Addiction

Ten Tidbits (Timbits?)

/ Tim / 2 Comments

I’ve learned a lot of life lessons since coming into the program. This is not an exhaustive list and not in any order of importance. Think of these as a few thoughts that popped into my head.

1. I am not alone.  For many years in my disease I didn’t want to admit that I needed anyone and at the end I didn’t want to admit that I needed help.  Even after starting the process of recovery it was difficult to ask for help.  This was foreign territory for me, both the program and the asking for help.

2. It’s the engine that kills you, not the caboose.  It never crossed my mind that the first hit or shot of something was what got my addiction going.  Once I had something in my system, the obsession took over and all of my resolve disolved. I said only one, and suddenly I had ten.  The first one is the deadly one that took me down the track each time.  The last one, just kept me out of it a little bit longer.

3. What other people think is none of my business.  This one was difficult for me to wrap my head around.  I slowly came to understand that when I was worried and thinking about what others might think about me, then I was giving my will over to them so that they would like me, I was handing over my self esteem to others and praying for a pat on the head.  I know now that I have to be true to myself.  It’s nice if others like me, but it’s not necessary.

4.  Faith will move mountains, but bring a shovel. I have learned that I am not helpless. There are many things that I can and must do to maintain my sobriety.  I know I have a Higher Power who has always looked after me. I have to look after me too. To get to sobriety takes work, work that I have to do.

5.  Not to decide is still a decision. I had heard this one years before, but I became an expert in the years leading up to my coming to the rooms.  I just sort of let life happen.  I needed to go somewhere or do something but I didn’t seem to have the energy to go or do anything.  So I would let it slide.  Letting it slide was my decision not to do something.  I take a more proactive approach today in doing the ‘next right thing’.

6.  Service will keep you sober.  This one was drilled into me from day one.  It took a year or so before I could begin to really understand what was happening.  When I was doing ‘service’: washing coffee cups, helping to set up for meetings, greeting people as they arrived, I was getting out of my own head.  My head is where the monkeys live and they like to have a circus whenever they can.  Service, I have found is a way of keeping them in their cages.  I get out of me and see that there is a whole other world out there.

7.  Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. How many times did I wake up and say: ‘I’m never doing that again!’ only to be back at it by noon. Of course I was. I wasn’t changing anything different and yet, I expected I could stay sober. Thanks to my sponsors and personal reflection, I am able to have a clearer picture of what I am doing in life. I have to do something.  A change of only one degree on your bearing will drastically change where you will end up.

8.  There are many paths to get to where you want to go. “Do you know that way to San Jose?” goes the song.  Living in Costa Rica with it’s capital being San Jose, I can give you a definite ‘yes’, I do know the way to San Jose. There are many ways to get there. Some are more direct, others are more scenic, some require a four-wheel drive vehicle. Eventually, following these ‘ways’, you will get to San Jose.  So it is with sobriety. My program is not the only way. There are many sober people in the world who do not follow the same program as I do.  So it is with faith.  My Higher Power works for me, and yours works for you.  The point is, they all get us to where we want to go.

9.  The more we learn, the more we learn how much more there is to learn. A friend of mine in the program who started out well over thirty years ago talks of a member of his group who was an old, old timer who was around when the program was in its infancy. The fellow used to say at meeting: “Folks, we’re just scratching the surface here.” I agree. When I came in I thought I knew what I was doing.  Now I see a depth of faith in others in the program that I want and I know I can have if I work for it.  I see understanding of the literature that goes way over my head.  It is a challenge to me to keep asking questions, seeking more answers.  It is a journey that I am enjoying a great deal.

10. There is no room for resentment, anger or fear in a heart full of gratitude.  Gratitude takes me out of me and into the realm of the spirit. When I am grateful for all that I have been given, then the petty things of the world around me fall by the wayside. How can I hold a grudge, hate someone or worry about tomorrow when I acknowledge the many ways I have always been very blessed? I can’t. I am grateful.

Enabling Charity

/ Tim / 1 Comment

panhandleA blogger that I follow wrote about something that happened to her a few days back.  In a nutshell: a street person who looked like an addict asked her for some money to buy bread. She offered to buy the bread for this person, but that offer was refused. She was wondering if she had handled this situation correctly.

This reminded me of something similar that happened to me last year. Someone asked me for some money for food as I was returning home from walking my dogs. I told him to hang on, went into the house and returned with a small bag of tortillas and an easy-to-open tin of tuna, which he accepted. A short while later when I was heading off to town, I saw the unopened tin and tortillas tossed off to the side of the road a little ways up from my front gate. I guess he wasn’t as hungry as he claimed.

The question is, do I give people money who ask for it, even if it seems obvious that it’s probably going toward the purchase of a small rock or bottle? Am I not enabling them in their addiction? As someone in recovery I am torn.  I may not have lived on the streets, but I realize that had I not received the gift of recovery when I did, that is where I would have ended up.  I do know what it is like to need that fix of whatever. I do know the need to have something in me to calm my nerves and stop my hands from shaking. In those moments, I didn’t need food. What I really needed right then was my ‘stuff’. Without it I could hardly function even at the most basic level.  I may have been somewhat hungry, but my addiction was front and centre. Until that craving was fulfilled, everything else was in second place.

That’s why it’s hard to answer the question.  On the one hand, I don’t wish to contribute to the further destruction of an individual. On the other hand, I know the intensity, the yearning, the incessant pleading of addiction.  Why did this person asked for food, when money for his ‘stuff’ was what he really needed? Probably to sound better and make his appeal more palatable. Probably because it worked. Coins for food doesn’t sound like I’m enabling someone in their addiction.

Early in my recovery a fellow approached me.  “Listen man,” he said.  “I’m an addict.  I need money to get some shit.”  I was taken aback by his honesty, and thanked him for it. It was a novel and honest approach and it worked. I gave him the equivalent of about a dollar and reminded him that it he wanted to get off the roller coaster he was on I would be happy to talk to him.  But his ‘need’ had to be fulfilled and he was off.

All of this reminds me of a story I heard years ago from a Jesuit priest who lived in one of the sketchier neighbourhoods of New York City.  Every day when he left his apartment he was bombarded by people panhandling on the street. Should he give money? Who should he give it to? To how many should he give? He came upon a wise solution. He put a dollar bill into the pocket of his jacket when he left for work.  The first person who asked him for money that morning got the dollar. He didn’t ask the reason why this person needed the money, nor judge that his clothes were too clean or too dirty to deserve that dollar. He just gave it away.  The priest said that it wasn’t his responsibility to judge people, their circumstances, or their lifestyle.  His responsibility was to be charitable to others, to offer his time, talent and treasure to all people.

This is an approach that works for me.  I’ve been struggling with giving money to an individual when it is obvious what it going to be used to buy. I know what they are going through. I can relate to their suffering. So I’ve determined that each day I will give the equivalent of one dollar to the first person who asks me for it. After that, anyone else who wants food or bus fare, I’ll buy it for them if they really want it and if I have it to spend.  It’s a solution that works for me and I offer it as one of many possible solutions for others who are struggling with this question.

Here’s a link to the original article by Candace Bisram in her blog “Pocketful of Smiles” that inspired me to write this today.

 

 

 

Living the Program

/ Tim / Leave a comment

I am an addict.  It doesn’t matter what substance I used, how often or how long I used it, or how long it’s been since I’ve used it.  I am and always will be an addict. I am grateful that I have some time in my program, but I must always be aware that I am just a couple of bad decisions away from a crash and burn.  I know from hearing others in meeting rooms how easy it is to slip up and what can happen if I do go out again, and it won’t be pretty.  I have never heard of someone who came back to their program talk about how wonderful it was while out there using or drinking again.  “The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker.”(Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 30) This idea must be crushed and obliterated from my mind.  My ego tells me I can be different from everyone else.  Experience, my own and others, warns me that I am not.

It’s not sobriety that has brought about the changes in my life. It’s the spiritual awakening that is the result of working and living the 12 steps. Not drinking and not using may mean that I am sober and clean.  But they don’t give me sobriety. In my early thirties I stopped on my own once for about five years. But I wasn’t really sober: I was fighting against my desires to escape life.  I really wanted to have a beer with friends, a glass of wine with dinner or share a joint, but I knew I shouldn’t.  And I wasn’t the nicest person to be around because I still had all of the ego charged character traits that I always did, only now they weren’t being softened by that gentility of the first pipeful or shot. My recovery was missing something.

That something, I believe, was the spiritual experience, or awakening.  A psychological shift in thinking that has allowed me to surrender, stop trying to control everything, and realize that I was the greatest threat to my existence.  I was drowning in the river of life and still trying to swim upstream.  If I wanted to really live, I had to understand that when it came to certain things, I was completely powerless.  If I just stopped thrashing about, I could at least float with the current.

Surrender on this existential level wasn’t that hard. There really wasn’t much left to give up. I had lost my dignity and self respect.  I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror.  My liver was enlarged and who knows what other physical problems I was on the verge of encountering. I had alienated most of the people around me and was finding comfort in gloomy establishments with people who were living much like I was. My life was circling the bottom of the toilet bowl. Somehow I still had enough sense to see that I was on the path of losing myself. So in spite of my misgivings and preconceptions of what recovery was all about, I showed up at a local meeting and took my place at the table.

I understand that I was ready to surrender, to try something else because my way wasn’t working.  A friend of mine calls it his Gift Of Desperation.  I was powerless and I couldn’t manage my own life.  That was my first baby step into the program.  The eleven remaining steps helped me to recover and slowly brought me about to a more awakened state of being and opened me to a relationship to a Higher Power.

My life today is changed from what it was before.  My sobriety today is of a different quality than I had when I quit solo for five years. It is different because I work at living a twelve step program. I know that this is a lifelong process, and it is one I do willingly because I like the changes in my life and my being.  Today I like who I am and I can look at my reflection in the mirror without cringing.  The changes in my life are not because I am put down the bottle or the pipe. They are a result of working all twelve steps of the program and awakening to the spirit.   I am finally enjoying the trip down the river.

♥  ♥  ♥

Please like and share this blog, not to stroke my ego, but for those who need the courage, strength and hope to start and continue their journey down Recovery River. I would appreciate it if you would sign up and follow the blog as well.  My intention is to post Mondays and Thursdays.   Please comment.  I’d love to hear from you.

Peace