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!

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.”)