I recently saw a video clip in which a guy said, “Thirteen years ago, I got clean and sober off of drugs and alcohol and I was taught that I have to give it away to keep it.”
From what I gather, he went around helping as many needy people as he could with acts of kindness and words of encouragement. In other words, he took the very life he had been self-medicating to make himself feel good, did an about face, and gave it away in service to others and in so doing preserved his life from self-destruction.
To some degree, his experience illustrated the words of Jesus: “Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it.” Luke 17:33
