Tag Archives: Addiction

Recovery As The Great Equalizer!

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-- Image ©Kerzner 2012 --

— Image ©Kerzner 2012 —

Spend and invest any amount of time in recovery and you soon discover that it is a way of life. Very quickly you come to realize that recovery is something that you will be engaged in for the rest of your life (if you want to live any kind of quality life). Over time, you may have other realizations. The other day it occurred to me that recovery is an awesome equalizer!

There is a line in the movie “New Jack City” where Judd Nelson’s character says “This drug thing – it’s not a white thing, it’s not a black thing. It’s a death thing. And death doesn’t give a shit.” In a lot of ways, recovery is similar. Rich, poor, CEO, line worker, housewife, married, single, man, woman, child; if there is addiction involved, then an opportunity exists for recovery.

Everyone that enters “the rooms” of a 12 step program has the same opportunity as everyone that came before them. The 12 Steps apply to everyone … no exceptions.

The pain, anguish, uncertainty, dejection, and surrender you feel is just as real for the person sitting next to you (whether you believe that or not, and whether they admit it or not to themselves). The bottom each person hits is different, but hitting bottom is the same for everyone, once they reach that point. Sadly, a lot of people don’t reach their bottom; most will wind up in jail, insane, or dead before they do.

Recovery requires that everyone works to succeed. You can proceed at your own pace, but doing the work is the glue that holds your recovery together. Slack off, ease up, throttle back just a little, and it will show regardless of who you are. Recovery does not care what else is on your agenda, where you come from, where you have been. Recovery knows that if you do not put in the effort, you will not succeed.

Recovery IS the great equalizer. It brings humility to egos run rampant. It can bring peace to the emotionally torn and spiritually bankrupt. Just like our additions, recovery is not a black thing, or a white thing. If you don’t do the work, and don’t make the effort, your addiction will become a death thing.

“You can’t stay sober today on yesterday’s sobriety.”

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The Voice

“You can’t stay sober today on yesterday’s sobriety.” I saw this today and thought to myself “Boy is that the truth!” It really does not matter WHAT we are recovering from, we can not rest on yesterday’s progress, can we? Could be a car wreck, bad relationship, really bad, abusive relationship; drugs, sex, booze, gambling … it really doesn’t matter, does it? So, the question arises, “Why not? I’m doing OK. Why can’t I take a breather and take it easy a little bit? It isn’t going to hurt anyone.” In AA, we refer to this as stinking thinking, and this is precisely the thinking that will get you dead.

Think about where you came from … the hole you had to claw your way up and out of. Think of the pain, the struggle, the education. Perhaps you only had a few people care enough to help you, or maybe you were one of the fortunate ones that had family and friends rally around you, give you a hand up. Maybe you were never in jeopardy of losing your job, your home, your way of life. When I hit bottom, I was facing losing everything. The only friend I had was me and that was doing me a whole world of good (sarcasm!). A couple of my superiors took pity on me because they thought I had potential as a human being and I made them laugh: they thought I was redeemable, and repairable. I busted my ass to get sober, go through withdrawal, get educated, go through counseling, confront the truth.

The day after Christmas this year, I will have 24 years of being clean & sober. Every day, I STILL have to work to stay clean & sober. Things are good now. I have accepted who I am, shortcomings and all, and I try to better the things I can. I still work on educating myself, doing the steps, trying to help others, and staying clean & sober. At this point it would be really easy to ease up a little and not stay buckled down on it. Deep down though, I know that that is the voices calling to me. Those voices are calling me back to places I never want to go again. My recovery has meant that I do things that people do not understand, and often take the wrong way. Once I got squared away, I made up my mind that never again would I be with people I didn’t want to be with, in places I didn’t want to be, spending my money, and wasting myself and my time. To this day, I don’t do this and sometimes that causes friction. I am extremely particular about who I call a friend; not because I am stuck-up, but because I don’t settle anymore. I do my best to live up to the standards I hold others to. Somedays I fall short; but I do not make it a habit because now I care.

Addiction and codependency are sneaky: they will lie and cajole you. They will caress you with lies and a false sense of independence so that you let your guard down, becoming less vigilant. They will say “It’s been a long time, it’s OK. Live a little. Have fun.” There is nothing fun about being in a shitty relationship, even if it is with yourself: actually, especially if it is with yourself. After all the work we did and continue to do, one day at a time, we owe it to ourselves to continue working on us. Don’t give in – don’t rest on the success of yesterday. It will kill you.

What Is Hurricane Sandy Teaching Us About Recovery?

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Chairs with Sailboat Sunrise

What Is Hurricane Sandy Teaching Us About Recovery? Good question. Let’s take a look.

We all know that this storm has devastated countless lives, destroyed property, and stolen the security of hearth and home from many.  The sense of the familiar, and the comfort of routine are gone. All this has been replaced with clearing away the wreckage, taking stock of what remains, and then, rebuilding. As a country, we will begin rebuilding homes, families, communities, friendships, and lives. We will seek to regain and renew our sense of purpose, and the security we once knew. There will be times we will have to put whatever reservations and difficulties we may have with our neighbors aside, and work together for the common good.

For those of us involved in addiction recovery, all this should sound eerily familiar. Our addiction brought us to varying degrees of destruction. We had damaged our reputation, our relationships; lost our homes and families, and in a twisted sick way, our routine and sense of “normalcy” (as we envisioned normal to be within the context of the twisted existence we were living). Comfort in the familiar, and our sense of security, were gone once we hit bottom. We had to begin anew. We had to assess the damage, see what was salvageable, and then, begin to rebuild our lives starting with ourselves first. We had to reassess things we believed to be stable and unshakable, and determine how to approach them anew. We had to cultivate healthy and productive habits and approaches to solving problems instead of procrastinating, or feigning that they didn’t exist. This rebuilding required education, training, and often, cooperation with those that we previously would not have trusted or worked with at all.

Just as we have learned to do these things and worked tirelessly to maintain our hard-won progress, the country is in the process of doing these same things. Already we see differences put aside and people working together for the common good. Already we see a recognition that old ways must change and long-held beliefs must be examined, and possibly abandoned. Mostly, we see working toward renewal and rebuilding, with a firm determination and sense of purpose.

Isn’t that what recovery is all about?

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