Success in Recovery

February 8, 2018February 7, 2018 / Tim / Leave a comment

I read a good blog about success and how much we need to do to renew ourselves or realize our plans. Sitting on the sofa in front of the television will not make you a world class athlete or a best selling writer. People who are successful at anything are people who pour their whole spirit into their endeavours. A half hearted effort doesn’t get you a gold medal; it won’t even let you qualify to compete.

Recovery is the same. You have to go all in if you want to succeed. There is no ‘sort of recovered’. We are either in recovery or we aren’t. You don’t get a yearly key tag or medallion for being clean and sober for ‘most of the year’! Wanting isn’t enough. I have to do the work; I don’t try, I do. If I want to take the journey I have to take the first step.

I know achieving recovery isn’t easy. I know there are times when it seems like life is getting me down and I’d like to escape the pain I feel but I’m either in recovery or I’m not, so chemicals or alcohol are off the table, they’re not an option. I won’t go there. My recovery is my passion.

Had I continued on the path I was going down in my disease, I would have lost everything, not just material things, but my health, my dignity and my life. That’s how this disease works and I’ve seen it take too many others down. I know I’m not different from them except that I am passionate about my recovery. I have been given the tools of recovery and they work. I know they work because I have used them in the past and I got through very difficult and stressful life events. I got through them because I worked my program and I live my steps.

Recovery is an all or nothing deal. Recovery means that some days are great and some days are challenging and there’s no avoiding any of those days. It means taking all that life offers and using my experience, strength and hope: I can apply my program to every situation. Sometimes I get through with some scrapes and bruises, physical or emotional, but I make it. At the end of the day if I didn’t consume or drink then I am successful.

Pour your passion into recovery. Let it give you the deep desire that we all need to recover. Success doesn’t come to those who sit by and wait. It comes to those who work for it, train for it, study for it. This isn’t a one time event, recovery is a lifetime process. I am grateful to be a part of it.

Here’s a link to the article that inspired me today: Skylarity

There is a Season

February 5, 2018February 4, 2018 / Tim / Leave a comment

There are times when I want to be loud and boisterous and the centre of attention. At other times I retreat and I am quiet. Most of the time I am somewhere in between on the continuum of emotion. The past couple of weeks have been ones of retreat and reflection. I’ve been taking it a bit easy physically as I hurt my back and need to rest. I have learned as well that when something happens to me physically, there is always something on the spiritual side I need to take special care of as well. Oh I still do the necessary things and fulfill my commitments, but my interests in other things is not as keen as at other times.

More and more medicine is discovering that the physical disease is a result of how we think and feel. There is no separation between the body and the soul; they are entwined within the self. I’ve heard of the link between worry and stomach ulcers for years. But there’s also plenty of evidence to link depression with heart disease and anger with arthritis. Research is also showing that there is direct result between how quickly one recovers or is cured of a disease and one active participation in the cure.

I believe that my addiction is a direct result of not feeling connected with others and the world. The further I got into my addiction the less I was connected and the more I isolated myself from the world. Therefore it makes sense to me that my actively participating in reconnecting myself to the world around me will result in establishing and maintaining my recovery. The program of recovery is the twelve steps that help us to look at ourselves and bring us out of that self and to make contact again.

So, is my withdrawal from the world a sign of an immanent relapse? Am I going back to older behaviours of isolation? I don’t believe it is. I think it is just my body and spirit taking a break from what is going on about me to reflect on what has happened in the past year or so and to take stock of what worked and what didn’t, to do some introspection and review the lessons I’ve been given. I can use this time to look toward where I wish to go in the future; in order to write the next chapter I need to know what was written before or I’m likely to forget and repeat the same story over again.

To everything, there is a season, we are told. My back will heal and the mental rest will give me a fresh perspective on the next part of life. I know that spring will come. Body and spirit will heal together and trod on this journey.

A Journey to Belief

February 1, 2018January 31, 2018 / Tim / 1 Comment

In Step Two we come to believe in a power greater than ourselves that can restore us to sanity. As with all the steps, it’s a process that takes some time. I still had a belief in ‘something’ when I came into recovery. I can’t say that I could have articulated exactly what I believed, but there was something ‘up there’ I figured. It certainly wasn’t the god I was raised with, and I was very relieved that the program allows me to believe in a god of my own understanding.

When I started to come out of my self-induced haze I had to admit that I hadn’t been doing all that well in the running of my life. And here were some folks who were telling me that they had turned things around in their lives and that part of that was a believe in a Power greater than themselves. I couldn’t argue with the results they were telling me about. And by the time I arrived at recovery’s doorstep I really was ready to give it a shot. After all, I was told, I didn’t have to believe in the god I was made to believe in, I could choose the god that I came to believe in.

I remember a friends description of his journey through Step Two. Joe was an atheist. He couldn’t accept that there was some sort of a god up there somewhere doing stuff to us and allowing all of the bad stuff to happen. As Joe tells it, when he was five, his grandfather, for whom he is named, died. He and his Papa had a very special relationship. At the funeral the priest said that God had called his Papa to be with him in heaven. What Joe heard was that God had stolen his grandfather away. What a mean and selfish God. At that point, though he was very young, Joe stopped believing in God, gradually, with time, declaring himself an atheist.

Through the journey of life, Joe became an addict and alcoholic and eventually found himself coming into a rehab centre and recovery. He was having a great deal of trouble with Step Two. During one of his discussions with his sponsor he shared his experience of his grandfather’s funeral. “What would you say to this god if you had the chance?” asked his sponsor. And Joe began to rail against this god who took is Papa away from him. “You sure have a lot of hate and anger against something you say you don’t believe in,” said his sponsor.

Joe was stunned. He couldn’t deny that what his sponsor had just called him on: he must still believe in some kind of a god if he had such strong feelings toward him. And that was enough to open the door for Joe. He continued to work with his sponsor and had come to a strong belief in a god of his own understanding. He came; he came to; he came to believe.

Thank you Joe G.