When I first entered recov­ery, I just wanted to stop drink­ing and drug­ging, and I thought that was all there was to “Recov­ery”.  I did what peo­ple sug­gested, got a Spon­sor, took his sug­ges­tions and started work­ing the 12 Steps.  I wanted ‘it’ so badly that when my Spon­sor told me to read a page in the text, I read the whole chap­ter, usu­ally 2, 3 or 4 times.  If he told me to write a page, I wrote 3 or 4 pages.  What­ever my Spon­sor asked me to do, I did, and more so.  I wanted so badly to get and stay clean and sober, that I did any­thing and every­thing I could, if it might ‘work’ for me.  After a lit­tle time and get­ting fur­ther into the Steps, I started see­ing and real­iz­ing that there was more to “Recov­ery” than just putting down the drink & drugs, and it wasn’t long and, well, like my Spon­sor said, “I only needed to change one thing.… EVERYTHING!”  When I first heard that say­ing, in all hon­esty I thought — “Yeah, right.  I’ll stop going to the bars or the dope-man, and I might get some dif­fer­ent friends, but you can’t be seri­ous.  I can’t change ‘every­thing’.”  But, in time, I did.  Today there’s noth­ing about me, except my looks and my legal record that is the same — and even the legal mat­ters have changed a great deal (ha-ha).  But over the course of a few years I learned that what really had to change, was my abil­ity to han­dle “life on life’s terms”, and that meant learn­ing how to han­dle *feel­ings* — *emo­tions*, with­out the use of mood or mind alter­ing substances.

I found out that I didn’t know how to han­dle my emo­tions, and that was the main rea­son I drank and drugged — to “change the way I feel.”  Now here’s my point;  I had to learn how to feel, good AND bad feel­ings, with­out try­ing to change how I felt or try­ing to run from my emo­tions, but to be ok with feel­ing not only good, but ‘bad’ too.  It took a lot of work and some time, as I not only didn’t know how to han­dle emo­tions, but I didn’t *feel* like other peo­ple feel.  I had learned over many years to avoid my feel­ings, my emo­tions, so much so that when I didn’t have any way to numb the feel­ings, I was lost.  I had no clue how to ‘feel’, much less how to express those feel­ings and deal with them, so I had some work to do.  I was blessed in early recov­ery to be placed in a treat­ment cen­ter which had a group called, “Emo­tional Incar­cer­a­tion”, which helped peo­ple like me who’s emo­tions were ‘locked-up’ inside them­selves.  This group taught me how to be ‘freed’ emo­tion­ally, and walked me through the ‘breaking-free’ process.  It wasn’t easy, but in some time and a lot of work I ‘escaped’ the lit­eral impris­on­ment of my emo­tions.  Today I feel the whole rain­bow of emo­tions, good AND ‘bad’, with­out hav­ing to try to either change my feel­ings or run from them.  Thus, I had entered what I now call “real recov­ery”.  This, along with build­ing a rela­tion­ship with a God of my under­stand­ing, namely Jesus Christ (for me), and today I know what it means to be truly “clean and sober” and “liv­ing life on life’s terms”.

I have a prob­lem, how­ever, with what I’ve learned and expe­ri­enced in this “Recov­ery”, and that is, I see many, many peo­ple who have put away the drink and drugs and claim to be, and even believe they are, truly “in recov­ery”.  I see so many peo­ple who still, after years of not using drugs or alco­hol, don’t know how to han­dle their emo­tions in any­thing like a mature fash­ion, but instead find a mil­lion other ways to “change the way they feel” or “run from their emo­tions”.  Per­son­ally, I don’t believe they are really “in recov­ery”, but only exchang­ing one ‘addic­tion’ for another.  In fact, I’ve come to believe that the answer to my title ques­tion, “Recov­ery from What?” is — recov­ery from not being able to han­dle ALL emo­tions, good AND bad  (note, I call emo­tions ‘bad’, but I don’t believe there are any ‘bad’ emo­tions, only emo­tions we don’t like).  Thus, these peo­ple, in my opin­ion, are not “in recov­ery” at all — but  still in active addic­tion.  They’ve only changed ‘drugs’, so to speak, and changed what they use to “change the way they feel”, and/or “run from emotions.”

I have a close friend who, though this per­son claims many years of “recov­ery”, has never learned how to han­dle ‘bad’, or neg­a­tive emo­tions.  If they don’t “feel good”, if an activ­ity, event, per­son or sit­u­a­tion causes them to “feel bad”, they either find a way, an activ­ity of some kind, to change the way they feel, or they run from the event, per­son or sit­u­a­tion, or push that away and deny it exists and even blame it on some­one else that they ‘feel bad’ — but they DO NOT han­dle neg­a­tive emo­tions within.  This, in my opin­ion, is active addic­tion.  Thus, again in my opin­ion, they are not truly “in recov­ery” at all, but only deny­ing their other addic­tions while they con­tinue to “use” — only not using drugs or alco­hol, but instead they use food, sleep­ing, peo­ple and activ­i­ties that cause them to ‘feel good’, and a whole world of ‘addic­tions’ besides chem­i­cals.  In my opin­ion, they are lying every time they claim to them­selves or oth­ers that they are “in recov­ery”, but they cer­tainly wont lis­ten to this idea, because it “doesn’t feel good”.  A sad fact of this person’s life, is that they have man­aged to con­vince all the peo­ple around them that they are “happy, joy­ous and free from addic­tion” and “in recov­ery”.  Peo­ple around them, after all, only see what this per­son wants them to see, and this per­son has made it a fine ‘art’ through a lot of prac­tice, to put on a facade to the world, and even to them­selves, which enables them to remain in denial of the fact that this per­son has no “real recovery”.

I want to “live life on life’s terms”, includ­ing *feel­ing* all of the emo­tions, good AND ‘bad’, with­out hav­ing to use any­thing or any­one to “change the way I feel”, and with­out hav­ing to “run from my emo­tions”.  To me, THIS is what “real recov­ery” is all about!  So, in answer to my orig­i­nal ques­tion, it is my own opin­ion, belief and expe­ri­ence that, “Recov­ery from What?” — is recov­ery from the need to change the way I feel or run from my emotions.

What about you — what do you think — what have you expe­ri­enced — what is your opin­ion.  I’d love to hear it, so PLEASE “SHARE”!

“We don’t have to be clean when we get here but, after the first meet­ing, we sug­gest that new­com­ers keep com­ing back and come back clean.  We don’t have to wait for an over­dose or a jail sen­tence to get help from Nar­cotics Anonymous.”

Basic Text, pp. 10–11

––––=––––

Very few of us arrive in NA brim­ming with will­ing­ness.  Some of us are here because we are court-ordered to attend.  Some have come to save our fam­i­lies.  Some come in an effort to sal­vage a career tee­ter­ing on the brink of ruin.  It doesn’t mat­ter why we are here.  It only mat­ters that we are.

We have heard it said that “if we bring the body, the mind will fol­low.”  We may come to meet­ings with a chip on our shoul­ders.  We may be one of those who sits in the back of the rooms with our arms folded across our chest, glar­ing threat­en­ingly at any­one who approaches us.  Per­haps we leave before the final prayer.

But if we keep com­ing back, we find that our minds begin to open up.  We start to drop our guard, and begin to really lis­ten when oth­ers share.  We may even hear some­one talk­ing with whom we can relate.  We begin the process of change.

After some time in NA, we find that more than our minds have arrived in our meet­ing rooms.  More impor­tantly, our hearts have arrived, too.  After that hap­pens, the mir­a­cles really begin!

Just another day clean and sober?  I’ve “been around” (in recov­ery) for many years now.  Each and every day when I awake I spend time in prayer and med­i­ta­tion, as I was taught in my first few weeks of recov­ery. I’ve been prac­tic­ing this every sin­gle morn­ing, and haven’t missed a day yet, but I say that not to ‘brag’ or ‘boast’, but to say that it’s now just a solid part of my day. I don’t really think about it any more — I just do it, as ‘reli­giously’ as I brush my teeth. There are other things through­out the day that I do to aid my recov­ery, that I’ve also been doing every day, one of which is in prayer, I always thank God (as I under­stand Him) for “another day”.  In fact, that’s exactly how I word it in prayer — “Thank you, Lord, for another day.”  I don’t add the words “clean and sober”, because I mean more to my thanks giv­ing than ‘just’ to be clean and sober, but isn’t that enough?  It is for this addict/alcoholic!  I’m thank­ful for ‘just another day clean and sober’, but I’m also thank­ful for another day — period.

As I men­tioned, I’ve been clean and sober a num­ber of years and I’ve been doing pretty much the same things for my recov­ery from the day I awoke in a detox-unit “clean and sober” until now.  But this brings about my point of topic — after some years, I’m not sure where in there this hap­pens, but it’s easy to become com­pla­cent and think of recov­ery more as “just another day”, then to think of it as it is — a gift of incred­i­ble grace by the God we under­stand — or don’t under­stand, as the case may be — and for many of us, if it hadn’t been for His grace we’d not have lived this long.  I need, for my own recov­ery, my “atti­tude of grat­i­tude”, my men­tal, emo­tional and spir­i­tual well-being to always remem­ber that fact.  Being clean and sober, and alive, for ‘just one more day’ is some­thing I need to remain grate­ful for and never for­get or become com­pla­cent with.  Per­son­ally I’m afraid that if I were to become com­pla­cent or in any way take for granted that I am clean, sober and ALIVE for one more day, I might also for­get that I can’t take just one drug or one drink — and soon lose it all.

They say, “A grate­ful addict (or alco­holic — as if there’s a dif­fer­ence) will never use (or drink).”  I don’t know for sure if that’s true, and to be hon­est I don’t want to find out, but I’m reminded of a book my father used to have that sat on the end of a book­case with the title show­ing, which read, “If it aint broke — don’t fix it.”  That’s how I ‘work’ my recov­ery.  I was taught cer­tain things early in recov­ery (also for which I’m thank­ful), such as to start every day in prayer and med­i­ta­tion, and I still prac­tice that today.  I never get up in the morn­ing with­out a time of prayer and med­i­ta­tion (I call it, “hav­ing cof­fee with God”), and I also never have this time of prayer with­out say­ing, “Thank you, Lord, for another day.”  Each and every time I say that, I’m reminded deep within that God lifted me up out of ‘hell’, as a camper might lift-up a smol­der­ing marsh­mal­low out of the fire before it bursts into flames. I know not ‘why me’, but this is a ques­tion I don’t spend much time pon­der­ing, and instead sim­ply bask in the grat­i­tude inside my soul for hav­ing been one of His cho­sen.  For this I’m grateful!

My brother, 10 years my senior, died of this dis­ease when I was between 3 and 4 years clean.  He never used drugs, per se, but drank like I did — which even­tu­ally caused his body to shut-down and, while sit­ting on the floor of his hum­ble apart­ment, a hard-boiled egg and empty shell of another on one side of him, and a 1.75 liter bot­tle of whiskey on the other.  Yet myself not only an alco­holic who drank in like manor, but a heavy-duty drug addict to boot, sits typ­ing this mes­sage today — why? — I have no idea, but am EXTREMELY grateful!

What do you do to main­tain your recov­ery, and how do you keep your­self from becom­ing com­pla­cent in hav­ing “another day Clean –n– Sober”?

Thanks for let­ting me share!

Do You Desire To Be Happy Or Holy?

Noth­ing in the Bible remotely sug­gests the idea that we should seek “happiness.”

But there is plenty writ­ten about seek­ing holi­ness: “Pur­sue holi­ness, with­out which no man shall see the Lord… like the Holy One who called you, be holy your­selves in all your behav­ior.” (Hebrews 12:14; 1 Peter 1:15)

While many blithely pur­sue the life depicted on “Fan­tasy Island,” a bat­tle is rag­ing between the forces of heaven and hell — between good and evil. It is here that Satan seeks to destroy us while God is prepar­ing us for eter­nity. It is here that either godly char­ac­ter is being forged, or souls are in the process of destruc­tion. Hardly a place for “happiness.”

“The whole cre­ation groans and suf­fers the pains of child­birth… wait­ing eagerly for our adop­tion… the redemp­tion of our body.” (Romans 8:22, 23)

The pur­suit of “hap­pi­ness” is cen­tered in self and has about it a kind of Dis­neyesque sur­re­al­ism. Sur­rounded as we are by strug­gling human­ity in the abyss of mis­ery and dev­as­ta­tion, chat­ting about “hap­pi­ness” seems a tad trite. Con­sider King Solomon’s poignant observation:

“It is bet­ter to go to a house of mourn­ing than to go to a house of feast­ing… to lis­ten to the rebuke of a wise man than… to lis­ten to the song of fools.” (Eccle­si­astes 7:2, 5)

Para­dox­i­cally, it is only out of a life of holi­ness and ser­vice cen­tered on glo­ri­fy­ing God that we expe­ri­ence pur­pose, mean­ing, and fulfillment.

Note Isa­iah 58:10, 11:

“And if you give your­self to the hun­gry, and sat­isfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in dark­ness, and your gloom will become like mid­day. And the Lord will… sat­isfy your desire in scorched places, and give strength to your bones; and you will be like a watered gar­den, and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.”

If “hap­pi­ness” were achiev­able in the wealth­i­est nation on earth, why then are we plagued by bore­dom, crime, drugs, the mur­der of the unborn, teenage preg­nancy, and divorce? It is my sus­pi­cion that Satan has been less than truth­ful to us in hold­ing out the car­rot of “hap­pi­ness.” What do you think? 

Noth­ing in the Bible remotely sug­gests the idea that we should seek “happiness.”

But there is plenty writ­ten about seek­ing holi­ness: “Pur­sue holi­ness, with­out which no man shall see the Lord… like the Holy One who called you, be holy your­selves in all your behav­ior.” (Hebrews 12:14; 1 Peter 1:15)

While many blithely pur­sue the life depicted on “Fan­tasy Island,” a bat­tle is rag­ing between the forces of heaven and hell — between good and evil. It is here that Satan seeks to destroy us while God is prepar­ing us for eter­nity. It is here that either godly char­ac­ter is being forged, or souls are in the process of destruc­tion. Hardly a place for “happiness.”

“The whole cre­ation groans and suf­fers the pains of child­birth… wait­ing eagerly for our adop­tion… the redemp­tion of our body.” (Romans 8:22, 23)

The pur­suit of “hap­pi­ness” is cen­tered in self and has about it a kind of Dis­neyesque sur­re­al­ism. Sur­rounded as we are by strug­gling human­ity in the abyss of mis­ery and dev­as­ta­tion, chat­ting about “hap­pi­ness” seems a tad trite. Con­sider King Solomon’s poignant observation:

“It is bet­ter to go to a house of mourn­ing than to go to a house of feast­ing… to lis­ten to the rebuke of a wise man than… to lis­ten to the song of fools.” (Eccle­si­astes 7:2, 5)

Para­dox­i­cally, it is only out of a life of holi­ness and ser­vice cen­tered on glo­ri­fy­ing God that we expe­ri­ence pur­pose, mean­ing, and fulfillment.

Note Isa­iah 58:10, 11:

“And if you give your­self to the hun­gry, and sat­isfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in dark­ness, and your gloom will become like mid­day. And the Lord will… sat­isfy your desire in scorched places, and give strength to your bones; and you will be like a watered gar­den, and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.”

If “hap­pi­ness” were achiev­able in the wealth­i­est nation on earth, why then are we plagued by bore­dom, crime, drugs, the mur­der of the unborn, teenage preg­nancy, and divorce? It is my sus­pi­cion that Satan has been less than truth­ful to us in hold­ing out the car­rot of “hap­pi­ness.” What do you think?

Bring­ing in a new year always causes me to reflect on the past year, it’s pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive aspects, and take a look at where I am today in look­ing toward the com­ing year.

Early in my recov­ery my Spon­sor guided me in this direc­tion of the turn of the cal­en­dar, in order to use this time of year for my own growth. Each year I’ve done the same, emo­tion­ally stir­ring, thought-process, and each year I’m thankful.

Mak­ing it through another year clean and sober, to me, is purely a gift of God for which I’m extremely thank­ful, and I mar­vel at the fact that some­one like me could pos­si­bly stay clean and sober for a whole year — not to men­tion the number.

Today I reflect — and would love to hear of your own reflection.

2009 was not an easy year for me, as many emo­tional strug­gles arose this year, but each came and went with­out pick­ing up — “But by the Grace of God!”  Today is ‘New Years Day’ — a day of gen­e­sis - a day of new begin­nings. An appro­pri­ate day to ‘begin’ post­ing in ~CLEAN-n-SyBER~. I’ve spent a great deal of time and effort this year try­ing to put together a ‘Com­mu­nity web­site’, with lit­tle suc­cess and a great deal of fail­ures along the way. I’ve had much emo­tional tur­moil this year, and it seems to be a turn­ing point in my life. It’s almost as though my ‘old life’ — not the life of addic­tions, but the life I had since I’ve been in recov­ery — draws to an end, and I’ve been in a “wilder­ness” period between ‘old’ and ‘new’ . I hope for a bet­ter year in 2010, as finan­cial strug­gles have been enor­mous this past year, socially it’s been a ‘dry spell’ for me, and spir­i­tu­ally — well, God and I have had some rough times and some good times, but not the most spir­i­tual year thus far, though that too seems to be changing.

Recov­ery — I once heard it said — is like a “Roller Coaster Ride” — so you bet­ter put on your seat­belt and hold on, because you’re in for the ride of your life!

I’ve found this to be oh-so-true! — What about you?

How was your 2009 — and what do you fore­see, hope for and/or even ‘plan’ for in 2010?
(I use the word ‘plan’ with some humor, for I often say, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.”)

When they had eaten break­fast, Jesus asked Simon Peter,
“Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these?”—John 21:15

Jesus has a won­der­ful way of restor­ing us when we fail Him! He does not humil­i­ate us. He does not crit­i­cize us. He does not ask us to make a res­o­lu­tion to try harder. Rather, He takes us aside and asks us to reaf­firm our love for Him.

Peter mis­er­ably failed his Lord when he fled with the other dis­ci­ples from the Gar­den of Geth­se­mane. Later, he pub­licly denied that he even knew Jesus. Peter must have won­dered if he had been capa­ble of being Jesus’ dis­ci­ple when he was unfaith­ful to Jesus in His most cru­cial hour.

As we begin a new year, we may be painfully aware that we have failed our Lord in many ways. Per­haps we were not faith­ful. Per­haps we dis­obeyed His word to us. Per­haps we denied Him by the way we lived. Jesus will take us aside, as He did Peter. He will not berate us. He will not humil­i­ate us. He will ask us to exam­ine our love for Him. He asked Peter, “Do you love Me?” If our answer, like Peter’s, is “Yes, Lord,” He will reaf­firm His will for us. If we truly love Him, we will obey Him (John 14:15). Jesus does not need our res­o­lu­tions, our recom­mit­ments, or our promises to try harder this year. If our resolve to obey God last year did not help us to be faith­ful, it will not make us suc­cess­ful this year. Jesus asks for our love. If we truly love Him, our ser­vice for Him in the new year will be of the qual­ity that He desires.

We need to know and remem­ber how God feels about us:

We are “majes­tic” in His eyes (Lit­er­ally: excel­lent, glo­ri­ous, mighty, worthy)

We are the source of all His delight (Psalm 16:3)

Zepha­niah 3:17 puts it this way:

The Lord is with us.

He takes great delight in us.

He will quiet us with His love.

He rejoices over us with singing

Of us He says, “I have loved you with an ever­last­ing love.” (Jere­miah 31:3) He has always loved us! Even before we were conceived!

Yes, I know we are ‘sin­ners’. That is not new infor­ma­tion. But in His eyes our prob­lem with sin has noth­ing to do with our intrin­sic worth. If your daugh­ter con­tracts can­cer, her worth is not dimin­ished in your eyes, is it?

As the kids say, “God don’t make no junk.” The truth is that “you are fear­fully and won­der­fully made… skill­fully wrought”: God’s mar­velous cre­ation! (Psalm 139:14, 15) In fact, “while we were sin­ners” — scuzzball rebels, many of us — Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8) Before we cleaned up our act, He crawled up on that cross for us. Is there a more force­ful demon­stra­tion of uncon­di­tional love?… Of our worth to Him?

So, this week as you enter the shark infested waters of the world, keep in mind the fact that you are

A CHILD OF THE KING. A PERSON OF INFINITE, ETERNAL WORTH!

Have a Blessed New Year in 2010!