Control

One simple word sums up the amount of control any human has over those things that abide outside of their own thoughts, words and actions: none. To sum up the amount of control most of us perceive ourselves to have is far less simple. To most of us, the attempt to control people, events and outcomes is a tragically flawed waltz we dance daily with our surroundings.  We struggle hopelessly to exert control over things that hold influence in our lives and become distraught when it doesn’t work out.

Addicts, codependents and those riddled with any of a myriad of compulsive behaviors are masters of playing this game, We are not very good losers (anywhere except in the big-picture sense in our active addiction, at least) and our favorite game is one we can never win. Our penchant for self-defeating behaviors is never more evident than during our attempts at controlling everyone around us. It’s about as effective as grabbing a handful of water to carry in your bare fist. Life spills out everywhere and we’re left cleaning up a mess that we created and for which we refuse to be responsible.

There is a common saying in the rooms of recovery that “Our very best thinking got us here.” The fact is that no addict, active or in recovery should relish the idea of controlling anything when he or she can simply step back and play the footage over once more in their mind of the utter insanity and misery that their attempts at control birthed. If you are being honest with yourself, you realize that the struggle to maintain control over your own thoughts, words and actions is time consuming enough to keep you occupied and preclude any attempts at controlling anyone or anything else.

Surrendering your illusion of control is a truly monumental undertaking (and an equally valuable step forward).  The counterintuitive mantra “Surrender to win” finds meaning in this context. You must surrender your notion of control for your own sanity’s sake; it’s simply letting go of a thought but not nearly as easy as that statement suggests.

Surrendering control does not mean giving up on making the effort to be the best version of you that is possible. It simply means having the courage to relinquish something that the loss of which is at first a very scary proposition. After you let go, you realize the truth: control is something you never actually had. You’ll win the battle every day if you can simply and successfully control yourself, and that is all you can ever really do anyway. Controlling everyone and everything else? That's too much for any person.

Let it go.

What Now?

There is an immediate and very real danger to each and every recovering addict the moment they decide to get clean, and that is the reality that their support network may have been alienated to the point of no return. Most of us have driven our loved ones to the very brink of sanity and in some cases they completely wash their hands of us, and deservedly so. We have destroyed many of the relationships we may have developed in the years before the madness set in and those that we cannot revive become dangerous pitfalls of guilt and remorse on our journey.

The addict must somehow make peace with the fact that not being able to revive some of our friendships and relationships is simply another form of being held accountable. Our transgressions are not wiped clean just because our eyes become clear once more. There are repercussions for all our actions (sober or in active addiction) and some have lifelong implications.

On the off chance that the people who love and care for them haven’t been driven as far away as they can possibly get, odds are strongly in favor of those people not really knowing how to support them in their recovery. From the first bender to the last breath, it is a tenuous, tedious balance between support and enabling. How do you know where that boundary lay?

An addict who chooses to be admitted to inpatient treatment has made a significant step towards living the kind of life they have fooled themselves into believing only exists at the bottom of the bottle. If you are a friend or loved one, the key then becomes supporting them in such a way as to not set them up to fall back into the self-destruction by enabling. How do you help without inadvertently hurting their chances for survival?

First things first, you cannot give them anything without receiving something substantive in return. The recovering addict is only set walking down a path of manipulation and ill spiritual health if given anything for free. Everything must be earned, no matter how small. This also serves to boost the long-shattered sense of self-worth and gives him or her something about which they can be proud.

Structure and regularity are also necessary. The chaos and insanity of their past lives must be supplanted with the type of routine in which they can become grounded and upon which they can rely. This means schedule and routine must be the order of the day every day for as long as it takes.

Finally, love and acceptance must be in abundant supply. The extension of these is much to ask, but if you’ve stuck by them this long the odds are that you have both by the boatload. Understand that a recovering addict can be the loneliest person on Earth, and everyone has good and bad days. The key is remembering that eventually the good will greatly outnumber the bad.

Good things happen when a person adopts an upright way of living and the residual effects are sure to touch their loved ones even more than the heartbreak ever did. Love, integrity, patience, honesty, kindness and loyalty are adjectives that only scratch the surface of what’s in store when an addict resolves him or her self to becoming who they were born to be by laying down the very thing that without fail cripples their ability to be happy. If you have been there while they were crawling, you deserve to see them fly as well. 

What Can I Do?

Few situations can produce the kind of helpless hurt and confusing conflict that a front row seat to the self-destruction of an active addict cultivates. Loved ones are affected without much ability to do anything to help and are often the primary victims of the collateral damage from our chaotic existence.

We usually don’t mean to hurt them; sometimes we intend to do just that. Hurting and disappointing our dearest friends and family is almost like another way to hurt ourselves and feeds our hunger for the self-mutilation of the soul. We have a strange way of becoming accustomed to being a disappointment. We are a very adaptable breed and can lower our standards in the blink of an eye to try and keep ourselves from feeling too guilty or ashamed.

At some point our status quo changes and becomes that of a constant state of abandoned dreams, ambitions and goals. Our natural sense of self-loathing feeds into this and convinces us that while we’d like to be happy, it is a state we surely will never deserve. If we can’t be happy, we don’t really want to see anyone around us being very happy either and to the untrained eye we don’t appear to have any qualms with making sure of it.

On some level we do care that we are hurting people who love us, but that thought just feels like another salvo in the war for control of our lives. We are unwilling and by extension unable to cede the control we think we have. We can’t see past our addiction long enough to see that we’d be better off giving that “control” over to a doorknob. Our lives are an absolute wreck but we refuse to admit it or take responsibility for the mess.

The addict is a living paradox. Our self-loathing inspires us to reach new lows while we are simultaneously trying to dig ourselves out of our spiritual grave by doing despicable things as coping mechanisms. We can’t win for losing because we practice self-sabotage at every turn while cursing our luck or everyone around us.  No one can utter a word that will turn us; there is no magic phrase. Inside us lurks an egomaniac with a self-esteem issue who won’t listen to the desperate pleas of our loved ones urging us to save ourselves. To us it all sounds like someone telling us what to do and NOBODY tells US what to do. We would rather hang ourselves in a noose we tied than save ourselves from the gallows by heeding another’s advice.

We have to reach a point where we just cannot stomach sinking any lower. It must eventually cost us more than we are willing to give. Our standards must get to a point where we are unable to lower them further. This is bottom, and for every addict it is different. For some it is the loss of a job; others must lose connection with family members before they will consider a change. For some it may be a near-death experience, while for others it may involve the loss of someone else’s life. There are few hard and fast rules about the bottom, outside of the absolute that each person’s bottom is his or her own and no amount of pleading, prodding or threatening will make it arrive any sooner than it must.

Acceptance is the key to your happiness. You have to divorce yourself from the idea that there is much of anything that you can do to help, no matter how much it hurts to see someone killing themselves a drink, snort or pill at a time. You must realize that the only control any of us has in this world is the control of our own thoughts, words and actions. You must admit that you are powerless over someone else’s problems and realize that trying to change another person is an unmanageable task. You have to let go and trust that things will unfold exactly as they should and that your timetable is not applicable to everyone else. 

Denial Revisted

Denial is most simply defined as not being truthful with one’s self. As harmful as deceit is, it is at its’ most venomous level of toxicity when it is pointed at ourselves. You cannot begin to be truthful with anyone else when you aren’t honest with yourself. Denial is perhaps the most base and dangerous of the types of self-deceit.

The downward spiral of denial begins with the addict’s best friend and constant companion: justification. We are masters of rationalizing even the unhealthiest behaviors to ourselves. This usually begins with, “Well, I’m nowhere near as bad as that guy. He’s got a problem,” and all-too-often ends with “So what if I’m drinking at 7 in the morning? It levels me out and helps me be more productive. At least it keeps me from killing my boss.” We can and will convince ourselves that any and all of our behaviors are not merely okay but typically good ideas.

Want to act like a degenerate while ducking the guilt associated with it? Rationalize it. Want to miss (or lose the ability to) work, alienate friends and family and destroy your reputation without losing any sleep? Deny within your own mind the severity of your actions and count sheep while your world crumbles around you. Hey, who’s worried about any of that stuff anyway? Nothing a little vodka won’t help you forget for a night.

The shaky part is what happens when you are confronted with the undeniable, inescapable facts and you’ve run out of excuses and exhausted your supply of mistruths. Eventually you just run out of lies and are really only left with the cold truth of your misdeeds. No one could’ve convinced you at any point before that because you were too lost in the throes of the disease.

It is nearly impossible for a “normal” person to understand what that denial is like. They cannot grasp just how wrapped up in it you are and just how much it becomes your reality, no matter how fictional.

Being unwilling to acknowledge a problem won’t ever make the problem go away.  Without fail it continues to intensify the issue across its’ depth, width and breadth until it has enveloped its’ target. The addict is figuratively drowning in a sea of self-deceit and literally drowning in a habit that is killing him or her as it robs them of their ability to really live.

There is no magic formula by which to combat denial. It simply takes the addict having a rock-bottom moment of clarity to be able to see what everyone else in his or her life has known. The question for the addict to answer for him or herself then becomes this: How much are you willing to give up before you refuse to lose anything else? When is enough finally, fatefully enough? Only you can make that decision, and only you can draw that line. 

Disappointment

We have all faced disappointment from others. You see, as humans we are uniquely gifted to let other humans down. For the addict the guilt, shame and remorse that accompany those moments wherein we have let down those folks who are brave enough to love us is enough to choke the life out of any hope we have for sobriety.

The guilt and shame that live hand-in-hand with all the foolish decisions and hurtful diatribes are favorite things to drink or pick up about.  How simple it is to escape those feelings by looking for the solution to and shelter from our mistakes at the bottom of that bottle or on the other side of that “good, good night.”

Conversely, the feeling of being disappointed is immeasurably difficult to describe. We all know it and have felt it, and as addicts we often times have been the cause of it for our loved ones. To be on the receiving end is an empty, lonely and frankly pitiful feeling. We tend to set ourselves up for disappointment by placing too much of our faith and hope into other humans, forgetting briefly that they are at least as imperfect as are we and every bit as fallible and prone to indiscretion.

How does a healthy person process through the disappointment? I am no expert here; I’ve more often handled disappointments and the accompanying hurts in the least healthy ways you can imagine. I could make a laundry list of the things to not do, but I will make an attempt at positing about some action to take as well.

For one thing, don’t try and hide from or deny the feelings of hurt and disappointment.  Acknowledge them but be careful not to dwell too long in them. Therein lies one of the main points of danger.  You can’t get caught up trying to deny them, as they will surely bubble to the surface eventually.  Admit that they are there and accept that they are real and valid.

The next step is definitely NOT trying to understand why the disappointment happened. This is one of the biggest mistakes we as humans repeatedly make. We don’t have to understand everything, especially when it comes to human nature. We can barely understand our own actions and are spinning our tires in the proverbial mud when we try and understand the actions of other humans. This is a perfect example of a time when we can practice some acceptance (it did happen, after all) and then become solution-oriented. Mucking about in the negative feelings will get you nowhere; on that subject I am an unquestionable expert. Focus on what must be done to repair and mend rather than what caused the damage. Healthy progress cannot be made any other way.

In all things, look to find the positive point-of-view as difficult as that may be. For “normal people” this is a tall order indeed, but a necessary effort. For an addict, it is so necessary that it becomes life-or-death. Instead of focusing on the problem or the way in which you were wronged, seek the lesson and the positive resolution, and therein find the beginning of your healing.

Getting and staying honest with yourself

Most of the time, the greatest task of the addict’s call to a life of rigorous honesty is turning that truth inward on yourself. It’s about undoing years of self-deception and setting things back on a level and starkly truthful plane.  A person can get so entangled in his or her own web of deceit that uncovering the truth about themselves becomes a Herculean task.

Addicts are con men and women so adept at the game of lies that they’ve blurred their self-perception to the point of buying wholly into their own smoke and mirrors. I convinced myself that my own façade was my reality, but it was only after I had set myself free from the trap that my mask represented that I was able to begin to live honestly with others. I’d convinced myself of many things that would help disguise my near-crippling insecurities and those walls had to be destroyed brick by brick if I was to ever find true happiness and peace.

The lies I told myself were necessarily interwoven with lies I told everyone around me, and like with any good tall tale my identity was more of a burden than an existence. I wasn’t an altogether bad guy but I sure did con my way into and out of situations as it would best benefit my interests, which usually revolved around my next bottle or gram or quarter ounce. 

As an active alcoholic and addict I was a womanizer and a troublemaker on my best days; on my worst I was capable of putting anyone unlucky enough to be in my vicinity in direct and real danger. I truthfully didn’t even have a grip on my next move and in the end many viewed me as a total wildcard and hazard to everyone around me and to myself.

There was such a hopeless, helpless feeling accompanying the thought that the soothing escape offered by any number of substances of abuse was my only truly reliable friend. This was one of the biggest lies of which I’d been convinced. I knew when everyone else got tired of my complaints, my bitterness and resentment that I could turn to the bottle, line, pill or the pipe and neither would they judge me nor grow weary of my rambling.

I had to humble myself enough to take an honest look at the man I had become and compare what I saw to the vision I held of the man I longed to be. I’d just grown tired of the lying, of being “that guy” and a horrifying disappointment rolled into one and knew that it was simply time. It was time to make a drastic change and time to step up and be who I was meant to be. To be that man who I was born to be, I set about on a way of life dedicated to acknowledging that I didn’t have to be weak and cowardly anymore.

I didn’t have to lie about who I was to feel good enough any longer.  Who I was happened to be more than just okay or good enough. My authentic self is a man who cares deeply, maintains fierce loyalty and humbly seeks always for knowledge and growth.  I live life passionately and do my best to live every moment at peace with my existence in that moment.

Today I practice a policy of rigorous honesty. I fall short of infallibly living that ideal, but it is an effort that finds its’ greatest value in genuine daily pursuit. The key remains staying honest with myself about who I am, why I am here and where I am going. Staying honest about what issues fall into the category of things I can control (only my own thoughts, words and actions) and its’ constant companion, things over which I have no control (everything else in the universe) is another cornerstone. Things have a way of falling into place at just the right time when we get and stay honest with our fellows and with ourselves.

Identity Crisis

An addict in recovery is faced with a difficult identity crisis. For years or maybe decades he or she has been first the life of the party, then “that” guy or girl, and finally a loner who has isolated from most everyone around so as to better bathe in the pain. And self-pity  How do you begin to transform the perception others have of you, or is it really of great concern to begin with? How do you change your identity into that of being a person-in-progress who also happens to be a recovering addict?

The mantra of “changing your playgrounds, playmates and playthings” is one that is emphatically mentioned quite often in the early stages of recovery. All the counselors at my rehab facility stressed the importance of this vital element, mainly due to the need to avoid triggers. This was balanced out by the “wherever you go, there you are” doctrine, which expresses the hard truth that moving to a different location will not effectively change the fact that the real problem is inside you.

So make that make sense for yourself for a moment: you cannot run from the real root of the problem, which is your diseased, insane mind, but you also can’t fall right back into the same behaviors and social circles and expect things to end up differently than they did before.  Translated, that means you have to confront the real issue while changing habits that will serve only to remind you of the “good” times and help you to “mis-remember” the misery.

So-called friends (your drinking and/or using buddies) will only try and pull you backwards so you can join them in the cycle of self-destruction, but true friends will actually be overjoyed that you’ve decided to become the “you” they always knew you could.  I personally have very good friends that have remained loyal since back in the craziness, but I still have to safeguard my sobriety if and when anyone chooses to partake.

My sobriety does not necessitate anyone else’s, and I always have to remember the wise words of my Uncle John: Keep the keys in your pocket, the tires round and some gas in the tank. If I have to leave a particular situation because I feel within myself that my sobriety and serenity are in jeopardy, my loved ones will understand. If I relapse, all the joy in my life will become transformed back to sorrowful loss and self-punishment.

I went through all the stages of identity that I’ve mentioned above, and now my identity is somewhat different. I’m just Jesse, and that is perfectly acceptable. To some people I’m just a recovering addict, and that is perfectly acceptable too. I am truly a blessed man to have gone through that transformation. This question always remains, however: Who will YOU be today?