New Beginnings

October 5, 2017October 4, 2017 / Tim / Leave a comment

In this area, like many other places, when there’s a newcomer or someone returning to the fellowship, we talk about Step One. “We admitted that we were powerless over our addiction and that our lives had become unmanageable.” We also talk about the Third Tradition. “The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop using.” The last three meetings I attended have welcomed new people. Is my Higher Power trying to tell me something?

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t want to quit when I arrived at my first meeting. I had no desire to stop using. I had a desire for the craziness to stop. I wanted the circus in my head to pull up stakes and move on. I wanted to feel better and stop feeling depressed. The feelings of despair were so overwhelming that I wanted them to stop, but I didn’t want to admit that my consumption was the problem. I thought you could perhaps teach me to control my use so that I could enjoy life. Once I got my life organized again, then I could drink and use like a normal human being.

Hmmm. Didn’t quite work out the way I thought.

I really wasn’t sure what would happen when I walked into the room that first time. But I was welcomed, recognized a couple of people I knew and sat down. Almost immediately I heard other people sharing their story and it was my story. I could relate to the insanity of it all. I heard them speak of the shame they felt, their despair, fear and confusion while they were still drinking and using. They told me something that I never knew. It’s the first drink that got me drunk, not the eighth or tenth. How many times did I tell myself that I was only going to have one or two and find myself falling off of the barstool asking myself what happened. I thought, ‘One can’t hurt’, and came to the next morning unsure of how I ended up lying on the porch. As one member said, ‘It’s not the caboose that kills you, it’s the engine!’ Once it was in me, I lost all my resolve and all bets were off. I had to admit, that I never just had one of anything.

Sheepishly, slowly, I had to admit that perhaps my use was at least part of my problem. Slowly, with time, I realized that I was powerless over my addiction. I saw that I spent most of my time getting high, recovering from it, or planning my next one. I might still have had a roof over my head and food in the fridge, but it wasn’t me who was managing my life, my addiction was. Most importantly, I learned that I couldn’t solve my problems with the same thinking that caused them. Something had to change.

Something did change: I stopped thinking and starting listening. I had to admit that the folks around the table had something that I wanted. They were happy, laughing and friendly. It didn’t take long before I dropped the pretense that I could control my use. One minute at a time, one hour at a time and then one day at a time. I could stop for the moment, this minute or this hour. Gradually the hours added up to a day and then the days to a week and so on.

I can’t take my sobriety for granted. I know that I am a few bad decisions away from losing it. The elevator of my disease is waiting with the door open, ready to take me down deeper. And there’s no guarantee that I will make it back. Like the diabetic taking insulin, I must follow the program on a daily basis to ensure my sobriety. I am a beginner every day.

Beginner meetings remind me how far I have come in sobriety. They remind me of what it was like and could be again. Working with a new member helps to keep it fresh. I am grateful to those who took the time to pass the message onto me and in my gratitude, I pass that message to others. What’s my Higher Power telling me? Keep coming back. Keep working the program. I can’t know what will coming around the corner in my life, but whatever it is, I know that keeping close to the program will allow me to handle life as it comes. I am grateful.

♥ ♥ ♥

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

The Wreckage

September 25, 2017September 24, 2017 / Tim / 2 Comments

I’ve learned in my program that I need to clear away the wreckage of my past. Part of that wreckage is the damage that I did to other people, especially family. In the movie When Love is Not Enough, the Lois Wilson Story, Lois’ character says that on average four people are pulled into the vortex of an alcoholic. The word vortex, the spinning fury of mayhem that pulls what is around it into its empty centre, is quite appropriate. We lie, we cheat, we manipulate and we steal from these people while we are in the vortex, often discarding them along the way. I am reminded of the Tasmanian Devil of old cartoons. That is pretty much what we did.

Lois Wilson was the founder of Al-Anon Family Groups program for the family and friends of alcoholics. She, being the wife of Bill Wilson, one of the co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, knew what she was talking about having lived through the destruction that her husband’s alcoholism caused in both of their lives. She also knew of the struggle to find her own sanity in the midst of chaos and conflict. If her statement is true about how alcoholics and addicts affect the lives of others, then the rooms of Al-Anon should be overflowing; they aren’t.

I suppose it must be extra difficult to admit that the insanity of an addict’s life rubs off and that they are as powerless over alcohol and drugs and their loved one. It’s the alcoholic who is sick, not the spouse or partner. It’s hard to admit that one’s attempts to help a loved one have never been successful. It’s also hard to see that AA or NA is doing what love and devotion couldn’t accomplish alone. The wife of a friend of mine in the program openly states that she was as sick as her husband because of alcohol, but she was unable to see it until she went to Al-Anon, ostensibly to try to get help for him. Once there, she discovered that she needed help as well. Today they both travel their path of recovery.

I remember hearing a speaker at a meeting talk about having an argument with his wife because he was late coming home from work one night. She had been worried about him and he was angry because he had been in recovery for almost a year at the time. His sponsor chastised him, telling him that he had made so many promises to her that he had broken, that he had lied so many times about where he was and when he was coming home, and had manipulated her for so many years, that she had a right to think that he may have slipped. Even after a year, two years, or ten years, members have relapsed, so a partner’s worry is not without cause.

One of my sponsees came to me a while back. He’s fairly new in the program and was complaining about his wife. He felt that she was not understanding enough about his disease, always asking him where he was going and who he was with. He felt like she was treating him like a child and not the sober adult that he felt he was. His wife’s concern was genuine and is quite common. How many times had he broken promises to her? How often had he lied to her about where and with whom he was with? How often had he told her that he wasn’t going to drink or use only to find him dropped off on the front porch unable to stand let alone find the front door? No, he was the one who needed some understanding of where she was coming from and that while he may be sure he’s on the path of sobriety, she has every right to her uncertainty.

It is so much easier to see how our addiction has affected our own lives. It is not as easy to see how it has affected those who made the decision to love us. And it does affect them just as deeply and profoundly. I do not presume to speak for members of Al-Anon. I only know what I have heard from them. One told me that it was one of the most difficult thing he ever had to do was admit that he had allowed the alcoholism in his family to affect him as deeply as it had and that it took so long for him to realize that he too needed help to live.

We cause great swaths of destruction and leave a path of wreckage behind us. All of this can be cleared and the vortex toned down to a tolerable swirl. It takes time. Addicts and alcoholics know it takes time to go through their program and find happiness, joy and freedom. Those whom we have deeply affected also need time to heal. There is hope for all of us affected.

♥ ♥ ♥

Peace

Photo credit: Jennifer Rice

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