Living Change

August 31, 2017August 30, 2017 / Tim / Leave a comment

If I don’t change, I won’t change.

How often in life have we not liked a situation or circumstances and done nothing about them? Perhaps it was a job, a relationship or a where we were living that wasn’t working out. Oh, we could and did complain. We complained about the boss, the spouse, or the neighbourhood to whoever would listen. However, a situation never resolves itself unless something changes.

When I find myself in an intolerable situation I have two of choices. I can either do nothing and hope that somehow it will get better, or I can make the change I want to see. I used to be a master at the first option. I let it slide. I’d tell myself it really wasn’t that bad. I would hope that things got better, I would ignore it. I’d use it as another reason to escape into my addiction. I saw myself as a victim of circumstances or of other people. Rarely did I do anything about it because that would involve me making changes. It’s amazing how we can learn to accept even the most intolerable conditons rather than make a change.

“Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.”

Often I don’t make a change because I fear that if I make a change things will get worse instead of better. This attitude can be traces back to the idea that we must accept our lot in life. I think serf and slave owners fed us that work ethic. We saw ourselves victims of fate or karma about which we had no control.

Or when we saw others making changes in their lives we focused on their failures, or the amount of effort it took to make the change. We didn’t think we had the necessary abilities or talents to accomplish something similar in our lives. Probably nothing has held us back more than social pressure. “Don’t rock the boat,” we were told. The pressure to conform and be similar to everyone else in our group was too difficult to break away from. We would be all alone if we did something different. No, we had no choice but to keep with the status quo. Or so we thought.

What doesn’t kill me will make me stronger.

One of the things I have learned in the past few years in recovery is that I can survive anything. I know because I have. I have gone through some difficutlt times in sobriety: ending relationships, changes in health, income shifts, moving to a different country. I have survived each major challenge and I believe, learned from each one. Yes there is fear of the unknown. Yes there are obstacles. Yes river is riddled with rocks and eddies. And yet here I am. I have always and will always survive whatever comes my way until I don’t.

I know that I have a connection to something greater than myself. I have come to the conclusion that the next right thing for me to do is what I do. There is no right or wrong. There are only options. Sometimes I like the outcome and sometimes I don’t. But I am making changes, I am learning, I am moving beyond my fears. If my Higher Power loves and cares about me then I know I can trust whatever comes my way.

I embrace change. Sometimes, I admit, it’s about as whole-hearted as hugging a porcupine, but I do it anyway. I know that life is change and nothing stays the same. Oh, I can fight the current, thrash away to keep myself from going through those rapids ahead, but eventually, I will have to go through what lies ahead. Why not save the energy and trust. My fear tells me there is only one possible outcome: disaster. False! There are many possible outcomes to every situation. I am learning that I get through the rapids much quicker if I let the current take me.

Faith will move mountains, but bring a shovel.

I choose to rely upon my Higher Power. I choose to move forward. I choose change over stagnation. I will do the work to move ahead and to grow. I trust. I am the change I wish to be. I may not always be successful by the standards of the world around me, but I’m learning and for me, that’s what this life is all about.

♥ ♥ ♥

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 as well. My intention is to post Mondays and Thursdays. Please comment and offer suggestions. I’d love to hear from you.

Peace

Living the Program

August 24, 2017August 23, 2017 / 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

Real Recovery

August 10, 2017August 9, 2017 / Tim / 3 Comments

In the 82 years since the beginning of Alcoholics Anonymous, the granddaddy of all twelve step programs, a lot has changed. There is generally a better understanding of what addiction is and how one recovers. There are movies as well as series on regular and cable channels in which twelve step groups are depicted, sometimes fairly accurately. One thing however, that seems to remain the same is the idea of what Recovery looks like. We (including the general public and those who are going in for the first time) think that one goes into a rehab or recovery centre for a month or two and they are cured! To many people, recovery looks like the illustration below.

And, it doesn’t. A far truer representation of recovery is this:

Recovery is messy. It doesn’t last for a month, or two, or a year. It’s a lifetime commitment to staying clean and sober. Sometimes we fall off the page and find our way back on, and sometimes, we just drop off and are never heard from again. It’s a constant struggle to learn new skills, a new design for living that is as strange and foreign to us as using chopsticks for the first time: we understand the concept but we just can’t get our fingers, our minds and the sticks to work together. Food drops off before we get it to our mouth, we splash our new white shirt, and we just want to go back to what we know. We drugged and drank because that was what we knew how to do; that is how we had learned to cope with everything. And now we just want to scream out like a newbie in a Chinese restaurant: “Give me a bloody fork now!”

It takes time. I recall my first year. I can see now that I was still certifiably insane. I owned a business, but didn’t want to answer the phone or open the mail. It was all I could do to attend to clients, get through the day, make it to a meeting and head to bed early. Once a day I would listen to the phone messages. And it took a real effort to make myself open an envelope or go to the bank. Just doing regular, normal things that running a business entailed were monumental feats. Oh, and I felt I deserved a medal every day for doing what little I did do, because I was finally acting like a normal human being doing what normal human beings do. Yup, the elevator wasn’t making it all the way to the top floor.

Like everyone else, I thought that when I went clean everything would be fine, would go back to normal, life would be beautiful and there would be rainbows, and unicorns, and butterflies, with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing in the background. Only, I had been out of it for so long that I had no idea what normal life was supposed to be like. I had badly twisted and damaged my mind and that of those around me as well. I still had all of my faults and character flaws and now that I was sober, I was acutely aware of them. Some days weren’t pretty at all. Early recovery wasn’t what I had expected to it to be.

I am fortunate that I was ready to give myself to the program. I didn’t want to go back to the irrepressible demoralization that was my life. But I complained about it. I remember one member asking me at a meeting, “Do you have a sponsor?” When I said I did, he responded, “I suggest you use him!” Our program has so many tools that help in early sobriety when everything is so new. The meetings, home groups, steps, slogans, sponsors, phone lists and just not drinking the first drink were the first tools that I was given. Gradually I learned to use these tools.

One of the things I learned was that in order to get a year in sobriety I had to go through a whole year in sobriety. It takes time. There are plenty of firsts in that first year: birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, festivals, outdoor patios, beaches, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the list goes on. Making it through each one of these firsts added to my resolve to continue. My sponsor guided me through the steps, listened to my B.S. and gave me advice from his own experience. When I made it through that first year, I did it all over again, this time knowing that if I could do it once, I can do it again.

There are still plenty of dips and dives in sobriety. But with time, there is more of a balance in my life. I suggest that new members to give themselves time. It took years reach my bottom and I didn’t climb out of it in a few weeks. Remember the rooms are full of people who will help you to grow and understand and show you how they worked the steps. If recovery were easy everyone would do it. It takes a decision and dedication to make it through that tangled mess of a life, sober.

♥ ♥ ♥

Please share if you think this blog can help someone. Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, etc. or good ol’ copy and paste. 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.

At the suggestion of a reader I have added a new page to the blog: Recovery Resources. There’s a Google Translate link to the site on the right sidebar if you prefer to read this or share this in another language. Let me know of your thoughts and possible additions that might be helpful. Please share your ideas for future posts.

Once again, please like and share, not to stroke my ego, but for those who need the courage, strength and hope to start and continue their journey down Recovery River.

Peace