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.

Shame

Shame is powerful. It's often overwhelmingly so. As with many other things in this life, you have to get to it and go through it to get past it- there's no ducking it or taking any real detour around it.

Shame was a consistent companion in my active addiction and it's never all that far away today if I choose to be honest with myself. It is waiting patiently to be reintroduced to me and it will always hope to once again be in my inner circle, along with anger and self-pity. Shame says I'm not good enough and never can be; it swears to me that I'll never really stop being the person I was and that everyone who says they love me now only does so with reservation because of an inescapable history.

When I was stuck in guilt and shame about how I was living and how I treated others, I was spiritually crippled and lacked the ability to see a clear way out. I would feel the weight of this shame in the center of my being; it was as if a mass of dense liquid metal was in the center of my stomach and it was as though that mass was pulling the rest of me into it like a black hole. It was a helpless and hopelessly lonely feeling.

I ran away from it, raged against it and punished myself for it. I loathed the "man" I was and in spite of passing happiness, that shame would be back 'round again just as soon as I wasn't drinking or high. It often loved to pop by for a visit when I was at my drunkest and it was in those times that I would try to crush it by crushing myself. It wore the masks of anger and despair more adeptly than I'd have believed, but it was truly shame that was coursing underneath it all.

As I began to walk towards real sobriety, my shame was front-and-center and I knew the only way I could be out from under the weight of it was to deal with it head-on. I had to look shame right in the eye and not back down. The way through it was to own it and to share about my past openly and honestly, with no expectation. I don't get to control the way that people react to my story, but I do control my willingness to be honest in sharing it. I pull no punches and I gloss over nothing.

At times, I know I probably overshare. The fact is that it catches people off guard and sometimes makes them uncomfortable- the fact that a person may be so open and candid about their failures isn't something they anticipate. We are in a world of sugar-coating speech and carefully manicured online identities- just the sort of struggle screening that can incubate shame of unparalleled breadth and power.

The fact is, I don't share for anyone else which seems admittedly counter-intuitive. I share my story so freely because every time I do, I am putting a spotlight on shame in which it cannot abide. I am no longer a slave to my shame and I refuse to kowtow to it and again become the person it would have me be. I cannot and will not go back to being that human- the version of myself that shrinks from everything instead of expanding in proportion to the challenge. I choose to live out from under the oppression of that old companion.

I've found that shame is a lie I tell myself, and I choose to be rigorously honest with me today. I hope anyone reading may be able to say the same thing, because honesty begins and ends right between your own two ears.

Carrying the Message

I've thought about my worldly legacy from a much younger age than would be considered normal. Even as a small boy, I was convinced that I would do something that really mattered- that was much larger than a lifetime could contain. In those early years, I used to think it would be sports, (believe it or not) and later that changed to singing, (seriously) or the law or government or almost anything- anything that would make me bigger than my hometown, my age, my past or my damage.

One of the things I have found to be critical to my recovery is being willing to carry the message to others- to share what I've learned and how I've grown with folks who may just need to hear it. I've been through a fair amount of junk, and I know that if I don't use that as a vehicle for helping others than it was all for nothing. The pain I felt and the pain I caused would just leave scars with a story, but lacking value.

I take every chance I get these days to help - to share my story of to live my life in a way that leverages those lessons into  opportunities. One of the many unfortunate side-effects of an addictive personality is that almost nothing good is ever enough. Used for good, this insatiability is powerful and driving and uncompromising; however, when it manifests in an unhealthy way, it swallows me in the shadowy aspects of all those adjectives. Enough is never good enough and too much is a myth as I struggle forward unrelentingly into the chasm of impossibility of "satisfaction." I am haunted by a dream of a life that just isn't large enough to matter.

The idea on which I have focus is the fact that one task well done is worth ten half-measures (I know if you look at that mathematically it's not accurate, but the math is never quite the same when applied to matters of the spirit). If I truly give myself completely to dancing in the moment when the moment arrives, I am carrying much of my message out into the world. The message isn't just delivered when I'm speaking to a friend, to a group or to a crowd- it's delivered when I am rigorously honest. It's delivered every time someone knows they can count on me. It's delivered every single time I do the right thing; every time I hold a door open for another or smile at a stranger I am giving freely of what I have been given. I carry the message by living rightly and by living rightly I am creating my legacy.

For me, sobriety is the best of life, coupled with the strength to get through the worst and the perspective to know the difference. Today. Every day.

The Might of (Doing the Next) Right (Thing)

When I was in my active addiction, I wasn't terribly worried about doing the right thing.

Without fail I knew what the right thing to do was in a given situation, but in nearly every instance I didn't care whether or not it was what I did. I definitely didn't always do the wrong thing, but I didn't place much importance on doing the right thing - it simply didn't matter enough, and my alleged "values" would warp in an instant if ignoring some of them meant I could get what I wanted. I had a finely tuned sense of right and wrong, but doing the wrong thing only bothered me if I had nothing to gain from it. Doing the wrong thing became fully acceptable if it got me what I wanted.

This manipulation of reality happened as I justified any and every action so I would be okay with doing what it took to become satisfied. I wasn't acting in a way that used my "values" as a guide - I was quite often acting in opposition to them. That created all the more turmoil within me, because the guy who down deep inside I longed to be was so different from the jerk that I was. I had my moments of goodness, to be sure, but they were as few as they were fleeting (and I made sure you knew about all of them) and it was juuuuuuust enough to keep me from being thought a total degenerate.

Upon entering into a life of sobriety, I looked for ways to heal my heart and soul and quiet the guilt and shame that had consumed me for years. The first part of this was a moral and spiritual housecleaning, but the process couldn't stop there because that only addressed the past. My progress would be halted quickly if I didn't move forward in a way that didn't set me up for failure and an emotional "guilt and shame relapse." I had to figure out how to do this, because setting an impossibly high standard of personal behavior would be just as self-defeating as not trying at all.

It was important that I set myself up for battles that were big enough to matter, yet small enough to have a very good chance to win. I started by breaking down this big-picture effort into smaller and more manageable chunks based on some advice from my counselor in rehab: I decided to just work on doing the next right thing whenever the opportunity arose. It seemed simple enough that I felt good about my chances of being successful; our lives are at their most basic made up of a series of choices we make every day, with some being of little consequence and some being of grave importance. The thought of being "perfect" forever was even more overwhelming than the idea of never drinking or getting high again, and if the one day at a time mantra eased my mind about the booze and drugs, I figured the one choice at a time philosophy could do the same regarding my daily life.

So far, it has made all the difference. Life seems manageable when I do the right things. If I do the wrong thing, I have to admit it, own it and set about making it right as soon as possible. This keeps my conscience clear and the twin terrors of guilt and shame at bay, thus increasing my chances of staying clean and sober exponentially. 

There is immense power in doing the right thing, and when you make life as simple as it can be (when faced with a choice, choose to do the right thing as determined by your values) it really is as simple as it should be.

And amazing. 

It's every bit as amazing as it should be as well. 

Seven Years

Seven years ago today, I was broken. I was neither willing nor able to think about conquering anything. I was unwilling to face myself, the man I had become and the life I had thrown together for myself.

I was ashamed.

I was beaten and weak.

Seven years ago today I stopped drinking just so I could eat something. Seven years ago, I didn't know I was planting my flag - I was just trying to stop shaking.

I was in utter disbelief about my predicament. I couldn't lie my way out of it and there was no talking myself into feeling positive about my direction because I didn't have one. I knew something had to change but had not yet landed on what that should be. I wasn't ready to admit any wrongdoing and I wasn't willing to accept that I was the root of my problems.

I wasn't taking a stand. I was cowering beneath the weight of my situation,

I wasn't righting the ship. My ship had no rudder, no sails and no anchor.

I wasn't walking the path. I was just trying to make it - anywhere that wasn't there, where I really was.

I wasn't empowered. I was powerless. Over alcohol. Over drugs. Over my self-pity and my self-loathing.

Before I could gain a sense of self-worth I had to let go of who I had been; that version of myself was no longer who I wanted to be. I had been driven by fear, guilt, shame and dissatisfaction. Dis-ease. Along the way, something began to change. Something clicked and I knew I had found something worth keeping and a version of myself worth being. It was a gradual shift and sometimes that pace was excruciating, but at least I was moving forward.

The man I am today is the sum total of my experiences and I wouldn't change any of them. I am worthy of happiness, love and peace. I've found that in my weakness, I've gained strength and in my pain I have found healing. In the discord I've found harmony and the dissonance has shown me resonance. This journey hasn't been easy and I have no expectation that it will become so. It has, however, been worth every second.

My story - the good, the bad and the ugly - isn't so much a weapon that I brandish as a drink of water that I can offer a weary traveler. My pain showed me my purpose. My struggle is my gift to the world and the path forward is my gift to myself, my loved ones and my future.

Seven years later, I still only have today. Seven years later, every moment of every today is worth living to the fullest.

Perception? Reality.

As humans, there are very few things which are actually in our control. This doesn't mean that we are cursed to drift through life as mere victims of circumstance. On the contrary, we do control the one thing on Earth that can change our circumstances: our outlook. Our attitude and the resultant perception with which we view things is firmly within our control and doesn't exist outside of our mind.

We think how we choose to think, (with the exception of people operating with serious mental or emotional illness) which causes us to live life as we view it through the lens of our perception. This can be an amazing catalyst for good things and it can also be a stifling trap composed of limiting beliefs. With some obvious exceptions, we are often just as free as we choose to be.

For the addict this can also mean that as our perceptions shifts, we shift into different mental obsessions. For me, this often translates into obsessively expecting the very worst to happen in a given situation - my default is to expect that and if I am not careful I will rapidly make myself and everyone around me miserable as a result. I almost without fail choose to immediately view myself in the worst possible light and as the lowest common denominator that ties together my reality. I then have to make the conscious choice to shift out of this perception of myself into the truth, which is that I am complete- worthy of good things and capable of being a light in this world. There is beauty within me that I can accept when I choose to witness it.

My perception is the color of the lens through which I choose to view the world. If I choose, I will see darkness, hatred, indifference and a place not worthy of redeeming. I can choose to see a million fake Facebook & Twitter crusaders who take no real action elsewhere and a billion more live bodies whose actions only perpetuate the horrors of hatred, ignorance and violence. The sad truth is that I often do only see the world this way and with this view comes soul-crushing hopelessness. There isn't much I can understand and almost nothing I can bring myself to love.

I can also choose to see the world for what it can be if people can become enlightened to the beauty and the power within themselves. I can choose to see the wonderfully generous spirits taking unnoticed actions every day to bring love to their fellows. I can see the world and all the souls within it as possessing brilliant and beautiful light and radiating it to all those who are willing to embrace it. I can see a world worth believing in and a world that is worthy of being loved. I can choose to see the best (or the worst) parts of myself in the world around me. I find that my reality is most often a reflection of my self-perception; if I can change the way in which I see myself, I can change the way I perceive the world around me.

Your perception is yours. How will you choose to shape it, and consequently shape your world, today? 

Why Not Now?

Change comes in life irrespective of your levels of preparation or desire for it - a matter of "when," not "if." It is often scary, typically difficult and frequently represents a serious mental mountain to be climbed. It is natural to make more of it than it actually is and it can be an even bigger misstep to underestimate the totality of it.

The inevitability of change also represents your typical lack of control over it, as most folks find comfort in routine and the familiar spaces of consciousness. That it will happen cannot be denied, but the way in which we respond to it is a reflection of our resilience and strength of spirit.

At times, it happens when you seek it. I submit to you that it nearly always happens when you need it, although you can't typically see that when it has arrived unexpectedly. That kind of change is a call to action and an undeniable motivator.

Self-authored change is the focus of this post, entitled with a question that's worth asking frequently:

Why Not Now?

That question is perhaps best accompanied by a series of follow-ups including (but not limited to) the following: How might it serve you to wait? How might it serve you to proceed as soon as possible? What will it cost, and what might you gain? Why have you waited? Why would you move forward with the change? And, the bottom line: Is the pain of changing greater than the pain you'll experience by staying the same?

Too often in this life, we wait to act until circumstances force our hand when we could author our own change if we're willing to see in an honest way how life is unfolding all around us.

For the addict, it seems that everyone around us can see our lives crumbling (sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly) yet we refuse to admit that truth until destruction is imminent or has arrived to visit its wrath upon us. We have to suffer the consequences before we can admit to ourselves that something's gotta give.

What if, by honesty, open-mindedness, willingness and courage we could set our own rock bottom? I believe wholeheartedly that we can do just that, as long as we are willing to humble ourselves enough to admit that our way isn't working - as addicts, our own best plans most often aren't in our best interests. Why test the limits of our resolve unnecessarily when in this case it is a life-or-death proposition?

I freely admit that it's pretty easy to look back from this side of the bottle and think of how obvious it was that for me, something had to change. It wasn't so clear at the time and some other things that happened prior to what is thus far the climactic event in my drinking and drugging could've or perhaps should've been the thing that catalyzed my sobriety. All that to say that what could be your bottom if you chose it won't really present itself as such in the moment. The insanity of the disease of addiction will speak as an internal voice saying that it isn't that bad and that you're still in control.

The final truth is that it will get just as bad as you're willing to allow. It will lower you into places you don't want to imagine and your descent won't stop until you take a stand or die. This disease only plays out in a few ways- you either change or you end. You either find and utilize the cure or it consumes you and you perish. Make the choice. 

Dad

The truth is that I miss you Dad.

For as long as I am alive I will miss you. I don't think of you every day anymore, but I do think of you often. When one of my many "days" rolls around I remember that you aren't here to commemorate it and in fact, you have been one of my "days" for fourteen years now.

There's so much you haven't been here for and seven years from today you will have been gone from my life for as long as your earthly body was in it. I have so many memories with you, but as the years have passed I have experienced more without you and for a few of those years I hated you for it. I said goodbye to you only months after my 21st birthday and only a year after I'd almost died in my wreck. Things had only begun scratching the surface of normalcy for me when you got sick, and you were dead a few weeks later.

It hurts. The part of my heart where you are aches from all the ways I've missed you and from all the things we've missed out on. You didn't see me (finally) finish college. You weren't able to rejoice with your daughter the day she married the love of her life. You weren't there when I hit my bottom and decided that I had to pick myself up from it. You weren't there for my fight in Louisville. You weren't sitting beside me the first time I got to go to a Vikings game in Minnesota. You never met Erica. We can't talk about how different life is for me today and you won't meet the children we hope to someday have.

There are some things I am glad you weren't here to witness, such as my arrest and subsequent 5 day stay in the county jail or the behaviors that led me to being fired from three jobs in the span of 6 years. You weren't around either time I had to move back into your house to find shelter from the messes I'd made. You didn't have to live through the loss of your Mary Sunshine and for that I am grateful.

I'll always treasure the time we had together and I hope someday I can fully reconcile all the time we've spent apart. Until then you are always with me in my heart.

I miss you, Dad.

Irritable? Restless? Discontented?

There are some dangerous mental places for an addict to be: extremes of anger, sadness, happiness and guilt are but few of the many. For this addict in particular, normalcy and routine can lead to some pretty bad ways of thinking.

When life feels too normal, too stable or predictable my mind starts crawling like lava over rocks with an intense, seething itchiness. I become very irritable, restless and am discontented and it is not a healthy place for my mind to be. Thankfully my thoughts only like to take vacations in those places rather than more permanent residence. This is a result of my experiences in recovery and the self-awareness that those times have cultivated in me. I know what it feels like, so I am able to pick up on it and take actions to remedy the situation.

The tough part is that the part of my brain that craves chaos and reckless instability defaults to goading me into taking extreme measures in response to these feeling of bored, boiling angst. I want to not just take action, but take the most reckless action possible to really stir things up and make life interesting.

My urge to do something so alarmingly foolish has fortunately been checked so far by the other, louder part of my brain that screams "DO THE NEXT RIGHT THING!" That's not to say that it always will be shouted down in this way. There is a nearly ever-present longing for doing the wrong thing; it's as though the part of me that loves a challenge wants self-sabotage so blatant to occur so I have the chance to show the word how else I can come back from the brink of ruin or death's doorstep.

It's certainly much more of a cry for attention and/or recognition than a cry for help. I don't know that help is what I need as much as saving from myself. In times when this pattern of thinking has taken hold, it is most crucial to get outside of myself and talk with someone who can understand what I'm thinking. That can only be another addict. To the non-addicted it seems to be no more than impulsive insanity, while to the addict it is just another truth spoken in our language.

Oftentimes when I'm mentally ill-at-ease, something more consistent and deep is happening and I've glossed over it. A more long-term feeling of dissatisfaction or hurt I've buried bubbles to the surface in the form of this grimy, oozing discontent. Times like these call for a pause to reflect for self-examination. I've got to get to the root of what's happening before I go so far as to decide to take a drink or pick something up.

I haven't gotten that far but have been much closer than anyone reading this will realize. Sometimes the only thing keeping me from saying "screw it all" is the knowledge of how many people I'd be letting down if I did. Consider it a sort of socially pressurized control, and know that I'm okay with it if that's the only thing standing between me and a drink or drug in the heat of the moment. I can't reside there too long, but I'll stay sober by any means necessary in the short-term.

Fear

As I've previously expressed in this space, basically any post I make refers to a topic with which I am particularly struggling at the time. This is no different, but has a special kind of relevance for me today.

Fear is not a thing I often give myself permission to feel.

Pain, hurt, anger, joy, rage, love, gratitude? Sure- often each of those comes into play more than once in the course of my day.

But fear? Not so much. Even if I feel it, it's usually immediately translated into something else (most often anger) or dealt with and eliminated swiftly. I don't often acknowledge it in my own mind when I do feel it, much less let anyone know about my experience.

Today is different. Now I know that when I acknowledge, uncover and tell my world  about something, I am empowered to confront it in a healthy way. Lately I have been experiencing fear in a way I haven't in many years.

My father died of a rare and incurable lung disease when I was 21 and he was a month shy of 56. In hindsight it was easy to see how long he'd probably been sick but in the moment we just knew something wasn't totally right, but figured nothing was terribly wrong either. We knew he wasn't quite himself and that his health seemed to be different, but didn't know that he was dying. We took him to the hospital in late July or early August with what we thought was pneumonia for the second time in six months or so. It took the about three weeks and two hospitals to diagnose the true problem and the news was grim: he had idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and that wasn't curable with anything short of a lung transplant. They figured it out just in time to tell us they couldn't do anything to stop it or treat it and he died a bit less than a week later.

I have been dealing with my own health issues, and while they aren't related to my lungs they are unable to be completely and accurately diagnosed right now. I was told in December that I am anemic (at times severely so) and they aren't certain if it is due entirely to internal blood loss (although that is happening) or intestinal issues causing my body to be unable to properly absorb nutrients (probably part of it, and also due in no small part to my years of alcoholic drinking and drug use) or that my blood is in and of itself just iron deficient (also actually happening to some degree as well) OR ALL OF THE ABOVE, or maybe some of the above with other, different factors at play.

I am frightened because my quality of life has somewhat diminished (although not disappeared by any stretch of the imagination) and there are no solid answers, resulting in no distinct plan of action regarding treatment. I am frightened because my addict brain is telling me that it has to be the worst possible scenario and that I am going to turn out like my dad.

As stated in an earlier paragraph, when I experience fear it turns very quickly to anger and often that escalates almost immediately into rage. I have spent a lot of time being very angry lately, and this to me was the sign that something else was actually going on- these days I am not an angry person, so I knew it had to be a reaction to something more. Upon some honest soul-searching and inventorying, I uncovered the truth of the matter: I am being barraged by fear and it may not be entirely unjustified. I refuse to cower in front of this and I will not become paralyzed by it, but acknowledging it helps me greatly- it's the first step towards overcoming it. I recognize it in myself and now you can take me at my word that I am dealing with it rather than stuffing it away, as is my default.

I can only do this one day at a time (like everything else) and I ask for you to show me the patience I am so often incapable of showing myself.

This is my truth, and now that it has been expressed it is a thing that I can overcome. For me, it cannot be dealt with while it is hidden inside of me. Now that it is in the light, I can confront it, conquer it and not be ruled by it.

Of Course It Doesn't Make Sense

When I was in college, I saw a shirt for a fraternity or sorority that said "From the outside looking in, you can't understand it. From the inside looking our, you can't explain it." This is a pretty effective way to both pique curiosity and project exclusivity. It's also a fairly apt description for many things in this life that hold mystery to those who aren't members of a particular group, and non-addicts looking at addiction from the other side of the proverbial glass are no exception.

For most normal folks, the concept of never being satisfied is something to which you aspire. This way of being can propel you much further than the alternative in most all of your endeavors. Never being satisfied is the double-edged sword held to the throat of the addict. We can't be satisfied - one is too many and a thousand is never enough, remember? For us, that unsolvable problem has potentially deadly consequences. We chase the unmet satisfaction even as the chase is killing us.

By definition, alcoholism is an addiction to alcohol. An addiction is characterized by a lack of control - the compulsion is so strong that when active, it is outside of a person's capability to resist. In active addiction, you have no control of and no power over this compulsion to act directly against your own physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health. You cannot stop it and you cannot hope to contain it. If you have any true grip on your action related to an unhealthy substance or activity, you may be in the early stages of addiction and have the opportunity to deal with it before the issue takes over.

There are plenty of behaviors in or characteristics of addiction that don't make sense.

- Why can't you just stop? If I could stop I would, buddy.
- Are things really so bad in your life that you have to drink yourself straight into oblivion? I'm an alcoholic- they don't have to be. Good, bad or indifferent I feel the urge to drink until I don't know my own name.
- Aren't you afraid of the consequences? Nope. Not as afraid as I am of being sober, anyway.
- Don't you love yourself enough to want better for yourself? Nope. The capacity for loving oneself is reserved for someone who isn't such a screwup/loser/idiot/disappointment.
 - That seems like a good enough reason to have a drink, so why not? Fact is, I don't need a reason; I'm an alcoholic.

You see, I don't have control after the first whatever- drink, drug or other vice. Without consistent effort I have no defense against the first whatever, either. In and of my own capabilities, I may be able to make it stop for a bit, but I can't keep it that way. I know this because I tried more than once without success. If I could do it on my own, I would've done it on my own a long time ago and saved myself the embarrassment.

If I am able to continue to do the right thing and ask for help when I need it, I've been granted a measure of power back. I have to bear in mind that the price of that power and freedom is eternal vigilance, to coin a paraphrase.

If that doesn't make sense, maybe it doesn't have to. It just has to work for me, for today.

Rock Solid?

The kind of guy you can set your watch by. Rain, sleet, snow or hail, he's there.

One trait that has become important to me in sobriety is that of being dependable; I was difficult-to-impossible to count on consistently in my active addiction and I feel the need to offset that now as often as I am able. It feeds my soul to be a man upon whom your can count to be there and to get the job done. I may not be on time (frankly, I'm often late) but you'd have to cut my head off before I would no-show, and even then I'd probably show up with my head tucked under my arm like a football, ready to rock and roll.

This dependability is a great thing on many levels, except when it is coupled with my tendency to never say no to helping. It's a fact that I feel indebted to this world for my years of acting like a donkey, and I've programmed myself to take advantage of every single opportunity to use my experience to try and benefit others. I over-commit, dance my dance and at times wind up feeling a bit worn thin and unappreciated. Let's face it: I'm pretty much an all or nothing guy, which is owed to the central condition of my addictive nature.

I am of the high-output, high burnout sort; I give and go and give some more and at times wind up bitter and battered before I decide to de-commit and withdraw. I am often driven by a fear as old as I am: that of not leaving a significant enough mark on the world to be remembered, much less worth remembering. This fear was only magnified during those time when I realized just how mortal I was- my wreck, my dad dying young and just by paying attention to the goings-on in the world around me. I have one chance to be significant and one opportunity to leave my mark in a way that matters, and I will often drive forward towards that at the expense of my health, relationships and happiness.

What I seek now is the middle ground, because I can't continue to pour out so much of myself while being poured into by others so little. It isn't possible to sustain. I get sick and tired of being sick and tired, much in the same way I was by the end of my drinking and using days. I must admit there's a high I get from feeling needed, but the comedown is pretty unforgiving. I love to feel useful, but hate feeling used and those unfortunately go hand-in-hand far too often.

In truth, there's a powerful tendency in my mind towards self-destruction. It's SO TEMPTING to just start blowing stuff off and being irresponsible just to shake things up. My status quo has become being Johnny on the Spot, and my mind rages against status quo and routine because I get bored and grow restless. My mind has started crawling with a boiling sort of itchiness, so I want to screw it all up to make things interesting. Think of it as that part of my identity wanting to commit suicide so the rest of my identity can re-invent itself again. I'm restless, irritable and discontent- hallmarks of the addict alcoholic - so I desperately want to do something destructive and insane to turn it all on its' head.

I am saying "no" to far too many valuable things most every time I say "yes" to something without weighing the cost. I owe it to myself, my sobriety and semi-sanity, my wife, our marriage and happiness to consider things in a different way than I have. Something has to change for me, and it has to change inn a way that doesn't just nuke all the progress I've made in just over 6 1/2 years of sobriety.

Challenge accepted.

Wherever You Go, There You Are

If nothing changes, nothing changes. Simple, practical truth.

In addiction recovery, it is often strongly recommended that you change your "playmates, playgrounds and playthings," which is a reference to changing the places where and people with whom you spend time on a regular basis. This is a sound strategy, because you obviously cannot keep doing the same things the same way with the same folks and expect anything to be different. That's not to say that you have to totally turn your back on everyone from your past, but you do have to be mindful of both how and how often you are spending time with people with whom you used to "run around."

External influences can also be triggers; people, places, circumstances and experiences can all cause the proverbial switch to flip, and then that old familiar craving kicks in and you find yourself with only a few options for how to proceed. The more you can recognize those things and minimize their occurrence, the better your chances of avoiding a confrontation with your darker impulses.

The rub is that no matter where you go or who you are with, it is still "you" that you're ultimately having to deal with and keep in check. Your thought, words and actions are your responsibility and you are accountable for them. You are the constant in every situation in your life; with this in mind, you have to be willing to look to yourself first if things aren't going the way you think they should.

You also are the first (and last) line of defense against your own unhealthy thinking and have to be both self-aware and ready to self-correct. You have to be even more vigilant in this pursuit than you are in the effort to stay out of potentially difficult circumstances, because the key to surviving those circumstances clean and sober is right between your ears.

If you have yourself in the right mental and spiritual condition, you don't have to fear going into places or being around people that made your heart skip a beat in the early days of your recovery. If you don't, you must realize there's no place that is safe enough to save you from yourself. Your first responsibility is to yourself and your sobriety and you must act accordingly every time you're able.

Taking Inventory

It is a valuable thing in this life to be willing to consistently take a look at oneself in the mirror and honestly, earnestly evaluate where the person looking back at you stands.  It is both a difficult and worthwhile exercise and one that we far too often do not undertake. We get busy and things are going well and everyone loves us so why mess with a good thing, right?

For an addict, this regular self-evaluation is a necessary component of a healthy recovery. It is often gritty and grimy and difficult; it requires rigorous honesty and a dedication to seeing our own roles in any situation, especially when we feel we have been gravely wronged and couldn't have possibly been a contributor to the negativity. It's much easier to blame and get upset at others for perceived injustices and allow that to turn into a resentment. That resentment will simmer, fester and boil until it spills over and we are left to clean up the mess- 99 times out of 100 the "cause" (I use that term loosely, because we are almost always the cause of our resentments because we don't address the issue immediately) has moved on so far and fast that the aftereffects couldn't be further from their minds because they aren't aware of our wound in the first place.

It is comparatively more natural to look at ourselves when things aren't going well, when others have seemingly abandoned us and success feels out of our reach. It is often these times which bring us back to our roots and compel us down a path of right thinking and acting, but one has to question whether or not these trials could've been avoided by simply being more diligent about checking in with ourselves. Had we established a routine of regular, honest self-evaluation, it is reasonable to think that we very well may have been able to head many of these situations off at the pass.

I can say from my own experience that the period of time when I finally made the decision to get a sponsor and work the steps brought about the most freeing thing I have experienced in recovery: the opportunity to sit down with my personal inventory and go over it with said sponsor. It was as though a ten-ton weight had been taken from my head and I felt as joyous and alive as I ever had. It felt like my slate had truly been set back to zero and that I was free to truly move forward unencumbered.

It would be reasonable to ask, then, if that experience had such a profoundly positive effect on me, why I am not more enthusiastic about having a smaller version on a regular basis by taking my own inventory frequently? There are answers to be sure, but nothing that rightly justifies my lack of diligence. It is too easy to let things of this nature slip when life has me running and gunning, and it is not the least painful process through which a person might go. There is reward on the other side of the discomfort and of that I am certainly aware.

What keeps you from looking honestly at yourself? What would you gain by doing it more often? How would your perspective change if it was more often influenced by honest self-evaluation and reflection?