A Great Comment On ‘Surrender’ In Addiction Recovery From Jeff C, Moderator Of Sober 24

I have been a member and follower of Sober 24 for some time now, and realized I have never given them mention or a plug on my site. I also listen to the addiction recovery interviews.

From their mission statement:

“Sober24 is a not-for-profit outreach mission to benefit people from all walks of life impacted by diseases of addiction and/or compulsion, so that they may enrich their ongoing recovery and build upon their gift of sobriety. All are welcome to Sober 24. The only requirement is a desire to get well and be on a path of recovery.

We are not a 12-Step program, nor are we affiliated with one, but we do believe that the path to recovery lies in participation in a 12-step program. We do not intend to be a replacement for attendance at such meetings…

I hope Jeff doesn’t mind if I share his recent comments on ‘surrender’, as a recovery component.

Moderator, Jeff

It really is worthy to note that the “surrender” is more of a process than an event.

Yes, that first “surrender” will be to the “substance itself, and even that most often a slowly dawning awareness that each and every time we mess with it the outcome is depressingly familiar. And although we’ll have heard the term “surrender” the discovery of just “how” we’ll go about affecting one, often eludes us for a while, as we “study” on recovery’s way, feeling the discomfort of having removed ourselves from our DOC.

The really strange thing seems to be that no matter just how many brain cells we killed off in the exercise of our dis-ease, we never seem to kill off the ones that create the logic that says it’s “O K” for us to just have ————one. Well, maybe two, since we’re already negotiating. If indeed we actually take that drink we‘ve probably spent too long at the bargaining table. If we don’t we’ve learned a bit more about those properties of surrender specifically in regard to our DOC.

And yet the really mind-blowing lessons and releases seem to occur when we apply that “principle to “other” aspects of what we understand as our lives. Any area is which we’ve been known to engage in “inappropriate” measures “ of control, “inappropriate” only to mean that which “cause US considerable discomfort, and chaos, will yield to “surrender” given that it’s implemented with that burgeoning knowledge of what those implications actually are.

Resistance is ALWAYS what creates our pain, our desires often exceeding their intended purpose. And who doesn’t recognize that mindset that determines that if “one is good. “two” must be better, twenty, super, allowing us to “bank” —-a bunch, “insurance“ of sorts.. And so we’re brought into conflict with ourselves and a host of others who indeed have their own agenda  Resistance, our minds response when like a child, it’s suggested that we can’t have our “way” or what we “think” we want.

And whether we’ve got five minutes or fifty years, it matters not, all things being relative. But then if we haven’t “surrendered’ there’s still some point in continuing the battle, be it booze or behavior,  some sort of “victory to be wrested from the jaws of our admitted defeat, more reservation than capitulation, more desire to run an “underground” campaign, than study on the terms of our surrender. Nowhere Have I heard it more poignantly and beautifully voiced that when Chief George “gave it up” so long ago “Hear me,” he said, “I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. Our chiefs are dead; the little children are freezing. My people have no blankets, no food. From where the sun stands, I WILL FIGHT NO MORE FOREVER.”  No equivocation, no negotiating, just a class act that might be paraphrased in programeese as,  I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. I am beaten. My children. and family suffer We have no succor, no hope. From today, and where I now stand in the program, I WILL FIGHT NO MORE FOREVER.

Jeff

Pain is the greatest gift –  given to the alcoholic.