Acceptance or Complacency?

Within the addiction recovery community, there's great familiarity with the first stanza of the Serenity Prayer:

     God, Grant me the serenity
     to accept the things I cannot change;
     courage to change the things I can;
     and the wisdom to know the difference.

It is easy, almost natural for those of us dealing with addiction to at times twist acceptance into permission to coast. Most everything that challenges us gets filed into the "cannot change" category before we can even really unpack it and see what's at the root of the issue. Even when we know that something we've done or said caused the situation, we'll pile on layers of comforting (if false) blame for the purposes of absolution. If we aren't careful, we can at times convolute stories about things in our lives in a way that absolves us from any responsibility.

Acceptance does not mean complacency, although the latter far too often is confused for and replaces the former. It can be critical for the sake of our own mental, spiritual and emotional health to rightly practice acceptance, and it can be just as vital to all of the above that we reject and move away from complacency. It's important that we don't waste time obsessing over or lamenting things completely out of the realm of our control or influence, and that we take great care to differentiate between things we can control (only our own thoughts, words and actions) and things we can influence, in addition to those things that fall out of either realm.

I heard it said that in this context acceptance is accepting the things you can't change, while complacency is accepting the things you can change, and by extension not doing anything about them. The courage to act is not always easy to access, which is why we ask for it in the Serenity Prayer. Doing the right thing sometimes really takes guts.

Once we land on the realization that we cannot truly control anything beyond our own thoughts, words and actions it all begins to look a bit differently. It takes a different kind of courage to confront the hard truth of your own shortcomings and do something about them. As much of a challenge as pushing against an external status quo can present, struggling against your own nature is monumentally difficult. This is the first battle to be fought and many times it leads to others, but nothing else can be rightly tackled until we toe this line.

Don't let the idea of acceptance become warped into permission to be passive and complacent. Acceptance is an act, and in truth it is an act of courage. It is the act that begins your climb up the mountain, but having the courage to change the things you can is what helps propel you toward the peak.

Eight Is Not Enough

Eight years.

Has it really been that long?

Some days it really feels like I've been clean and sober for nearly as long as I can remember, and other days it's like I'm brand new at this thing. There are moments when it feels as if this is just the way I've been for so long that it's become "old hat." When I reflect on how many people are now major figures in my life who have ONLY known me in recovery, it really starts to feel like I've spent a whole lifetime this way. That's kind of a nice feeling in its own way - what an amazing gift it is to have so many valuable people who see me as I am and not as I was?

Truthfully I'd much rather feel brand new all the time, because that pushes me back into the most mentally, emotionally and spiritually healthy place in my life: learner mode. Mature sobriety at times can feel to me like stagnation and that is a very dangerous spot - perhaps the most dangerous. It would be so easy to settle into comfort in a way that could breed complacency; our very nature as humans seems to be easily aligned with contentment, and in a lot of cases that isn't unhealthy. We seek the comfort of contentment. We bathe in complacency. Seek simple satisfaction.

Relaxation.

Stagnation.

Relapse.

Misery.

Death.

You see, that awesome eight year coin I picked up last Saturday did nothing to keep me sober on Sunday. Nothing I've "achieved" up until now in my sobriety guarantees me anything. The things I've learned will atrophy without application and the ways I've healed will slowly be undone if I don't remember to take my medicine. For me, my recovery involves mental, physical, emotional and spiritual health and I take "medicine" for each on a daily basis. Prayer, meditation, exercise, service, communicating and fellowship with others like me, educating myself in order to expand my spiritual life, rigorous honesty and many more habitual practices are daily doses that I need to maintain my sobriety and serenity.

I am most grateful for the time I've had clean and sober in this life, but that time alone won't give me one more day of serenity. The work is never over. No days off, because I promise you that my alcoholism/addiction is waiting patiently for me feel normal - to think I can drink like one of "them." If an when that day comes it will be ready to rip everything away and destroy whatever is left of me with tornadic intensity, and I can't accept that fate. I won't.

Time Wasted, Wasted Time?

Early in my recovery I was obsessed with the idea of making up for the time I'd wasted in my active addiction. I thought my life had become a race against time and I had to double my output in every way to catch up to my age. Most of my friends were (and to a point still are) ahead of me in life as the world measures it and I was stuck beginning a wholesale rebuild of my life, my habits and my priorities at 28.

One idea with which I am becoming familiar to the point of being well-versed is the concept of morbid reflection. I hadn't really considered it until it was spoken of in a cruise ship 12-step meeting and it has stuck in my mind consistently since. It dawned on me how much time I've (wasted) spent in that very state. I can remember something from the past, either during or after my active addiction and it is as if I was transported to that moment in time and I can become just as angry/sad/disappointed/jealous/angry/angry/angry/enraged as I was in the moment itself.

Morbid Reflection.

Morbid: "Characterized by or appealing to an abnormal and unhealthy interest in disturbing and unpleasant subjects, especially death and disease."

Reflection: "Serious thought or consideration."

So it's safe to say that morbid reflection could be accurately described as giving serious (to the point of being abnormal) thought to unpleasant subjects from the past, the present or the future. Obsessing over things you can't change (past and future) as well as having an unhealthy interest in things about the present that are disturbing. I can't speak with any authority to how this affects anyone else, but it saps me of so much time, energy and gratitude that it's hard to admit. 

I catch myself in this space multiple times a day, but thanks to my cruise ship meeting partner I now have actual awareness of it and can call it out and change course. If I take a moment to look back, I've wasted MONTHS worth of hours lost in morbid reflection in my life. I am especially susceptible to it - who'd have thought, an addict getting caught up obsessively thinking about stuff - but my awareness of it enables me to make the conscious choice to step out of it.

I control my thoughts, words and actions. Today I choose to make my thoughts a weapon I wield in the fight for my own good, not a weapon of self-destruction. 

The Art of Living Amends

Cleaning up the wreckage of the past.

This is perhaps the least enjoyable (in the anticipation phase, at least) and most necessary part of a healthy program of addiction recovery. In our active addiction, we are at best flawed and manipulative individuals around whom our every thought, word and action is centered and at our worst we are a nightmarish plague of Biblical proportions, wreaking havoc and causing ruin. The toll on those around us is immeasurable and in many cases unspoken.

At times, it is critical that you don't reach out and make contact with a person from the past, for your own sake or for theirs due to the potential harm it could cause. If you're being honest with yourself those cases are pretty obvious although not always simple to address. This process of making amends can also lead to special challenges when, in addition to being a near-to-impossible to quantify emotional toll you are attempting to make amends to someone who's no longer living among us. How in the world to you go about balancing that numberless ledger with either someone you cannot contact or a person who has passed away?

What in the world do you do to reconcile that - making things right when you can't measure the wrongs you perpetrated against a person who you can no longer see, hear or touch?

This is where the beautiful concept of making living amends gets to shine through. Think of it as being intentional about the way you live as a tribute to a person.

My father departed this Earth on August 25th, 2002 and the mental, emotional and spiritual pain this brought me (barely a year removed from so nearly dying myself) was massive. Dad wasn't around to see me bottom out, and he wasn't around to see me begin or sustain my recovery. I've chosen to work a 12 Step program as my method of recovery and a pivotal part of that is the amends making process. When I got to my dad, I was a bit stumped. My sponsor at the time clued me into making living amends. I thought specifically about how I'd harmed him and what way of living could offset that.

With dad, I'd lied, stolen and manipulated. The inverse of those habits is pretty clear, and as such I make my amends to my father each day by being rigorously honest in my dealings with everyone. I also try and stay as humble, helpful and loving as possible because this would make my father intensely proud of me.

For several years, I knew deep down that the way I was living would've caused him great shame. That is not the truth today, and as such I can celebrate his memory with a full heart rather than mourning him from a place of emptiness.

The Privilege of Sobriety

Like most humans, I am multifaceted. I can put a check in many socially labeled columns. I am a middle-aged, middle class heterosexual white man. I'm a Southerner, a Fraternity man, a Christian, a Coach, a student support professional and a survivor. 

I am also a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. 

I'm all of these things all the time; I'm never not any of them and I'm never only a few of them. I'm much more than any one category and who I am is greater than the sum of those parts. I am representing all of these things and more with every thought, word and deed. Who we are doesn't get to take a break, and there's a level of responsibility there for each of us. It can certainly be viewed as a burden and is at times burdensome. That's life.

In my case, I am also blessed by the privilege and honor that comes with that responsibility. Some of those associations are biological and some are by my choosing, but they all carry a similar duality of benefit and responsibility. As an able-bodied person of means (which is an honor in and of itself) I believe it to be my responsibility to use those means to be of service to others who don't share them. As a Christian I am charged to love others without hesitation or qualification. As a coach, I am tasked with walking in all of the love, grace and light with which the training and the profession have blessed me. 

As a man in long-term recovery, sobriety tells me that I must give it away with enthusiasm if I hope to keep it. What an honor to have been entrusted with the sacred responsibility of carrying the message to those who still suffer! All the suffering, difficulty and struggle was preparing me for this path - it was all a gift that when opened would empower me to be of the most service to my fellow humans. 

I count it all joy. Every bit of the process of my becoming - good, bad, suffering and celebrating - is a gift. I am the sum total of my experiences and that "who" is a man equipped with the ability to help and support so many more people than would be possible otherwise. To be who I am today is an honor and a privilege, and while it took me a long time to see it that way, the sight is an irreplaceable gift. 

The Hardest Part?

Be prepared for at least 101 different answers if you ever ask 100 different addicts the question "What's the most difficult part of staying clean and sober?"

Frankly, if you asked me 100 different times, you may get that many different answers from me as well. Prior to sitting down to think through this, I'd have had a different response based on what I had going on that week. Things shift and change and our thinking, acting and reacting often have to shift to accommodate the changing need. There are some themes to sobriety, though, so if we look at those and map them backwards we can get to a passable answer.

Once an addict commits to recovery, honesty with ourselves must follow. Once this happens, we can start to admit and understand that we ourselves are at the root of our issue. The "problem" isn't the problem, because the problem is us. We then go to work on ourselves, and after some progress we move forward in a flawed, broken-but-healing state. We learn and practice honesty with ourselves and others, but we also learn how to deliver honesty with compassion, grace and love. We learn that we must have a buffer or filter between the thoughts in our minds and the words and actions that bring them into everyone else's reality. How do we do this, or at least make an honest effort?

Self- management.

Everything begins and ends with our thinking. Managing and being responsible for what we think and how we use those thoughts is our toil, trouble and triumph. I don't have to speak or act on every thought that crosses my mind, and I really shouldn't anyway if I want to continue as a respectable member of society. For more than a decade, I didn't choose to cultivate the ability to manage my words and actions - I acted out of my impulse almost exclusively. To borrow a phrase from a friend, I continuously sacrificed the permanent on the alter of the immediate.

All of life comes from the way we navigate how our minds work - the good and the not-so-good. Our thoughts lead us to what we do and say, and as addicts the way we think is influenced by our hardwired addictive traits. Obsession, compulsion, selfishness and self-centeredness, impulsivity, self-destructive tendencies and thrill seeking, plus a handful of other mental defects packaged neatly together like the explosives in a landmine and just as intent on rendering our destruction. These personality defects are part of the mental illness of addiction and they don't just leak out of our ears because we stop drinking/picking up/acting out; it takes a great deal of time and energy to deal with these factors in a healthy way so we can be mentally, spiritually and emotionally suitable for public consumption.

We are at our best when we can manage this insanity without self-medicating, but personally it's impossible to do without the aid of my ever-present Higher Power. I can't do it alone, and I fail miserably every time I make the attempt. That may or may not be the case for others, but truthfully it isn't my business or my place to take stock of how anyone else lives out their recovery from addiction (unless of course I'm sponsoring or mentoring them, but that's another story for another day). With care, practice and intentionality I can be in a place of living out of the finer elements of my character, but lots of things have to line up for that to be the case.

When I'm taking the time to expand my spiritual life, and I'm being intentional about cultivating meaningful relationships with others (addicts or normies) that include healthy boundaries, all while being mindful of my physical health, life can really SING. The melody and the harmony of it all just buzzes together in vibrant resonance.

This requires time, effort, practice and lots of patience. Self-management is the key, although I can't do it alone (there's a riddle for you).

Thank goodness I don't have to handle me all by myself.

Service In and Out of The Rooms

One of the hallmark traits of the addict alcoholic is self-centeredness, although perhaps it's also a hallmark of being a human being in 2017. We have a startling capacity to place ourselves at the center of everything, including but not limited to the universe.

You've had a bad day? Sorry about that. Let me tell you about MINE.

Traffic jam because someone got in a wreck? That bastard must've known I was running late and decided to screw with my life.

Favorite team lost? I shouldn't have worn that hat yesterday!!

Child labor crisis overseas? Those tyrants must know I love kids!

Bad weather? God must be getting back at me for not taking advantage of the sunshine yesterday.

It's all about me - every wrinkle in the fabric of any story is a reaction to something I did or failed to do. It's all a wave created by a ripple that only started with the splash I made in the pond.

This type of thinking is central to many (if not most) of our unhealthy behaviors and justifications in both our active addiction and our recovery. One of the most readily available treatments for this diseased thinking is service- to "get outside of ourselves" by serving others in some way. Service involves sacrifice of some kind, which isn't genuinely doable if we are fixated on ourselves, out problems and our self-pity.

Service is seldom, if ever, convenient. It wouldn't be wrong to say that by its very nature it is inconvenient. Healthy recovery demands of us that we be willing to inconvenience ourselves for the sake of being of service to others. It may not be expressly stated anywhere, but it is certainly implied and there are mounds of empirical evidence that it is a most effective way to align your perspective.

A life spent focused on yourself and your own desires is pretty common - that's the way of the world today.

A life dedicated to the service of others is both rare and remarkable. No one is arguing that in any case a person would need to go that far to be effective. Being mindful of opportunities to be of service and then acting appropriately when they arise is a reasonable prescription for the sickness of selfishness and self-centeredness, however. It's nearly (but not entirely) impossible to feel sorry for yourself while you're truly being of service to others.

Alcoholic addicts need to take the real medicine of service for our disease. It goes hand-in-hand with talking with other alcoholics and/or addicts, doing a regular inventory of ourselves and humbly accepting that we don't have all the answers and shouldn't attempt to control things we cannot possibly control.

Take your medicine, whether it's currently the cure or the preventative measure.  It may just save your life today.