fear

Live Life!

/ Tim / 2 Comments

“What if you don’t like your path?”

“Then it’s not your path.”

Jed McKenna,  Dreamstate: A Conspiracy Theory

I remember when I was a kid there was a great emphasis on finishing what you had started. Even if you didn’t like it, you stuck with it because that is what you were ‘supposed’ to do. Quitting part way through was the lazy way out, a defect of character. This went for college course choices, job choices and relationship choices. Once you committed to something, you couldn’t change course.  Stiff upper lip and all that!

I couldn’t disagree more today!

How many people are working at jobs they detest? Are going through the motions in a relationship that no longer fulfills? Living in conditions that are sapping them of their life blood? What good does it do you to keep climbing the corporate ladder when you find that the ladder is propped up onto the wrong wall?

Life is too short. It’s too short to be working at a job you detest, living where you aren’t comfortable and being with the wrong person. To everything there is a season. And when the season ends it’s time to move on. And there’s a lid for every pot; if the lid isn’t fitting, then change lids.

When I look at my life before recovery and now, I see a colossal difference. When I came into the meeting rooms I was at my bottom. I was living in the metaphoric dungeon of life and my addiction kept me in chains. The miracle of recovery showed me that the chains were of my own making and they weren’t locked. The trap door from the dungeon was unbolted and there was a ladder out. According to the old philosophy, I made my bed, now I must lie in it. The goal, I discovered isn’t to “make the best of it” it’s to leave the dungeon all together!

Any change can be very stressful. Because of this some prefer to stay in the dungeon because they ‘know’ it. Some fear what might happen if they do leave. What if they fail? What if they don’t like it? So they sell their health and peace of mind for the sense of security of a job or a relationship or an addiction that is robbing them of really living life.

Again I say, life is short and you’ll be dead for a lot more years than you ever lived. No one on their deathbed wishes they could have spent more time at the office. Get out there!  Try different things! Take some risks! Change the path you’re on if it’s not your path. You don’t get out of here alive, so make sure that you’ve lived while you were here.

 

 

Act as If

/ Tim / 1 Comment

“I’ve got this!” Famous last words of many folks who had no idea of what or how things could go wrong. Suddenly they will be nominated for a Darwin Award: a prize given to those who contribute to our gene pool by removing themselves from it. It’s a fitting crown to an otherwise obscure tombstone.

So often we think that we’ve ‘got’ it, and we don’t know how close we are to ‘lost’ it. There are so many variables in life that it is impossible to have sufficient contingency plans for everything. A tire will explode; a dog will cross your path; the ladder will break. It’s not a matter of good or bad karma. Things happen. It’s often the timing and the consequences of those things that we judge to be good, bad or indifferent: how do I perceive it?

Take for example the tire exploding. If it happens when the car is parked, just after we got home then, “Well, it’s a miracle that we made it!” If it happens just before we are about to leave then, “What bad luck, now I have to change the damn tire!” If it happens while driving too fast down a gravel road in the mountains, we may not survive to make a comment.

I’m learning that I simply don’t have control. I have plenty of evidence that gives me the illusion that I can control things: it worked today, so it will work tomorrow. However, there is never a guarantee that walking to work today will be as uneventful as it was yesterday or the day before, or the ride I’m about to take on my motorcycle will end with me safe and sound back in my home. The guy who said, “I got this!” might have done the same thing 25 times before without turning himself into a human torch. The unexpected happens. We all know this is true on some level, yet we still venture out into the ‘unknown’.

Why aren’t we paralysed with fear? Why would we ever leave the ‘safety’ of our homes? I think it is because we know on some level that we have to ‘act as if’ things are going to be fine, that they will run like clockwork and we’ll be tucked safely into bed at the end of the day. It’s an agreement with life that we will act and think as though things will happen as we intend them to happen. And for the most part, they do.

When I came into recovery I began to ‘act as if’ I was sober and clean. I ‘acted as if’ I could spend the rest of the day without consuming. I went to meetings, I worked the steps and talked to my sponsor because I was ‘acting like someone in a recovery program’ until I actually began to feel that I was no longer acting. And when I ‘came to believe’ in a power greater than myself, I was opting into the same belief system that I was operating with before: that if I would ‘act as if’ there was a Higher Power in my life until I could really believe and trust. The program has given me a new perspective. Now I don’t have to ‘act as if’. Now I know, “We got this!”

Expanding Horizons

/ Tim / Leave a comment

As the disease of addiction takes over more and more of life, the addict’s world became smaller and smaller. I think that’s the experience of most of us who enter recovery. The one who was the life of the party and the centre of attention imperceptibly changes. He looks to party with people who party like he does, who don’t suggest that he might want to slow down a bit. He finds a bar or a house where he can enjoy his pleasure in peace. Each locale is smaller, in a sketchier neighbourhood and with more of his kind. Gradually even these folks begin to irritate him. He doesn’t want to hang out with a bunch of losers so he holds up in his now tiny apartment or rooming house.

Slowly he has turned into the loner who doesn’t go out anymore unless he absolutely has to leave to seek out more supplies. He’d rather stay hidden under the table or behind the chair because that’s where he feels safest. He can’t see that he’s lost his family, his house and his job. He is unable to perceive that he’s without a sense of living or purpose or dignity. He can’t see it because the change happened gradually and addiction has twisted his mind to such a degree that his search for solace in a bottle or a toke has become a solitary experience.  If he continues he will move into a cardboard box on the street and then onto a statistical list of persons found dead of an overdose, cirrhosis or suicide.

Recovery opened up my world. It has slowly broadened and widened my life to one of fullness. Recovery delivers on all of the promises that alcohol and drugs reneged upon. I am living a life that truly I couldn’t have ever imagined. And it takes time.

Early recovery is difficult because the lure of what was known is so much closer that the promises of being clean. My world had shrunk so much that I no longer knew how to cope in the outside world.  My mind was still in the prison of addiction and though the door was open, I was afraid to venture forth into the open spaces of recovery. Some days I wanted it and other days I wanted the ‘comfort’ of what I had known for so long. I often felt insecure and undeserving of recovery. The sins of my past weighed heavily upon me.

Though it was explained to me that I wouldn’t find happiness, joy and freedom overnight, I had the expectation that once I stopped, things would get better quickly. Looking back I can see that some things did begin to turn around fairly quickly such as my financial situation, and my physical health. I was told that I didn’t get to my bottom in a week or a month so I shouldn’t expect to ‘get over this’ in a week or a month. I went to a lot of meetings in those first months, more than 90 in 90. It was where I felt safe and protected by my recovery family. That long breath that I once took after I got that first sip or hit now happened as the chairperson called for quiet to begin the meeting. It was my social life because I couldn’t trust myself in other social situations yet. Slowly, my world began to get bigger again.

Staying in recovery takes a decision and commitment. I’ve come to realize that my perspective on life slowly changed so that I became more comfortable without using and drinking. I woke up in the morning and began to enjoy this new life I was living. I started to see things around me that I hadn’t seen in a long, long time: birds, squirrels, people walking dogs, a beautiful scene. I turned my focus from the smallness of my old world onto the greatness of the one around me.  As my recovery continued, my life expanded again to where I can now see a far horizon. There is a path before me and I happily tread it. Gone is that tiny little world of addiction. I never want to return.

♥  ♥  ♥

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Peace

Photo credit: Rodney Conrad