Answer Addiction

Tag: honesty

  • The Five Pillars of Recovery from Trauma and Addiction

    Believe in yourself. Tell yourself that you deserve happiness, joy, success, and a life free from the pain of trauma and addiction. You are worth your recovery.

    In my forty-five years, I enjoyed twelve years of quasi-normal childhood, which ended abruptly when I was raped. I spent the next ten years in a dangerous dance with addiction, suicide attempts, and more trauma. But then I reached a turning point, and my past twenty-three years have been spent healing and learning what works for me in building long-term recovery.

    There is no standard set of blueprints for long-term recovery, as everyone is different, but I have identified five pillars that have enabled me to build on a strong foundation of recovery. My daily choice not to use substances forms that foundation, and these rock-solid pillars stabilize that recovery into an impenetrable structure. These five pillars are not unique, and they do require work, but once built, they will stabilize your recovery fortress.

    1. Maintain rigorous honesty. In addiction, our lives were built upon lies and false narratives we told ourselves and others. But recovery demands honesty—only when we can admit the truth can we begin to heal. I had to get honest with myself about my addiction. I had to own it and then take a brutally honest assessment of my life. We cannot build a sustainable recovery on a false narrative. When we lie, we enable sickness, secrets, shame, and suffering.

    Dishonesty makes us vulnerable in all the wrong ways, but honesty conjures the true vulnerability we require to discover authenticity. Start practicing honesty in all your interactions—beginning with yourself. This must be the first pillar because without honesty, the rest will crumble. Anything created in a lie is chaos, and anything created in chaos will end in chaos.

    2. Expose your secrets. You cannot soak in the joy of today if your soul is still filled with yesterday’s garbage. Take out that trash. For me, this meant diving deep and pulling forth all the trauma, pain, and sorrow that I had packed tightly away. I thought this was for my benefit—why bring up old stuff? But in fact my secrets were keeping me sick. They were smoldering under this new foundation I was building in recovery, threating to burn it all down.

    Secrets require silence to thrive, and they allow shame to fester inside of us. Shame is an emotional cancer that, if left untreated, will destroy our recovery. I began by slowly exposing my secrets in my journal. At first, it was the only safe space for me. As I began to trust others in recovery, I began to share those secrets, and the smoldering was extinguished by their compassion and understanding. Begin exposing your own secrets. What thoughts and memories are you afraid to give voice to? Those are the secrets that will keep you sick if you do not get them out.

    3. Let go. All those secrets take up a tremendous amount of space in our mind, body, and soul. We must find ways to process that pain into something productive, useful, and healing. You must unleash this pain so it no longer occupies your mind, body, and soul. When you do this, you make room for hope, light, love, and compassion.

    Writing is my release. But when physical emotional energy rises in me, I need more intense physical activity to push the energy out of my body. I use a spin bike and weightlifting, but you might run, walk, or practice yoga—any activity that gets your heart rate up and helps you sweat, which I think of as negative energy flowing out. When I do this, I am calmer, I am kinder, and I am more the person I want to be. Meditation is another way for me to simply let go and sit with myself when my thoughts are plaguing me or I feel stuck emotionally. I often use mediational apps, guided mediations, or music to help me meditate. When you find what works for you, do it daily. Recovery is like a muscle; when it is flexed, it remains strong.

    4. Remember you aren’t alone. Connection is core to feeling hopeful. By interacting with other trauma survivors and others in recovery, you become part of a group of people with similar experiences who have learned how to survive. Being able to share those pieces of your past with others is incredibly powerful. Seek out support groups in your area, attend meetings, reconnect with healthy people from your past, and pursue activities you enjoy to help you meet like-minded people. Create the circle of people you want in your life—the ones who will hold you accountable yet provide you with unconditional support and love, without judgment.

    In our addiction, we push these people away. We run from them because they act like mirrors to our dishonesty. In recovery, these people become the ones we turn to when things get hard. Even one such person in your life—a family member, friend, sponsor, or trusted colleague—can make a difference. Surround yourself with those who seek to build you up.

    5. Know you matter. In order to grow, heal, and build upon your recovery foundation, you have to believe you are worth it, that you deserve joy and love. At some point in your recovery, you will have to rely on yourself to get through a rough patch. When this happened to me, I had to really dig down and get to know myself. I had to strip away all the false narratives I used to define myself, all the ways I presented myself to the world and to myself. Who was I? What did I love about myself, and what brought me enough joy to feel worthiness?

    I now know what I need to feel calm, to feel beautiful, and to feel deserving of this amazing life of recovery. I matter, and my life in recovery matters so much. It is this core truth that makes me fight for my recovery, my sanity, my marriage, and my job, because they are all worth it. I am worth the fight, and so are you. Believe in yourself. Tell yourself that you deserve happiness, joy, success, and a life free from the pain of trauma and addiction. You are worth your recovery. It is the foundation on which you build your new life.

    Building any structure requires hard work, and recovery is no different. While we each require different tools and plans to create them, these five pillars will sustain our recovery from trauma and addiction.

     

    Jennifer Storm’s Awakening Blackout Girl: A Survivor’s Guide for Healing from Addiction and Sexual Trauma is now available at Amazon and elsewhere.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Truth or Consequences: How I'm Learning to Practice Rigorous Honesty in Recovery

    Truth or Consequences: How I'm Learning to Practice Rigorous Honesty in Recovery

    Hard to overlook taking a can of black beans from a church pantry on the same day I spend $74 on hair care, when I bother writing out my nightly inventory. 

    Riding on the back of my dad’s Honda in western New York when I was a teen, we stopped by a cornfield and stole a few ears for supper. The kernels were tough (actually inedible). Turns out it was feed corn. That memory stuck, along with its moral: stealing ain’t worth it. It never turns out like you’d hoped, and you never get off scot-free… 

    In my first year of recovery I pilfered fistfuls of Sugar in the Raw packets from Starbucks (I don’t take sugar in my coffee). This bad behavior went into my nightly inventory for months, but I still stole those sweet square pillows any chance I got. I wrote about it, talked it over with my sponsor, but it didn’t stop. 

    Eventually, as a newly single head-of-household, I connected thieving to my fear of not being able to provide for myself and my two sons. And this awareness helped me to see I had a choice: fear or faith. I could stay in scared survivor mode, working those sticky fingers at Starbucks, or instead, start shelling out for sugar at the supermarket for William’s breakfast strawberries, while still believing I’d manage to pay the July/August combined electric bill on an apartment climate that artificially supports both cool and warm zones (for humans and equatorial pet lizards respectively.) And while I still sometimes make the un-sober choice at the cream and sugar station, I’ve gotten my haul down to two packets; the amount, I reason, every customer is entitled to, whether or not they use sweetener. 

    While some of the promises outlined in the chapter “Into Action”in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous are, indeed, starting to materialize (I AM “intuitively” able to “handle situations” that previously “baffled” the hell out of me), others remain misty. I won’t say I’m panicky, but “fear of economic insecurity” does remain a vaporous dread…

    Absolute Honesty – Aiming for The “Great Ideal”

    Originally, the third tradition went like this: “The only requirement for membership is an honest desire to stop drinking.” That’s how it was written, until Bill Wilson was persuaded to axe the “honest” by other sober drunks, concerned that word might scare some rummies away. I agree, it’s a tricky adjective. In a letter from 1966, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous writes:

    “Only God can know what absolute honesty is. Therefore, each of us has to conceive what this great ideal may be—to the best of our ability.”

    Hmm… leave it up to each delusional drunk to define the term, know right from wrong, truth from fiction? Problematic. But Bill knew that alcoholics–maybe more than normies–need regular reality checks. That’s why accountability to other sober alcoholics is embedded in the steps, and it’s why fellowship with others, also aiming for this “great ideal,” is important, if not critical, to long-term sobriety. And the fourth and fifth steps, taken in tandem, are two flea bombs to the infested sofa of the dishonest alcoholic mind. At least they worked this way for me, driving to the surface a teeming nest of selfish, self-serving behavior, driven by false beliefs of incompetence and unlovability. 

    Writing for The Grapevine, Bill W. admits: 

    “Fallible as we all are, and will be in this life, it would be presumption to suppose that we could ever really achieve absolute honesty. The best we can do is strive for a better quality of honesty.” 

    Yes, it’s “Progress, not Perfection,” an overworked AA cliché that still works for me. 

    Tenth Step…

    As I just celebrated my sixth sober anniversary, I’m self-assessing, looking for evidence of change. For 2,229 days now, I’ve been striving for this “better quality of honesty.” But am I any less of an opportunist, a conniving cheapskate looking to get over? After all, I am still wheeling over to the express check-out line with well over ten items. I do still abuse mascara testers at Sephora with no intention to buy, slather hand cream samplers up past my elbows, and spritz enough cologne to reek as bad as that OKC coffee date who pinched my calf and finished my almond pastry. Last time I was at the dermatologist’s, I scooped all the free ointments for scaly skin conditions I don’t have, and just last week in the health food store, I sampled the salsa and chips, both coming and going. I justified that snacking by lying to myself that someday, I would actually buy that breaking-bank bag of corn chips. I even tethered my teenager to the tasting station to graze while I shoveled spicy cashews in the bulk section. A few missed my baggie and met my palm instead. For as long as I’ve been around the rooms, I haven’t gained as much ground as I’d hoped on “rigorous” honesty. I’m less afraid, yes, but I’m still a tightwad. What’s been sorta acceptable ‘til now is finally starting to really bother me, six years later; little acts of looting are getting under my sober skin.

    So tonight I put this question to the cleansed face in the mirror: What does recovery from shifty and self-serving look like, entering year seven?

    “Well for one thing,” my reflection replies through toothpaste paw prints, “you can pay better attention to what you’re actually doing, and the results you’re getting from these actions. Are you still boxing fellow commuters into tight parking spots and returning to your bumper the next morning to find profane love notes under your wiper? How about cutting the line at the Lincoln Tunnel? You are definitely still guilty there…”

    My mirror image is not getting off her soap box. “What about those five dead minutes between applying your serum and moisturizer? Wouldn’t it be a good look to jot a 10th step review then? Remember those?” I do. Hard to overlook taking a can of black beans from a church pantry on the same day I spend $74 on hair care, when I bother writing out my nightly inventory. 

    “Then there’s meditation,” my two-dimensional me adds. And she’s right. Sanity is somewhat restored when I light incense, hit the gong, and sit for ten minutes. Sometimes I fall asleep. Doesn’t matter, still helps. 

    “Oh and call your sponsor.” Because my spiritual growth is inversely proportional to my enthusiasm towards any particular action, the single best move I can make is to remain accountable to another sober alcoholic: to recommit to running anything eyebrow-raising by my sponsor.

    Today it’s less about how many sobriety coins I’ve collected, and more about whether or not I’m dropping the suggested donation in the collection plate. (I can damn well afford the two bucks). I tell myself that “tasting” 12 grapes in the produce section before deciding on red over green is old behavior that won’t ever again find sea legs on this sober ship. Same goes for wheedling out of traffic violations or fighting late fees. But I’m lying. Only today, the Con Ed customer support chick waived all late fees for one lame reason: I’d somehow “overlooked” the whopping summer billing summaries to my inbox. 

    And five years ago, my son reached 44 inches, the legal height to pay full fare on New York City public transit. Yet I still make the seventh-grader duck the turnstile while I glide my MetroCard just once. I won’t say “no, never,” but I don’t see this behavior resolving until William sprouts facial hair. Why? Because I’m cheap and manipulative—always angling to get something for nothing. AA is a program of change, but some defects die hard.

    Recognizing Progress

    It has gotten better in other important ways though. Post-divorce romantic relations are above board and approaching sane. And thanks in part to my sponsor, who flagged flaws in my interactions with others that serve no one, my wuzband and I now communicate, commiserate, and reciprocate in rearing adolescent males under separate cover; our co-parenting game is tight. 

    These are the payoffs for continuously striving for this “better quality of honesty” —better relations with others when I keep my inner-cheater, the little girl who collected loose change from her mother’s purse to buy cola slushies from the corner store, and who grew to collect new boyfriends before losing old ones, in check; a conscience that’s becoming clearer than the bathroom mirror. That feels good.

    But here’s why rigorous honesty is life-or-death to my long-term sobriety—and it’s not the petty larceny— because sure, I can probably carry on for a while stashing stray Oreos in my overalls after the 5:30 meeting instead of leaving them for the 7:30 drunks. It’s because these minor infractions lead to major ramifications. It’s the excessive texting on company time that leads to the O’Douls, that leads to the oyster stout, or the laughing gas for the routine filling that leads to the first bloody Mary—light on Absolut—that leads, absolutely, to the first drunk. Because this is what it’s really about, right? Tricking myself straight into the insanity of the first drink. 

    My BS detector needs its batteries changed more than just when Daylight Savings Time rolls around… 

    The most honest and most important action I can take on a daily basis is to follow through on my primary purpose: to stay honest, to stay sober, and to help another alcoholic. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • The Perils of Dating While Sober

    The Perils of Dating While Sober

    I am acutely aware of how careful I am to minimize my recovery journey when I first start dating someone.

    A few months ago, a male friend and I were talking about the frustrations and disappointments of dating. I mentioned how lonely it can be navigating this world on my own, without a traveling companion, a long-term lover, or a hiking partner, without someone with whom to Netflix and chill on a rainy Sunday.

    He said, “Dating is complicated for everyone, but for you, with your history? I can only imagine. Maybe guys are afraid of you, afraid of your intelligence and strength.” He hesitated and then continued, “Or maybe they’re just afraid to get close because of your bipolar diagnosis and…well, you’re an alcoholic. So a drink in a bar is out. Your history makes them wary. It’s going to take someone special, someone who’s willing to accept that risk and all your baggage.”

    All Your Baggage

    All your baggage. My old shame rose up, and his words fell on me like a one-hundred story building collapsing, cinder block by cinder block, The only words I could say in clipped retort? 

    “It’s called alcohol-use disorder now,” I said. “Update your vocabulary.”

    For days I replayed his assessment in a loop, an auto-play rumination and in self-defense, even wrote out a bulleted response:

    • Men afraid of me? Seriously? Maybe he’s afraid of my brain, but I’m afraid of his brawn. I’ve been sexually assaulted twice by two different men. Statistics show that women are more likely to be harassed and assaulted and raped—their lives endangered—by men than vice versa. 
    • I’m on a low dose of lithium now, and eight years stable and on an even keel since my divorce. My psychiatrist thinks I may not really be bipolar, or that maybe my bipolar instability was triggered by the conditions of my marriage.
    • And on dating apps, so many men post pictures swigging beer, wine, and booze and list beer, wine, and booze as hobbies. Almost always the first message they send is, “Do you want to get a drink?” And when I suggest a walk, a museum, non-boozy meetup? They disappear.
    • No drama, no crazies, no baggage: an oft-repeated list of No’s on dating profiles, but then these men (perhaps women do this, too?) indicate that they are married and looking for discretion, no strings attached; they also like to post photos of bloodsport: bare chested with AK-15’s and dead animals. But no drama!
    • And finally, too risky to love me? I’m a safe bet now! Look at the evidence: Sober, stable, all my s*** sorted!

    Doth the lady protest too much? Might my bulleted explanation be my armor against latent shame? Because what I am admitting to in my list is that I am lovable only now that I am well, and that when I was unwell? I was unlovable. 

    Love Is an Inherently Risky Proposition

    “I stopped loving you when you got sick,” my ex-husband told me when we decided to divorce, and it’s what I have secretly believed for so long. Hence, my adamant insistence that I am well, well, well and have been now for years, years, years. 

    But this narrative—I am such a scary person to love that it will take someone with extra-special love powers to love me—is one that no one with any diagnosis or at any stage of recovery should ever buy into. Love is an inherently risky proposition. We are at our most vulnerable when we love, trusting our hopes and fears to each other. And there is always the risk of love’s end, but, too, always the possibility of love’s beginnings, its growing and expanding.

    And yet, finding our way to a beginning of love with someone can be daunting and terrifying as we have to negotiate our commitment to honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness. We must reconcile that old shame that rises up, sometimes in ripples, sometimes in waves, when we summarize our histories or share how we still struggle with one day at a time with a new partner. I am acutely aware of how careful I am to minimize my recovery journey when I first start dating someone.

    “Oh,” I might say, “I stopped drinking because I wanted to live a healthier life, and for a few years I struggled with depression, but it’s all good now. Really, all good now.” Again that adamant insistence, again that background noise in my head: If he can fall in love with me now in all my lovableness, then none of my previous unlovableness will matter. Of course, even for those who have not struggled with mental illness or alcohol or substance use disorders, it is impossible for “all” to be forever good.

    “Really Crazy”

    I recently ended a relationship with someone after two months of mostly happy, breezy fun but I realized I’d been dodging my shame. When we first met, he mentioned early on that his ex-wife was bipolar. “Really crazy,” he said, and gave me a look that put me on notice.

    So I casually mentioned to him that I had bipolar as well, but “Stabilized!” I said, with a giant calm smile plastered across my face, and I even fluttered my eyelashes in flirty dismissal.

    He said he could see I was in a “good place” and not at all like his ex. And because I want the world to believe that I am in a good place (and most days I am), I nodded in enthusiastic agreement. 

    But then, a few weeks later, he mentioned that my town was known for the State Psychiatric Hospital, opened in the 1840’s and now shuttered. 

    “Have you ever been there?” I asked, because it is now a tourist stop—The Walking Dead once filmed a scene at the mostly abandoned grounds and there are historical markers describing the troubling treatment of the mentally ill across its almost 150 year history.

    “No,” he said, immediately and with a laugh. “I’m not one of the crazies.”

    Of course, during a period of my own instability, I was once one of those “crazies,” in and out of a psychiatric hospital. He knew this by now, though maybe because I “presented” as so very very well, he couldn’t believe that was part of my history.

    To be fair, he made these comments casually, without malice, the kind of talk that generally surrounds those of us who suffer from mental illnesses or who are on a recovery journey. They were the kind of comments I often hear because most people assume, by looking at me and my “got it all together life,” that I am one of them, i.e., “not crazy.”

    But even if his comment was thoughtless, I felt that old shame rise up and stayed silent because I didn’t want him to suddenly see me as sick, and hence unlovable, and consequently maybe leave this beginning of us. So I made a silly remark about ghosts who must surely haunt those grounds. 

    No bulleted list at the ready but here’s what I should have said:

    “It’s hurtful to hear you call someone with my diagnosis ‘really crazy,’ and to call those in treatment ‘crazies.’ We all have our baggage, don’t we? We live and stumble and get up and try to live better, always. All of us.”

    But his remarks and my silence unsettled me. How easy it is for me to talk the talk, but how hard it can be to walk the walk. A few weeks later, I ended this beginning because, yes, I have baggage, and it is not just a free carry-on roller bag, but one of those $20K vintage Louis Vuitton trunks that have drawers and a hanger rod, room enough for my pain and my joy, my mistakes and my amends, my shame and my wisdom. 

    That is, a trunk big enough to carry all my necessities for this continuing journey.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Lying, Manipulating, and Sleeping Around: Sex Addiction and Recovery

    Lying, Manipulating, and Sleeping Around: Sex Addiction and Recovery

    I was fine labeling myself a hedonist, a kinkster, or a playboy, but to actually admit that I couldn’t control my destructive behavior took years, even decades.

    With the exception of certain harm reduction models, when it comes to addiction, there isn’t much controversy around what constitutes sobriety. If you went to rehab 10 years ago because you couldn’t stop drinking alcohol or injecting heroin, you probably have a pretty solid idea of what sobriety looks like in your life. But if you went to treatment because of sexual addiction or sexual compulsion issues, recovery might feel a little different. 

    Almost all of us want some form of sexual satisfaction. When, if ever, does a sex addict move forward with their life and feel comfortable with themselves sexually again? Is that part of you gone forever? 

    Completely Out of Control

    Years ago my life was completely out of control, all due to my sexual behavior. To say that I was sexually compulsive was an understatement. I knew my life was a disaster, but even so, it took me a long time to get help and to come to understand that I had a real problem. I was fine labeling myself a hedonist, a kinkster, or a playboy, but to actually admit that I couldn’t control my destructive behavior took years, even decades. I kept lying, manipulating, and sleeping around, all to give my brain enormous shots of dopamine, which of course was designed to keep me from noticing how miserable and anxious I was. 

    I was having numerous affairs, but they were never enough to satisfy me. My whole goal was to cheat on the person I was cheating on, then cheat on that person too. My entire life’s purpose was to either get laid or indulge my kinks, and I put a ton of effort into accomplishing this. I lost jobs and two marriages and went into financial ruin because of my sexual behavior, but to get off that ride of adrenaline and anxiety seemed impossible. I lied constantly and was deeply ashamed of who I truly was. 

    Soul Searching

    Finally things got so incredibly awful that I went to rehab, twice in fact, because the first time didn’t quite take. The first time, I went to an outpatient clinic in Los Angeles for two weeks, where we hung out at night and ate sushi. Another time I spent a month in a gritty inpatient facility in Philadelphia.

    At the time, it seemed impossible that I would change my behaviors, but with a lot of soul searching and some hard work, I did. It took a while. In fact, it took years. Going to rehab was just the beginning of my journey. I’d walked a long way into the woods and it took a long time to walk back out.

    Now, I consider myself to be doing well. I rarely think of myself in terms of being an addict or sexually compulsive anymore. But what is long-term recovery for a long-term sex addict? 

    Dr. Rob Weiss is an expert at Seeking Integrity, which offers treatment for men struggling with sex addiction/intimacy disorders or co-occurring sex addiction and chemical dependency. He told me, “In early recovery, when it comes to sex addicts or people with intimacy disorders, the treatment is all focused on what negative things have happened in the addict’s life and how to avoid them happening again. But at a certain point, even if the addict struggles for a bit, many sex addicts get to a point where what has happened in the past isn’t ever going to occur again in their lives.”

    That certainly has been my experience; I still struggle at times, I still have to watch myself and am still more than a little outside of the norm sexually. 

    But now, 12 or so years post-rehab, I am in a long-term relationship. We have sex, much of which indulges the same sort of thoughts that I used to be ashamed of. I’ve made amends with people I care about. I am even really good friends with one of my exes and hang out with her all the time. 

    Lying or Compartmentalizing

    So am I cured? Not hardly, but I’m totally honest about who I am with pretty much all the people in my life, including those I am romantically involved with. More importantly, I’m actually honest with myself, and I like who I am.

    The honesty piece matters, perhaps more than anything else. Dr. Weiss said, “At some point recovery isn’t about sobriety; it is about integrity. How honest you are in your relationships, how meaningful are your relationships, how connected are you to the people in your life? How much are you being completely honest? Are you doing anything that takes you out of integrity? Are you lying or compartmentalizing?”

    If you’re sexually compulsive or an addict, you’re going to have to find a whole new way to look at and understand sex and all the things that surround it. This new outlook must exclude compulsive behavior and all your old destructive patterns. It isn’t the sex itself that’s the problem; it’s how the addict misuses it and turns it into something dangerous and compulsive. 

    Triggers and Compulsions

    Your bottom line behavior is probably going to stay the same over time and there are certain things you used to do that you might need to stay away from forever. No matter who you are, you’ll have triggers and compulsions that you need to avoid. But not all sex addicts are created equal. Your triggers are going to be different from mine.

    One of the biggest tools used in treatment for sex addiction is something called the three circles. You draw three circles: an inner circle, a middle circle, and an outer circle. Your inner circle is where you list everything you do when you’re acting out in your addiction—things you simply cannot do. For some, it might be porn or phone sex, but for others, those might not be problem issues. The base issues in my inner circle were lying, manipulating women, or having affairs. Those behaviors stay constant over time. If I do them, I am not being honest with myself or other people in my life, which is dangerous for me.

    Your middle circle is filled with the actions and behaviors that might lead you to engaging in your inner circle issues. Then you have your outer circle; these are activities that help you have a productive and healthy life. These activities and behaviors are likely to change. Something that might have caused you to act out sexually ten years ago might not even be a blip on the radar today.

    Practicing Honesty and Love 

    In my experience, the most important mindset for combating sexual addiction and compulsivity is honesty, loving yourself, and being okay with who you are. Once you stabilize your life and start being honest and true with yourself and those around you, you’re most of the way home.

    Dr. Weiss agrees: “If I were working a program of sexual recovery and I was spending time with a prostitute, that would mean I wasn’t living with integrity. My goal is to not have anything in my life happen that I would be embarrassed about, or be ashamed about, and that the actions in my life are things I would be glad to tell anyone about and feel good about. No matter what those are.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Using Love as a Drug

    Using Love as a Drug

    I used drugs and alcohol to control my feelings and gave up on relationships early on since people are harder to control than substances. As I felt the other person pull away, my urge to control increased.

    Recently I was sitting in a meeting with a little over two years sober, feeling completely insane. For a few months, my moods vacillated between elation and utter sadness, complete faith and deadbeat nihilism, raging excitement and total fear. I was leaning into the program of AA more than ever. I was attending meetings every day, sticking to my spiritual practice, sponsoring two women, and regularly checking in with my sponsor. Even so, I wasn’t able to find any middle ground. The emotional chaos raging inside me was very reminiscent of active addiction. I felt so twisted I asked myself: Am I even sober?

    I googled the word “sober” and found a source that defined it as “being unaffected by alcoholism.” Fuck! I’M NEVER GOING TO BE SOBER, I thought. Over two years without any mind-altering substance in my body and serenity felt that far out of reach.

    You hear about people feeling messed up and hitting bottoms all the time in sobriety. But there’s a flip side to that: you can feel just as good in sobriety as you did in active addiction when the drugs and alcohol were actually working. At its best, it’s what the Big Book calls “being rocketed into a fourth dimension.” In my experience, the highs in sobriety get higher and so do the bottoms. Even so, feelings can come as quite a shock in early sobriety since they’re no longer being regulated or masked with drugs or alcohol.

    They say that for real alcoholics, the problems really begin once the drink is removed. My obsession to drink and do drugs was removed through working the 12 steps in AA (a few times) and the idea of picking up a drink or drug rarely, if ever, crossed my mind. This in itself is the ultimate miracle.

    But alcoholism is a beast that will show up in many forms. Once the obsession is lifted, the addict/alcoholic mind will quickly move on to other things: coffee, cigarettes, shopping, gambling, sex, eating disorders, social media, take your pick. In my case, it shifted towards arguably the greatest drug of all time: love.

    “Love” can mean different things to different people and our understanding of love has been shaped by what we saw growing up and our past experiences. As a point of reference, I use renowned spiritual teacher and physician David R. Hawkins’ Map of the Scale of Consciousness, which categorizes every level of consciousness a person can experience into levels of falsehood and levels of truth. Shame is the lowest energy field in falsehood where one feels hateful towards themselves and views a Higher Power as despising, and Enlightenment is the highest in truth where one feels completely attuned and at one with a Higher Power.

    Based on this structure, I propose that love is an energy field in an array of consciousness that we can fall in and out of at any moment. In Hawkins’ scale, Love is sandwiched right above Reason and below Joy. So here, we see that love is literally beyond reason. According to Hawkins, it is here that a person experiences feelings of reverence and revelation before transcending into Joy where one views themselves as complete. Perhaps this helps explain why our culture is so fixated and obsessed with the idea that another person can “complete” us.

    The process of revelation may come to an addict easily since, for many of us, any human connection at all in early sobriety is unprecedented and revolutionary. For years I used drugs and alcohol to connect with people around me. As I continued to develop a sense of belonging with others in sobriety, and saw it was possible that I could feel emotions of such a loving nature, I felt as if I had been “rocketed” into that fourth dimension the Big Book referred to.

    In his excellent book Unsubscribe: Opt Out of Delusion, Tune in to Truth, recovered addict and Dharma teacher Josh Korda explains that feelings of attraction and infatuation create a neural surge of dopamine, the neurotransmitter that is related to our rewards state and motivation. The same neurotransmitter that floods your brain after two drinks, that thing that makes you go “Ahhhh.”

    As an addict, I was bound to chase that high. I was driven by an obsession of the mind and a phenomenon of craving. All I wanted was to feel that rush. Even a text message would send the dopamine levels up. It wasn’t long before this relationship dictated my every move, just like drugs and alcohol did. It was no different than when I chased one high to the next in active addiction, doing everything in my power to find relief and a sense of control. (For the sake of disclosure and to spare the theory of sex addiction, there was no sex involved.)

    Without realizing it, I’d become hooked. And with every high, there comes a crash.

    During the crashes, I found myself resorting to some lower-level behaviors I had not seen in a while. My behavior was extremely erratic, I couldn’t stay focused, and I was irritable unless my craving was satisfied. My addiction found its way into other areas of my life and unmanageability and insanity crept in once again.

    Once someone becomes addicted, they lose their free will and will do anything in their control to satisfy the craving. Referring back to Hawkins’ Map of Consciousness, the addict falls into another state entirely: Desire. Often confused with Love, Desire is actually one of the states of falsehood, along with Guilt, Shame, Fear, and Hatred. Desire itself can never truly be satisfied, because it’s based in an illusion. One wants what they can’t have. It is here that nothing is good enough, everything fails to hit the mark, and any other place and time is better than the present moment. This conjures the state of restlessness, irritability, and discontentedness. This internalized state eventually turns so wretched that drugs and alcohol appear to be the solution again. My alcoholic mind took all its evil twists and turns so that once I exhausted all other alternatives, I “all of a sudden” had the thought, A line of coke and a shot would make all of this go away.

    That is the insanity of drug addiction and alcoholism.

    Naturally, there is an impermanence to all things and all states; a simple fact of life I could never easily accept and consistently fought against. Feelings ebb and flow, usually without any sense or rationale behind them. Relationships are not guaranteed. As an addict who is obsessed with control and wants to feel good all the time, these truths are not easy pills to swallow. I used drugs and alcohol to control my feelings and gave up on relationships early on since people are harder to control than substances. As I felt the other person pull away, my urge to control increased.

    I tried to take control of my feelings back. I had no desire to pick up a drink or drug at the time, but my addiction manifested in my anorexia, chain smoking, excessive running, drinking too much caffeine. Meanwhile, I still attempted to control the course of the relationship. Even my participation in AA was extremely alcoholic in that I was using the tools to fix the way I felt, rather than simply living with it. (Yes, it is possible to do the 12 steps like a drug.)

    It was suggested to me that I was perhaps a love addict, to which I countered: Am I love addict or am I simply an addict who now participates in relationships? I did attempt to dive back into the 12 steps yet again, but this time in the area of relationships, so I could just figure it out and then just not be that way anymore. It didn’t work.

    One thing I’ve learned in recovery is that this is all super normal, human stuff. People meet other people, develop feelings and feel the adrenaline and dopamine rush of a crush and the heady feelings in the beginning of a relationship. Everyone experiences rejection and break-ups. However, my experience as an addict is that I did not thoroughly develop in these areas because I was never truly there for them. My emotional growth was stunted when I began to use drugs and alcohol, and sobriety is a big catching up game in terms of emotional intelligence. It’s how I cope with these normal life experiences that matters and what I found was that I was still living alcoholically, even without drugs or alcohol in my system.

    Is all of this to say that addicts should shy away from connecting with others, initiating new relationships, and striving for new, unadulterated levels of intimacy? Am I doomed in every relationship because I’m an addict and alcoholic? Absolutely not.

    One of the greatest things about recovery is its wide invitation to exist on this plane with other people, to feel things the way humans should. These developments can take years to even out. In recovery, we get to challenge our false belief systems and stumble around with everyone else learning how to care about each other effectively. Relationships are where we see our character defects in action, where we experience life, where we ultimately grow in the process. The longer I stay sober, the greater my capacity to connect with others and to be honest becomes. And it all boils down to this: There is no way to grow spiritually in isolation.

    All I needed to remember was one of the simplest things I heard when I first got sober: The unmanageability would cease as soon as I relinquished control. Just as it did with drinking and doing drugs.

    I was back at step one and had to get honest. With truth and reality can come a lot of pain and suffering, but it’s not the truth that causes it. It’s the extent to which and for how long someone lives in a false reality that perpetuates suffering. Not only was I driven by the same obsession of the mind and phenomenon of craving that drove me in active addiction, I was also driven by the false belief that people, places, and things are on this planet for me to prove my worthiness and to validate my experience.

    The old ideas and beliefs that drive us in our relationships were constructed by years and years of living in falsehood. Now, in active recovery, we chip away at those old ideas and free ourselves from those false beliefs.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Let’s Get Real: How To Handle the Tough Stuff in Recovery Without Using

    Let’s Get Real: How To Handle the Tough Stuff in Recovery Without Using

    Of course, people had good reason to think that I couldn’t handle upsetting news. Every time a hardship, breakup, or something unsettling happened, I wound up in the psych ward, detox, ER, or a bloody, tear-filled mess.

    When I was drinking, I was the girl who took pulls of rail vodka right from the bottle. I took it straight, no chaser. Others looked at me with a mixture of surprise and disgust. Girls were supposed to mix their vodka with fruit juice or soda. Girls weren’t supposed to out-drink the men or keep straight razors in their wallet for chopping up fat lines. Fellow drunks patted me on the back. I was one of them. I embraced my heavy drinking as a point of pride, wore it like a badge of honor.

    But the point of this isn’t to share my war stories or act like I was the most bad ass alcoholic or junkie to ever haunt the planet. Rather, I want to share how I still prefer to apply the “straight, no chaser” motto to other areas of my life. I prefer when loved ones are straightforward, blunt, and honest with me about tough stuff and hardship rather than trying to gloss over the truth or protect me from pain. Even though I have been in recovery for years, some of my loved ones have continued to worry that I will relapse upon hearing bad or heartbreaking news, as though I was some sort of wounded dove with the word “fragile” stamped on my forehead.

    Of course, they had good reason to think that I couldn’t handle upsetting news. Every time a hardship, breakup, or something unsettling in my life happened, I wound up in the psych ward, detox, ER, or a bloody, tear-filled mess. I categorized people as either “normies” or “addicts and crazies” because it was easier than embracing the messy complexity of human beings. In my mind I was broken. Normal people went to the gym, spa, or the mall when they were troubled. But those options didn’t work quickly enough to soothe my mercurial temperament and smooth my edges. I labeled myself as a crazy addict, so I went straight to the liquor store or to the organic grocery store (ironically this was where my dealers were, standing outside with signs reading: “needs money, anything helps”).

    If you’re someone who struggles with addiction, you understand this self-destructive pattern. It’s hard to deal with “life on life’s terms,” as they say in the program. When stressful life events happen, we often turn to our familiar coping mechanisms. In fact, the National Institute of Drug Abuse found that up to 60 percent of people relapse within their first year of recovery. 

    There is a constellation of reasons that people relapse. Studies have found that being exposed to stresses that originally caused someone to excessively drink or use drugs is a major trigger for relapse. Another study found that patients with alcohol and opioid dependence were most likely to relapse when they had a family history of substance use and high number of relapses, used maladaptive coping strategies, and also had “undesirable life events.”

    I can relate as I had my share of undesirable life events this past year. Even though I’ve been clean for a few years, I still felt a massive urge to use after hearing about the death of my god-daughter and, on a less serious note, a heartbreaking romantic let-down.

    These events were handled very differently. The morning after my god-daughter died, my mom called and told me the tragic news. She wanted to make sure I heard it from her directly rather than passively finding out about the death on social media. Although this was devastating news, I appreciated that she was direct and real with me.

    What really triggered my cravings was ambiguity and a romantic disappointment. Although we broke up a few years ago after I relapsed, I still consider my ex one of my best friends. We text every single day and I even stayed with him for five days when I was visiting Portland in December. He let me sleep in his bed while he slept on the couch. Wrapping myself in his blankets, I was comforted by his familiar smell of Camel cigarettes and Old Spice. Although the visit was platonic, there were moments when I felt a possible rekindling of our romantic relationship.

    He paid for all my meals, opened doors to restaurants, and even took me to the Oregon Museum of Mental Health in Salem where I researched an essay. Okay, maybe going to a museum of mental health isn’t exactly a hot date, but the fact that he was willing to take me felt positive. He also talked about taking a road trip together in his new BMW coupe, laughing at how when we had been together he drove a Buick and we barely made ends meet. I reminded myself that my intention for this visit was to make amends in person for spinning him in my addictive chaotic orbit and leaving him in the wreckage of our relationship. Yet I still got my hopes up that we would get back together and I wrote him a long letter proclaiming my feelings for him.

    He never responded. He faded away from me, and his texts became infrequent and vague. He said that he was busy and stressed with work. Finally, he admitted to our mutual friend that he had a girlfriend but was afraid to tell me because I was “constantly on the verge of suicide” and he was worried about relapse.

    I was crushed, but at the same time I sort of understood his perspective. He knew the story of my old self. I had shown him in the past that I couldn’t handle such rejection or disappointment.

    So how do we deal with the tough stuff in recovery? Amanda Decker, a Licensed Addiction Counselor (LAC) and Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in Fargo, North Dakota, explained: “There will be growing pains throughout the ebb and flow of recovery. It’s hard knowing how to deal with life without drugs or alcohol but it’s helpful to remember that perspective shifts over time. It also helps to develop hobbies and interests. When people in recovery can embrace these things, drugs and alcohol become white noise in the background.”

    Decker suggested developing a “pre-emptive” relapse prevention plan by thinking about how to handle life stressors without alcohol or drugs. If we are in the position of telling difficult or uncomfortable news to a family member or friend who is in recovery, Decker advises: “As an addiction counselor, I’ve had to tell my group about a fellow group member who has overdosed. The first thing I did was to be direct and be present with my group members who were struggling in that moment. There will be a lot of grief and sadness that we have to learn to cope with.”

    The truth is that hardship, tragedy, and disappointment are parts of life that we have to learn how to come to terms with in recovery. We have to start embracing and seeing the shades of wellness and addiction rather than labeling things “normal” or “crazy.” It’s hard to tell a different story about ourselves, it’s even harder to break the story that others have about us. But I have faith in myself and I have faith in you, my fellow humans in recovery. For we are resilient, brave survivors, not fragile wounded doves.

    View the original article at thefix.com