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Hi, I have a brother and a friend that are addicted to alcohol. An important thing that I have learned is to just love that person and be there for them. There still has to be boundaries that person has to understand and take responsibility for. Sometimes I think these people feel like outcasts when others find out about their problem. Just treat them like a normal person, yet let them know you care and support them on getting rid of the addiction and gaining their life back.

On or around December 28th, 1989 I had my separation experience from alcohol. My alcoholism had progressed to such a point at this time that I went into the DT’s (delirium tremens) . I would have really violent reactions to stopping drinking, when I was on one of these benders and so I was not really positive about the day, I know it was between Christmas and New Years 1989, that I had that separation experience.

I think we all have experiences where we separate from alcohol. Some of us get to the Grace of God that allows us to stay separated and some of us don’t. Sometimes its the fault of us, if we’ve heard the message and we choose to reject it, or we understand the process of recovery, and we choose to not engage in it. But unfortunately, more often than not, its another couple of reasons.

If you’re new, if you’re just coming back, or if you have not gone through the steps yet, there’s two things about you that are very, very true, that you are not gonna believe.
One of them is: You’re in way more trouble than you think you are. Way more trouble! Alcoholism does not allow you the dignity of being able to accurately assess just how much trouble you’re in. It doesn’t!
The second thing that’s true is that Alcoholics Anonymous has a more substantial answer to the problem that you have, than you think it does. I know this because I work with a lot of newcomers. I also know it from personal experience. Alcohol was killing me and I said to myself back in 1989, “I think I need to go to AA now to stop drinking”. I thought that there was a chance – I wasn’t sure, but I thought there’s a chance – that if I go to Alcoholics Anonymous, I’ll be able to stop drinking. My life was basically a living hell at this point in time and all I was really hoping for was to separate from alcohol. I thought, If I can just do that I’d be okay. I had no idea how all-encompassing alcoholism really is; and I certainly didn’t understand the gifts, the potential gifts and potential promises of our recovery program in Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn’t know. Didn’t understand it.

Now, there’s a lot of things that all of us have in common as alcoholics. We’re just different than other people. We metabolize alcohol differently and there’s a lot of personality traits that we have that are similar.

I share this story that I’m about to share, quite often, and a lot of people come up to me after the meeting and say, “That happened to me. It happened just like this”. I was doing a fear inventory and the person who was instructing me to go through the inventory this time said: “I want you to do something a little extra. I want you to identify the very first time that you experienced the fear that you’re inventorying”; and as I’m doing my inventory list, I come across “Fear of People”, and I remember back, and the earliest recollection of fear of people was when I got dropped off for kindergarten.

I remember my mother throwing me in the car, driving me to kindergarten, pulling up and saying, “There it is” and I get out of the car, and I’m standing up there on the hill, looking down at the school and there’s kids playing tag and kickball. They were already friends, it looked like, for their whole lives, and here I am standing up on the hill, feeling like a jerk, you know, I’m feeling really uncomfortable. What if I go down there and they don’t accept me? Or they don’t like me, or they make fun of me, or I embarrass myself? I had all this self-centered fear, all these emotions about what people would think about me and everything; and looking down at these kids, these kids weren’t thinking that, they were just having a blast! So, I’m telling you, you know what would have helped me? Give me pint of Vodka and I would have been able to handle kindergarten like you wouldn’t believe! I tell you, I would have been the Kindergarten Kid! You know what I mean? That was my problem, I was born a pint short! Does anybody understand what I’m saying?

Did you ever have to get some booze, just to be able to “step out”? Because you just didn’t feel comfortable stepping out. So you get yourself like half a pint in you for ballast. You get drunk before you go to the party to get drunk. You know what I mean? There’s something fundamentally wrong with us. Emotionally and spiritually we are not like our fellows. My problem is all this self-centered fear, my problem is all this emotional uncomfortability that I have. I’m uncomfortable with my self, I’m uncomfortable with my environment and from age 5 on, I had to act as if everything was okay. I had to act as if I wasn’t afraid of you. I had to act as if what you said to me, didn’t bother me. I had to hide all these feelings, I had to act cool, I had to act “as if”… and it was a burden, it was hard, it was a lot of work and I never felt right.

I’m cutting school with a couple of my buddies one day – I’m about 12 or 13 – we decide to go back to my house and take down a bottle of booze and get drunk. It was the first time I ever did this, also the first time they ever did this. So here we are – I don’t know anything about drinking, except the old John Wayne movies, you know? – He busts through the saloon doors and shouts “Bartender, whiskey!” and the bartender would pour a dirty water glass, fill it with whiskey, then he’ll shoot the whole thing down, grab the bottle, go back to the table and wait around till he has to shoot somebody! So I don’t know anything about drinking, I don’t come from a household of hard drinkers. There was a couple of people that would drink beer, that was about it. So anyway, I pour out these big water glasses, of whiskey, and the two guys I drank with never became problem drinkers, never became alcoholics. They just didn’t. Here’s how they drank: they had two thirds of their glass, and they’d had enough and they were able to say “no more for me, I’ve had enough”. You ever drink with people like that? Is that the worst? They go “I’ve gotta go home to the little wifey”. “What!? Let’s go to the city! It’s only one ‘o clock! We’ll be back for you to go to work at five!” I mean, never understood the word “enough”, you know what I mean?

Anybody in here that use cocaine to “propel” their drinking? Did you ever like buy a Naple(??) and say “I’ll leave the rest for tomorrow”? Sure you will! What you’ll do is, you’ll go to work and the next thing you know, you’re gritting your teeth like this, wanting to kill anybody that’s looking at ya. That’s what you’ll do, because we’re different. We have an obsession in the mind which gets us to that substance and we have an allergy in the body that keeps us continuing to use it. It’s not a good prognosis.

What happened to me, when I was drinking, was a lot different than those two buddies that who had two thirds of a glass. I started drinking and about two thirds of the glass down, I started to feel okay. That fear, that self-centered Chris-crap(??) that I had, started to disappear. I know everybody in here will understand. Sometimes this even happens before you put the alcohol to your lips. You remember “aaaaahhh…” You remember that feeling? Well that’s how I felt two thirds of the way through this glass and all of a sudden I could “step out”. I didn’t care what you thought about me. I felt like I was the funniest, coolest person on the planet. Nothing bothered me, I was “reborn”. I knew a new freedom and a new happiness! I now wished to shut the door on the past, I found that I could be a benefit to others! If you were a brain surgeon, I could give you advice at the bar, you know? “What kind of scalpel you use?” I’m serious! I found that “inner peace”…. and then I got unbelievably sick, worried out projectile vomiting and blackouts.

Anybody in here a blackout drinker? That’s disconcerting isn’t it? You don’t even know if you have any “I never!”’s if you’re a blackout drinker. You know what I mean? I was a blackout drinker. I would come to in some amazing places, you know what I mean? It was scary sometimes. “What am I doing here!?”. I travel in a blackout! Then you have to pretend you wanna be there, cause you don’t want anyone to think you’re stupid. You won’t go “what the hell am I doing here!?”. No! You gotta act like you meant to be there! [unintelligible], walking around with one shoe or something! But that alcohol, from the moment I felt that sense of ease and comfort, I started to become preoccupied with alcohol. Where was I gonna drink it? Who was I gonna drink it with? I was 12 and the drinking age was 21. So you know, there was some “logistics” that would have to be worked out, but I would persevere! I mean, we did what we needed to do! Some of the crap we ended up drinking was pretty bad too. But anyway, I started to become preoccupied with alcohol.

Now, I’m gonna skip the whole war story, I’m gonna tell you about my “last drink”, okay? My last drink, I’d been through rehab, I’d signed myself into rehab and I found that not drinking and going to meetings, for me, was not a treatment for alcoholism. What it did was, it created a finite space of time where I didn’t put alcohol in my body, but all the craziness, all the self-centered fear and the depression and the anxiety, the guilt and remorse and everything, was still all over me! I just wasn’t drinking. That’s a grim outlook, but I had signed myself in.

Alcohol was really getting my attention, I’d lost my family, I’d had three VWI’s(??), I’d totaled nine cars in drunken blackouts, because I come from a place where you let friends drive drunk. You know what I mean? “Friends, let friends drive drunk”. I went through the front windshield once, I went through the passenger windshield. I even woke up in the trunk of my car one time, with glass in my hair. It’s a Toyota, it’s still running, there’s not a window left in it, three flat tires, it’s bent like a boomerang, the drive-shaft is slapping the frame, I got glass in my hair, I climb back into this thing and I start driving. Okay? Cause I’m going home! “Where you going? Home!” The cops pull me over on radar. I’m doing like a mile and a half an hour, “whackety-bookety-bam! whackety-bookety-bam!” The cops pull me over and yell “Where did you have that accident!?” I’m like “What accident, Officer!?” He goes “where are you going!?” I’m like [unintelligible]. He goes “That’s like 28 miles! Are you nuts!?”. “Cops are always bugging me, you know? They’re always after me! Hassling me. Just leave me alone! I’m going home!”. It was horrible, the things that were happening to me.

I’m 33 years old when I get sober and I’m living at home with mom, because my family fell apart, I wasn’t really that employable and I figure one day “You know, mom needs some help around the house”. So I moved back there and I burned her house down, twice! Drinking, by accident. She needed me around the house like she needed a hole in the head! I’ve got a 1976 Ford Granada with white walls and no clutch and no muffler, no emergency brakes, no heater, it’s like January… cause I was “busy”. You when you drink, you drink. Not a lot of time for like, working on the car! So I had a piece of crap and I’m living at home with mom and I’ve got no money, it’s just absolutely a nightmare.

Finally, its Christmas. My brother and sister come home, nieces and nephews, cats. The Christmas tree was up and the stockings were hung by the chimney with care, the carols were on the stereo. I start drinking. I had a special “Christmas drink”. I don’t know about anybody else in here, but mine was Johnny Walker, Black Label “for the holidays”. And I start drinking this stuff and I go into a violent blackout rage, where I threaten my entire family with a .38 caliber handgun. Now, this wasn’t the festive mood they were looking for, you know what I mean? Somebody’s gonna kill ‘em. They won’t come home for like family and all these things that you don’t understand when you’re an alcoholic, it was this warm fuzzy stuff. I wanna kill people! So they all picked up and they moved their whole Christmas up to upstate, New York!

When I come out of this blackout, I’m like staggering around and I mean this was the worst one I’d ever had. I go into the kitchen and I find a pile of Vodka bottles, this high! I don’t even remember buying them and I used to buy one bottle at a time! Any smokers in here that buy one pack at a time because you “might quit”?. That’s the way I was, I don’t wanna be stuck with a lot of “overhead”. So I must have staggered uptown to buy the Vodka you know? Oh, that must have been a sight, you know, walking serpentine through town, trying to get my vodka. But anyway, I start to go into this detox, the DT’s. I start to hallucinate and go into convulsions and you know, I’m calling on the phone and I’m trying to figure out what happened, where is everybody? My presents are gone! Trying to figure out what the hell’s going on and I figured it out and I remember asking my family to come home because I didn’t want to die alone. I’m going through some serious detoxing, my aorta is pumping like a garden hose, you know? I really think my ticket is gonna get punched and I didn’t wanna die alone and I’m asking my family “Please come back home?” and you know what they said? “No. We don’t wanna have to see you die”. That was the right thing to do.

The only thing worse than bad luck for an alcoholic, is good luck. What I mean by that is, if we win the lottery, it’ll kill us. If we know all the cops in town and they always let us off, it’ll kill us. If we’ve got an understanding family that gives us a steak and a bed, after we’ve gone through “one more run”, it’ll kill us. Them saying “no, you’ve gotta do this yourself”, was a defining moment for me. I didn’t sleep or eat and just could barely get down a little bit of water, for like 3 or 4 days during this detox and it finally got to a point where I needed to go to a meeting.

I knew that I had to get back to Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn’t really fully understand why, because I gotta tell you, my first skit in Alcoholics Anonymous, I didn’t really get the picture, okay? I remember explaining to one of my electrician buddies what AA was like, cause I’d gone to some meetings and he was like “What’s it all like there in that A&A?” and I said “Well, you know you walk in and, you know, you get a cup of coffee and you sit down and they say the Serenity Prayer; and then somebody will start the meeting and somebody will raise their hand and say they’ve got a resentment and some other people will raise their hand and say ‘I’ve had a resentment too and this was like my resentment!’. Then at the end, everybody will get up and hold hands and say the Lords Prayer”; and he was as confused as I was about just what the hell does that do!? You know? I go “It’s only a Dollar!”.

I didn’t understand why it was working, you know, what is it? It was hard to convince me that doing that was the answer to my problems. I had real problems! I don’t know about your problems, but my problems are real! I’ve got big problems, I’m different than you. I’m not a run-of-the-mill alcoholic, I’m special! Anybody ever think like that? “I may be a scumbag, but I’m not a run-of-the-mill scumbag, I’m a special scumbag!”. So I don’t know, I don’t know why it works. So after I relapse, get this, I’m going to two AA meetings a week, I’m doing two outpatients a week, where I pay $35 to hear somebody share about their stuff. You know you sit in group and just [unintelligible], “you know my wife is not understanding”(??) It’s like a bad Bob Newhart episode! I’m paying $35 to hear some moron tell me about his life, I could care less about! I’m hoping he drinks so he doesn’t come back the next week!

Alright, I’m going to AA, I’m not drinking, I’m telling everybody I’m not drinking, I mean “what more do you want!?”. Now I’m on my way to an AA meeting and the thought crosses my mind, this is what the thought said to me – now I gotta tell you, after this happened to me, I understood the obsession of the mind, absolutely, experientially, because here’s what my mind told me – “Chris, this sobriety stuff is really, really great, but you know what you should do? You should buy a gallon of vodka and drink it, and here’s why – before you overreact – here’s why! You’re not really getting into the AA thing, you’re not ‘one of the guys’ in AA. If you got drunk, it would make you feel so bad, that you’d rush back to AA and you’d just integrate! You’d really do a good job! Besides, you can’t even remember what’s it’s like to be drunk, you’re sober almost 90 days for God’s sake! and somebody said if you can’t remember your last drunk, you probably haven’t had it(??). So, I buy the gallon of vodka, and I go back home and I start drinking it.

Now it says in the book “Alcoholics Anonymous”, the guy that was pounding the bar, asking him “how could this have happened again?”. That’s exactly what happened to me! Drink number three woke me up and I recognized the enormity of my mistake, okay? An enormous mistake and I’ve opened the cage to the beast and he’s gonna drag me around by the ass as long as he wants to, because I’ve got no power and no control, once I start drinking, where it’s gonna take me or how long I’m gonna be on the ride. I just don’t, and I realize I’ve made a huge mistake.

Now, let me ask you this. When was I insane? When I was drinking or when I wasn’t? The alcohol restored me to sanity! The most insane thing I did, was convince myself to put the booze back in my body. I even had to convince myself it would be good for my sobriety to drink! It’s one of the reasons why you get a Sponsor, you know what I mean?

Anybody in here sponsoring and a newcomer comes up to you and they’ve got a “plan”? You know? Aren’t some of them beauts? You know what I mean? Oh God! And if you’re new and you’ve got a “plan”, grab one of us and tell us the plan before you do it! We can save you a lot of trouble! Anyway, so that’s how I relapsed. Now, I come back into Alcoholics Anonymous and I’ve gotta tell you I have a willingness, born of desperation. I almost died in this last dish out (??) and I’m kinda fond of being alive! I almost killed my entire family with a handgun and you know, there’s times I’m even fond of some of my family. It scared the crap out of me! I’m one of these guys who don’t really wanna end up in prison.

So anyway, I come back into AA and I make a commitment, I make a fellowship commitment. What they told me to do back then, was “go to meetings!”. My Sponsor grabbed me and said “Chris, I want you at meetings every night, until I tell you to stop”. I started listening to fellowship suggestions. As a matter of fact there were periods in time where I went to anywhere between 8 to 14 meetings a week. I was a treasurer over here, I was a coffee maker over here, I was a secretary over here, I was a no show GSR (??) at this meeting. I’d go out to the diner with people afterwards, I’d buy people, who didn’t have any money, lunch. I was hanging out with the AA’s. I was going to the sober dances! Oh! Oh! Don’t do that until you have a couple of years, please! Wow! It was brutal! It brought back a very traumatic experience for me. Remember, I told you I was like a real repressed, real self-centered fear kid? Well back when we were like 9 and 10 years old, they had this thing called “barn dancing” in school, where they would line all the girls up on one side of the gym and all the boys on the other side of the gym. They’d blow the whistle and you’d have to run across the gym and grab a girl to dance with. You know I still wake up having cold sweats over that one! All they were doing was making psychiatrists rich doing crazy shit like that! My God!

So anyway, here I am. I’m at Alcoholics Anonymous and I’m struggling. That scared kindergärtner I was telling you about? He’s still all over me, but now he’s a sober, scared kindergärtner I mean I’ve got nothing now to dull the pain of me and it’s really a grim time. Now, I had this buddy of mine, “Radio Shack Mike”. Everybody had nicknames back then, you know ’cause I was nicknaming them really pretty much! I was always good for that, and he had tapes, he would listen to tapes and he talked me into a tape one time and it was an affirmation tape. He should not have given this to me, but he gave it to me. One part of the thing is, it tells you to get in front of a mirror and to repeat these affirmations, and I remember standing in front of the mirror going “Chris you’re a wonderful guy! Chris you’re a wonderful guy. Chris you’re… oh sure!! I’m a scumbag, I know!”. So I throw the tape out the window. I’m an alcoholic, I’ve got alcoholism! Trying to treat alcoholism with affirmations is like trying to stop a semi with a cobweb! Alright? You’re going to a gun fight with a butter knife! It’s not gonna work. So I threw the tape away.

So the next time he gives me these tapes, I’m thinking, not some more tapes! You know? So I go “who is this?”, he says “Oh, it’s a couple of guys from Arkansas”. “Arkansas!? Arkansas!!?? Are you crazy? We do more thinking before nine o’ clock than somebody in Arkansas does all day! What the hell are they gonna teach me!? Arkansas!”. I had contempt prior to investigation! Anyway, I’ve got a long ride to work, so I throw the thing in and I start listening, and it was, God bless him, it was Joe and Charlie. Many of you here are experienced with Joe and Charlie, unbelievable introduction to the recovery program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Very, very good for someone who’s not experienced with that.

Anyway, I start listening to it and I’m prone to resentments at that time. Can you imagine? Can anybody in here relate when you get a resentment? I mean I had resentments against like 90% of the people in my home group! I mean, when I was new, I didn’t like anybody. Bunch of hypocrites! “Listen to that guy share.. oh God! If he shares one more time about being a grateful alcoholic, I’m slashing his tires! I’ll see how grateful he is with four flats!”. That’s me.

Anyway, I’m driving down the road and I’m listening to this Joe and Charlie, and here’s what they tell me, I hear this loud and clear. Now picture me being real happy to hear this: “Chris, you do not have a program, an AA program. What you have is a bunch of fellowship activity. Nice, that’s very nice, but you need the program of recovery to be able to recover. The program is found in the book ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’. If you’re not going through the book ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’ and following the suggestions and spiritual exercises, you do not have an AA program, ’cause that’s what an AA program is, so don’t tell people that you’re working a program, ’cause you’re not, and when you come back or when you go back out, don’t tell anybody that AA didn’t work, ’cause you didn’t work AA”.

Now, I’m going to 14 meetings a week, I’m driving the boobies from the hatch to the meetings. (??) I’m even sponsoring people at this time, you know and some of them are even still alive! Sometimes the tugboat with the most steam gets the tow jobs; and I gave good share, I learned right off about how to give good share at meetings, you know? How to not make anybody mad and make just the right amount of people like what I say, and all that crap that you do as an alcoholic, seeking approval. I could care less today about approval, believe it or not.

So, I’m mad about these tapes, because there’s a part in the book “Alcoholics Anonymous” that Chapter “Working with Others”, where it says if you’ve disturbed them about their alcoholism, which is step 1, you have an obsession of the mind that will, not can, will bring you back to alcohol, no matter what! There’s nothing you personally can do about it, you’re gonna drink again.

Once you start drinking, you have a phenomena of craving that’s gonna continue to ensure your body kills itself through the craving of alcohol, and dash – your life has become unmanageable, meaning that you’re suffering from depression, anxiety, self-centered fear, guilt, remorse, resentment – all those things that just make life worth living. That’s what understanding alcoholism is. So, they taught me this, I’m pissed off about it, because its inconvenient truth. It means now, I’m going to have to take responsibility for something. It’s no longer an outside issue, its an inside job, and I recognize that, and its not good news for me. So I throw these tapes there in the backseat, or whatever, but what happened was it was wonderful to be awakened to this knowledge, because what it did was it brought me to my own experience.

Some things went on in my life over the following months, where I was denying the necessity of working a program that lead me back to my knees. I had, what’s known as a “sober bottom”. I think a lot of us have been there. If you don’t work the steps and you stay sober any period of time, you’re gonna go there yourself, and you’re either gonna drink, or you’re gonna have a sober bottom and recommit yourself to this process. I was able to do that, because these tapes told me how. If I didn’t have that message, when I hit that sober bottom, I would have drank. It would have been the only way to stop the emotional pain. I know what alcohol does. I know it destroys me, but I also know that between drink 6 and drink 8 I feel some euphoria, and sometimes you just grasp for that.

So what I did was, I opened up the book “Alcoholics Anonymous”. Now, this is 1992 middle of New Jersey, no one is working a big book program at all in any of the meetings that I’m at. It’s unheard of! Nobody had heard of these tapes, everybody was going to discussion meetings, where you discuss! Everybody here knows what they’re like, right? “I hope that person shuts up so I can raise my hand, ’cause I wanna discuss! I’ve got some discussings (sic) to do too! I wanna talk!”. And there were discussion meetings and there were speaker meetings and there were step meetings, where people talked about the steps, philosophized about the steps, read about the steps, thought about the steps, but never did ‘em!! Amen!
You’d hear a ninth step and somebody would go “Well I haven’t got to this step formally, but I’d like to take this meeting hostage for 8 minutes and share my opinion about what this step might be like if I actually ever took it”. You know? “Ooh, can you be my sponsor? I don’t wanna do the work either!”.

That’s what there was, so here’s what I did. I went to the book “Alcoholics Anonymous”. Alcoholics Anonymous on this side, Joe and Charlie tapes here, pencil here, and me, just as confused as you can be, imagine, but I’m trying. I’m doing the four column inventories, I even went back to make amends. I did amends cards, I went back and I made amends to ex bosses, to ex wives, to old friends, houses that I’d trashed, I started to do this because Joe and Charlie told me to, and I went back and I started to make amends. Something very peculiar happened. You know that scared, repressed kindergärtner that was always inside of me? All of a sudden, I started to be able to “step out” easy. All of a sudden the fear started to leave me and I started to feel some comfort and some serenity in my life.

Now, before you engage in a spiritual process, you’re only gonna have an opinion on it. There’s two types of knowledge, one type of knowledge is intellectual knowledge. One type of knowledge is experiential knowledge. I always use this as an example: There’s two twin boys. They’re about 5 years old. They get really interested in mountain climbing. As they grow older, one of them goes to every library they can, getting books, every book they can get on mountaineering. The other one goes to outward bound and starts going to climbing school, and actually learns how to climb. By the time he’s 18, he is the youngest summitter to ever summit Mount Everest, where the other guy is ready to start teaching mountaineering in a College. Now, who do you wanna talk to about what it’s like to stand on top of Mount Everest? You wanna talk to the person who’s done it, not to the person who has the intellectual knowledge, but to the person who had his ears freezing off, standing there, looking out into the Himalayas. Now its the same thing with recovery. We’ve all got opinions about what the steps are gonna be like for us. We know! But you know what? We’re wrong! Everyone of us. It’s always a little bit different, if not a lot different than what we expected when we actually get through it.

Here’s one for you. The difference between having an unfinished amend or unfinished amends, and having completed every single amend you’re conscious of, to the best of your ability is like the difference between night and day, spiritually. It is. If there’s anybody in here tonight that’s hanging on to some amends, I beg you to make those amends, so that you can find the level of freedom that’s being offered in Alcoholics Anonymous.

We’re not about relief. The early meetings that I went to in New Jersey was about relief from alcoholism. Don’t drink, go to meetings, get relief from active alcoholism, but what Alcoholics Anonymous promises is freedom. Freedom is a lot better than relief! Okay? So pay very close attention to who you get as a sponsor, who you work through the steps with. Find somebody that’s experienced. Find somebody that says “Yes, I have done my amends. Yes, I do pray and meditate every day. Yes, I work with others, I take people through the steps”. Find somebody like that. This is your life. This is not only your life as far as you could drink again, this is your quality of life too. Because one of the wonderful things in Alcoholics Anonymous, is the recovery process of Alcoholics Anonymous has over 200 promises that are absolutely wonderful promises.

Think about some of the promises in the book “Alcoholics Anonymous”. Do you know of any other progressively fatal illness that the treatment will bring about promises like that? I doubt it! You know, cancer treatment does not promise a new freedom and a new happiness, it just doesn’t. It promises you a renewed life. What Alcoholics Anonymous promises you is a “reborn” life. It’s even better than before you started to drink, if you’re anything like me.

Now, in Alcoholics Anonymous at this time, like I said, I had just gone through the steps, I found out that I had started to taste a little bit of recovery, rather than sobriety. You may call it semantics, but I believe sobriety is not putting alcohol in your body – you can still be the biggest prick on the face of the earth and be sober. Punch a cop and you can get sober real quick! – but “recovery” is: the whole persona recovers from an abnormal state of mind and body.

We’re so sick when we first come in here, we don’t even think we’re sick. That’s what I said earlier, “You’re in way more trouble than you think you are”. For you to know how much trouble you’re in, you have to get out of trouble, so you can look back and say “My God! I was in trouble!”, ’cause when you’re in it, you’re just like “Well this is just the way it is, you know? I feel like putting a bullet in my head every minute, you know? What’s new!?”. I mean, I swear going through life was a toil. It was drudgery to me. Today its like I wish there was a thousand hours in a day. I don’t have enough time to do the things that I wanna do!

So anyway, I’ve recovered to a point. I’ve had a spiritual awakening. Now the people I was sponsoring were drinking on me. Have you have had people drinking on you when you work with them? Makes you look bad, you know what I mean? Somebody will come over and go “Chris, is Harry yours? Do you know he’s drinking and he’s stealing money out of the basket? He’s hitting on all the women!”. “Yeah, Harry’s mine”. Well they were drinking on me and making me look bad! So I started bringing them over to my house and we’d start reading through the book. I would read them every word in the book and when it came to an instruction or a directive, “Stop! Let’s do this and then let’s get back to the text”.

If it said we listed the people we were angry with whom we had a resentment, we would put it down in black and white. “Stop, after you’ve done that, we move on”, like you would any textbook. If you had a calculus textbook, would you read it through like a novel and get to the end and say “Yeah, that calculus!”. I don’t think so! I think you have to do the problems, you know what I mean? In the book Alcoholics Anonymous, you have to take the exercises to get the results. Otherwise you’re going to be one of those people in the meeting sharing “Well you know, I haven’t done the twelve steps officially, but I’m sponsoring all these people that I’m gonna kill, putting a notch on my big book for everybody that dies”. So, you know get yourself some experience with this stuff!

So, I start bringing these guys over and they start going through the book “Alcoholics Anonymous” with me, and I want to tell you something incredibly significant. Yes, there were people, we got to the fourth and the fifth step and “Wow man, it’s a little bit of an overreaction to a problem that I kind of overestimated, you know? I don’t think I was really that bad, this is like kind of advanced stuff for me”. “It’s a list! Of people you’re mad at! Good God! I bet if I go to your house, I’d find 35 self-help books that are more complicated than this. But I bet I won’t find one ‘help-others’ book. Selfish bastard!”.

Anyway, so I get them over. Now there was a few people who didn’t make it through, but the people that did, that made it to the first step and then started to make amends, learned how to pray and meditate and then started to work with other people. Every single one of them is still around, every single one! They’re card-carrying AA members in good standing, working with other people, every single one. Some of them had some, you know, relapses along the way, because they rested on their laurels. If anybody wants to know what laurels is, where it says you’re resting on your laurels, you’re in trouble. Laurels is yesterday’s accomplishments. We do live a day at a time. We don’t stop drinking a day at a time, you better wanna stop drinking the rest of your life or you ain’t got no shot at doing this, even if you wanna stop drinking, its hard to motivate up for that, but if you’re just in here for a rest stop, you’re in some deep crap.

We do have a spiritual condition that we need to maintain on a daily basis. We absolutely have to do that. Sometimes we fall short, sometimes we just forget. Sometimes, have you ever seen people who kind of drifted away from AA and you haven’t seen them in three years and all of a sudden they’re back like “Oh!”. I mean like “Duh!?”. You’re supposed to drink if you do that! Don’t act surprised. It’s not okay to leave AA. You know we pat you on the ass and we tell you to keep coming back here, the most important person in the room, but we don’t believe it. We think you’re a horse’s ass! But keep coming, you know? Keep coming, ’cause we want somebody that makes us feel good about ourselves, you know? Stay here, alright? Stay here! It’s not okay to leave. It’s not okay to leave. There’s a lot of people that you affect when you relapse, for God’s sake, you know what I mean?

So, I start taking people through the steps, now all of a sudden there are bunch of little people running around, taking other people through the steps and there’s some people that are mad at me about it, you know? “Who’s this Chris guy? What’s he doing? Who does he think he is?”. But the book says to do it, you know? Would you like me better if I fail? God! What’s the matter with you? It became like politically correct to be a moron somewhere along the line in AA, and to not pay attention. “Yeah, I heard about the steps. I don’t choose to do ‘em”. Hey! We’re a 12-step program. You’re not gonna do the steps?

You know if your were suffering form pancreas cancer and they had like a 12-step procedure and you said “Yeah, I know about that 12-step procedure, but I’m just not gonna do it”, they’d call the loony bin! You’d go to the flight deck! What happens in AA? “Well, I don’t know if I’m really ready for this step. They call it the ‘work’. I don’t know”. We should be calling the flight deck on these people! You’re dying! I’ll tell you right now, you’re dying and you don’t even know it, and alcoholism is to bad, it even kills people that don’t have it! We crash cars into families, we burn houses down. We do stupid things like pull guns on our family. It kills people that don’t even have it, it’s so bad and we check out with absolutely no dignity at all!

90% of the people with alcoholism die an alcoholic death and the people closest to them either pity them or can’t stand them. Alright? You go out and there’s nobody there. I have buried a lot of people in Alcoholics Anonymous. The people that go out drinking, there’s three guys there. It makes for a tough time carrying a casket with only three guys, you know what I mean? The people that go out who were strong AA members, I’ve seen five- six-hundred people at their funeral. How do you wanna check out? How do you want your life to read?

Do you want the scales balanced? ‘Cause if you’re an alcoholic, you’ve harmed people, you’ve harmed your family. Don’t you wanna balance the scales? ‘Cause if your an alcoholic – I’ve never met an evil alcoholic – we do evil things, but we’re not evil people. We don’t want to hurt people, we want to be a positive influence in people’s lives. Alcoholism just doesn’t allow us to do that, because it just destroys so much of our being. We can’t! We become these self-centered, arrogant, obnoxious people that retreat into their own little dark twilight-zone-type-of-existence. It’s just a terrible way to live! So the recovery process just brings us back into the light. The sun light of the spirit. You know, we need this. We’re lucky to have had this. Without Bill and Bob putting the pieces of the puzzle together, we’d all still be dying.

So, there’s a couple of people running around. The [unintelligible] with a spiritual awakening and pissing off everybody, and there’s this one guy who had somebody who he was working with. The guy was relapsing and he sent him to me. He said “Chris, I don’t know what to do with this guy. Whatever the hell you’re doing, won’t you do it with this guy?”. So, this guy was a chronic relapser. You know, in 8 years he would never get a month together. I take him through the steps, he has 93 amends, he isn’t making over 90 of his 93 amends. The lights are now on in the attic! You see that with some people, right? They “wake up”. That spiritual awakening. All of a sudden there’s somebody home, you know? His sponsor goes “God damn! What happened to this guy!?”. So he comes to me and he goes “Chris, you know this is a guy who had like 15 years and I had like 4 or 5 years with this guy!”. He goes “Whatever the hell you did with this guy, would you do it to me?”, and I said “Yeah, sure!” and I take him through the steps.

This was an individual who never had a real job. Never got his license back from multiple DWI’s. Didn’t wanna pay the surcharge! Was in terrible relationships with women. Just completely irresponsible, you know? Grateful Dead t-shirts and going to the job interviews, you know what I mean? He wasn’t going anywhere, and within a year this guy had gotten a job, gotten his license back, gotten engaged to a woman, started his own business and bought a house, like within a year! The priest at his church noticed a little bit of a change and said “What the hell happened to you!?” and he goes “Oh, I went through the steps”. “Well how did you do that?”. “Well, there was this guy Chris”. He goes “I wanna meet Chris” – this is the priest of his church. So he goes “Well, I hear he is speaking up at Net Kong (??) on Tuesday”.

So this priest comes up, listens to me speak from the back of the room. Comes up to me after the meeting and goes “Whatever you’re doing over at your house, I want you to do it in my church. You can have any night of the week, I don’t want any money. It needs to be part of my mission. I’ll help you however I can”. Now, this is 1997. There were step meetings, there were speaker meetings and there were discussion meetings. There were not “Chris-teaches-you-how-to-recover-meetings”. I knew I was gonna get crap from everybody. I was gonna start a meeting where I read out of the big book and tell you what it means. This is like heresy back in 1997. But, I’ve had a spiritual awakening, a priest is asking me to do it. Pieces of the puzzle are falling into place. How can I say no?

So I start the spiritual awakenings group, and I think 16 people came to the first meeting. We’ve had our ups and downs, but we can have anywhere between 40 to 100 people there on a Tuesday night now, and that meeting has affected much of recovery in the North Jersey area. A lot of meetings were started by people who came a long way to go to Bernardsville, stayed for a little while and then took that message back to their areas. There’s big book meetings that are really big book meetings now, all over North Jersey.

The only credit I take for this, is being a channel of God’s message. I believe God got tired of seeing us all die, and then I believe He got tired of seeing us all suffer in AA meetings, you know what I mean? “Just do it! I’m just not drinking!. You know what, I beat the crap out of my wife. I kill my dog, but I didn’t take a drink!”. I think God got pretty tired of that, you know?. So, now there’s some big book meetings around, there’s recovery.

Listen, I’m telling you, if you’re new, if your just coming back, or if you have not gone through the steps yet, you’re in more trouble than you think and there’s a bigger answer in this room for all of your problems. Even your “special” problems. There is more of an answer in here for those than you think…

I had a brother who was addicted to marijuana. It was a difficult time for our family, and it took a lot of patience and understanding to make it through those though times. What I learned about that chapter in our lives, is how important family is. A great deal of love and encouragement was needed to help us all heal from the pain the addiction has caused. But with God’s help, we are all okay now and we came out stronger as a family.

Hi, I’m addicted to “something”, and i can’t find good stuff on the internet to help me! Serious! It’s not OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), but I loved numbing out by playing Solitaire on the computer for hours, or checking my facebook account, or eating and eating and eating….anything i get my hands on or can buy if i have money. I spend that till it’s all gone, usually two days after my payment comes in each week, it’s all gone. If i have money, i go buy food. till it’s all gone. even if i’m not hungry.
i just can’t lose this 35 pounds overweight! what am i runnign from? where can i get help? i keep coming back to this website everytime i get desperate to do something about it and look for who can help me.
i wonder whether the principles on this website can apply to my problem? i think it’s addiction, or running away from something? or numbing out? or scared of something?
Can anyone help please? I want to stop doing this to myself….right now it’s 2.12 am, and i’ve been searching on the internet the past 6 hours reading, reading, and doing solitaire in between. I’ve got the worst indigestion, and it’s so painful, i ate half a slab cake at midnight cos it was there, and i wanted to stuff it in my body.
Help me anyone? i do this all the time….i started Weight Watchers two weeks ago, but after four days tracking what i ate, i stopped. Every morning i resolve to eat healthy as i love eating a fruit and veg based diet, but then i turn around if i see a food, and eat it all up. i am so miserable! it’s been going on for years…decades!!! sorry to write like this but i didn’t know where else to write. also, i’m successful enough in a few other areas of my life. but i’m the same wtih money. Money and food….i devour it, i think cos i’m scared i’ll die without buying sustenance for myself. I have to spend it all! I have to eat it all!

dark twilight-zone-type-of-existence. It’s just a terrible way to live! So the recovery process just brings us back into the light

My name is Sarah and I am 2 weeks shy of my 21st birthday. I have been denying my addiction to painkillers for 6 months now. My boyfriend Mark, whom I live with started to pick up on some of the weird habits I had, like small lies, not sleeping well or even at all (until 6 in the morning I’m exhausted and sleep till noon or later)
It all came down to the day when he got the courage to confront me and he asked “Sarah, do you have something you think you can’t tell me because I’ll be mad or leave you or hate you?”
I had a gut feeling he knew but did not want to accuse me in the fear that I would put up a wall and not let him into how I truly felt, but the look on his face I was merely obligated to come clean and FINALLY tell someone my secret. I hadn’t been able to confide in anybody and just kept feeding my addiction and making silly excuses. I knew I did not want to burn bridges with any loved ones I care about and so I quit. Not for myself, but for my family, and concerned boyfriend. I stayed clean on my own for a week and got through the worst of the physical with drawls (which were never severe but kept me immobile and hurting, sore and depressed, guilty and cornered.)
I caved and went back to the drug I convinced myself I needed. I knew then I had a problem because I lost my sense of self control and felt a terrible feeling of disappointment and guilt.
With any persons story or problem, there is a lot of background to it and details that aren’t included.
But the point of my writing are the crucial parts of my story.
Before, I was a friendly, caring, generous, church going, family oriented normal girl. I cant justify my addiction, I had a happy childhood and wonderful siblings that are my real best friends. But I did what I did and all I can honestly do now is start fresh and not make one mistake. because with me it is a seemingly snowball effect with one mistake, comes 5 more…
So I am past physical withdraws and I only am taking this hard mentally. I feel depressed. So much guilt and frustration, so much time, effort, and money… gone, and nothing to show for it.
I feel accomplished in that I have made all the pro active decisions to move forward and change myself for the positive by changing my phone number, deleting nearly all my numbers keeping 2 close friends, my boyfriend, and my family in my phone contacts. Now I don’t have the all TOO often calls, texts, voice mails and reminders of my lifestyle.
I am doing what I can to completely erase myself and start over. I have alot of self evaluation to do and am exited, nervous, scared, ashamed. So many, TOO many emotions.
I personally do not think I need rehab any longer because I know that I would benefit greatly from simply going to therapy of some sort. I do not need help with physical with drawl symptoms but do need to fix myself on the inside. and That will take effort and full dedication.
I can do it this time.
I need my life back. I need myself back.
The real Sarah is so much cooler, and fun, and uplifting.
I want it enough to fight the fight, and give 100%.
I wish myself all the luck and anyone else dealing with the struggle or a loved ones struggle with addiction.

I have been using heroin off and on for the past 6 years, but been partying and experimenting with other drugs since the age of 13. I got pregnant at 16 and had the baby at 17. I stayed clean until my child was 4. Thats when I started experimenting with heroin. It was so destructive. Even tho I only used a little each day or every other day I left my kid with my mom for hours at a time then was too high to spend time with her when I was home. My husband was also addicted and then incarcerated for 3 yrs. My mother then suggested methadone maintenance. But going to the clinic everyday became an addiction in itself. Hanging out with the other ex-druggies, then buying benzos to increase the methadone high, walking the streets of camden nj thinking it was a haven for all of the junkie outcasts. Everyone knew everyone and their business, rumors and gossip was everywhere. I don’t know what I was thinking. My husband and I divorced and I then married a man from the clinic and got pregnant with my second child. I was clean for 1 year again.. My 1st child went thru extreme trauma of abandonment, 1st losing me to the drugs, her dad to jail, then me starting a new family. My new baby went thru detox at birth from the methadone. I was fed up so I decided to detox with the baby. I went from 150mgs, down 5mgs a day to 10mgs and got sick. Thus the using started all over again. We thought leaving the area to the remote parts of puerto rico away from civilization would work and it did for a little bit but it was still inside me, the little nagging desire to rush home back to the junkie haven and the drugs. I was never so bad on drugs as I was last year tho. I went from small time junkie of 2 bags a day before to using 15 bags a day now living with a new man b/c my 2nd husband decided to stay in puerto rico. This time I left both kids. My new boyfriend supplied my habit, used it to keep me prisoner, would punish me by locking me in a basement when he had withdrawl himself, beat me, mentally, emotionally, and physically abused daily even throwing me outside without clothes on in the snow. All this time, thru the years to that point I knew I was wrong for everything, I was a parent and I was being a horrible one. I missed my parents, my kids and most of all I missed the “real” me. Not this “nothing” the heroin made me into so when he got arrested I ran for help to the clinic again and moved back to my parents and kids. Since then I don’t hang out in the streets. My mom drives me to get dosed and we go straight home. I’m in the house with my kids being a real mother, getting ready to start college, helping pay bills and being responsible. I guess you just have to hit that rock bottom to see. My life was at its end, it flashed before my eyes and all I could see was my 2 kids faces and all I had missed and would miss in their lives in I didnt get help and I took it into my own hands to keep living for my children. I can’t say I’m healed, but I’m much better and 98 percent where I should be in life. I keep a relapse prevention, got rid of people ,places and things, and surround myself with positive. This was a major life lesson and I’m lucky b/c alot of addicts never learn it and never get out. Praise the lord and thanks to him and my loving, forgiving family that neverr gave up on me. Kellee Gonzalez age 27.

Remember, recovery brings hope.
Loriann’s Personal story

Gratitude and Grace

How do I feel about myself today after 22 years in recovery? I can sleep. I can go to sleep at night, right out, with out taking anything. Being able to sleep gives me the energy to get up in the morning and be a part of life. I have learned that getting up on time is an important factor in my being a productive member of society. Going to bed on time, and being able to sleep is just as important. In the early months of recovery sleep did not come easily to me for a while. I was told I wouldn’t die from losing sleep. Getting some sober time was promised as the answer to my difficulties. Thank God I hung in there and stayed clean waiting to see that staying sober would change my life for the better. We have to give clean time, time to change us.
This means a great deal to me. I never could sleep before getting clean. I laid awake and suffered, thinking of all of my insurmountable problems. I’d think and think instead of sleep. My mind played movies for me every night in living color. I’d lay in bed and re-live any embarrassment or shame from the now showing selection of my mental movie collection. The program of recovery has showed me how to clean up my act. I don’t experience embarrassment and shame on a regular basis in my new live.
My brain chemistry is balanced. I live without drugs or alcohol. No more getting high and then coming down hard. Hurt feelings are no longer the status quo.
I roll through my life suiting up and showing up. I do my part as a human being. From the time I wake up in the morning, anytime symptoms of the dis-ease start to come on me, I keep reminding myself to think, how I can be of service. The Big Book of AA says some symptoms of the disease of addiction are ‘becoming bored, restless, and dis-content.’ I know I have to watch out for these feelings.
The hours of the day when I am awake are mine to enjoy. I now feel like I lead my life, I’m at choice about what I am going to experience. In active addiction my life leads me. I just watched as things happened to me. All thinking was centered in the getting and using and finding ways and means to get more. The disease of addiction talked to me all of the time. “Ok Loriann, you just stay high while we go to divorce court. While you are working on getting money to use, we are now going through eviction.” The disease told me “you drive better drunk, so now we are going to jail.”
Taking step 1 of the 12 steps made me realize I was powerless over drugs and my life had become unmanageable. Step by step this new way of thinking gave me the freedom to have power in the other parts of my life. Working the steps and going to meetings quieted down the voice of my dis-ease. I am free to choose how I act and even how I think. I’m learning to put a positive spin on most everything. I feel so much better because of positive thinking. I declare myself as happy, joyous, and free .
I have come to believe that I gave up enough of my life to fret, worry and discord. I have changed my mind and choose to walk on the path of hope, good works, and taking very special care of my precious self.
Most of my life I was shy. More than shy I was afraid of people. I could only communicate by being rough and tough, or a desperate victim. Raising my hand and sharing in meetings taught me that I do have something to say. The people in the meetings starting responding to me differently when I was able to share about the new solutions I was learning.

If you are wondering what going to all of these meetings can possible do for you, know that all of us had this same question. It’s a new way of spending our time with people. It is healthy to be around other people who are in the process of making a difference in their own lives and the lives of others. The people in the meetings are talking about what they are doing to cope. As alcoholics and addicts we know plenty about the problems of life. We know all about what we do not want. Solution is the message of the program. Meetings are a life style. I go most everyday because that is what I believe will keep me clean and sane.
Getting commitments in meetings and eventually being a part of service taught me about how to interact. In service to AA & NA we learned how to operate a business meeting according to standards but we all said the serenity prayer before we started. In service you find plenty of differing ideas about what is the best way to carry the message of recovery. The message I got out of this was to accept the things I can not change. It is better to be happy and healthy than it is to be right. I learned preserving the power of the group conscious was more important than a personal victory. The lessen I learned in all of this is humility. Humility is not to be confused with humiliation. Humility for me has been about valuing my ability to be a part of systems that benefit me and others. I am able to be an important part of the system with out it being all about me. This is a whole new attitude and out look on life.
Going to meetings and working a program has taught me so many useful skills. One way to love my job is to be responsible. The ability to respond comes along with the ability to be awake for the time I am being paid to respond to my company’s needs. Part of being responsible is to wake up on time with a good attitude about being of service. Another part of this recipe is to go to bed on time. Being able to wake up happy and get excited about my plans for the day is a skill not luck. Taking good care of my brain has become very important to me.
Life in addiction was filled with “Oh, I can take it.” I used to say “When it’s too tuff for everybody else, it’s just right for me.” That is a philosophy of the past that no longer serves me. Recovery has taught me if a gentle flow with life is what I desire, it is most reasonable to treat my self and others genteelly. We reap as we sow.
Swimming up stream all the time proved to be undesirable. I am very much my own person. When I feel I disagree with an established pattern within my scope, I change my own action. Lighting one candle, let change begin with me.
As I write this story I have been married for 28 years. My husband and I have also come a long way in learning how to be loving partners in peaceful co-existence. We have come to know through an abundance of trial and error how to support each others’ individual life experience with out one life defining the other. I walk beside my husband giving as much love and respect as I can muster. When his walk is not a part of my highest good it gives me another opportunity to individuate and have personal strength within my self. In the course of a long term marriage (or even a new relationship) people don’t always live up to who they want to be. My husband is my dear friend as often as I let him be and as often as he is able to be. I appreciate the time of love and support we have been able to share with each other over the years.

I married my drug connection whom I met in a bar at 6:00 AM. We were married 6 years before recovery. Even after we got clean we have not always been sober together. That’s the way it is and reality has to be acceptable to me if I am to know peace. All in all my marriage is the best part of my life.
I’m not afraid anymore. Fear was my number one feeling. The feelings of anger and rejection all turned out to be based in fear. I got to take a look at these old feelings and events with a sober head. While writing my steps I came to know a lot of the unrest I went through was all a bunch of fear. Some of the 12 step writing helped me like a road map. Writing the steps established a state of grace in my thinking. I went back over things and started to see that everybody does the best thing they can think of to do in each moment just like I have. I began to forgive others; I have since then forgiven myself. I feel safe and sure. I love myself. I passionately enjoy being alive.
Observing the passage of time and events with out judgment is such a gift of serenity. What happens does not have to be judged as good or bad. Very often now I can understand that what ever happens is neither good nor bad but all just part of life experience. That kind of level headed, art of just being, allows me to feel safe and happy to be me.
My journey to serenity has been about rounding off the rough edges of my personality. Somehow I took on a mistaken idea that I had to make a big production out of everything to feel alive or to be noticed. In recovery I know it is so important to be slow to anger and quick to forgive.
I like the idea of keeping my side of the street clean. The light I shine on all of my days gives me energy to create my own intentions. I take the time to formulate what I want to happen then take the action to support my intention. My big deal is to trust. Trust the process of the program of recovery.
I have learned how to love myself so much, that I can love you and carry the message of hope in recovery. I’ve come a long way, baby. I don’t know why I had to walk the crooked path. The why of the past isn’t as important to me, as it once was. What I know is true is that my way has been made clear before me. The crooked path has been made straight.
In my years as a member of the recovery community I have seen so many people come and go. It appears to be much easier to get clean than it is to stay clean. Only the diligent make it for any period of time. Meeting makers make it. The absolute joy is the miracles that have unfolded before my eyes. I also know the ones who have come and stayed in the program. We share our lives together. By sitting in meetings with these people we do the wed and the dead together. It is said NA means Never Alone.
I have young people in my life. I remember hearing about their conception. We all worried about the parents’ sobriety. Could they handle a child? Could they step up to the plate and be parents? I have seen everything that could happen has happened to the parents and the children of recovery. Some couples stayed together, some did not. In my 21 years of recovery I have seen life find a way and the next generation is here, ready or not, life goes on. Some of the children were raised by clean parents of sprit. I know program kids who are so healthy they shine brightly. I know program kids who have died all ready.

I believe the kids of those who stayed clean are innately better off than the kids of those who have continued in the struggle. The best thing of all that I know is, that it’s all good. We are each on our own path. Every one of us is on an individual journey as we evolve to our ever increasing diversity. I believe we are all born perfect, whole and complete individualized expressions of love.
When I was a kid, I woke in the morning to see my family and receive my nurturing. Then I wanted to run, and jump, and play, and live my freedom in bliss. I was compelled to love and have as much fun as possible.
Somewhere along the line I decided my parents maybe were not the perfect teachers, nor the most intelligent, most loving, most beautiful people in the world.
As I had held belief in parental perfection belief as absolute truth, I was crushed to find I they may have had faults. I was so angry and hurt by the knowledge of their humanness that I decided they appeared to have more serious faults than most others. These childhood condemnations lead me to loose faith in all established systems and a rebellious spirit became my constant companion.
The first thing I heard in my recovery program was your resentments will kill you. Then in Alanon I heard “It doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter, and doesn’t matter.” I knew I was on to something. The fact that every little detail of life was not my business gave me a new idea that forgiveness of others was possible. These revelations lead me to begin to understand self forgiveness was recommended. As I took in these earth shaking concepts they showed me the way I had been thinking was way off. I was promised I’d find peace if I could change my mind.
A large portion of my spare time is spent maintaining my spiritual condition. I go to work and I go to meetings, or to my church. I talk on the phone to people who are not using and who want to help me in my recovery; I listen to peaceful music so I can have some meditation. Good food, the decorations in my clean house, exercise like walking my dog on trails I like, this kind of stuff keeps me together. I find my way out of continuing to do things that I don’t like. I don’t take part in actions that upset me. Taking care of business doesn’t have to include suffering. There is a solution.
My well being is of top priority. Doing what is important to me in a way that I can feel good about myself makes it possible for me to stay clean. Being mindful of other people’s feelings is a part of recovery too. Do no harm. Be polite.
Living our lives trying to make others happy is often one of the key ingredients in the addictive process. This is the selfish part of the program. While recovery is about being of service, and learning how to give; it is also about taking care of yourself so you have something to give. We must always replenish the well. We can’t give away something we haven’t got. Being of service is not about being a martyr. Stretching beyond our comfort zone is how we grow. There are many paradoxes in the program we must be willing to be a little uncomfortable and try new things, but then find a way to be comfortable in this new action. We can be of service without trying to be who other people want us to be. My adjusted attitude can make what was once impossible very doable. We must find a way to be kind to ourselves and others.

Faith is an action in that way. My thinking is powerful. Another one of the great gifts of recovery is the ability to realize that this is my life to live as I choose. I take the action to go to meetings and be at the center of the heard. I am not floating around the edges of the safety and happiness zones. I go to church and make sure people know I am there. I love relationships. That’s my favorite thing. I go to meetings and most often speak up and share, I thank the speaker, and stay after the meeting is over to talk to people.
In recovery I have been taught that my shyness was some kind of self centered fear. My life was controlled at one time by the fear of what people will think of me. As I listened in meetings I came to understand that everyone spends most of their energy thinking about them selves and not so much about me. Some of what I hear shared in meetings teaches me what to do and some of it teaches me what not to do. It’s all good. Meetings are not something I take only when I need them. What ever that means!
For me I feel that I have found my life’s meaning. Addiction was a primary part of my existence for so long even before I stated using, addiction was around me. I have replaced it with recovery being primary. My main job has been and continues to be carrying a message of hope to addicts and their families. Work is what I do in between
meetings to pay my bills.
I went from a broken lost soul to a woman of power. What a transformative journey. Maybe your addiction story is similar or very different than mine. Getting clean and sober is possible for all of us. The lie is dead, we do recover. The clean and sober part is only the beginning that opens the door to changing our thinking. What I think about myself and how I think about others has truly changed. I have learned how to live walking the path of serenity and good will. For this I am grateful.
Today I work in treatment. I love my work. I am an interventionist. I belief in my message that addicts do recover and recovery is a much better life than active addiction gives me the confidence to get on a plane and go do this very personal work with people I have never even met.
949-292-2000

I have been a law enforcement officer for over 25 years. I have seen the horrible affects of drug and alcohol addiction. It not only affects the addict, but also the family and the community. Sadly, I deal with the same addict time and time again. I do not understand completely why this is..but I do understand that without the addict really wanting help..it won’t happen.

My granddaughter was a heroin user, it is under control with methadone, but now she is using angel dust, to make matters worse she is pregnant, the father of the child is also using angel dust, somtimes I cannot understand what she is saying her speech is so bad. I have tried everthing with her, threatening, loving, tried to tell her how much damage she is doing to her baby, which she claims is the only thing she cares about, but nothing gets throught, she constantly denies doing anything, she steals, lies, takes cars without permission, do not know what to do, she is 22yrs old

I have written a book in the hope of inspiring/ helping others.

This is my real life story on how I struggled to overcome heroin and alcohol addiction which eventually lead me to crime and homelessness.
I was living on the streets of Sydney Australia for over six years and at one stage lived in a cemetery, drinking mentholated spirits (window cleaner) and addicted to methadone.

One morning I had a spiritual epiphany which lead me eventually on a journey to recovery.

I have been clean for over 5 years now. I wrote my story and published it on lulu.com

Writing my story was originally motivated by trying to turn something so dark into a positive…But now I also realize that my story could help inspire others!

Thank you so much, I hope my story helps you to overcome addiction!
Laurence Stanway