This reminds me of this from a story of mine: "Early in my summer-of-2012 stay in Pennsylvania, Father Bill resonated with me when he said that substance abuse impairs our (he too is in recovery) ability to have intimate relationships with our loved ones, the world and God. For me, God is not a singular anthropomorphized individual Supreme Being — my conception of God is the spiritual energy that singularly (souls) and collectively permeates the universe, which, for the most part exists in a dimension not directly perceivable by our human form, but the presence of which is certainly inferable.

The concept of interference with intimacy is what strongly resonated with me at the time.

A couple months later at a meeting I attended during my time in Delray Beach, I heard a speaker of some renown (a pop singer popular in the late 50’s), who had over 40 years of sobriety, talk about intimacy. He said something I had not heard before — intimacy means “into me see.” It occurred to me that true intimacy is letting people see into me, but that before I could do that, I had to into me see. This could only be accomplished free of chemical masking."