Forgiveness

We all make mistakes that hurt others. We've all at times held those same types of mistakes against people in and around our lives. We cannot rightfully seek forgiveness if we are unwilling to offer it, and we limit our own potential for happiness if we become committed to the burden of a grudge. We can't truly receive that which we are not willing to give.

The freedom bought by forgiveness is worth much more than the price of your pride. Anyone can be made a slave to resentment, but that servitude is particularly dangerous for the addict. Resentment is the “number one offender,” pushing active addicts towards acting out and those in recovery back towards the downward spiral of relapse and becoming “reactivated.”

Unforgiveness can quickly escalate into an intense obsession that takes up a great deal of time and emotional energy. In a sense, the offending party continues to hurt you for the entirety of the grudge-holding process. As long as they are allowed to live rent-free in your head, they are “winning” and you’ve victimized yourself substantially more than the offense itself ever could.  Unforgiveness is an illness with which you infect your own life.

In terms of pure return on investment, you can’t find much better return than that found with forgiveness. It costs you nothing that you can’t stand to lose anyway and what you receive is priceless. We hold on to resentment and unforgiveness for illogical reasons and to let go of them brings our universe back into balance and harmony. Ultimately our stubborn pride is the bottom-line cost of letting go.

The act of forgiveness is one of setting yourself free to move on from the offense and the offending party (if you so choose). You are bound to the incident and the offender for as long as you choose to carry your unforgiveness. You then become your own worst enemy because you are enslaving yourself with your refusal to forgive and move on from the incident or behaviors. You’ve become beholden to the grudge.

Mentally, emotionally and spiritually you are a slave to your unforgiveness. You alone can also choose to set yourself free from it once you give yourself permission. You must emancipate yourself from the bonds of resentment and unforgiveness, because until you do you’ll never truly live in freedom.

Coping Mechanisms

For many, drinking, using recreational drugs, watching adult content, occasional binge eating (Thanksgiving. Hello?) and/or smoking a random cigarette here or there are ways to relax, unwind or have a bit more fun on the periphery of everyday living. Even when these behaviors occur in occasional excess they may or may not indicate that something deeper is at play.

When picking up or acting out becomes an immediate reaction when things don’t go our way, we are taking steps over the line that separates the normal from the maladjusted. If and when these behaviors become our go-to when life “hands us lemons,” red flags being raised would be an appropriate response.

You see the transition from occasional add-on to outright necessity pivots at the coping mechanism stage. There’s a clear shift if and when that pint of bourbon is the answer to all of life’s challenges, large or small. Many people turn to a substance or behavior when the “worst” happens, but a select few start out that way only to justify use and abuse at every turn in life’s pathway.

Normal people come equipped with a mechanism that through experience gives them the ability to deal with life on life’s terms. In addicts, that mechanism seemingly got misplaced in the process and thrown out with the proverbial packaging. Motivated by perhaps our most severe defect of character we flee from problems instead of trying to deal with them. It is in our nature to mentally cut and run when times get hard even though we remain physically present; we love the pain and the pity far too much to actually pick up and leave most times, but we practice the utmost escapism in the midst of the situation.

After setting down the bottle, figuring out to whom we owe apologies and setting about a course of action to make things right with anyone we have harmed, we must begin to formulate positive coping mechanisms for the first time in our lives.

What we’d previously felt were coping mechanisms weren’t in any way actually helping us cope with anything. “Coping with” and “running from” are apparently two very different things, (who knew?!?) although we didn’t seem to know it at the time. In order to deal with life on life’s terms, we must seek and develop healthy means by which to do so.

These healthy choices can and do include turning to our Higher Power, turning to a positive support group (Twelve Step, faith- or belief-based or otherwise) or recovery program, meditation, seeking wisdom from those we respect, exercising, reading, journaling or any number of things that help us work through the problem constructively instead of burying our heads in the sand and waiting for the storm to pass.

Actually dealing with problems is difficult at first. However, an addict is uniquely positioned to handle most any circumstance with which we are confronted. The things to which we have subjected ourselves have toughened us immeasurably. We truly can make it through anything if we simply give ourselves permission.

The same is true of you “normals.” We all tend to be exactly as tough as we make up our minds to be.

Relapse?

They say that relapse doesn’t have to be a part of recovery. You know what? They’re right. Some people give themselves the pass of adding a “layer” of legitimacy to their recovery story, but this is a prime example of justification. It is not a requirement and a great many “old timers” have never again picked up once setting their minds on sobriety.

Many things can contribute to a relapse, but one thing is for certain: to quote my Uncle John, “There’s no such thing as a slip.” It is all premeditated to one degree or another. Relapse finds its roots much earlier in time than the critical moment of the first drink, drug or act-out. There are a few specific behaviors that almost certainly spell trouble for anyone in recovery.

First, there is a false sense of confidence in his or her ability to stay clean and sober by simply not drinking or picking up. While it is obvious that this is the beginning, it is assuredly not the end of the action items that must be undertaken. You cannot kill a weed without digging up its roots, and you cannot combat addiction without addressing what is behind the compulsion.

Withdrawing from contact with friends, loved ones and especially a sobriety support system such as a 12-step meeting or other form of fellowship is also a huge red flag. It’s a potentially deadly step into isolation. Isolationism is a key character trait amongst we addicted. No matter the circumstance, alarms should ring in the heavens when we begin to withdraw from other people. Something is wrong that, if not addressed could become toxic enough for us to give ourselves an excuse to drink, use or act out, and our next binge always has the potential of being our last (which isn’t necessarily a good thing).

The main reason for the failure of an attempt at sobriety seems to me to be not going after this lifestyle with the right motivation behind your decision. If this is done for anyone or anything other than purely ourselves and our own health and happiness, we are setting ourselves up to fail. External motives, such as pleasing a loved one, court-mandated recovery or social pressures (think an intervention) won’t serve to keep us sober because we are then mainly doing it for “you,” and you will eventually let us down or upset us enough that you become an excuse to pick up again.

Keeping things simple and applying methods that have proven to be successful seem to be keys to relapse prevention. Finding a support group consisting of other addicts, alcoholics, etc., plus figuring out a different way of life utilizing some greater purpose as a guidepost, and understanding and accepting that you cannot do it alone seem to be some of the key themes. No one, myself included can give you a foolproof, ironclad formula that is guaranteed to keep you sane and sober, but I do know what has worked for me. These things may just work for you as well. 

To the family

The impact of addiction on the family and loved ones of the addict is unmistakably hard to quantify and impossible to deny. The addict is selfishness personified while whirling away recklessly in the throes of active addiction and as such he or she rarely if ever stops to consider the profound effect of our choices on friends and loved ones. Countless broken marriages, ruined relationships with children, shattered trusts and pains too deep to be easily forgiven litter the trail of recovery. The simple fact is that we are incapable of justly loving others while we are busy trying to kill ourselves.

Family members are right in the epicenter of “Hurricane Self,” a most apt description of the still-suffering addict. We make rash decisions based on little else outside of whimsical, fleeting impulse while damning the consequences. We don’t stop and consider the effects of our actions on any scale outside of immediate pleasure or pain.

We are enslaved by the need to place our own desires above anything and everything else and as a result we don’t really care what we do to others until the behaviors force us to pay consequences. We then miraculously sprout a conscience in the very same location burned bare by our scathing self-hatred and our guilt and shame know no limits.

The next phase is one of remorse accompanied by some form of expressing deep regret. We then fish for sympathy by telling anyone in earshot that we always screw things up and that we aren’t worth anything and probably never will be. We swiftly turn the focus from the wrongs we have committed to why you should feel as sorry for us as we do for ourselves. The rollercoaster won’t stop until we drive ourselves off on another binge that is destined to bring about this same dramatic sequence: stupidity, apology, and self-loathing. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

I have no right to offer much advice to families of addicts, but I can say what I feel helped me start to turn the corner. Nothing short of unconditional love tempered by a refusal to validate my behavior was ever impactful in a positive way. You can love someone without co-signing on his or her self-destruction.

The tough sort of love, the firm-but-fair and unconditional type was all that ever made me feel okay about being me. That’s all that really works to this day. I still shut down in a very unhealthy way when confronted negatively or by nagging “suggestions.” In order to speak love into the life of an addict you must acknowledge our mistakes but make sure that we know beyond any doubt that you love us anyway. At some point we grant ourselves permission to believe you, and the healing has begun. Further down that same road we begin to internalize the source of our love and can then prove quite capable of loving ourselves and others as well. Admitting our wrongs and becoming willing to make amends for them must follow. Once we can begin to make those amends to our family members we have been put firmly on the path to living happily, feeling joyous and truly free. 

It's Been Awhile

Welcome back, long-lost readership. I have to confess that I took a break from posting because I’d really lost sight of the reasons and aims with which this particular blog began and I needed time to evaluate my ability to return to them. You see I had become dangerously egocentric in the author’s chair and was obsessively focusing on the views, comments, “likes” on Facebook and all the little metric tallies that don’t amount to much outside of an ego stroke in the grand scheme of things.

I began this blog to serve a twofold purpose: to educate “normals” and to help recovering and still-suffering addicts find benefit from whatever of experience, strength and hope that I have to offer.  At no point did I make it a goal to have a certain readership, and in all honesty the broad scope of influence I’d hoped to achieve was merely a function of increasing the levels upon which I fulfilled my purpose in writing. I never imagined I’d become so obsessive about how many people were reading my posts on a nearly minute-to-minute basis.

An addict must take great care to never place him or her self at the epicenter of much of anything, personal projects included. This blog can never be more about me than it is about the message I am trying to deliver. A few occurrences in my personal life helped serve to realign my perspective for the better and bring to light the limits of my personal ability to influence (read: control) other addicts or the disease at large.

The mental illness of addiction is one that cannot be treated by anything other than a willingness to change and the humility required to go to any lengths to stay sober. It’s been said (very accurately, I might add) that recovery from addiction is not for those who need it. Recovery is for those that want it. In the heat of the moment or the throes of desperation the addict will fall back to the comfort zone of personal manipulation and say or do anything temporarily to relieve the stress, strain and spotlight that accompanies a climactic event or confrontation of their illness.  This type of emotional manipulation is as natural as breathing and it takes great effort to avoid falling back into this behavior.

Without due care and attention to our recovery we all will fall back into another place of comfort known as the ego, the self and self-will. Without the mirror provided by some type of fellowship (i.e. AA, NA, or another recovery group filled with other people suffering from our illness) we often cannot see our behaviors for what they are and slip into a sort of emotional or mental relapse state, preceding only the physical response that is sure to follow if we don’t change the road we’re on.

Becoming again a more active participant in my own recovery, as well as the perspective that accompanies the fellowship of other addicts have served to enlighten my thinking in regard to the unhealthy internal focus I’d adopted with this blog. You see, I was delivering the message but I was not keeping my motives in check. One without the other is never good enough for very long. I have decided to divorce myself from the wrong motives, serve the right ones and persevere in my mission while regularly checking my ego at the proverbial door.

That’s all for now. I truly hope that I’ll be seeing you again soon, friends. 

The Holi-daze

The Holiday season provides many of us with a yearly celebration of family, friends and beautiful memories. There is laughter, joy and love overflowing. We sing carols, eat hearty meals and hug our loved ones and we are left above all with a heart full of gratitude.

There are also many for whom the holidays offer no real or lasting happiness. For that segment of the populace, this is just a time of the year to get through as unscathed as possible. Haunting memories and bitter longing plague this scene. If I’m not careful I can take the seat reserved by my past on my behalf right on the front row of this show.

In spite of your own view of what the holidays mean or the lovely memories they represent, everyone doesn’t share your experience. Many people carry years of emotional and mental scarring from tumultuous holidays of their youth that have carried over to affect those of their adulthood. Others have had serious difficulties and loneliness (some of that is self-inflicted, of course) as an adult and the holidays only seem to serve as a reminder of the emptiness of years past.

For many, the holidays serve more as a stark reminder of those who have been lost than as a time to enjoy the fellowship and love of those who remain. The dismal quicksand of woeful recollection swallows whole any joy or gratitude that lives in the present and he or she often feels left with no comfort outside of chemical or behavioral distraction. The beauty and wonder of the here and now are mortgaged against the brokenness of yesterday and the present is often forfeit as a result.

Our disease has we addicts convinced that our sole comfort lies in the next drink, drug, box of cookies or stranger’s caress. Like any good spree of bad behavior we are left with more questions than answers: How did this happen again? Why did I yet again run away from both the good and the bad and leave such destruction in my wake? How can I repair all the collateral damage for this latest binge? What now, and what lies ahead?

The key here is to attempt to realign our focus. All the negative memories and feelings produce energy, and if this energy is not redirected than the consequences can be dire. We must figure out a way to get out of “self” and get in to service. This time of year more than any other offers a multitude of opportunities to go in either of those directions, and by our CHOICE we can either drown in our bitterness or help ourselves be set free from the bondage of negativity.

If you find yourself wallowing in the negativity of the past or present, get up and get going in the direction of another person you can help. You’ll find that much like a morning frost in Tennessee, your negativity will be gone before you know it. You just have to decide to get out of your own head and get into service of your fellows.

How can you be of service during the holiday season?

What Might've Been

The rooms of recovery offer a fantastic opportunity to revisit the end stage of my active addiction and my early sobriety. It is of great value to pause long enough to remember just why I had to change the road I was on and just how desperate I was for a bit of hope to which I could cling. Without those timely reminders and quick trips back in time to that fall and winter of 2009, I would surely be lulled into a false sense of security in my own ability to hold my life together. I may even toy with the idea of being able to drink or use again in a controlled way if not for these stark trips down memory lane.

The addict has a unique ability at time to see the past through rose-colored glasses, turning a blind mind’s eye to all the pain and suffering our drinking and using wrought in our lives. Sometimes my mind wanders into a “what might’ve been” scenario.

What if I hadn’t left my Financial Aid/ Adjunct Faculty gig at then-Draughon’s Junior College to take on a role that was truthfully so much more demanding?

What if I hadn’t gotten caught with liquor on my breath at Miller-Motte that day and been able to keep pressing on in a tough situation, although with progressively worse drinking and using sure to follow?

What if I had just gone right back out to find another job after I was let go from that job instead of agreeing to go to rehab?

What if I’d come out of treatment, gotten a job and tried to embrace that good ol’ controlled drinking fallacy once again instead of embracing my sobriety?

Then, there are some more positive and affirming “what ifs” that followed the pivot point of my life:

What if I’d never walked into the SSF Submission Academy?

What if I’d never walked into Grace Community Church?

What if I’d given in and relapsed like I wanted to so many times while I worked and wallowed at the motorcycle shop?

What if I had stubbornly chosen to keep diving headfirst into the proverbial meat grinder of unhealthy and ill-advised romantic relationships?

And the seemingly not-so-positive:

What if I hadn’t somehow mentally broken and tapped out with 3 freaking seconds left in the round?

What if I’d gone to visit my sister and her family as often as I should have before she was killed?

What if she had just worn her stupid seatbelt?

People can “what if” themselves to the point of institutionalization or worse. I learned this the hard way after my own car wreck in 2001. You see, things have unfailingly unfolded in exactly the manner in which they needed to even when I can’t make sense of it all. The truth is if any of those critical scenarios had turned out differently I’d be nowhere near the place in my life that I am today. In many of the above cases, had they turned out differently I’d have no place in life because I probably wouldn’t be left among the living. Relapse for me is a death sentence.

There is an unbelievable peace that accompanies the realization that right here and right now you are exactly where you need to be. No matter how blindingly confusing it is at the time, even those life-defining moments that seem to be so awful in the midst of the moment can become an amazing positive force in your life if you so choose. You must resolve to press on and stay in the fight when you’re hardest hit. That’s largely what separates a life well lived from the chasm of what might have been.