Alcoholism

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!”

Success in Recovery

/ 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

Make Me Teachable

/ Tim / 4 Comments

There are many paths to get to where we want to go in life. There’s not necessarily only one road to get to where you are going, rather many options. What makes the difference between those who achieve their goals and those who don’t make it is, I believe, attitude. Human resource professionals say that given a choice, they will choose a candidate with a positive, eager attitude over one with more skills and education.  Someone with a good attitude who is willing to listen and learn can be taught the skills of a job, make it their own and thrive in their work environment.

When the addict is ready, the recovery program will appear.

It is my attitude that determines the happiness, joy and freedom that I will experience in recovery. It’s up to me to choose to do the work of the steps or not. Meetings and sponsors can invite me to do the work, but it is my attitude toward change, trying new ways of approaching life and the people around me that will carry me through. If I don’t think I can do it, I won’t. Like Yoda’s advice to Luke in Star Wars, “Do or do not, there is not try.” I have to put myself all-in-there if I am going to make it.

Achieving a positive attitude toward life requires humility: teachability. It’s realizing that I don’t know everything, I don’t have all the answers. It’s listening to people speak at meetings and relating to their experience, strength and hope. And it’s applying what we have learned to our own lives.

I remember a speaker say that at most meetings the 70-20-10 rule applies. Seventy percent of the time people share good solid material that can be applied at some point in the future. Twenty percent of the time what is being shared has you at the edge of your seat because it is exactly what you need to hear right at this moment. And ten percent of the time, he said, it’s an opportunity to practice patience and tolerance. The funny thing is what’s a 20% moment for me, might be a 10% moment for the fellow sitting beside me. I don’t ever remember a meeting where I didn’t come away with something useful.

You can lead an addict to a meeting but you can’t make him recover.

Going to meetings is part of my program of recovery. I followed the recommendation of 90 meetings in 90 days in early recovery and it helped to develop a positive attitude and a yearning to work the Twelve Steps of the program. I discovered that I had a lot in common with the addict with six months sitting beside me or the alcoholic with 15 years across from me. I learned that I didn’t have to invent new ways of dealing with life on life’s terms; I could use the tools that others happily shared at meetings to create a path to where I want to go in life: living in the solution.