The Aftermath

The time comes after a major event in your life when everyone else has gone back to life as usual and you are left alone still trying to put yourself back together. People mean well and they typically truly want the best for you and your life, but they also have their own lives to live. You are then left with a singular burden and it is often too much to bear on your own.

Putting the pieces back together after a major change in the “status quo” of your life is perhaps the most difficult element of the whole struggle of life. Normalcy is never the same as it once was although life must inevitably go on. The world doesn’t stop turning for anything or anyone. Coping with a difficult loss after everyone else has stopped falling all over himself or herself to check up on you is a tough row to hoe.

When the inevitable temptation to pick up a drink, a gram bag, a joint or some pills arises, pick up the phone instead. Go for a jog.  Write down what you are feeling in a journal. Read some literature you find helpful, or go be with sober friends. Do anything healthy and constructive to get outside of yourself without leaning on something that will only make things worse.

It is important primarily to let yourself actually feel your feelings. You cannot work through something by ignoring it or pushing it aside. It must be met head-on and processed through with great care and rigorous honesty. Masking your feelings or emotions only leads to more damage and a longer timeline for processing.

One especially difficult element in the process is resisting the urge to deify a person after they are no longer physically with us. Not one human among us right now is perfect, and while it is easier to remember them through rose-colored glasses you may be doing your emotional recovery a grave disservice by so doing.

It is perfectly acceptable to feel angry, hurt or betrayed, let down or incomplete. What is not acceptable is leaning on an artificial coping mechanism to deal with those feelings. A drink or drug does nothing to help you truly feel better. Anything that offers only a temporary solution will never be able to help you handle a permanent issue. 

When you are feeling weak, remember that there is strength around you if you will only ask.  Often times what you need is only a short chat with your Higher Power away, or even the distance between you and a telephone. Those who love you would never begrudge you a meaningful conversation.

I hope a bit of this helps someone, somewhere as much as it has helped me to compose it. Thank you for letting me share. Peace, love, serenity and joy to you on this Christmas Day, friends.

BIG changes

Life doesn’t get any easier just because you have decided to live it in a more real way. No one is exempt from either the hard times or the great triumphs that so often propelled us through our very worst benders. Difficulty and instability touch everyone’s life, whether teetotaler or dope fiend. The different ways in which the spectrum of personality types may cope with these trials is a clear indication of our spiritual and mental health.

For anyone who doesn’t know, I lost my father in 2002 when I was 21 years old to a mysterious, incurable lung disease. This came barely more than a year after I was delivered from death’s doorstep by my higher power after a horrific car accident. This was also my very favorite thing to drink or use over and the wellspring from which great waves of resentment flowed over my life for years. I’ve been down that path time and again and I pray daily that I made my last trip several years ago.

On Friday December 7^th of 2012 my life changed dramatically for the better and unchangeably for the worse within barely an hour’s time. Had either of these things separately occurred a few years ago it would’ve been enough to send me even deeper into my addiction. Had they both happened together I very seriously doubt I would have survived the night.

I’d been going through the interview process with an exciting young education assistance company called InsideTrack, based in San Francisco with other offices in Portland, Oregon. At the conclusion of the first part of a dinner-and-a-movie date night with my wife I received a follow-up call to discuss the afternoon’s phone interview, which directly preceded a job offer from this amazing pioneer in the education industry. I accepted immediately and was instantly catapulted higher than I had ever before traveled.

A quarter-gram rail of blow had never made me soar like this. No roll or other pill had made me feel this good. All was right in my world after a long and seemingly fruitless job search tested the limits of both my resolve and my faith. I’d been toiling away in miserable bitterness for quite some time. I was often times angry, hurt and violently resentful. I was much quicker to explode than to believe, and it caused considerable turmoil in my personal life.  “This is it! This is the end of the struggle! It’s finally MY time!” echoed in my mind.

An hour later and shortly before the second half of our date night was to commence, I received a phone call from a Lexington, Tennessee phone number. My sister and brother-in-law had lived there for about four years. Surely one of them was calling to congratulate me on my tremendous blessing, I thought, just from someone else’s phone for some reason. I answered with expectant excitement in my voice and eager to gush on about how happy I was. This would not turn out to be the nature of that phone call.

“Your sister was in a car accident tonight, and she passed away. She’s dead.”

Silence.

“What?!?”

My brother-in-law’s voice cracked as he handed the phone off and began to cry. His brother-in-law then got on the phone and basically repeated to me what I had already heard and could not believe. My sister had been killed in a car accident a bit earlier in the night; the death certificate would later reveal the time of her death to be about ten minutes after I concluded the phone conversation wherein I’d gained my dream job.

I was literally as lost and confused as I hope to ever find myself. How could this be real? How could this possibly happen only an hour after being seemingly so high? How could my life be so immediately slammed down to the depths so close in proximity to the time when I was flown directly to the mountaintop?

The next few words are kind of blurry, but what I could make sense of was the request of me that I be the one to go and tell my mother what had become of her only daughter. Hesitation exploded in my mind at the thought of how much pain my disclosure would cause my mother.  After the longest car ride of my existence and with an immeasurably great deal of difficulty, I managed to convey the message to my mother. That was the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life, but there could be no other way. It had to be done, and I had to do it.

Now, these circumstances by themselves represent a deadly quagmire for any recovering addict. Either of them could be all the excuse I needed to run from the truth I have come to know for myself and that is that I can never ever have another drink or drug. Period. Combined, they could spell almost certain disaster if I wasn’t carful to take a moment to do some fundamental things that have carried me thus far.

I had to immediately connect with my Higher Power, because without the help that Power provides me I could not deal well with too great of a triumph or a tragedy. I’ve proven time and again incapable of dealing well with either. I also had to reach out to my closest friends and loved ones for help. Many a person finds a moment of great failure after being unwilling to seek help when they desperately need it. Most importantly, I allowed myself to feel what was happening. I lived in the feeling, even if it stung me to my very core. I don’t wish to run from my feelings ever again. This was the focus of my active addiction; I didn’t feel that I could deal with the curveballs life had thrown my way.

Next time we will focus on getting through the aftermath of tragedy, that period of time when all the people have gone back to the normalcy of their lives and aren’t checking on you hourly. This is the most difficult time, because you can feel isolated in your attempts to work through your emotions. If you think this is a lot to read, I must beg your patience as I continue to actually process it.

Rock bottom

People in and out of a program of recovery have heard of the concept of “hitting rock bottom.” Just as with the diagnosis of an addiction, no one is qualified to set the bottom for anyone else. While your observation may lead you to believe that a person is a hopeless addict or that their lives are at their worst, the fact is that your opinion doesn't matter a single bit.

However heartfelt your pleas or from which place of love and caring your point of view happens to come, a person has to accept the truth for themselves or it isn’t their reality. If it isn’t real, it certainly doesn’t have to be confronted. Most often your efforts to convince and addict that he or she has a problem will result in the behaviors becoming immediately worse. We are honestly grown-up petulant children and you are trying to take away our security blanket.

You hear it often and from a very early point in recovery that everyone’s bottom is different. This is an absolute, inarguable fact. The best way it’s ever been defined to me is the place you reach where you aren’t willing to lose anymore. You realize that the addiction has cost you more than it has or will ever give you in return and you are fed up with losing.

You see, an addict is drinking, using or acting out to hide from something. Normal, non-addicted people drink to relax or have fun. We, however, are avoiding having to deal with things that we feel as though we cannot handle. That might include stress, embarrassment, shame, guilt or anger or any number or combination of things that normal people may struggle to deal with, but deal with nonetheless.

Ours is a policy of avoidance. We avoid dealing with even simple problems and wonder why things get so bad as a result. At that terrible point, we pass the blame onto anyone or thing except ourselves. At some critical juncture in the addict’s life all the mess and turmoil becomes more than we can bear, drunk or high or stoned and we break down. We break down to the point of enough being enough, finally.

Once the addict has hit his or her own personal rock bottom, the options narrow and it boils down to deciding to live or deciding to die. You either come to want better for yourself and more from your life or you give up and end it all. Either choice ultimately means a necessary surrender, but the force to which you are surrendering is the thing that makes all the difference.

This time you must surrender your selfishness and self-centeredness, self-will and pride on the altar of the life of your dreams. That life doesn’t appear overnight, but every bit of struggle you must go through is more than worth that promise’s ultimate fulfillment. 

The blame game

I have heard in rooms of recovery the tendency to blame the disease of addiction, family members, supervisors, ex-whatevers, or even the government for bad personal decision-making or poor behaviors. This indicates an unwillingness to either admit to or accept responsibility for your wrongdoings. You must accept and embrace your role in the negative parts of your life, even if the part you play is simply a refusal to really deal with them.

The acknowledgement of addiction as a disease isn’t for the purpose of giving you a built in cop-out; it is to help you to understand that your particular method of acting out is but a symptom of a deeper mental and spiritual illness that must be addressed and treated aggressively.

Unflinchingly admitting your mistakes and being willing to be accountable for them is maybe the most difficult and crucial thing that I must strive to do on a regular basis. 12-step work helps you to realize the hand you play in every situation. There are but a few times in life wherein the blame for a negative event lies solely somewhere else. In my active addiction I was an absolute master at convincing myself that everything bad was anyone’s fault but my own and refusing to admit the severity of my mistakes in the rare instances I would actually own them.

No power in existence can force you to open a bottle and drink, or pack a bowl or cut out a line. No one can put a pill down your throat or force you to overeat (real life isn’t like the movie “Seven”). Porn doesn’t magically appear on your computer, nor does gossip force its’ way out of your mouth.

Until a person is willing to be accountable to themselves for the bad choices they have made or continue to make, no real progress can be made. The first step is absolutely to stop the behavior, but that’s just the beginning. Not drinking is not enough. You have to accept and understand that your real problem is you and your warped, twisted way of thinking. This problem must be addressed in order for you to have any real hope at true happiness.

Stop blaming others. Stop making excuses. Stop copping out. Stop doing everything the easy way. There’s no easy way out of this. You got yourself into this, and you must make significant changes to your daily mentality to even begin to get out. You will need to seek and accept help from mentors, friends and your higher power, but you must be ever vigilant over your mentality. You alone are responsible for your thoughts, words and actions and you will be the only one who must account for them.  

A few words of caution

Often, the newly recovering addict is riding on what is referred to as the “pink cloud,” spouting off the kitschy sayings and reciting word-for-word some of the things found in recovery literature. We are excited beyond belief about our new way of life and mistakenly expect that it is something everyone wants to know everything about, and by extension wants to take part in.

You quickly find that the support people may offer you is most often limited to cheering what you are doing and in no way is a cry for your help. In classic cart-before-horse fashion we attempt to evangelize the world before our own recovery has any real foundation, and this most often results in discouraging rejection and sometimes leads to a loss of belief in the recovery process and ultimately relapse.

You have to begin to surround yourself with the type of people who live the kind of lives for which you are striving. Don’t think for a second that you as a recovering addict are in any position to help anyone else with issues or baggage until you have laid down your own baggage and have begun to deal effectively with your own issues (with the help of your Higher Power). You can’t “fix” yourself and you cannot live under the illusion that you can fix anyone else. Keeping your side of the street clean is more than enough to keep you busy.

We must also understand that our sobriety does NOT necessitate anyone else’s, and other people sometimes have a harder time understanding that than the addict him or herself. Each person is different in this regard, but it really doesn’t affect me to occasionally be around people drinking.

Please understand that I don’t wish to make it a weekly thing, but I also won’t seize up at the sight of a beer bottle. I’m not going to relapse because anyone in my immediate vicinity consumes anything. Relapse takes place inside the mind of the addict and then manifests itself by an act, not the other way around. As long as I am doing the things I know to be necessary to my recovery, nothing in my environment should be a threat to it.

Now, sloppy-drunk people typically even annoyed the heck out of me when I was one of them and that certainly has not changed. However, the fact that I’m living a different lifestyle now doesn’t mean I would be upset with my wife for having a margarita night out with her friends. My sobriety necessarily doesn’t depend on anyone else’s, for if it was tied to anything human or humanly-influenced it would be set up to fail thanks to the fact that is human imperfection.

In short, I’m too busy today taking care of my own life and my own family to try and save the world because no amount of success in that endeavor is going to keep me clean and sober. Not taking a drink or drug and connecting with my Higher Power must be the mutual, symbiotic #1s on my daily To Do list every morning.

You ARE worth it.

Self-esteem is unfortunately one of the first things usually and mistakenly sacrificed by an addict who has made up his or her mind to get sober. You see, humility and low self-esteem are NOT the same thing by any stretch of the imagination. You don’t have to be humiliated to become humble, although that is often what it takes. A once-proud addict must humble him- or herself enough to be teachable because the process of recovery is one that involves lifelong learning and constant humble reflection and self-evaluation.

Addicts spend so much of their time beating themselves over the head about past or current wrongdoings that their self-worth is typically not where it needs to be in order to be mentally healthy. This causes us to allow ourselves to be treated poorly because we don’t feel like we deserve anything better, or that it is the penance we must pay for those years of mistreating others.

Often we have such a poor work record that we take and keep jobs that are very detrimental to our mental and spiritual well-being. The same thing goes for romantic relationships.  We unintentionally seek out these Jerry Springer scenarios because we don’t think we deserve better. We often stay in mentally or emotionally unhealthy situations while we mistakenly think we can fix them although we cannot even fix ourselves.

They are both situations where we allow all the bad for the occasional glimpses of the good, of the acceptance we so desperately crave and rarely find because we look in all the wrong places. This is a symptom left over from our active addiction; we subject ourselves to such unhealthy work and interpersonal relationships because we simply don’t know how to find the healthy ones without some help. We've never done it before, and if we somehow have we quickly found a way to screw it up. We are grasping for any shred of a glimmer of a sliver of positive feedback, so we settle for much less than what is acceptable because we think that it is the best we can do.

You must understand that in spite of your past transgressions, you don’t deserve to be treated poorly in your personal or professional life. Never accept less than being treated with the loyalty, love and respect you had better be giving to others. Do the next right thing every time you have the chance, but do not allow yourself to be taken advantage of. You are worth it, and you always have been. It is not just “okay” to be happy. That is simply how it is supposed to be.

You aren't alone

Reaching out for help is a vital and conversely difficult necessity. You cannot recover from addiction alone; if you could, you would have before the insanity of the disease took a complete hold on your life and probably almost cost you everything (or perhaps did). In life, you have to humble yourself enough to know that you will never know everything about anything (especially yourself).

It goes against an addict’s very nature to seek the help of others. We are loners and naturally isolate ourselves, in addition to being egocentrics with self-esteem issues (paradox intended). It isn’t uncommon for an addict (whether active or recovering) to feel completely alone and isolated in a room full of people. We feel like outcasts and certainly play the role, at least in our own minds.

Pride is a huge issue many people battle, but to the addict who has yet to find humility pride is both his or her best friend and our constant undoing. It drives us onward at breakneck pace towards a cliff whose existence we vehemently deny. “That can’t happen to me; maybe everyone else, but not me. I’ve got it all under control. I can stop any time I choose.” For the addict, this is the prime example of false bravado mixed with hubris. Control is an illusion, and the sooner anyone can see past that façade the better.

Oftentimes people talk about an addict hitting “rock bottom” and the fact that everyone’s bottom is different. While this is true, I submit to you that for most of us our bottom directly correlates to the point where our ego is smashed and humility introduces itself. The bottom is when you have simply had enough and are willing to go no lower, to lose no more. Our pride typically has been dashed against the rocks, along with our hopes, dreams and aspirations (at least for the time being). Only when you have laid all of this ego down, lost every bit of it without finding it again are you able to accept the path you must take without any reservations.

Is pride holding you back? Do you need to reach out to someone for help, addiction or not? What are you waiting for? Lay down your pride and your chains together, because they are one in the same.

Three Things for My Three Years

For the uninitiated, one thing that you can be sure to hear if you are picking up a “year or multiples” chip in a twelve step program is “How did you do it?” In honor of my little sobriety baby’s third birthday, I want to set out for your scrutiny some things I have learned. Some things I have done have worked and some have definitely not. Some of the means by which I attempt to maintain sobriety and serenity on a daily basis contain nuggets of experience and hope that others in recovery may be able to mine out of the madness.

1. Taking things one day at a time is something that everyone probably thinks they do. Most don’t realize how often they do not do this simple mental exercise and how much serenity they are missing as a result. Move on from the past and don’t worry about a future that you can neither guarantee nor change today. Be concerned with the here and now, be present in the present moment and watch as the days become longer and more full, more satisfying to your soul.

2. One of the biggest obstacles I unknowingly faced was the idea that anyone or anything other than my own thoughts was a threat to my sobriety. My only true threat of relapse exists solely between my two ears. No person, place or thing of this world has the ability to control my thoughts or actions. I make my own choices and am solely accountable for them. I am ducking my natural responsibility for my own life when I begin to think that anyone or anything in my environment can truly threaten my sobriety.

3. The most ever-present, vital thing that has kept me sober is maintaining and enhancing my relationship with my Higher Power. Having faith in something, somewhere that can relieve a person of the madness and obsession is the cornerstone of the 12-step program. We addicts in recovery have to hold onto the faith that something out there has the power to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Faith, hope and love, not necessarily the brand of man-made extra-doctrinal religion that has tried to cloud our world today. Simple faith and spirituality and an effort for nearly constant and conscious contact with my Higher Power has been the glue that has held my life together when collapse and destruction seemed imminent.

I hope that helps someone, somewhere. Many, many thanks go to my family (new and old) and my dear friends. My Sigma Chi and Masonic brothers and my brothers and sisters at the SSF Submission Academy have all played a tremendous role in my recovery. My family at Grace Community Church has been vital to my happiness, growth and fulfillment as well. My loving and amazingly supportive wife Erica means more to me than I could have ever realized before I knew her. She lights up my life with her energy, creativity and love. Here’s to another twenty-four hours. 

Expectations or Acceptance?

Expectations can be as dangerous to an addict (or any person, for that matter) as a cyanide pill swallowed with a bottle of Drano.

Unfortunately we as humans have a tendency to let people down and to fail to live up to expectations. It’s one of the unfortunate side effects of being human, no matter how much we strive to be otherwise. It is in our nature to be imperfect, and once an addict builds expectations and gets disappointed it can often be followed swiftly by relapse and the well-documented consequences thereof.

One way that a person can insulate themselves against this disappointment and potential resentment is to begin to change their expectations into hopes. If you merely hope that a person will do the right thing or hope that an outcome is favorable, then you aren’t setting yourself up for an eventual, inevitable disappointment.

The fact remains that you will be hurt and disappointed in this life. No one is immune to these negative emotions, but you can choose how you respond when events conspire to drag you down.  That much is the only thing that is in fact within your power to control.

You can choose to accept that “it is what it is,” that you have no power to change the past or others and simply decide to relinquish your illusory control of the situation. Accept that you can only control your own thoughts and emotions and stop being as sensitive and reactive as you have been, and watch as life goes from “in the red” to cruise control.

As an addict, you must come to accept that there are certain things you simply cannot do as other normal people can.  This is such a hard lesson for the prideful, egotistical addict, but one that is absolutely necessary. The sooner you make peace with this as a fact and accept it, the sooner you can move forward less embittered and more empowered. Accept that there are things in this life that you can do absolutely nothing to effect and focus on the things that you can control, i.e. your emotions and your responses.

Expectations can often lead to disappointments. Acceptance inevitably leads to serenity. Which would you rather experience today?

Self Will Run Riot

Addicts are prime examples of what can go wrong when the insanity of mental and spiritual sickness takes the reigns.  Case studies in impulse control issues, addicts often make horrendous decisions and later blame everyone and everything except themselves when their lives fall apart.

In rooms of recovery, a favorite saying is “My very best thinking is what got me here.” Before we become truly aware of our plight, our obsessive self-centered thinking causes us to destroy our lives and most of our relationships, so our own decision making process has quite literally left us with no choice but to set ourselves to the work of recovery or languish in misery until we die. The maturation in recovery is often indicated by the realization that addicts’ troubles are almost solely of their own doing, and that simplifying the decision-making process is a necessity.

You see, the mind of an addict is perverted by all-encompassing selfishness and self-centeredness. We are so egocentric that left up to our own devices the addict (both active and in recovery) can literally tie any and everything that happens in the world to him or herself.  It’s a twisted and paranoid form of the Six Degrees of Separation game, and the only spoils of victory are isolation and mistrust. 

We are masters of conspiracy theory and our tendency towards fixation makes us chronic over-analyzers. Surely everyone is out to harm us or “get” us, especially those teetotalers who keep trying to convince us that we have a drinking (or smoking or snorting or pill-popping or chronic masturbation) problem. Surely none of these bad things that have befallen us can be of our own doing. Surely our attempts to control everything can’t have resulted in our crumbling and insecure existence.

All these mental and spiritual issues make surrendering our will and the care of our lives to our conception of a Higher Power a necessity. We have to simplify our decision-making to “doing the next right thing.” You see, if we can compartmentalize our lives into segments of a day, things don’t seem so overwhelming and impossible. If all I focus on is doing the next right thing when the opportunity comes, it doesn’t leave me with much room for worry or the frightened anticipation of horrible events that probably won’t ever come to pass except inside my own twisted imagination.

Thoreau encourages us all to simplify our lives, and simplicity is exactly what the addict needs to make it through the day.  Keep it simple, and you just might make it through another 24 hours clean and sober and happy.

Dealing with life on life’s terms

One of the first, best indicators of a possible problem with any potentially addictive behavior is its’ use as a coping mechanism. The after work beer to mellow out after a tough day that turns into ten and a few shots before you know it, or the occasional weekend toke that creeps into your week as a requisite daily “wake and bake” or any other potentially harmful behavior upon which you feel a growing reliance as a method for dealing with life.

Normal people deal with life as it comes at them. Addicts are too busy running for shelter every time the breeze blows, and one of the more difficult parts of sobriety is learning how to deal with life’s difficulties as a capable, clear-headed adult. You see, no one makes a recovering addict the mistaken promise that things will suddenly get easier; in fact, they are often more difficult since we have abandoned our emotional crutch for a more honest way of living.

It isn’t as though our Higher Power sends everyone in our lives a memo that they are to take it easy on us or give us a break, although we inevitably feel cheated that this hasn’t somehow happened. No one should have to cut us much slack, because we have done nothing but give ourselves “a break” throughout the entirety of our active addiction. We cope with our shortcomings and wrongdoings by bellying up to the bar or partaking in any number of other harmful behaviors rather than facing them, owning them and setting them right.

We spend years refusing to accept responsibility for our mistakes outwardly, even as we inwardly rip ourselves to shreds with guilt, shame and remorse. You’ll never meet a person more capable of self-loathing than an addict, either active or recovering. In fact, the larger-than-life persona most of us project when we have the chance is simply a way to “throw you off the trail” of our shattered sense of self-worth. We have a harder than average time forgiving others because we struggle mightily to forgive ourselves. We are case studies in psychosis and neuroses.

All we can ask is a bit of kindness patience and understanding. You see, we are learning the life skills that you picked up years ago. No one said it was easy, although that would be exactly the thing to make an addict take up this way of life. We are drawn towards the “easier, softer way.” It may not be easy, but living a genuine, real and honest life is worth the struggle. It is worth feeling all the pain and anguish and confusion to simply be able to feel something again. In life, most often you simply have to take the good with the bad and know that it is all exactly as it should be. It is all working together for the good, one day at a time.

The disease of addiction

The average person is able to do certain things without feeling compelled to do them to excess. They don’t feel this burning, incessant desire within themselves to take part in a behavior that is destroying their bodies, minds, spirits, relationships and lives. That is a telltale indicator of the insanity of addiction; why on Earth would someone continue to do something that is harmful to him or her each and every time they do it, to one degree or another?

You see, this mental and spiritual affliction may manifest itself in a variety of ways, but it boils down to a central issue; the problem of an addict is the addict him or herself. We are our own problem and our own worst enemy. We loathe ourselves and routinely sabotage our own happiness and well-being. It is in our nature long after the last drink, toke, fix or toot has faded into the sunset, and even exhibits itself in people who have the addict tendency and are fortunate enough not to be caught up in fully acting on it.

Addiction is a heartless, cunning and baffling adversary. It is a spiritual sickness and not simply a demonstration of weakness or a lack of restraint. It’s a well documented fact that addicts, once clean and living their programs of recovery are some of the hardest-working and most valued members of the workforce; our tendency to fixate and our natural stubbornness are re-channeled into something productive and worthwhile.

If you have never felt the compulsion of addiction, you cannot understand the desperation inherent in that feeling of being drawn like a moth to a flame towards the very thing that is ruining your life, your relationships and ultimately killing you. You know it is wrong, but you can’t stop.  You don’t want to, and couldn’t even if you did. You cannot control the monster. You know your limits and how badly it will hurt you, but you don’t care. You are driven onward like a lemming rushing off a cliff into the ocean of emptiness, guilt and shame but you cannot turn away. Something inside you just will not allow it. Eventually you come to understand that something outside you is the only thing that can treat this infection of your soul. You cannot defeat this affliction on your own. The hope inherent in the Twelve Step philosophy is that your conception of your Higher Power can and will if you are willing to give over control and care of your life.

Buddhists teach that understanding is the root of love, and that you cannot have love without a real understanding of the place from where a person is coming. I hope somehow I am helping increase your understanding and in turn the love of your fellow humans.  If I help even one person “get it,” I am accomplishing what I set out to do.

The number one offender

Resentments

Everyone has people, places or events towards which they harbor resentment, even if they don’t choose to see it.  For a “regular” (read: non-addicted) person, these are very unhealthy and can cause stress, strife and discontent. For an addict, resentments often mean living the life of a “dry drunk,” or in some instances relapse, which can eventually lead to an untimely death directly preceded by a horribly miserable existence. 

Resentments are “the number one offender” for addicts, and truth be told for people in general. Often people are harboring resentment unbeknownst to them. How many people have you “forgiven” only to have a few cross words cause all the negative thoughts, feelings and emotions to boil over once more? Some hurts wound more deeply than others and are harder to let heal.  These resentments are the baggage filled with cinderblocks that hold you back whenever you would rather be moving forward. For addicts, they are a cancer that eats away at our spirit until we are consumed by our anger and hatred. Remember, no half-measures with this bunch. Life can become a rather love-hate existence without any gray “dislike” in the middle.

Some resentments are right in your face every single day. It is a burden that becomes too much at times, and defines the whole “Living life on life’s terms” ideology. When we were in our active addiction, it was exactly the kind of thing that landed us on the barstool every night, and eventually led us to the morning drink. In my case it also lead me to stashing bottles in my car at work, but that’s a whole different post for another time.

For me, the resentment was primarily of myself. I’d cheated myself out of the kind of future I thought I deserved because I decided it was okay to be a constant underachiever in school. I resented the car wreck I’d gotten in, my dad for passing away, and my successful friends. There was honestly a little bit of resentment for everything and everyone in my life. It was a stockpile of resentment that I cashed in every day and replenished every night. Nothing ever got better because I refused to see things for what they were and refused to stop feeling sorry for myself. That is a pretty common story among addicts. The perpetual victim who always blames everyone else for the things he has done to himself.

Are you harboring resentments, jealousies or grudges? Try and write them down, each and every one. Figure out your role in the situation and take responsibility for the wrong you have done and take a moment to forgive someone (there’s probably a bunch of forgiveness that needs to occur for almost everyone in your life). Want to be free? This is certainly one key to that lock. If you truly forgive someone, you are setting both that person and yourself free to fly.

An attitude of gratitude

Perhaps the biggest motivating and uplifting morale boost in the life of an addict is the acknowledgement of gratitude. In treatment, we began every day with a meeting devoted to clients expressing gratitude for something in their life, whether at home or in treatment. Imagine how much better our lives would be if we did a first-things-first rundown every morning of everything in our lives for which we are grateful. It was an absolutely vital focus, and for good reason. Addicts are almost without fail using “at” something; focusing on the things in life for which we are grateful transfers our focus from our junk to our possibilities. When you aren’t fixating on how bad you have it you appreciate just how good you have it.

As naturally fixating beings, we addicts have a tendency to lock in with laser-like intensity on certain things in our lives. More often than not, these end up being the negative day-to-day struggles. Unfortunately, this doesn’t end when we get clean either. It takes a concerted, daily effort to remember all the things for which we should be grateful. Most of us have scores of positive things in our lives, but an addict will nearly without fail zone in on the one or two negatives out of the bunch. It’s just in our nature.

One thing that helps maintain an “attitude of gratitude” is to begin the day with a mental checklist of myabe 10 things in our lives for which we are grateful on that day. We as humans just do better and lead happier lives when we focus on all the good that is around us, all the blessings in our lives.  Days, weeks, months or even years can be lost in the blink of an eye to being caught up in focusing on the negative things in our immediate surroundings. For an addict, this can lead to a relapse; at the other end of this relapse can be deadly consequences. Nearly every daily happening has potentially dire effects for an addict depending on the perspective with which he or she chooses to view it.

For what are you grateful today? What are you taking for granted today? On what negative thing are you too fixated today?

Unconditional love

The biggest thing that people who have active addicts in their lives seem to struggle with is the idea that they can somehow blackmail or force an addict to recover. That blackmail can come in the form of emotional pleas (If you really loved me, you’d sober up) Pavlovian psychological warfare (If you don’t stop looking at porn, I won’t have sex with you) or fear mongering (You’re going to die awfully young if you don’t change your ways). The fact of the matter is, even if these tactics work in the short-run, they are destined for failure over a longer timeline.

A person’s sobriety can never be dependent upon anything human or related to other humans. You see, as humans we are assured to disappoint and upset each other fairly frequently. The last thing an addict needs is an excuse to drink or use in reaction to something someone else thinks, says, does or doesn’t do. If an addict bases his or her motivation for getting or staying sober on anything in their environment instead of something inside themselves that no one else can corrupt, they almost surely fail.  We come with enough built-in, preconceived personal excuses to use and abuse our “drugs of choice.”

If you suspect that there is an addict in your life, your best approach to getting them to help themselves is NOT to force anything or anyone on them. Love them in a truly unconditional way, but don’t enable or condone their behaviors. Chances are they are just as guilt-riddled and full of shame as anyone else in active addiction, so you don’t have to make grand gestures to punish them. Just let them know you love them anyway. No big hyper-emotional scenes or pleading, no blackmail in any form and no manipulation. We are master manipulators and can see right through your bull, to be honest. We learn to play that stuff against you pretty quickly, so just love us for who we are.

Now, when the time comes for tough love, don’t hold back (bit of a confusing transition, I admit). There can be no reservation. Remember that not giving us money we didn’t earn, not allowing us to stay with you rent-free while still using, or really not doing anything for us that we can’t do for ourselves isn’t really blackmail; it is simply requiring of us that we be adult and handle our responsibilities as such. None of these things should even be offered to the active addict, because it’s probably in the form of you attempting to leverage them into sobering up.  These things can’t be the carrot dangling off a rope at the end of the proverbial stick, because all of it is temporary. What happens when it stops or becomes unavailable? Nothing on this Earth is permanent enough to be a truly solid foundation or motivation for successful addiction recovery.

Worried that you may have an active addict in your life? Put down the torch and pitchfork. Give them a hug.

Denial. It's not just a river in Egypt...

Denial is one of the most difficult recovery deterrents to overcome. No one wants to believe that they have a problem, even after all the regrettable, forgettable nights (that they can’t remember anyway). Overcoming it means being forced to admit that there is something that has defeated the addict, something they cannot control with all their power, intellect and stubbornness.

Most addicts and people in general evaluate their lives, their problems and successes against the people around them, and by so doing set themselves up for failure. There’s always someone better or worse off, and this can become a way an addict can justify his or her using behaviors. The problem inherent with this is that it masks your need to be accountable to and for yourself. If you always live your life in comparison to those around you you’ll be continuously disappointed and, frankly, disappointing as well. You can’t live up to your true potential as a person when you never measure yourself against your own possibilities.

When in the company of an active and unacknowledged addict, you may hear some things that are quite often denial indicators:

“You can’t be addicted to ___, so I’m not an addict.”

The fact of the matter is that you can be addicted to anything that you do that is an escape or a coping mechanism. It may not be a chemical dependence, but addiction is psychological at its’ root anyway. If you have to catch a buzz to be happy, it may be time to look at your life realistically.

“I’m not as bad as ____. He’s a real addict.”

This is a prime example of living life comparatively and giving yourself a pass for bad behaviors. Are you worse off than you should be, irrespective of anyone else around you? It may be time to evaluate your life and compare it to the life you want.

“But I only drink/use on the weekends.”

For the record, there’s no such thing as casual or recreational consumption of cocaine, but I used to throw this one around a lot. What I failed to mention was the fact that I got blackout, stumbling stupid drunk on the weekends. I often used coke to “sober up.” Quite the strategist, huh? It isn’t the frequency that counts the most; it is the motivation and the amount when it does happen.

Now, not everyone who drinks is an alcoholic, much the same way that not everyone who plays golf is a “golfer” or who runs is actually a marathoner. Whether or not a person has a problem is something that only they can truly determine for themselves. Thus, the motivation to change has to come from within as well.

Dropping a lil' knowledge bomb

One of my main goals for this whole exercise is to help educate “normal” people on the insanity and struggle inherent in the day-to-day life of the addict, both active and in recovery. You have to understand that it isn’t as simple as not drinking, not using, not looking at porn or not overeating. All of the behaviors that you actually see or hear about are simply the real problem manifesting itself outwardly. 

This business of addiction is a mental and spiritual sickness; a compulsion from which the human mind cannot escape by itself. An addict finds him- or herself often acting out of the addiction when there isn’t even a desire to get high. It becomes simply a means to maintain the status quo. Feeling normal and cognizant and sane and just plain okay all become byproducts of our use and abuse.

The underlying sickness is something that never completely goes away, even long after the last bottle gets smashed or the last “gagger” line of coke is choked back. Selfishness and self-centeredness of a much greater-than-average level is present in the addicted mind, as are guilt, shame, embarrassment and remorse over the past.

You see, an addict feels and experiences things in a perpetually over-the-top extreme. That’s why most of us got started. We felt we had to escape this hyper-emotional state. We were afraid to feel things in their entirety because the feelings consumed us. That is one of the most difficult things to sort through once we put down the bottle or the eightball or the gallon of ice cream or we unsubscribe from the websites. Our minds and hearts are raw and we are kids again, learning how to deal with emotions good or bad without the escape that is our addiction. We have lost our crutch and are learning how to walk again.

This question of how to deal with the amplified feelings and emotions, urges and compulsions is one that is virtually without answer in worldly terms. Thus the centerpiece of the Twelve Step program: the belief in a higher power that can help rid us of our afflictions. We have proven time and time again that we are totally incapable of handling it ourselves. Without the hope that comes from the faith in some power greater than ourselves that can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, utter despair exists. Ultimately this can lead to relapse and, with respect to the progressive nature of this disease, an untimely and tragic death.

Discontinuing the using behavior is an absolute necessity. It is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg, however. Putting down the whiskey bottle somehow proves to be the easy part. Trying to live without driving yourself and everyone around you utterly insane proves to be the real task.

Well well, friends...

Blog 1 

After much internal debate, advice seeking and procrastination, I have decided to author a recovery blog. I have haggled with myself over whether or not this may serve any real and useful purpose. I believe it will. Offering “normal people” some insight into the insanity that is the mind of an addict and alcoholic (both active and in recovery) may just help someone, somewhere.

An introduction is in order. If you are reading this, the odds are strongly in favor of you already knowing my story, but it is important to be sure that I tell it as often as I can. It serves as a reminder to me of where I have been, where I am now and where I hope to be going.

I wasted little time in seeking out the very thing that would one day help push me beyond the borders of sanity. I took my first drink sometime in elementary or middle school at a friend’s house. I tasted my first beer on a trip with my father at the end of my sixth grade year. Within a few years I had also experienced my first drunk. While I honestly didn’t drink often throughout high school, it was mainly due to the lack of access. I partook basically every time I had the opportunity. I never really had any opportunity to use drugs, but followed the same pattern of immersion once the chance to smoke a bit of the fabled “weed” presented itself during my senior year of high school. Within weeks I was getting high on an almost-daily basis. Thanks to my use of marijuana I spent the summer after my senior year and my entire first year of college on criminal probation, stemming from a run–in with the law in May of 1999.

I began my post-secondary education at Austin Peay in the fall of 1999 and was initiated into my fraternity on December 4^th. As an undergraduate in my fraternity chapter I served as Vice President, pledge trainer, (2x) Recruitment Chairman, (2x) and held several other positions. In college I also served in Student Government, the Interfraternity Council and the Student Organization Council. I was also a functioning alcoholic of the most severe sort, and that later morphed into some pretty severe drug abuse and addiction as well. I reignited my love affair with Mary Jane, and I was especially fond of cocaine, although I’d certainly never turn down ecstasy, acid, ‘shrooms or any pills. I managed to finally catch a DUI charge just out of college and spend a few days in the county jail. This only temporarily inconvenienced my drinking and using.

The cycle of active addiction followed me out of college and into the professional world, culminating in the loss of a position as the Director of Financial Services for a local technical school after fellow staff members smelled alcohol on my breath at 9 in the morning. I had been drinking since about 7:30 am that day, although I blamed it on a hard previous night to the faculty and staff assembled to confront me that morning. After a few difficult and dark days I decided that I needed to do something to change the road I was taking; it was leading to certain early death and was wrought with absolute misery and self-loathing. I checked myself into an inpatient rehabilitation center called Buffalo Valley in Hohenwald, TN in Mid-December of 2009. God willing, I will be 3 years clean and sober this November 4th.

I have had many reservations about writing a blog. It seems to me that many bloggers out there are just a bit too stuck up their own hind parts to see the light of day and I don’t wish to become this sort of self-righteous panderer. This whole thing is fairly self-serving, as carrying the message of my suffering and day-to-day struggles will be as therapeutic for me as it may be insightful to you. At any rate, this is me putting myself out there for the world to see, critique, relate and bear witness to. I hope something I say someday impacts a life in a positive way. Thank you for accompanying me on my journey.