Living “The Continued Demonstration” – Sobriety & the Post COVID-pocalypse

These things will come to pass naturally and in good time provided, however, the alcoholic continues to demonstrate that he can be sober, considerate, and helpful, regardless of what anyone says or does. Of course, we all fall much below this standard many times. But we must try to repair the damage immediately lest we pay the penalty by a spree.

Alcoholics Anonymous pg 99

This passage was originally written about the expectations a person in recovery should or shouldn’t have of his or her family. But, in our current context, the key concept is going to require a much wider interpretation.

The key concept is something called The Continued Demonstration:

• Continuing to demonstrate sobriety
• Continuing to demonstrate being considerate
• Continuing to demonstrate being helpful
• Continuing to demonstrate all of this REGARDLESS OF WHAT ANYONE SAYS OR DOES!

To start, I wanted to drift off for a quick second and mention that I have encountered many recovery groupings where it seemed to me that sobriety was a rarity, being inconsiderate was a badge of honor and definitions of helpful was definitely subject to one’s definition of the word at best.

Keeping in mind that most 12 Step groupings are peer based and centered on people like us helping other people like us and that we should look at it like going to a hospital except the people working at the hospital are the patients who are getting free of the same or a similar illness. What I mean is, only a fool would get mad at encountering sick people at such a hospital. If the other sick people at such a hospital bother you, it is quite possible the problem isn’t them, but that person you see in the big window over the sink in the bathroom.

That said, I think the importance of “The Continued Demonstration” as described above is often forgotten as a key part of the recovery process. That goes double for the “demonstrating being considerate” part.

Now back to where I was headed originally. I am hoping it is in the way it is in my context in the context of the readers reading this. In my context the obsession with turning everything into a “my team” against “the other team” and “whoever is not on my team is on the other team” mentality has grown into this huge monster absolutely devouring my nation.

No matter what it is there must be two sides and a person is either “with me or against me” and everything requires the most vigorous debate possible and in the end “my opinion must be the winner at all costs.”

While this whole thing is the luxury of lots of people, for us in recovery this sort of narrow-minded interpretation of people and the ensuing instant aversion to entire groups of people is not some new awesomeness you discover that gives you some elusive status you have been searching for all of your life.

Most people try to live by self-propulsion. Each person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show; is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery and the rest of the players in his own way. If his arrangements would only stay put, if only people would do as he wished, the show would be great. Everybody, including himself, would be pleased. Life would be wonderful. In trying to make these arrangements our actor may sometimes be quite virtuous. He may be kind, considerate, patient, generous; even modest and self-sacrificing. On the other hand, he may be mean, egotistical, selfish and dishonest. But, as with most humans, he is more likely to have varied traits.

What usually happens? The show doesn’t come off very well. He begins to think life doesn’t treat him right. He decides to exert himself more. He becomes, on the next occasion, still more demanding or gracious, as the case may be. Still the play does not suit him. Admitting he may be somewhat at fault, he is sure that other people are more to blame. He becomes angry, indignant, self-pitying. What is his basic trouble? Is he not really a self-seeker even when trying to be kind? Is he not a victim of the delusion that he can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if he only manages well? Is it not evident to all the rest of the players that these are the things he wants? And do not his actions make each of them wish to retaliate, snatching all they can get out of the show? Is he not, even in his best moments, a producer of confusion rather than harmony?

Alcoholics Anonymous pgs 60 – 61

This new level of “team mentality” that is so popular in my context, for people in recovery like us is just a disguised version of all of this. The mindset that “if these people would just think like me, they would be better and the world would be better” is not a newfound freedom, it is simply a repackaging of on old bondage.

While the conversations and other interactions are to some degree unavoidable (at least in my context), we must realize that these mindsets are a poison to our recoveries and our lives that we are not obligated to drink a gallon at a time.

The people around you may be immersed in this mindset and it may have the freedom to vomit their own brand of crazy on everyone they encounter with impunity, but this is not so for us. We are at risk of vomiting up our recovery, our lives and all over the people unlucky enough to care for us in times that we drift back into our insane behaviors we have been working so hard to leave behind.

If you have been in recovery and have been under the impression that the only change you need to make is the using, but you will otherwise be the same, then 12 Step recovery (and possibly any kind of recovery) is not for you.

IF YOU ARE NOT CHANGED INTO SOMETHING DIFFERENT THEN YOU ARE THE SAME AND CAN EXPECT THE SAME!!!

Now! Here is the deeper consideration. All the smart people who make mathematical and statistical suggestions based on research, statistics, trends and other smart-people-foolery seem to think that on top of worldwide pandemic there will be widespread bad things of various kinds to follow and possibly more sickness and on and on.

All of that may or may not be true, but one thing is for sure…

…however, the alcoholic continues to demonstrate that he can be sober, considerate, and helpful, regardless of what anyone says or does.

Alcoholics Anonymous pg 99

If the world does go through next level of turmoil, there will be some desire to blame, deserved or not. If absolutely nothing happens there will be a whole other desire to blame. There will be anger and some escalation of the “team mentality” (at least in my context).

HOW ARE YOU GOING TO REMAIN SOBER, CONSIDERATE AND HELPFUL in all of your interactions while all of that is going on? HOW ARE YOU GOING TO REMAIN SOBER, CONSIDERATE AND HELPFUL TO THE PEOPLE YOU PERCEIVE TO BE OPPOSED TO YOUR “SIDE” IN THESE COMING STRUGGLES? I know there are a few folks thinking snide little comments like “I’ll tell them how stupid they are. That is helping them isn’t it?” and the like.

While quite funny, the choice is one of a recovery nature and in that sense a choosing of “life or death.” Do I participate in my inferiority complex based attempting to show myself superior to this other person by putting him/her down or do I figure out how to somehow be considerate and helpful in the hope of remaining sober?

After all, the reason most of us are dealing with recovery at any level is that we have some level of understanding that some or most my normal desires are self-destructive. That reality means that my natural desires to some degree or other CANNOT BE TRUSTED.

MY POINT!!! Just because you feel like it and other people are doing it does not mean you have the luxury of participating in it – WHATEVER THE “IT“ IS!

On a deeper level some of us may find ourselves less healthy, without work, without a home, without toilet paper or any number of forecasted things that may happen to any of us, but…

…however, the alcoholic continues to demonstrate that he can be sober, considerate, and helpful, regardless of what anyone says or does.

Alcoholics Anonymous pg 99

If life was a card game, mastery of it is going to require you learn how to play both the good and the bad hands well. This is even more true of the alcoholic and the addict. We have to be able to work our recovery and the changes to our lives both when life deals us good hands and when life deals us the bad hands.

A person in recovery who has built up a defense that goes completely back to his/her old behaviors and old life at the first sign of bad times has built absolutely nothing of any good use. EITHER YOU ARE CHANGED OR YOU ARE THE SAME!!! Bad times are just the test to see if the change is real or not, because your change is only a theory until it is tested by the bad times. Which by extension means that your recovery is only a theory until it is tested by the bad times.

A SKILLED CAPTAIN OF A SHIP IS NOT THE ONE WHO CAN ONLY NAVIGATE A SHIP THROUGH CALM WATERS. THE SKILLED CAPTAIN OF A SHIP IS THE ONE THAT CAN NAVIGATE THE SHIP THROUGH BOTH CALM AND ROUGH WATERS AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN.

While I am not trying to minimize anything you may be going through, please recognize that your recovery cannot be tossed about by everything around it like some rowboat in the middle of a storm with no oars, rudder or anchor. Things may or may no get bad for each one of us and people around us may be doing all kinds of things…

…however, the alcoholic continues to demonstrate that he can be sober, considerate, and helpful, regardless of what anyone says or does.

Alcoholics Anonymous pg 99

What Do I Do One Day At a Time?

 

 

Picture Collage Maker 2013 Calendar (Photo credit: Squidooer)

 

When we retire at night, we constructively review our day. Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid? Do we owe an apology? Have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once? Were we kind and loving toward all? What could we have done better? Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time?  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 86)

 

In recovery circles, people often throw around the idea of living “one day at a time”.  This passage is one of the descriptions of what you do one day at a time and hopefully at some point what you do all of the time.  The passage is specifically describing Step 11 and is tied to Step 10, but is way more important than just that.  Recovery is not about being able to check twelve boxes that indicate you have completed twelve magic steps and then living happily ever after.  Recovery is a process of gaining much more than that:

 

Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 58)

 

Recovery is not a matter of just doing a bunch of things; recovery is about “grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty.”  The things you do in recovery have been designed to guide you to that end.

 

Working the Steps is designed to help each of us understand and to develop a way of living your life and that way of living is centered on being brutally honest.

 

The passage we started with gives us a key example of some of the things we are to be brutally honest about and by being brutally honest about these things on a daily basis we are working on making this the way we live our lives.

 

According to that passage on page 86, we are learning to live a life:

 

• free of being resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid
• where whenever you have done any of these things or anything that may have hurt another person you apologize to them
• where you are open and honest with others about even the deepest and darkest areas of your life and you cease to have those secret destructive areas in your life
• where you are kind and loving towards all people
• where you not only live positively, but you are always looking for how you can improve
• where you no longer focus on how comfortable you are or are not and live a truly unselfish life
• where you check on these things in the morning, in the evening and throughout each day to quickly catch when you are messing up in one of these areas and fix the problem immediately.

 

In other words:  RECOVERY IS THE PROCESS OF CHANGE.  THE AMOUNT OF RECOVERY YOU EXPERIENCE IS EQUAL TO THE AMOUNT OF POSITIVE CHANGING YOU DO.  Areas in your life that you are not willing to change are areas in your life that are keeping you from recovery.  UNWILLINGNESS TO CHANGE IS UNWILLINGNESS TO RECOVER.  UNWILLINGNESS TO CHANGE IS A DETERMINATION TO STAY THE SAME.   If you are determined to stay the same you can only expect the same results.  If you stay the same, you will do the same and relapse is inevitable.

 

Change is an incredibly hard thing to do and few people have the desire to completely change the totality of how they think and act.  Most people are willing to change a few particularly bad areas of their lives.  Most people just want to change a few isolated areas and somehow live happily ever after somehow getting vastly different results while still living basically the same way they have been.

 

A key ingredient required for all of this is the “rigorous honesty” that is required for all of these things.

 

Not only do you need to be brutally honest with yourself about the all of these areas, but you need to regularly talk with others who are brutally honest with you.  I don’t mean periodically either.  That passage describes discussing these things with these people at once in an effort to gain their outside “rigorous honesty”.

 

A person who is incapable of this kind of rigorous honesty an particularly those incapable of being brutally honest with themselves are one of those unfortunates that will not experience recovery.

 

YOU CAN HAVE RECOVERY IF YOU CAN SEARCH FOR, FIND AND ACCEPT THE FACTS THEN DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO CHANGE ACCORDINGLY.

 

This describes one of the main struggles of recovery while at the same time describing the facts that are the hope for recovery.  Recovery is change and change is hard yet can be achieved.

 

Think of how all of this is tied to “The Promises” you hear recited at many Twelve Step meetings:

 

We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us – sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 84)

 

The question is not: “Are these things possible?”  The question is, are you willing to work for them.  That means are you willing to be brutally honest and are you willing to be completely changed in the process?

 

Make this year, make each day, make each minute, make each interaction, make even each thought an experience of brutal honesty and an opportunity for significant change in your life.  Live the new lifestyle “one day at a time” and one rigorously honest change at a time and have a rigorously honest, happy New Year.

 

 

 

Stay sober my friends,

 

Wade H.

 

Related articles

 

• The New Year’s Change (wadehrecoverynetwork.wordpress.com)
• Holiday Gatherings: Explain or Avoid (wadehrecoverynetwork.wordpress.com)
• Treated as an Alcoholic/Addict or Weirdo During the Holidays (wadehrecoverynetwork.wordpress.com)
• Jan. 9, 2013 – Just for Today (12thstepper.wordpress.com)
• Nov. 10, 2012 – Just for Today (cmmacneil.wordpress.com)
• Honesty: The Measure of Our Success (realtimerecovery.wordpress.com)
• Honesty (marianne365days.wordpress.com)

 

The New Year’s Change

The New Year’s Change

I have since been brought into a way of living infinitely more satisfying and, I hope, more useful than the life I lived before. My old manner of life was by no means a bad one, but I would not exchange its best moments for the worst I have now. I would not go back to it even if I could.”  (Alcoholics Anonymous pgs. 42 – 43)

A new “way of living” is central to any idea of recovery.  If you stay the same, act the same and think the same you will end up with the same results.  If you do not change, you are the same and will end up getting the same results.

Here is the math:

THE SAME   =  THE SAME RESULTS

DIFFERENT   =  DIFFERENT RESULTS

Any hope of recovery must include an acceptance of the fact that you need to be okay with the idea of being an entirely different person to get different results.

This is a great time to look at this concept.  We have just passed through New Years after surviving the Mayan Apocalypse and those of us in the United States having survived a quick tumble over something called a ‘fiscal cliff” and here we are.

With the New Year, many cultures have the custom of making new resolutions, commitments or changes for the next year and for those of us in recovery this can be used as an important part of our recovery process as change is recovery.

Some changes may be simple commitments:  A person who has been in recovery circles and never seriously worked Steps may commit to actually working the Steps this year and find two or three people to ensure that happens.  Some people might have that one or two things that they have excluded from discussing when working their steps previously, such individuals might commit to working on those things this year (and call a couple of people you could meet with today and start discussing those things with – or you won’t really do it).  Some, who may have never done so before, might commit to sponsoring others this year and contact two or three others who are good sponsors to walk them through the process.

The ideas are endless.  Now that I have you pondering this idea, let’s slow down and look at some of the changes founding member Bill W. did when he got started:

My wife and I abandoned ourselves with enthusiasm to the idea of helping other alcoholics to a solution of their problems. It was fortunate, for my old business associates remained skeptical for a year and a half, during which I found little work. I was not too well at the time, and was plagued by waves of self-pity and resentment. This sometimes nearly drove me back to drink, but I soon found that when all other measures failed, work with another alcoholic would save the day. Many times I have gone to my old hospital in despair. On talking to a man there, I would be amazingly lifted up and set on my feet. It is a design for living that works in rough going.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 15)

I use this passage because this brief summary gives both the good and the bad of this commitment to changing.  There were some negative results of his using that didn’t magically disappear with abstinence from using.

Bill W. was sober and helping others be sober (as well as starting Alcoholics Anonymous) and working recovery yet the world around him was far slower in the process of accepting his sobriety which meant during this whole period of sobriety he couldn’t find any work.

This is important, because many of us in recovery start changing and then get frustrated by the fact that people around us treat us like the scum of the earth or like the village idiot no matter how much we change.  Some of us get so frustrated that we just give up feeling that it doesn’t matter:  “No matter what I do my life is not going to get better” etc.

Let me help all of us with a fact:  YOU CAN ONLY CHANGE “YOU”.  YOU CANNOT CHANGE OTHER PEOPLE!  The changes that you are making start with “changing you” and the damage each one of us has done to the world around us is not in as big of a hurry to change as we need to be.  No matter what is going on around us, we have to still do the changing.

It is not a matter of if there will be problems, frustration and discomfort, it is a matter of how well you push through when the problems, frustrations and discomforts come up that is key to your recovery.  If your efforts to change cannot overcome these times, then your recovery can only work in times when there are no problems, no frustrations and no discomforts.  In other words, your recovery will not work.

There will be problems and a big part of the change is continuing to change and maintaining the changes that you have made already through the worst of times.

A big part of the changing that Bill W. did was working with others.

Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics.  It works when other activities fail.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 89)

Working with others is tied to his being able to hold on through these first tough times.  This is not an option, this is a must for all people working something that you are claiming is a Twelve Step program.

For any Twelve Step program, working with others who are struggling with what you are struggling with is central to making the whole thing work.  Not just working with other however; “intensively” working with others like yourself.

In the case of Bill W. on page 15 of the Alcoholics Anonymous book, he went searching for people to work with.

I am astonished, by the amount of people desperately seeking to have the sponsees come to them.  Understanding that “intensively” working with other people is at the core of any hope you have of changing and staying sober, waiting for sponsees to come to you is like sitting around waiting for recovery to just happen to you.  As if there is some recovery fairy that will magically show up, wave the magic recovery wand, sprinkle the magic recovery dust on you and all will be fixed.

Recovery is something you struggle desperately to get and so are those you work with:

Helping others is the foundation stone of your recovery. A kindly act once in a while isn’t enough. You have to act the Good Samaritan every day, if need be. It may mean the loss of many nights’ sleep, great interference with your pleasures, interruptions to your business. It may mean sharing your money and your home, counseling frantic wives and relatives, innumerable trips to police courts, sanitariums, hospitals, jails and asylums. Your telephone may jangle at any time of the day or night. Your wife may sometimes say she is neglected. A drunk may smash the furniture in your home, or burn a mattress. You may have to fight with him if he is violent. Sometimes you will have to call a doctor and administer sedatives under his direction. Another time you may have to send for the police or an ambulance. Occasionally you will have to meet such conditions.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 97)

I am not promising you some easy time of magically changing as you plod along each day playing recovery in some meeting or other.  I am bluntly saying that change is hard work particularly in the hard times including in the key area of working with others.  FACTS ARE FACTS AND THAT’S THAT.

What I am hopefully doing is properly preparing you for the cost of changing and showing you a truthful view of what the honest hope of sobriety costs.

The good news about complete change is that what makes you happy will change also which means you will be made happy by things that right now you cannot imagine would make you happy.

Many times I have gone to my old hospital in despair. On talking to a man there, I would be amazingly lifted up and set on my feet. It is a design for living that works in rough going.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 15)

If you do this long enough as intensively as you can eventually it will be the thing which lifts you up and keeps you on your feet.  It will be your joy and stability in the storms of life as well as in the quiet times of life.

Getting back to the point; as each of us begins on the path of walking through a new year, let’s all set a new course for change.  I put these ideas out there to contemplate as each one of us process what that might mean.

Make a plan for what you are going to do on the path to change this year, involve others (people with good sense and strong enough to confront you if you are not following through) in keeping you on course and accountable to your commitments, and start on the whole thing before you close your eyes to go to sleep tonight.

In conclusion, I wish you a Happy New Year.  Not in the sense that I expect that magic fairy dust will fall on you and joy will miraculously fall upon you (that is called being high and never really ends well).  What I mean in “Happy New Year” is:  May the efforts you are putting into finding change and the joy of sobriety be rewarded with a joy you have never known before and may that joy be passed through you into the lives of many, many others you encounter.

We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pgs. 83 – 84)

Stay Sober My Friends;

Wade H.

Related articles

• Treated as an Alcoholic/Addict or Weirdo During the Holidays (wadehrecoverynetwork.wordpress.com)
• Holiday Gatherings: Explain or Avoid (wadehrecoverynetwork.wordpress.com)
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The Holidays “One Day at a Time”

One Day At A Time (Photo credit: sidewalk flying)

Now that most of us are relatively sure that December 21, 2012 is not the end of the world, we have to get back to living one day at a time through the holiday season.  There are insane occurrences and problems in the news:

There are fiscal cliffs to fall off of, people freaking out and shooting people, children being horribly killed and on and on.  The problem we have is that we have to remain clean in spite of anything that is going on.

I wonder how many people who were in recovery and really believed that the twenty-first was the end of the world decided that it was okay to relapse before dying in global destruction.  The “one last party before I go” thing since “we’re all going to die anyway.”  Now, as we head into December 22, those people are simply people who relapsed over some “insanely trivial excuse”.

As for the rest of us, we still have to make it through the usual chaos of the holidays plus all the added stresses of the economy and all of the things going on around us.  Like I said, just like before our supposed end of the world and just like any other time that is not the holiday season, we have to take life “one day at a time.”

When we retire at night, we constructively review our day. Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid? Do we owe an apology? Have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once? Were we kind and loving toward all? What could we have done better? Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time? Or were we thinking of what we could do for others, of what we could pack into the stream of life? But we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse or morbid reflection, for that would diminish our usefulness to others. After making our review we ask God’s forgiveness and inquire what corrective measures should be taken.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 86)

According to this passage, one key aspect of “living one day at a time” is to re-look each day and honestly look at your actions.

The first thing to notice is the implication that we are all going to mess it all up sometimes.  In all of our gathering together, fighting our way through shopping malls, fighting with holiday traffic and so on we still cannot allow ourselves to slide back into stupidity.  The problem is that at some point many (if not most) of us will slide back into stupidity.

It is not okay to let this happen, but at times we all fall short.  According to this passage we have to catch it as quickly as possible and fix the situation as soon as possible.

In the heat of the moment, many of us will feel justified in whatever crazy action we take and probably will not notice how crazy we are being.  The idea is to stop at the end of the day, step out of your current perspective and take a brutally honest look at your actions from the day.

The passage doesn’t stop there, it goes on to instruct us to involve someone else.  It implies that the “someone else” is not just anyone however.  The passage implies that it is a person of good sense.

I have seen many people pick such accountability partners, mentors, sponsors and various kinds of spiritual guides by looking for the person most likely to go along with whatever crazy trip that you go on without ever telling you you are wrong.

This person (or group of people) needs to be a person that can be brutally honest with you if you are being crazy in the moment and you need to be ready to listen even if you disagree.

That means a daily assessment of if you are being: resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid in anything.  Are you hiding something?  Were you kind and loving toward all people?  Do you owe someone (an immediate) apology for something?  Were you thinking of others or just yourself in all situations?

All of this is really just a part of Step Eleven which is really tied to working your Step Ten:

Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. We discuss them with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone. Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help. Love and tolerance of others is our code.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 84)

The same methods for reviewing the day are what you are supposed to be doing throughout the day.  If you do notice yourself drifting off into crazy land, stop right there, stop yourself, talk to whoever you have put in place to reality check your crazy moments and make any amends you need to make right then to whoever you owe them to.

These two things are key to our staying clean and to our staying away from our own self-destructive silliness.

This thought brings us to Step Ten, which suggests we continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along. We vigorously commenced this way of living as we cleaned up the past.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 84)

These things are not just good ideas, they are major parts of the new way of living that is recovery.  In harder times (such as the holiday season) we simply work harder at focusing on these key elements of our recoveries.

We each have to have a means for honestly (brutally honestly) taking an inventory of our actions and be willing to fix anything that is discovered to be wrong immediately.

We are not only supposed to do these things, we are supposed to vigorously live this way.  The word “vigorously” is defined by Merriam-Webster as:

: done with vigor : carried out forcefully and energetically

We don’t just live this way, we force ourselves to live this way energetically.

Living one day at a time is not just about focusing on not drinking/using today.  Living one day at a time is about living your life in this whole new way each day.  Not only living this way, but assuming there will be challenges and failures and putting measures in place to stop and immediately fix these things when they come up.

We can all live our recovery one day at a time if we first know what that means.  Once we know what that means each of us must “vigorously” live this way and even more so during more challenging times.

All of this may seem completely unlike your normal personality, but member:  “If you keep doing the same things, you can expect to keep getting the same results.”  If you are going to get different results (i.e. recovery) then you are going to have to do different things.  The fact that this does not sound like who you are naturally is not necessarily a bad thing.  The idea is that there is “way of living” that is “commenced” because it is new to you.  You are trying to live a new way of life that is dramatically different than the way you have lived in the past which by nature is uncomfortable.

This is why all of this is carried out “vigorously”.  It is uncomfortable to do and at times, you have to force yourself.

The very next paragraph from the passage I just quoted contains what most of us in recovery call “The Promises”.

And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone – even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality – safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pgs. 84 – 85)

This is the “way of living” that brings you to these promises and that can sustain these promises through the holiday season.  These are why you would force yourself to do things that are so uncomfortable.

If you do what the passage says will lead to these promises, you will then get the promises.  If you live this way one day at a time then you will get the promises one day at a time.

Live this way of living and you will get through the holidays one day at a time.  Live this way and you will also find yourself getting through every day one day at a time.

May you have the happy holidays as promised in the promises and…

Stay sober my friends;

 

Wade H.

Related articles

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• A Common Sense Approach to Communicating Common Sense (wadehrecoverynetwork.wordpress.com)
• Treated as an Alcoholic/Addict or Weirdo During the Holidays (wadehrecoverynetwork.wordpress.com)
• Truly Letting Go – Starting at the Bottom (wadehrecoverynetwork.wordpress.com)
• The Idiot in My Mirror (wadehrecoverynetwork.wordpress.com)
• Dec. 10, 2012 – Today’s Gift from Hazelden (cmmacneil.wordpress.com)

The Christmas Promises

Christmas gifts. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 84)

Those who have been to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings or have a Twelve Step Background will know this passage to be a passage from what are called the Promises.  Those things that are the awesome goals that are described as what life looks like when you have worked your recovery properly (through the Ninth Step into Steps Ten, Eleven and Twelve).

This passage is very important to consider during this time of year.  For much of the world, including the United States, we have begun counting down the days until Christmas.  By that I mean that many of us are counting down the minutes until that special moment when your friends and loved ones get together and give you free stuff.  There are other wonderful aspects to th holiday season and especially Christmas, but for many of us the gift receiving is most enjoyable part.

I know that, a bunch of people who are absolutely thinking like I just described are telling themselves right now that this dos not describe them.  Telling themselves “Thank God I’m not one of those people.”

Before you get yourself too far down that road, ask yourself this and ponder it honestly:  If for no apparent reason, nobody got me anything this Christmas or even really paid me much attention, how would I feel.

Would you not notice at all?

Would you notice and be thankful for the opportunity to focus on others without the distraction of them noticing you?

Would you think of how great it is that everyone is focusing on more important things finally?

or would you:

Be angry and bitter?

Be frustrated that here comes another Christmas and nobody is thinking of you again?

Think that the reason you are not getting gifts is because you didn’t get them nice enough gifts and plan how to get them better gifts?

Feel a tremendous amount of self pity, because you messed up so bad that they don’t even give you gifts?

If you would notice and feel anything like the second group of responses you might have an area that needs to be looked at.  Losing interest in selfish things and gaining interest in others.  Having your self-seeking slip away is a new attitude that is the mark of progress in your recovery.

The self seeking is at the rood of alcoholism/drug addiction:

Whatever our protestations, are not most of us concerned with ourselves, our resentments, or our self-pity?

Selfishness – self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 62)

On Christmas, birthdays or other times where many people expect gifts and people to honor them are you concerned with yourself, your resentments or your self-pity.

This is a big jump for a lot of people, but what would it be like for you on Christmas to truly not want anything from others and to be only concerned with how you can help or bring joy to all that you encounter.

Many of us have an incredibly hard time imagining that to be freedom and imagine that kind of thinking to be the thinking of someone who is all messed up.  While mentally measuring the people around you by what they give you on a specific day or days of the year makes perfectly good sense to you.

I know there are those out there who try to manipulate others to show emotion towards them by giving people big gifts etc. and that is not what I am talking about.  If a person does that then the gift they are looking for is the emotional response and that is a whole other sickness in and of itself.  That sickness is disguised by calling the expected gift “appreciation.”

I am talking about truly not expecting anything in return.

On the news, I have been hearing stories of people who anonymously pay off thousands of dollars of layaway items for others in stores.  There are people who could not afford to buy something, so they put it on a payment plan at the store.  Then some unnamed person goes in and pays for what they owe and they get the item for free and don’t even know who to thank.  The person who paid off the item truly expected nothing in return.  I know that because none of the people that had their items paid for can even give anything to this person du to th fact that they do not know who the person is.

This is a person who has a true interest in their fellows and has lost interest in selfish things.

There are these sorts of individuals on the planet and if you are in recovery, becoming one of these individuals is a art of what you should look like in the end.  I am not saying to run out and fake it right now or to get all emotionally excited because you just read this and run out to some store and buy people stuff.

I’m asking each of us to take an honest look at where we are at relative to this goal and to diligently work towards honestly being that kind of person.

If faking it for now is the best you can do on the way to becoming that person,  then by all means, get to it.  If working Steps harder throughout the holiday season is the path for you, get to that.  If reflective thought with your sponsor, counselor or group is the best you can do this year, then let get to that.

The key is not that you have to be perfectly unselfish by tomorrow morning.  The key is that this is the goal and you always measure your progress by your distance from the goal not by how good you feel or how good other people think you are.

If you really are not even beginning to get over selfishness, A GOOD PLACE TO START, is to find someone else in recovery to invest your time in over the holiday instead of what you usually do.  It may be just you and that person, there may be other sponsors/people in recovery or whatever, but focus on helping another person instead of what you can get.  Forget what stuff you can get or how much attention you can get and focus on what you can do for someone who probably won’t give you anything in return.

This concept is not only good for shooting towards those promises that say you will feel better than you ever have felt before.  This concept is a key one to staying sober:

Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 89)

To be helpful is our only aim.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 89)

If you are still looking for something you can take from the holidays, then I have the most awesome gift for you:  Growth in your recovery!  We can drink, smoke, snort or inject away all of the other gifts we get, but growth in each of our own recoveries is priceless.

Be useful this holiday season and the feeling of uselessness will truly disappear.  The more you do things for others without expecting anything in return, the more self-seeking will slip away.  The more you find joy in what you give and less in what you get the less you will have to feel self pity about.  This is the change of our whole attitude and outlook on life that we are shooting for.

Focus on this passage as the promises for future holidays including Christmas:

That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 84)

Happiest of holidays in ne freedom and stay sober my friends…

Wade H.

Related articles

• Holiday Gatherings: Explain or Avoid (wadehrecoverynetwork.wordpress.com)
• A Common Sense Approach to Communicating Common Sense (wadehrecoverynetwork.wordpress.com)
• Treated as an Alcoholic/Addict or Weirdo During the Holidays (wadehrecoverynetwork.wordpress.com)
• Truly Letting Go – Starting at the Bottom (wadehrecoverynetwork.wordpress.com)
• The Idiot in My Mirror (wadehrecoverynetwork.wordpress.com)

Treated as an Alcoholic/Addict or Weirdo During the Holidays

In time they will see that he is a new man and in their own way they will let him know it.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 134)

With the holidays whizzing by us at a pace that is too much for many of us to handle, that statement is one that every one of us who has ever used alcohol or drugs must keep in the front of our minds.  In time, our loved ones (and some not so loved ones) will finally understand that we are new people.  In time those around you will believe that you are a completely different person than you were when you were using.  That is, if in fact you have actually been changed through recovery, which is clearly implied as the objective in this passage.

I find that the words that need to be keyed in on the most in this passage are the words “in time.”  The implied fact being that it will take some time and will not be immediate because you tell those closest to you that you did some recovery things and now think you are all better.

The flip side of that statement is the idea that there will be a period of time (possibly a long one) where the people around you will not believe that you are a new person and will treat you in a way that you will have to be reminded that “in time” they will see you as a new person and act differently.

Guess what that means for gatherings of family and friends.  That means they may treat as the most jacked up person in the room because of your past or because of what they think your past means.

As each member of a resentful family begins to see his shortcomings and admits them to the others, he lays a basis for helpful discussion.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 127)

Notice that the passage does not say:  “As each member of a resentful family tells other members to admit their shortcomings.  The passage speaks of “each member” admitting his/her own difficulties to the others.  Each person is responsible to admit his/her own difficulties regardless of what the other people are doing in the hopes that sooner or later a conversation will occur that has no criticism or resentment but is actually constructive to everyone involved.  This could mean years of gatherings and talks before it is helpful at that level.

There was a saying when I was a child (I believe it came from the television show Baretta’s theme song):  “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”  That I believe to be a fitting statement for this topic.

The crime is becoming an alcoholic/addict and the time is the seemingly insane amount of effort it takes to be free of this seemingly inescapable bondage.  That makes the saying:  Don’t become an alcoholic/addict if you cannot handle the insane amount of effort and discomfort it takes to later get free.

I know that may be a little on the harsh side and that those of us who are already alcoholics/addicts reading this get that now, but it still has to be stated.  In talking to the proverbial “man of the house” alcoholic in the Alcoholics Anonymous book this idea is stated:

The head of the house ought to remember that he is mainly to blame for what befell his home. He can scarcely square the account in his lifetime.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 127)

The “head of the house” here did the crime so he has to do the time, however much it is because no amount of time is enough and any amount of time is being let off easy.

I you are treated as an alcoholic/addict or weirdo during the holidays, whose fault is that really?  Is it the fault of the people who think you are an alcoholic/addict or is it the fact that you have been the alcoholic/addict they suspect you still are?

Such it is with all of our loved ones.  Is it possible that we may find some or all of those closest to us seemingly unfairly looking down on us or otherwise treating us badly.  ABSOLUTELY!  Is it our responsibility to desperately try (for however long it takes) to clean up what we did either directly or indirectly to them:

Yes, there is a long period of reconstruction ahead. We must take the lead. A remorseful mumbling that we are sorry won’t fill the bill at all. We ought to sit down with the family and frankly analyze the past as we now see it, being very careful not to criticize them. Their defects may be glaring, but the chances are that our own actions are partly responsible.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 83)

We focus of what it takes for us to get better and not on what it will take to make them stop doing this or that.  We are to focus on undoing what we did to them and on what is wrong with ourselves.  That probably means, lots of uncomfortable, family gatherings, conversations and interactions, but that is a part of the price we pay for freedom.

Some of us have family and loved ones that can already accept that we are completely different.  How awesome that is and we need to continue changing so as not to dash those hopes and make it considerably harder for them to trust change in us later.

Those of us who have family and loved ones that have yet to accept you as completely changed, start with the BIG question first:  AM I REALLY A COMPLETELY CHANGED PERSON OR AM I JUST THE SAME PERSON TRYING TO BE ABSTINENT?  Because, if you are the same, it is insanity to expect people to see you as different!  The same person, thinking in the same way will sooner or later do the same things.

If you are convinced that you are a totally different person on a completely different footing then the fact that others do not believe it is actually part of the process of continuing to change.  It is a matter of time.  Time in which you sustain this change to the point that those around you can actually and honestly say, that the old you is completely gone and clearly will never return.  If you used heavily, that might be a bit of time because of what those around you saw from you.  If you even consider the concept of a person being an alcoholic or addict, then you have to accept that even the words convey the idea that change is elusive and should be trusted with caution.

In case nobody has ever told you:  DO NOT TRUST EVERY PERSON WHO IS AN ALCOHOLIC/ADDICT WHO SAYS THEY HAVE BEEN THROUGH RECOVERY AND ARE COMPLETELY CHANGED.  The proof is in the test of time.

It is also true of each one of us.  So, if your family and loved ones do not fully accept that you are a different person, do not be angry at them.  In actuality that would do more to prove their disbelief to be true.  Stand strong in knowing that you are one day closer to the day that each one of them will believe and be thankful for the opportunity to grow.

Happy Holidays and Stay Sober My Friends;

Wade H.

Related articles

• Sober is “But a Beginning”? (wadehrecoverynetwork.wordpress.com)
• Truly Letting Go – Starting at the Bottom (wadehrecoverynetwork.wordpress.com)
• Repairing Relationships After Addiction (everydayhealth.com)
• The Idiot in My Mirror (wadehrecoverynetwork.wordpress.com)
• Joy, Freedom and True Happiness Under Pressure and Difficulty (wadehrecoverynetwork.wordpress.com)

The Shortcuts and By-paths of Friends and Loved Ones

The Shortcuts and By-paths of Friends and Loved Ones

The alcoholic, his wife, his children, his “in-laws,” each one is likely to have fixed ideas about the family’s attitude towards himself or herself. Each is interested in having his or her wishes respected. We

058 (Photo credit: ribarnica)

find the more one member of the family demands that the others concede to him, the more resentful they become. This makes for discord and unhappiness.

And why? Is it not because each wants to play the lead? Is not each trying to arrange the family show to his liking? Is he not unconsciously trying to see what he can take from the family life rather than give?

Cessation of drinking is but the first step away from a highly strained, abnormal condition. A doctor said to us,” Years of living with an alcoholic is almost sure to make any wife or child neurotic. The entire family is, to some extent, ill.” Let families realize, as they start their journey, that all will not be fair weather. Each in his turn may be footsore and may straggle. There will be alluring shortcuts and by-paths down which they may wander and lose their way.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pgs. 122– 123)

For the friends and loved ones around the alcoholic/addict each life is incredibly altered by the fact of having an alcoholic/addict in their world.  Some people act as if not affected, but most often this is simply a massive misconception that will only be unraveled somewhere down the road with significant amounts counseling or a significant shock to that their system.

The behaviors, thoughts, interactions etc. of the alcoholic/addict in relation to those around him/her cannot help but impact all who come in contact.

An illness of this sort – and we have come to believe it an illness – involves those about us in a way no other human sickness can. If a person has cancer all are sorry for him and no one is angry or hurt. But not so with the alcoholic illness, for with it there goes annihilation of all the things worth while in life. It engulfs all whose lives touch the sufferer’s. It brings misunderstanding, fierce resentment, financial insecurity, disgusted friends and employers, warped lives of blameless children, sad wives and parents – anyone can increase the list.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 18)

The alcoholic is like a tornado roaring his way through the lives of others. Hearts are broken. Sweet relationships are dead. Affections have been uprooted. Selfish and inconsiderate habits have kept the home in turmoil. We feel a man is unthinking when he says that sobriety is enough. He is like the farmer who came up out of his cyclone cellar to find his home ruined. To his wife, he remarked, “Don’t see anything the matter here, Ma. Ain’t it grand the wind stopped blowin’?”  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 82)

These are the worst case scenarios, but all are affected to some degree or other from those who have a permanent raised eyebrow for that individual to those who suddenly feel the urge to vigorously bludgeon the person past death and past a state of rigor mortis simply because that person’s name was mentioned. 

Here is a newsflash that most of us, particularly those of us with no alcohol or addiction problems:  If you do not deal with (or have not dealt with) whatever negative effects that person’s using has had on you, YOU WILL BECOME ONE OF THE OBSTACLES TO THIS PERSONS RECOVERY AND GENERAL GROWTH IN LIFE.

You may have had no blame whatsoever in this person’s previous using, you may have been the codependent enabler of this person, or you might have been the direct cause of this person’s use, but at this moment you are either becoming a part of the solution or a part of the problem.

The person who has been building resentment for years that this person would never pay any attention to your protestations probably should not take the first moment of clarity to vomit up every injustice this person has ever done to you up to the point of dry-heaving insanity upon this person in his/her first hard fought moment of clarity.

I am not saying there is not a need for a time and a place to confront and resolve each injustice, but weaponizing your confrontation of legitimate issues for this first opportunity to act out an effective ambush is probably not the way, unless your goal is to utterly destroy this person.  If your goal is to utterly destroy this person, you need to leave this person alone and go get help NOW!

If you are the more passive, not wanting to set this person off, kind of person, that has a whole other set of issues that arise.  The fact for those of us in recovery is expressed in this passage written to help us focus our efforts to fix the past.  This is how we should be looking at dealing with you on these issues:

Under no condition do we criticize such a person or argue. Simply we tell him that we will never get over drinking until we have done our utmost to straighten out the past. We are there to sweep off our side of the street, realizing that nothing worth while can be accomplished until we do so, never trying to tell him what he should do. His faults are not discussed. We stick to our own.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pgs. 77– 78)

If we do not get better “until we have done our utmost to straighten out the past” hiding the past from us or minimizing it is the equivalent of hiding our recovery from us.  We need your true feelings and emotions to have any hope of recovery.  We need your reality to understand how to correct the filters we use for our perception of reality. 

A person working Step Nine should not be allowed to blame you or manipulate you into minimizing what you feel or what happened.  Each person in recovery needs to work on preparing to look at the worst of his/her past, preparing to do whatever is humanly possible to repair each thing in the past and desperately and vigorously use that experience as the fuel to grow to a point of never repeating the same destructive behaviors ever again.  This person is supposed to be learning to be far less self focused and more humble in a healthy and balanced way.

Selfishness – self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 62)

Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kills us! .  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 62)

That is the task that must be undertaken at some point.  There are appropriate times and places and processes of preparation that one must work through (Step Eight for example where you work towards each amends that you actually carry out in Step Nine) before each confrontation happens, but they have to happen or the recovery process has broken down completely.  The uncomfortable process that will serve as the motivating energy behind the radical changes the Twelve Step process requires to work simply does not exist if this is not carried out properly.  The change cannot happen and if you are not changed, you are the same and can expect the same results.  That means relapse and worse!

All of this needs to be confronted at the right time, in the right way.

Now, back to the family and the passage we started with (why we are really here):

We find the more one member of the family demands that the others concede to him, the more resentful they become. This makes for discord and unhappiness.

And why? Is it not because each wants to play the lead? Is not each trying to arrange the family show to his liking? Is he not unconsciously trying to see what he can take from the family life rather than give?  (Alcoholics Anonymous pgs. 122)

According to this passage, the alcoholic/addict in recovery may not be the only selfish and self-centered person in the mix.  This may not apply to you specifically, but each person needs to honestly ask himself/herself the question HONESTLY.  There is no excusing your self focus because that person has been more selfish or deserves it or is stupid or whatever.  Either you are being selfish and self-centered or you are not. 

If you are the person who has to confront this right now however you feel it needs to be confronted two things are evident:

1. This confrontation has nothing to do with any aspect of helping that person get better it is all about finding some sense of victory while that person is in a weakened state.
2. This confrontation has nothing to do with finding any real solution to the problem or you would be looking for the right time when the person would be properly prepared to really get together with you and do whatever it takes to resolve each issue. 

If you are one of the people who will act as if everything is fine and none of that mattered or the “well I just don’t want to make his recovery tougher” people:  STOP IT NOW!!!

You are robbing this person of their recovery simply so you won’t feel uncomfortable or feel responsible if they freak out.  If this person does freak out, there are really two possibilities:

1. That person is simply not ready to deal with these issues properly yet and cannot consider his/her amends to you completed
2. This person is so used to manipulating you that he/she can avoid any discomfort he/she perceives is related to you by manipulating you into feeling guilty until you shut-up.  (That is another area that that person would need to make amends for).

Either one is a situation that needs to change for that person to get recovery.

The truth is that the archenemy of the alcoholic/addict is selfishness and self-centeredness in any form.  Granted, that person has to learn to live with the fact that the planet finds itself covered with more selfishness than it has land for all of the selfish people to stand on and is highly unlikely a person could figure out a path in life that avoids all selfishness.  The question is not one about fixing all of the selfishness on the planet however, the question is firmly:  “Are you as an individual a part of the problem or of a part of the solution for this person?”

As I said before, you may have never do much as lifted a finger to cause this person to use ever before this.  That’s awesome, but please don’t start being a part of the problem now!!!  We all struggle with an alcoholic/addict and their thoughts and behaviors to some degree or other.  We need to be willing to struggle through some discomfort for their health and you will probably find that actual resolutions to the problems will do wonders for your mental and emotional health also.  Focusing on ensuring that you are not selfish or self-protective can’t hurt either.

I suppose there are those people who have all of this in line and struggle with none of these issues.  I commend you and I am thankful that you are on our planet as an example to the rest of us.  I do however, present to you the idea that individuals cannot judge such things about themselves safely without at the least the consultation of a few folks that understand what we are looking at and can honestly tell you the truth.

In other words, if you are a friend or loved one of a person in recovery, PLEASE seek some outside assistance or advice from someone who understands these things (assume you would like to be a part of the solution or at least not be a part of the problem).  And never EVER EVER EVER EVER use the sentence “He/she is the person with the problem, why do I need to…”  That statement in and of itself is an indicator of just being concerned with yourself and not doing anything for this person.

You can be a huge part of the healing process for your friend or loved one and all it takes is to unselfishly confront the issues at the time that is best for the person and for you.  Yes there is discomfort, but at least the discomfort is along the path to freedom and closure.  You may have been a hero in this person’s life standing by them all of this time and they may not have truly even noticed, but this is an opportunity to be a beacon of hope and freedom for a person in desperate need at the moment it will count the most to him/her.  You just have to stay off of the shortcuts and by-paths.

If you are the person in recovery, consider your responsibilities in all of this and the challenges those around you will have confronting these issues with you at the appropriate time and in the appropriate way.  Don’t try to protect yourself from discomfort by avoiding any of these amends.  If you are not ready, then diligently work (with the help of others) on getting ready to make the amends.

There is a solution, and all of us involved can be a part of it.

Thoroughly Followed or Thoroughly Ignored

A cornerman giving instructions. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Thoroughly Followed or Thoroughly Ignored

Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 58)

This is a fairly well known passage from the Alcoholics Anonymous book and it contains some key concepts that are often missed by those claiming to be working or to have worked recovery. The really odd thing here is that the key parts are put out there so clearly that it would seem that you would have to work pretty hard to miss those key points.

The first sentence says it just about as clearly as it could be.  It basically says; if you want the recovery program to work you have to do the actual recovery program.  “It works if you work it!” and it wont work if you don’t work it!!!

You have to “thoroughly follow” the same “Steps” that the people who are writing here took.  You have to do the same if you want to expect the same.  If you do something different, then you can expect something different.

I have recently encountered and have heard a few discussions about people who did a bit of this and a bit of that from the Twelve Steps and then believe; “all will be fine.”  

I would have to say that that if I went to a recovery program (in this case a Twelve Step Program) and put my future in the hope that what those people offer is my hope then I would have to do whatever they wanted me to do.  

Many people go into recovery with this hope and somehow don’t do what the people tell them they are supposed to do.  Then such a person person decides not to do what they tell him/her to do to as recovery or only some parts of it?  If this person is not doing the program they outline, what exactly is this person doing?  Is just being around people working recovery doing nothing or just the few things you are comfortable enough to get sobriety really a recovery program?

The supporting evidence these people use for this reasoning are reasons like:  “I’ve been sober six months now”, “I feel like I’m better, so I don’t need this stuff”, “I am losing interest so that means I’m done” and on and on.

The truth is that these people are not working recovery and not doing recovery, they are avoiding the work of recovery.

The minute you start cutting corners happens to be the minute you cease to be working recovery.  Either you completely give yourself to the simple program or you do not.  There is no kinda doing it.

All of this cutting corners and justifying it to yourself is really foolish when you look at the facts.  The fact that you decided this program would work and went there and did something else is foolish enough without lying to yourself and others to keep it that way. 

Lying to yourself is not being honest with yourself.  According to this passage those who cannot be honest with themselves are doomed to epic failure.

If your recovery program finds its foundation in lies you tell yourself and to others, how can you possibly hope to grasp and develop “a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty.”  If you are not doing the things that you felt could help you change and then lying about it knowing that one of the key goals is a lifestyle that demands rigorous honesty, you are making the choice to fail.

For any of you who are going into recovery or are already in recovery here are some facts to consider:

• If you don’t trust that the people you are working with or the program you are working with can give you recovery; why would you waste your life and time and everybody else’s lives and time.
• If you do trust them and what they do and yet do not do everything they tell you to do are you really trusting them?  NO!!!  You do not really trust them (refer back to the previous statement)
• If you do trust them and what they do and yet do not do everything they tell you to do as the path to freedom can you really expect the results that are supposed to come from doing those things?  NO!!!  Expect some other results (such as relapse perhaps)!!!

If you have done recovery like this and do not see any problems (yet), please go back and do whatever it is that you trusted until you started to trust the lie.  Do not allow yourself to be one of those “unfortunates”!

 

Stay sober my friends;

Wade H.

What You Need To Learn For True Freedom

Jail Cell (Photo credit: Casey Serin)

What You Need To Learn For True Freedom 

We have begun to learn tolerance, patience and good will toward all men, even our enemies, for we look on them as sick people. We have listed the people we have hurt by our conduct, and are willing to straighten out the past if we can.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 70)

This a segment from the part of the Alcoholics Anonymous book that describes the things that should have happened if you did your Fourth Step correctly.  In other words if these things have not happened, you are absolutely not done with your Step Four and should not be trying to move on to Step Five.  The change you were looking for has not happened.  Or, should I say, the change the authors felt you needed t get sober have not happened.

Look at this passage describing one of the focuses of Step Five:

They took inventory all right, but hung on to some of the worst items in stock. They only thought they had lost their egoism and fear; they only thought they had humbled themselves. But they had not learned enough of humility, fearlessness and honesty, in the sense we find it necessary, until they told someone else all their life story.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg 73)

The implication of this passage is that one of the reasons that there is a Step Five is to help each person get rid of MORE egoism, get rid of MORE fear, and get more humble.  This means that a big part of Step Four is to get humility, fearlessness and more honesty according to passage.  Step Five merely takes you deeper.

Consider this passage from a page before we start actually reading about doing the Fourth Step:

Whatever our protestations, are not most of us concerned with ourselves, our resentments, or our self-pity?

Selfishness – self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 62)

Selfishness and Self-centeredness!  The archenemy of every alcoholic and addict is self focus.  This is supposed to be addressed in Step Four directly.  If you do not deal with the selfishness and self-centeredness then you stay the same.  If you stay the same then you are the same and can expect the same results at some point.  In other words:  If your recovery does not change you deeply, then you have gone through recovery and come out the same.  If you are the same you can expect to do the same at some point no matter how long you manage to put it off.

Indeed, the attainment of greater humility is the foundation principle of each of A.A.’s Twelve Steps.  For without some degree of humility, no alcoholic can stay sober at all.  Nearly all A.A.’s have found too, that unless they develop much more of this precious quality than may be required just for sobriety, they still haven’t much chance of becoming truly happy.  (12 Steps and Twelve Traditions pg. 70)

The focus of Step Four and Step Five (and in reality of all of the Steps) is the attainment of humility.  I know I have crossed this bridge a few times, but because it is such a key focus of all we do this topic has to be more of a bridge we cross over daily in our commute to our one day at a time recovery instead a bridge we pass over and never look back at again. 

The obvious question that comes up when having this humility conversation is:  “What about the people who are not humble who have sobriety time?”  I say to that question:  “Bring three of those people to your mind.”  (I personally know a bunch)  How do you like to be around those people for a long time?  Honestly speaking, those people make me want to gag myself with a jackhammer.

Some are so miserable and angry about everything they encounter that I kinda have to resist the natural urge to avoid conversation with them.  The kind of person who gets up to share and describes how jacked up life is and the world and on and on yet throwing in the but I’ve been sober “X” amount of years (and people clap and cheer etc.).  Not to say that their recovery time is a bad thing.  I’m also not talking about the fact that all of us have those days and periods of time.  I’m describing the person who meeting after meeting, day after day, conversation after conversation and year after year has the same attitude and those same conversations.

I remember thinking to myself, when hearing guys like that over and over again; “If that is all there is to recovery, then I would rather keep using.  If sober is that miserable and being miserable is my motivation for wanting to be sober I’m stuck choosing between sober and miserable and drunk/high and miserable.

This passage says that sober and miserable is not the goal at all and that gaining humility is the answer. 

Another form of this being not “truly happy” because of not getting enough humility is seen in these people who cannot fell comfortable or good unless they are taking control of everything.  They always know more or have to get a word in or have to declare constantly how great they are etc.  Is not all of that truly the diametric opposition to humility.  The most opposite you could possibly get to it. 

If a person were this “truly happy” why would said person be so unhappy (or the disguise they use for this “uncomfortable”) when not in control?  Translation:  What kind of “truly happy” person needs to derive any kind of positive feeling from the manipulation of others.

I spoke on this previously so I will not go over this passage in detail but if you want to truly get a look at this kind of person look at pgs. 60, 61 and 62 in the Alcoholics Anonymous book.  The passages that use the example of the actor who wants to run the show and thinks if everyone would just act the way he/she wants them to all would be fine.

This person is not “truly happy.”  This person is sick (still sick) and manipulative.

I am not saying:  “Ooooh, you evil person!”  I’m saying there is a key obstacle that still has not been overcome that desperately needs to be (for your own good and the good of those around you).

Now back to what all of this has to do with the Fourth Step.  What does killing your selfishness, self-centeredness and gaining more humility look like in Step Four?

Referring to our list again. Putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done, we resolutely looked for our own mistakes. Where had we been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and frightened? Though a situation had not been entirely our fault, we tried to disregard the other person involved entirely. Where were we to blame? The inventory was ours, not the other man’s. When we saw our faults we listed them. We placed them before us in black and white. We admitted our wrongs honestly and were willing to set these matters straight.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 67)

The book asks you (as a resentment list) to write down everyone you have ever been angry at in your life.

In dealing with resentments, we set them on paper. We listed people, institutions or principles with whom we were angry. We asked ourselves why we were angry (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 64)

Without going too far down this rabbit trail, you list angers because people generally do not know all of their resentments off of the top of their heads.  Most people have five or so they can think of and that’s it.  But, if you list every time you have been angry (even if the other person never knew) then you are likely to realize that many of those (if not most) are some level of resentment, some of which you try to hide from yourself.

So if done like this, you end up with a massive, itemized list of every person who has ever ticked you off throughout your whole life.  Have you begun to “learn tolerance, patience and good will toward all men, even your enemies” or have you just unearthed a whole lot of uneasy feelings, many of which you had neatly packed away to not think about.  When do you start looking at them as “sick people” you have hurt by your conduct and become willing to straighten out the past?

This was our course: We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick.  Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick too. We asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. When a person offended we said to ourselves, “This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done.”  (Alcoholics Anonymous pgs. 66– 67)

First we look at them as people who are spiritually sick.  Sick in ways that are much deeper than just being the messed up person who chose to tick me off.  Two pages before, the authors use this same “spiritually sick” concept to describe the problem that has made us alcoholic/addicts and that made us hurt other people. 

The question here is, “Could it be that these people are suffering from a similar inner sickness that you suffer from.”   Is it possible that their real problem is that they need help that they may not even know they need like you and the rest of us recovery folks? 

Then you are asking for tolerance, pity, and patience.  The kind you show a sick person who accidently does something that you do not like because it is some symptom of their sickness.  Like a friend who has a week to live who vomits on your clothes.  What kind of person gets mad at that person and beats the terminally ill person up or cusses them out?

Next you are looking to be helpful to that person.  Instead of being a part of the problem, you are looking to be a part of the solution.  In other words; you are a sick person and this is a sick person.  You are trying to get better and have some ideas now about what it takes to get better.  You have encountered a person who is trapped in a similar sickness and you know how to point that person in the direction of getting better.  You can choose to overcome the urge to retaliate and look for ways to truly be helpful (even if it’s just dropping a tidbit of information that person may not even consider for many years) or you can just jump on the crazy train with that person and fan the flames of craziness in that person’s world while restarting whatever fires have been put out in you.

The fire starters and the people who fan the flames of others are continuing down the path of selfishness and self-centeredness and away from the key focus of Twelve Step recovery:  “The attainment of greater humility”.

Key to all of this is to seek freedom from the anger that normally rises.  They did not say resentment, the authors stressed “anger”.   Anger is really the feeling that there is this right to be angry which is really the spiteful desire to punish another person between your own ears in your head.  You may spew some of your own crazy on that person or others (or you may not) but in reality in trying to beat them up inside your head, you are in truth only beating a hole in the rock that is on top of your neck. 

That person did something to you:  “How dare they hurt someone as important as you?”  Forget the “sick” person part and the “how can I be helpful” to this person part.  This person had the nerve to hurt ME!

Another fine definition of “selfishness and self-centeredness” which is the root of our troubles.

After listing every person who has ever angered you in your life, you need to go over this with each and every person on the list.  You need to take this view of every person on the list and find an answer to the question:  “How can I be helpful to him” or her?

Then comes the deep part:  There is a test to see which ones you have been successful at making these changes on and the ones you haven’t so you can go back and work on those ones some more.

Referring to our list again. Putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done, we resolutely looked for our own mistakes. Where had we been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and frightened? Though a situation had not been entirely our fault, we tried to disregard the other person involved entirely. Where were we to blame? The inventory was ours, not the other man’s. When we saw our faults we listed them. We placed them before us in black and white. We admitted our wrongs honestly and were willing to set these matters straight.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 67)  

Now, you take this list of every person who has ever ticked you off ever and ignore that very fact completely.  All you have right now is a list of what is wrong with everyone else in the world and you may or may not have included yourself a few times on this list.  What did you do before or during whatever thing is listed to the listed person(s) that was in some way just not right?  If nothing what did you do to this person that was not right after this thing occurred (instead of looking for “How can I be helpful to” this other sick person)?

Is it not true that if you were not helpful to this person you were probably hurtful? 

The situation or the person may have required a calm discussion.  It may have needed a firm but caring confrontation.  It may have required the police be called and an abusive person arrested for their own potential growth and you to leave so that that person has opportunity to see that being abusive is not okay (even though he or she may never see it you focused on trying to be helpful instead of retaliation etc.) .  It may mean telling parents, principles and proper authorities about being abused as a child to get that person proper help and to save other children from such abuse. (An abused child will not have done anything to the person as a child but often as adults abuse themselves with resentments.  Those who were abused as children often also never even begin to think about how to be helpful to that person.  This is a deep part of the resentment and the self-protection manifesting.  That may mean demanding that person get help or you will expose them etc.  An abused child is never to be blamed but as an adult we have to take on responsibility to be free and to be helpful).

This is a deep and often painful look at what is wrong with you and not everyone else.  The “How can I be helpful to him” or her part is not just some cool psychobabble that the Twelve Step people invented.  It is the end zone for this part of Step Four.  It is the “attainment of greater humility” overcoming “Selfishness and self-centeredness” part.  If you don’t get this change, you are the same except now you have an itemized list of everything and everyone that ever worked your nerves. 

Or you might even be worse; you may be one of these people who has like three or four people listed and ramble on and on about not having resentments only to either relapse or to white-knuckle struggle your way through some abstinence while selfishness and self-centeredness keeps you never able to enjoy the world for what it is.

If we have been thorough about our personal inventory, we have written down a lot.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg 70)

This is a lot of work and a tremendous amount of stress.  Well one would expect there to be a tremendous amount of work and a tremendous amount of stress in the process of getting a tremendous amount of freedom.

A person chained up in a cage can get free from the chains and become free to roam within the cage and some can even get to roam around the whole prison which are levels of freedom but are not truly free.  We want true freedom and it is possible.

Next we launched out on a course of vigorous action, the first step of which is a personal housecleaning, which many of us had never attempted. Though our decision was a vital and crucial step, it could have little permanent effect unless at once followed by a strenuous effort to face, and to be rid of, the things in ourselves which had been blocking us. Our liquor was but a symptom. So we had to get down to causes and conditions.

Therefore, we started upon a personal inventory.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pgs 63– 64)

We went back through our lives. Nothing counted but thoroughness and honesty. When we were finished we considered it carefully. The first thing apparent was that this world and its people were often quite wrong. To conclude that others were wrong was as far as most of us ever got. The usual outcome was that people continued to wrong us and we stayed sore. Sometimes it was remorse and then we were sore at ourselves. But the more we fought and tried to have our own way, the worse matters got.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pgs. 65– 66)

Stay sober my friends;

Wade H.

Related articles

• “In The Face Of Expert Opinion To The Contrary, We Have Recovered” (wadehrecoverynetwork.wordpress.com)
• Getting The Right Glasses on the Right Way (wadehrecoverynetwork.wordpress.com)
• The “No Matter What The Consequences” “Go To Any Length” Promises (wadehrecoverynetwork.wordpress.com)

Getting The Right Glasses on the Right Way

 

Anachrome Aviator+ 3D glasses (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Though you are providing him with the best possible medical attention, he should understand that he must undergo a change of heart. To get over drinking will require a transformation of thought and attitude.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 143)

Recovery is not just a change of if you use or not:  RECOVERY IS A CHANGE OF YOU!    You must change your way of thinking and change your attitude which both lead to your actions.  The way you see things and thins and reasons for why you see things that way must change if you expect to change.  If you feel and think like an alcoholic/addict you will gravitate towards the actions of an alcoholic/addict (even if you keep resisting it you will still be drawn to these activities).  Your whole world view must change.

Then, one day in A.A., I was told that I had the lenses in my glasses backwards; “the courage to change” in the Serenity Prayer meant not that I should change my marriage, but rather that I should change myself and learn to accept my spouse as she was.  A.A. has given me a new pair of glasses.  (Alcoholics Anonymous 4^th Edition pg. 419)

This thought immediately makes me think of watching a 3D movie without the 3D glasses verse with the 3D glasses.  When I look at the screen without the glasses I can kinda see the picture and can pretty much tell what is going on.  The problem is that I am not seeing it correctly.  I actually wear prescription glasses and if I put on my prescription glasses and do not put on the 3D glasses I can see a bit clearer, but they are still not the 3D glasses so I still am not seeing clearly enough to be seeing it correctly.  The prescription glasses are a start, but the 3D glasses are a must to see clearly.

I think of no glasses as me using, I think of wearing the prescription glasses as me just abstaining, but not changing,  Using the prescription glasses and then the 3D glasses on top is me starting with abstinence then actually changing the way I see things completely.  Just as seeing more clearly allows me to better enjoy the movie in the good and bad parts; being able to see the world more clearly in the good and bad parts lets me enjoy life.

This sort of new filter for how I view life and feel about life is the focus.  In the tidbit above the man has been focusing on how bad his marriage is and how messed up his wife was and the problem seemed to grow. 

But then as I drank more and more, the alcohol seemed to affect my vision:  Instead of continuing to see what was good about my wife, I began to see her defects.  And the more I focused my mind on her defects, the more they grew and multiplied.  Every defect I pointed out to her became greater and greater.  Each time I told her she was nothing, she receded a little more into nowhere.  The more I drank, the more she wilted.  (Alcoholics Anonymous 4^th Edition pg. 418)

His focusing on his wife’s problems led to his verbalizing what he was seeing.  His verbalizing what he had been focusing on was making the problem he observed get worse and worse making his marriage worse and worse and in effect making his life worse and worse.  Making his life worse and worse would only serve to make his desire to use worse and worse which made him notice more and more wrong with his wife and on and on.  Is this not a cycle of insanity? 

It’s funny that in all of this the implication is that she is looking more and more terrible as if she won a prize being married to this guy (and staying with him).  Let’s catch up to reality a bit:  He is a drunk, regularly abusive and admits to being the verbal misery spreader of the home and if you go through the rest of the story you will find that he is a person who always wants to have everything in his control and arranged the way that makes him comfortable.  His wife’s problem (from his perspective) was that she doesn’t just sit around reading his mind and making sure whatever he wanted or was feeling at any given moment was satisfied. 

The filter he was looking through was that one that wanted his wife (and ultimately the world) to be some sort of psychic slave labor with some added benefits.  This filter (the glasses he had been looking through) said that he was supposed to be seeing a world that did what he wanted so he could remain happy.  If a person is waiting for the whole planet to sit around trying to do everything it can to keep him/her comfortable there is massive disappointment at every turn in that person’s future. 

Being convinced, we were at Step Three, which is that we decided to turn our will and our life over to God as we understood Him. Just what do we mean by that, and just what do we do?

The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success. On that basis we are almost always in collision with something or somebody, even though our motives are good. Most people try to live by self-propulsion.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 60)

Is his thinking clearly exactly what we are supposed to be confronting as the “first requirement” of working Step 3.   He is looking through the self-will glasses and needed a new pair of glasses that would change his way of thinking and his attitude to break his cycle of insanity.

If you go through recovery and end up basically the same person that were but are just not using right now, you might find yourself a bit better off, but still miserable.  Sober and focusing on what is wrong with his wife all the time and then telling her could never end with happiness:  SOBER OR NOT!  

Trying to do recovery and to decide what changes you are and are not going to make and deciding which parts you are comfortable with and ignoring the parts you are uncomfortable with happens to be exactly the same kind of self-seeking motivations that we are describing as part of the sickness.  It’s like going to the doctor because you were poked in the eye and the doctor telling you to heal the pain from being poked in the eye by repeatedly poking yourself in the eye.  We can’t cure our crazy using crazyness.

First, we searched out the flaws in our make-up which caused our failure. Being convinced that self, manifested in various ways, was what had defeated us, we considered its common manifestations.  (Alcoholics Anonymous pg. 64)

This is the key to the idea of having the lenses in your glasses in backwards:

I was told that I had the lenses in my glasses backwards; (Alcoholics Anonymous 4th Edition pg. 419)

They are backwards because they are focused on peace for yourself and what is wrong with the world when the focus is supposed to be peace for the world and what is wrong with you.  That is recovery.  This is also the starting point for Step 3.  Get the right glasses and get them on the right way…

 

Stay sober my friends;

Wade H.