Tag Archives: HALT

“But mom, you know I can’t drink!” Holidays in Recovery

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I stopped eating meat in 1983 yet every few years my mom will say something like “It’s Thanksgiving. You can have turkey on Thanksgiving.” She isn’t opposed to my not eating meat, it’s that she can’t wrap her mind around it during holidays. I suppose the memories that make her warm, fuzzy and sentimental involve us all sharing the same meal.  I mention this because a lot of people in recovery will be going home for the holidays. Many are going to have an experience similar to mine but instead of turkey it will involve alcohol.

If you are new to recovery, you’re going to keep hearing people talking about how difficult the holidays will be and how many people will relapse. This is going to either scare the crap out of you or you’re going to dismiss it by thinking, “This doesn’t apply to me because I have absolutely no desire to drink or get high whatsoever.” The truth is – none of us can predict how we are going to feel ten minutes from now let alone during the holiday season. It’s better to enter the next few weeks prepared for anything. Have a solid recovery plan to increase your accountability to your support group, know where there are meetings ahead of time for wherever you will be traveling to, have people you can call at any hour, and make plans so you don’t spend the holidays in isolation or spend it exclusively in the company of people who are partying or who have the ability to push your buttons (family).  Basically whatever level of daily actions you now take to keep your recovery a priority, increase them until after January 1st. Better safe than sorry – and sorry does not mean relapse. It can mean emotional discomfort, living with heightened anxiety, or riding the roller-coaster of shame, remorse, or anger.

In most cases, your immediate family will be supportive of your recovery but they may not understand the disease. To them, you are doing so well they may not see any harm in a glass of wine at a toast or alcohol soaked desserts. It’s up to you to educate them beforehand on what you need. If you go to 12 Step meetings, tell them beforehand when you will be attending them so they aren’t disappointed if it conflicts with their plans. You don’t want to be in a position where you give up your meeting because your mother is upset. Also, let them know if going for a walk/run/yoga/gym is something you have to do for your mental and emotional well being so that you don’t get moody and lash out. If alcohol drenched sweets are part of the dessert ritual, make sure there is an alternative for you to enjoy. And most important – if your family’s idea of fun is getting sloshed together, know when it is time to leave. Don’t stick around for the insults on how you are now a stick in the mud or debates about whether or not you are an alcoholic.

Self-care and sobriety involves preparing for the holidays. While they are almost always a roller-coaster of the unknown to the newly clean and sober, those of us who have some time under our belt can still be hit with loneliness, grieving for those who are gone, feelings of inadequacy or whatever negative self-talk that can surface when we are the sober one at a party. Thank God, it does get easier. Holidays clean and sober really can be a blast. Even so, it is always good to have a recovery plan in place.

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“Am I going to be staring at glasses of wine for the rest of my life?”

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A friend of mine said when he finished his program he was “like a wet dog on a back porch. They couldn’t get rid of me.” They ended up offering him a job. For me, getting out of rehab was like being pushed out of the nest not knowing whether or not my wings would work. I’d have stayed there forever if they’d let me.  From the minute I was admitted into treatment the thought of “life after rehab” literally took my breath away.  After all, forty-two days in a program built around relapse prevention made one thing clear – this place didn’t give guarantees.

I went straight from rehab to a friend’s apartment in New Orleans’ Quarter. I would wander  the streets feeling as though I’d been skinned alive. I’d sit on a step at every corner, smoke a cigarette, and pray that I would stay clean for the next five minutes. The word “terror” doesn’t come close. My first two weeks in the real world consisted of laying on a sofa for hours trying to make sense of the third step, smoking cigarettes on random steps killing time between meetings, and going to bed – where sleep failed to come. The only thing I had on my side was that I had no personal history with New Orleans. I knew no one. Thank God.

Recently I was in a shopping mall with a client who’d just returned home from treatment. She suggested we grab lunch in a little restaurant on the ground floor. It wasn’t until we were seated that she casually mentioned she’d spent many afternoons there drinking martinis. I would have known even if she hadn’t told me because the place electrified her. I handed the wine list back to the waiter and a look of disappointment came over her face. She sunk behind her menu. “The food here is great. I totally forgot about the bar when I suggested this place. Honest!” I’m sure she had. I’m never surprised at the tricks the brain will play on the newly sober person. They’re unconsciously drawn to risky situations and, once there, begin to play a form of mental chicken. They test themselves – which is a really dangerous game to play. While she commented on the cocktails at nearby tables, her disposition flipped from euphoria to gloom. We ate quickly and skipped dessert. I knew there’d be emotional backlash. She’d either become surly or would want to crawl back into bed when we got home. The experience gave us a lot to work with and talk about – how to safely navigate through day to day life without setting yourself up for additional emotional fallout.

“Am I going to be staring at glasses of wine for the rest of my life?”

In early recovery, my stomach would flip every time I passed a freeway exit that lead to any bathroom I’d ever shot coke in. Some days all it took was the Hollywood Freeway South sign to constrict my chest.  It felt like I was losing my mind. If the whole world reminded me of using, how would I ever stay clean?

There will always be restaurants, parties, and work functions. There will be comedy clubs and rock shows. You get clean so you can become part of life – not hide from it.  In early recovery, the key is to not test oneself by going it alone.

It takes time to build sober memories. Things that used to send me over the edge seldom affect me now. The Hollywood Freeway South sign is now just a sign. When I see it I’m filled with pleasant memories of fun times I’ve had and people who have passed through my life in recovery. I no longer look at the underside of spoons. People drinking wine at the next table are simply strangers experiencing a moment in their own life.

I would have never believed that the haunting memories of people, places, and things connected to my drug days would ever be replaced by equally powerful memories of my life clean and sober. It happened when I wasn’t paying attention. It will happen for you too. Remember – it takes time to create a new history. In the meantime, be mindful not to play chicken by deliberately placing yourself situations that are going to push you out on an emotional ledge. If you have to go anywhere that you know will be slippery, don’t go it alone.

 

 

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I didn’t get clean for this sh*t! Unmanageability.

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This has been a crazy summer for me. Not “crazy” in a wild and fun way either (sorry to say) but crazy in an unmanageable “life on life’s terms” way. This is my first summer in New York City without air conditioning and the hottest recorded summer since the 1800s. They decided to re-wire my building (an old brownstone in the Village) and hired one electrician to do all the work. I struggled through one major heatwave after another, sitting inside my apartment feeling like a dog locked inside a car with the windows rolled up.  I found myself crying at my desk for no reason. I’ve discovered that severe conditions can bring on feelings of despair and depression – go figure! I had to turn down several clients because I was in no shape to help anyone and writing was impossible. Instead, I went to visit my folks in Canada for a couple weeks and expected to come back to air conditioning. Well – what do you know – Con Edison went on strike so there is no one to do the inspection. There will be no air conditioning this year. The upside is that I knew enough to leave town to rejuvenate my spirit and have since put myself on graveyard hours so that I can bike in the cooler evening breeze for fresh air, write at night, and see as many matinees as I possible. I’m making my situation as manageable as I can because my mental health matters to me. I am powerless over the circumstances but not powerless over my ability to make choices to improve my situation. I needed topics for this blog to simplify my workload so I asked for help.I got a lot of suggestions. Phil wrote me this, which I felt was appropriate to use first:

Recovering addicts are always asking as to what they can expect to “manage” in the sober future and what they cant.  -Phil

When we look back at the unmanageability of our lives during our using days the list goes something like this: jobs lost, apartment evictions, regularly living without a phone or electricity, calls from collection agencies, owing everyone we know money, significant others leaving after many tears, fights and drama. Our health deteriorates and there are trips to hospitals, jails, and psych wards. Paramedics bring us back to life and even this doesn’t strike us unusual. What’s worse than the exterior unmanageability is our inner life – we can’t handle experiencing negatives feelings yet they seem to be the only feelings we have. Our only coping mechanism was to keep using in the hope of finding some inner peace.

Clean and sober, unmanageability in our lives can look like this: jobs lost, apartment evictions, regularly living without a phone or electricity, calls from collection agencies, owing everyone we know money, significant others leaving after many tears, fights, and drama. From neglecting our health there can be   trips to hospitals. If we don’t change our behaviors we can end up in jail and there could even be times we end up in psych wards.

In recovery, even when our external life can remain manageable, our inner life can be filled with anxiety, self-loathing, pain and torment. “Why is this happening to me?” we cry as our thoughts return to the old solution – getting high.

Recovery is the process of changing our behaviors and our response to situations so that we don’t back ourselves into an emotional corner where getting high seems to be the only way out. If any addict stays in pain long enough, s/he will use.

It’s our responsibility to manage every area of our life in a way to keep chaos and drama at a minimal, We learn to start paying bills on time, communicating honestly, become willing to renegotiate or compromise in relationships, We address health and mental health issues, earn money the old fashioned way of working for a living. The hilarious thing writing this is that I know everyone reading it is thinking “Of course we have to do this. Tell me something I don’t know.” It sounds easy to live an upright, ethical, honest life clean – but is it? I mean – really?

This is what I have seen over the years: some addicts gets clean and lives a very rigid life – so rigid and fearful of making errors that the first chance they get to let their hair down, they get loaded. Then there’s the addict who continues acting out deviously in some areas all the while spewing wisdom of recovery louder than anyone else. I call this the “Spiritual giant who goes home and beats his wife and kicks the dog”-syndrome” (not gender-specific) who, without change, will also eventually gets loaded. And then there’s the middle ground – the category that most of us fall into – we hold onto old behaviors as long as they work for us before we become willing to change. And we only are motivated to change by pain.

I didn’t learn how to pay parking tickets until my car was towed, pay my phone bill on time until I got sick of losing money to reconnection fees. It’s true – there are a lot of people in the world who don’t go to the dentist until they are in excruciating pain but for addicts being in pain brings a cry for drugs. Non-addicts experience unmanageability the same as we do. The difference is that they will not respond to it by self-destructing.

It’s important to understand how the disease of addiction gains ground. It LOVES when we are angry with ourselves. No one can ever treat us as badly as we treat ourselves inside the privacy of our own mind. This is why we need the love and support of other recovering addicts. They remind us to give ourselves a break, teach us how to find working solutions to the problems of daily life, let us know that our fantastic idea on how to beat the system is insane, talk us out of that one last heist, help us recognize when the criteria for a boyfriend is different from the criteria for a sugar daddy. Recovery teaches us how to live without being motivated by the fear that if we let go of our old hustles and irresponsible behaviors, our need to get over on the system, that we won’t make it.

It’s unrealistic to expect to come into recovery and immediately live a life 100% according to new recovery principles. We do our best.  We grow in leaps and bounds in some areas and stay sick and stuck in others. The pain from unmanageability in the form of drama, chaos, and from the consequences of our actions is what teaches us who we really are –in our hearts not in our minds. We discover that don’t want to keep hurting ourselves by living this way and this gives us the strength and courage to change. This is a good thing. Because we don’t want to suffer, we learn how to do things differently.

In recovery we can be free. Not just free from the enslavement of addiction but free from senseless self-made suffering. The calm and inner peace we feel by living a life of less drama and unmanageability will eventually guide us in all our affairs. Nonetheless, shit does happen – economies crash, people die, lovers leave, personalities clash. Sometimes we may have a long string of bad luck and feel like life is not fair. We cry, “Why me?” and an old voice will whisper back, “Fuck this shit. You didn’t feel this bad when you were using. Fuck this recovery bullshit.” Yep – the disease never gives up, always waiting for a moment of weakness, always quick to point out the hopelessness of it all. During these times lean into recovering friends for support, love and guidance.  When times get dark hang on because this too shall pass. It will and it does.

Recovery is harm reduction for day to day living.

 

 

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How can I tell if I’m heading toward a relapse?

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Last week I had the fun experience of being a guest “speaker” on a Twitter addiction chat. I had no idea how I was supposed to be a  “speaker” in 140 characters or less. Luckily it turned out to be a Q&A. The final question  “How can a person tell if they’re starting to relapse and how can they stop themselves?” seemed like a good topic for this week’s blog post.

The interesting thing about a relapse is that afterward the addict will swear, “I made the decision to use” when really, “I made the decision a while ago and using was the anticipated outcome” is more likely the case. When we’re clean we always have a choice. By the time the “decision” to use comes along, we’ve already given up that choice by not recognizing and correcting the behaviors that were leading us toward a relapse in the first place. When we are in the disease clean, the window of opportunity to choose recovery gets smaller and smaller until our disease is stronger than our recovery and we use.  We forget we are powerless once we use. Almost every addict who has relapsed tells me immediately afterward, “If it gets bad, I’ll get clean again”. Really? If it was that easy to get clean, why wouldn’t I use one day a year?  They get amnesia about what it took for them to ever have had the desperation to get clean in the first place.

So what are these behaviors we need to watch out for and take seriously that have the power to eventually lead us back to using?

We start to come up with reasonable sounding reasons to start missing meetings (or IOP or whatever support group you are part of).

We start finding our recovery/sober friends annoying. We don’t feel like being around people and are much happier when we’re alone.

We feel a general crankiness toward everything.

We feel an endless hunger for anything (food, shopping, money, power, sex, attention, caffeine, tattoos, seductive pain) outside of ourselves to make us feel better, to feel excited, to feel alive. We long for euphoria.

We stop doing things we used to enjoy in our fellowship such as service, group activities, fellowship, stop working the steps (usually after step 5), stop talking to our sponsor/sponsees. In fact we start feeling judgmental toward both.

We start acting out in asshole behaviors without noticing such as gossip, anger, deceit, and righteousness. We nurture our resentments and start keeping secrets. Consequences include shame, remorse and guilt yet we do not talk about these feelings or their source to anyone.

We’re Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired.  We take no action to remedy it.

We start hanging out with people who are not in recovery more often than people who are. Watching our friends who are not addicts use and drink starts making us have thoughts that we can do it too. We tell no one this.

We hang with using addicts and alcoholics and enjoy it. We believe it is not affecting us. We make less time for friends in recovery.

We act out in self-destructive behaviors such as cutting, eating disorders, sexual       compulsion, unsafe sex, compulsive Internet cruising and tell no one.

We isolate in abusive or unhealthy romantic relationships wanting someone who         doesn’t want us yet going back time and again expecting different results.

If you are doing ANYTHING that your head says is nobody’s business (not even the person you trust most with your recovery) LOOK AT IT.

I really believe that if an addict stays in emotional pain long enough the only solution guaranteed to bring relieve will be using.

A relapse can usually be traced back to a combination of these behaviors occurring over a period of time. If you see any combination of these happening in your life, start taking the opposite action. This can be as simple as removing yourself from the situation, recommitting to meetings, service, reconnecting to your support group and being thoroughly honest about devious thoughts and actions.

 

 

 

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Too Much Too Soon – How to sabotage getting clean

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If I wrote a science fiction movie, addiction would be a computer virus that infiltrates individual hard drives and adapts itself in a way to be almost undetectable by the general public. It would control the host’s body and subtly distort perception to protect itself from being discovered and eliminated. Most of all, it would reprogram the hard drive so that the host continues to feed it. It thrives on your drug of choice but any drug will do. The only way to stop the virus is to starve it.

This analogy explains why insane choices seem perfectly logical to us. And why our best plans on how to stop using have always failed.

I can’t tell you how many times I have had some variation of this conversation: “Patty, I’ve decided to get clean. I’m really doing it this time. I haven’t done any coke or had a drink since last week. I’m done this time, for real! It’s been almost a week and I feel great. It’s time that I get off my fat ass. I feel really motivated. I’m going to work out every day and I even hired a personal trainer three times a week to help keep me motivated. I also started an amazing diet – no sugar and no carbs. I gained so much weight from the booze I can’t stand to look at myself naked. I’m really kicking ass at work too. And I have this new boyfriend who’s totally supportive.  I’m really going to get my life together. I know you’ve heard this before – but this time I mean it. I’m really committed this time.”

A couple weeks pass and when I ask how it’s going, I hear all about the boyfriend and the diet and some excuses about why it’s been hard to get to the gym every day but how they’ll do better next week. What I rarely hear is what they are doing to stay clean and sober.  Some will start out this self-improvement regiment with 12 step meetings being part of the mix. Usually they are too focused on weight loss or making money and swear they have nothing against meetings but there’s not enough time. Since they aren’t even thinking about getting high, they aren’t worried.

It’s important to understand how the disease operates.  Quite often our downfall is that we believe our own thinking is healthy and accurate. For years, we were baffled by how, regardless of our intentions, we always ended up using when we swore we wouldn’t. Imagine the disease has infiltrated our hard-drive, like a computer virus, and our thinking remains hostage until we weaken its hold on us by starving it. Until then, we lack the clarity to recognize when we are setting ourselves up for failure or relapse.

Staying clean has to be the top priority. If we use, the diet won’t fix us. The relationship won’t save us. If you’re like me and using is a full time job, when would you get to the gym? For most addicts, once they pick up, nothing else really matters.

My advice is to not take on too much too soon. Trust me, as you stay clean, you’ll have time to take on every facet of self-improvement. High school dropouts become doctors and couch potatoes become marathon runners. Anything’s possible with some clean time under your belt.

If you are getting clean and thinking now’s the perfect time to quit smoking, give up sugar, give up caffeine, cut down to 1000 calories a day and spend 2 hours a day at the gym then lock yourself up in your love nest – good luck.   Don’t underestimate the ongoing effort and commitment you have to invest in early recovery. It’s like learning how to ride a bike without training wheels all over again. If you get hungry angry lonely or tired in the early days because of your diet, your exercise routine, your inability to jump off the hamster wheel,, life will feel like one big exhausting job and you’ll  wonder why the hell you bother.  This sort of thinking often leads to “I was happier when I was getting high”.

I believe in exercise.  The key is taking a gradual approach to change in early recovery. Perfectionism is another downfall so put down the whip.  An addict who plans on ten hours of exercise who only gets three will use this lack of discipline as a weapon for inner torment. The worse we feel about ourselves,  the more we set ourselves up for relapse.  Aim for a minimum of 45 minutes 3x a week to start. Walk instead of drive when you can.  Even if you are kicking narcotics and feel like any movement will kill you, take a walk anyway. Scroll down to January’s blog posts for tips specific to anyone getting clean.

Begin to make healthier food choices. This is not the time to fast, go on a juice diet, eliminate carbs. Your body is already going through a lot. Add fruits and vegetables and limit fast food and sugar. Don’t be rigid. If you want ice cream or pizza, have it. The first couple weeks are going to be uncomfortable enough. It’s not the time to  try to make up for years of McDonald’s fries. January’s posts also address diet for people getting clean or new to recovery.

Romance, sex, love, and companionship are wonderful things – in fact they can make us feel so right drugs don’t even enter our thoughts. But when there is trouble in paradise, getting high will be the first thing on our mind. Not to mention who wants the responsibility of being someone’s lifeboat in a relationship? Well, there are 12 step programs for those people too. A relationship is a relationship -not a substitute for recovery.

If you are thinking about getting clean or if you’re in early recovery, do yourself a favor and make staying clean your priority. Don’t let not living up to your unrealistic expectation of being perfect become an excuse to give up on everything.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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What do you mean I have to feel everything?

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The first time I heard someone say “I used over my feelings” the first thing that popped into my head was “Really? I used to have fun.” I couldn’t relate. In fact, I felt kind of sorry for him. Using over feelings -what did that even mean?  By the time everyone in the room finished admitting that they had also used over their feelings, I felt like I was in that depressing group therapy scene in Drugstore Cowboy. The lighting is stark in the bleak, institutional room and we see Matt Dillon’s character disengage emotionally as everyone takes turns being grateful for their seemingly pitiful little lives.  I knew how he felt at that moment and recognized the look on his face. He wasn’t going to stay clean and neither was I. After this experience, I continued to get high for a few more months but I couldn’t get that guy talking about “using over feelings” out of my head. Once I’d heard the truth everything changed. I couldn’t seem to get high enough to forget that I had a choice about it.

Until then, I’d never given any thought into why I used drugs. As an adolescent I was consciously constructing my persona. Rebellion was in the air throughout my childhood – in the news and in the movie theatres. There was a new generation saying, “fuck you” to conformity and kowtowing to authority. I was too young to really grasp what was going on in the world but it mirrored something I felt deep inside. Until then, I’d felt very alone. I found my people, the counter-culture freaks and anti-heroes, on the big screen. It was a look, an attitude, and a style. Once I adopted the image of the edgy, thrill-seeking, wild girl all I had to do was find drugs to legitimize it.

Writing this as a long-time recovering addict, it’s obvious that I was searching for a way to change the feelings inside of me. And I found something outside of myself that did the trick. Like every other addict, I used over my feelings.

Recovery is about learning how to deal with our feelings. Since experiencing feelings is not in our skill-set (even clean and sober) we continue to find ways to avoid them – always seeking something outside of ourselves to change the way we feel. In early recovery we drink pots of coffee, chain smoke, try or hope to have lots of sex, or search for love. Later in recovery, we spend endless hours on the Internet,  work out until we’re injured, fast for ten days instead of four, spend until we’re bankrupt, work 60 hours a week, stay busy every minute. We tend to create drama in situations because one large pain is easier to focus on than feelings of insecurity, loneliness, worthlessness, disappointment, self-doubt and self-loathing. When life is going great, we worry about what it’s going to feel like when something goes wrong. I’ve known addicts who take Tylenol in case they get a headache. Simply put, addicts can face down the barrel of a shotgun but we don’t do well with emotional discomfort.

So what happens when we stop running? We feel fear. Remember how the fear of withdrawal kept you using long after you wanted to be clean? Fear controlled us. It doesn’t just go away because we are clean and sober. So we do what we’ve always done – we try to control it. Seeking outside stuff to escape into, to alter our feelings, to change the direction of things. We’re fortunate to have a lot of pillows to land on when we get clean. I think going from feeling nothing to feeling everything, we’d surely explode and run back to using. So while we get comfortable with some of our feelings, we avoid others by throwing back pots of coffee, eating until we can’t move, having sex, shopping, getting 40 tattoos. As long as we don’t use, we gain positive experience from the feelings we do sit with (they didn’t kill us) and it helps give us courage to face new ones. But there’s a trick to all this: if you get clean and spend all your time “acting out”, avoiding feelings, seeking comfort, pleasure and escape and you don’t deal with anything you’ll probably relapse. Remember we use over our feelings and this also means if we don’t start to get comfortable in our own skin, we will use again. Pain and fear don’t magically disappear no matter how great the sex was, how many tattoos you got, or how whole your new relationship makes you feel. It takes work to stay clean.

You need someone to talk to. This can be your 12 step community, a therapist, friends you trust who love you – do not give this job to your romantic partner. You need a safe place where you can be honest about what is going on in your life and in your head and how it makes you feel. To lower the pressure on a tire you have to let some air out. Becoming vulnerable and honest with other human beings is how this process begins. You don’t need advice – you just have to let it out. This is often the first experience addicts have acknowledging how they feel. And I will give you a tip: it’s easy to talk about how angry you are, how much hate you have but it takes real courage to reveal jealousy, loneliness, disappointment, sadness, hurt. These are the feelings under the anger. Our feelings get hurt – just like when we were kids. Talking about this stuff, taking the air out, will reduce the pressure. It will feel weird at first but you’ll notice a shift in your mood and it will give you momentum to do it again. Remember – you don’t need feedback or advice. We start the process by hearing ourselves connect with what we are feeling. As time goes by, feelings become less frightening.

You’re tired all the time, you’re masturbating every day, can’t believe your appetite? My guess is you are having some feelings. Look for the signs. We don’t have to run anymore. Sometimes feelings suck. There’s no other way to describe it – thankfully feelings also pass. Feelings may not be facts but it is a fact you’re experiencing feelings. Face them and recover or run from them and hope you find some courage before you use again.

Although this post is geared toward early recovery, even after years clean our knee jerk reaction to an uncomfortable feeling will still be to find something outside of ourselves to change it or delay it.  With practice, it happens less and less.

 

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LIFE WITHOUT DRUGS (21 days and counting)

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This week I’m going to continue the thread of my recent blog posts geared toward those people who got clean and sober on New Years Day, for anyone new to recovery, on a relapse, or those who are about to embark on this crazy voyage called life without drugs.

I love being stimulated and challenged and lose interest in anything that gets boring.. Having said this, I’ve yet to become bored with being in recovery. Life stays interesting and quirky enough to keep me engaged.

My first year clean was, by far, the most surreal. I had to experience everything: from learning how many pots of coffee a day were too many, to figuring out what my taste was now that I had money to buy clothes, to having sex without being loaded. Sure, I had to feel rejection, insecurity, and all the shit I’d rather avoid at all costs but I also got to forge bonds with people who are still my closest friends, act out scandalously in public, figure out who I was underneath my many personas and coats of armor – but really what turned me on the most  was that for someone who’d experienced every aspect of life under the influence of something from 12-28, being off drugs was a lot like being on acid. It’s the equivalent to what an acid trip would be like for someone who’d never taken acid before.  It made me laugh to realize that I, Patty Powers, was choosing not to use drugs over the option of using them. If anyone would have ever told me that this would be something I would choose, let alone want, I would have said they were crazy. Twenty-three years later, it still makes me chuckle. So, if you are just getting clean, enjoy the ride because life without drugs is often like a cross between a John Waters and a Fellini move. Our life is really the only thing real that we have – so why not experience all of it – the good, the bad and the ugly!

It’s the 21st as I write this. Hopefully you’re still here and celebrating 21 days clean and sober.

If you relapsed, don’t let guilt, shame, and remorse stop you from starting over. Although relapse is not a requirement, it is a big reality with addiction.  Relapse rates are high for addicts regardless of what avenue of recovery they pursue (and I’m talking everything from harm reduction to 12 Step Programs and everything in between). I come from the school of “never give up” because I have watched people struggle for years, constantly relapsing, and then one day they start putting time together and end up with years clean. Everyone has their own path, the main thing is to never give up hope that you can recover and have freedom from active addiction and alcoholism.

What happens to addicts after they relapse is that they torment themselves in a way that no one in the world could ever torment them. All those thoughts – how you fucked up, how bad you are, how you disappointed the few people who helped you in the program – are created by and are fueling the disease. These thoughts are set up to make you feel so bad about yourself that you’ll believe that only drugs can bring relief. Eventually, the drugs are no longer quieting your head. Other negative thoughts start creeping in and they’re all shame-based, dark, and really personal. They’ll keep tearing you down (inside your own mind) until you start feeling like you don’t deserve anything good. Remember – none of this stuff in your head is real. It’s how the disease operates. No different from one addict to the next. Trust me – if you go to a meeting, put up your hand and say you relapsed the negative voices will quiet down. In fact, if you start counting days clean again, chances are most of those thoughts will start disappearing within a week. The noise they are making right now is a mind trick to keep you using. The antidote to relapse is to call someone in recovery and tell them the truth.

Go back and reread my last two posts and try to follow the suggestions 100% and see if you don’t get different results this time. It’s worth a shot, right?  What have you got to lose?

For those who have 21 days clean and sober today, congratulations. You should be getting some sleep by now. Feeling physically better. Your complaint, if anything, is probably that you’re exhausted from being so busy. You’d really like to take the weekend off from all this recovery stuff and lay in front of the TV. Go ahead,  add some down time into your routine this weekend but still maintain the basics – eat well, get some fresh air and a little exercise, go to a meeting (or two). Call up some of your new friends in recovery and see if anyone wants to come and watch a movie and order pizza (or get a movie and spring the idea when you see them at a meeting).

Alone-time is great and everyone needs some – but addicts REALLY like alone time. Its easy when you’re new to suddenly be in front of the TV with the phone off for a whole day but after an entire day alone with your mind you’re suddenly too comfortable to go to a meeting. “I’ll hit two tomorrow” is usually how the rationalizing goes. Then it gets easier to just take the whole weekend off meetings. I mean – you’re home and not hurting yourself or thinking about getting high, right? Beware: this is how a lot of relapses start.

I’ve been known to watch 9 hours of Breaking Bad in a day so I get that whole “I just want a day to myself “ thing but early recovery is a whole different story. You are sort of in “recovery training camp” right now. Sticking to a regiment now will pay off later – because clean and sober, you’ll be free to choose whatever kind of life you want. Recovery will be part of your life – you won’t be standing at the shallow end of the pool learning how to swim.

Let’s review the past week – what have you been slacking off on and what are you doing about it this week? It’s really important to be putting in time with people you’ve met in meetings. If you haven’t been meeting people then you need to raise your hand and say that you haven’t been reaching out and need phone numbers. Don’t rush out the door when the meeting’s over. Linger. Let people talk to you. This week you should be feeling people out to find a temporary sponsor. The suggestions I made in the earlier blog posts will help you to have balance in your life, to feel more grounded, to feel healthier faster, and to keep you from having too much time in a dark room alone. It’s going to be the 12 Step fellowship you attend, the people you meet, and a sponsor who’ll take you through the steps that will keep you clean.

Diet and exercise alone will not keep you clean year after year, nor will a new relationship – so this week grab your cell phone, your email, your face to face encounters and really make an effort to connect to others and start building up friendships with people you can hang out with outside of the meetings. Nothing’s worse than a day off when you’re feeling a little lonely and the only people you know are ones you got high with. It’s up to you to make sure this doesn’t happen because it’s a bad set-up for relapse.

Everybody looking back knows how hard they worked for that first 30 days. You’ve been earning every single day you’ve been clean and sober. The odds to succeed, they say, are stacked against us but we do recover. We are the proof.

 

I also have a blog of personal stories. They are updated less frequently.  http://www.pattypowersnyc.blogspot.com

 

 

 

 

 

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Starting the 3rd Week Clean and Sober

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For anyone just checking into this blog for the first time, last week I wrote about what to expect for people who made Jan 1st their first day clean.  (Go to pattypowersnyc.com/my-blog to open up all previous blog posts). Hopefully this continuing thread will be useful to anyone newly clean or thinking about getting clean.

Let’s talk about physical withdrawal. How quickly your body snaps back to feeling normal is dependent on your drug of choice, how big your habit was, and how long you were doing it. Most likely, if you were coming off legal drugs, you did it at a detox center or by gradually lowering your dose over time with a doctor.  It takes longer to feel physically better when you get clean from legal drugs (alcohol, painkillers, benzos, ambien, methadone, suboxone). Illegal drugs are quicker. Heroin is a horrible kick but after 3-4 days the worst of the dope sickness is over.  Meth, coke, crack and club drugs have no real physical withdrawal – other than feeling completely run down.

Getting clean is a lot more than getting the drugs out of the system – believe it or not, that’s the easy part. Most addicts have had to go without drugs for one reason or another so physical withdrawal is nothing new. The real hell is what happens in your head: the mental obsession. This is the inner torment and twisted logic which continually comes back around to the idea of giving up.  You know – the voice that says you weren’t that bad, 12 step program’s aren’t for you, you can do it different this time and keep it under control, or just straight -up screams “Fuck this shit. I’m getting high and I’ll deal with this later.”

It’s the 15th today, and if you got clean on New Year’s Day you’ve come to the end of your second week. 15 days clean! You’ve probably noticed by now that you stopped late-night weeping over the time in 1999 when your parent’s sent you hard-earned birthday money that you spent on drugs, or the hospital visit or funeral you missed because you were too loaded, or any number of long-forgotten memories of things you fucked up or people you disappointed. These crept into your head whenever you tried sleeping those first 8 or 9 days clean. Haunting regret arrives the 2nd or 3rd day clean and creates so much inner noise and torment that it makes you want to get high just to escape it. I mean, seriously, if this is what it’s going to feel like to be clean, to have to live with all these horrible feelings and thoughts – why do it? But, as you see, they start to lose their power during the second week clean. Aren’t you glad you stuck it out? Oh, they’ll sneak back into your head from time to time but it won’t be as debilitating because now you have the experience to know that these things do pass. You’ll hear that expression a lot in meetings “This too shall pass.” Now you know what they mean.

I bet you probably still aren’t sleeping or not getting much, if any. I didn’t sleep either. I took little cat-naps for four or five months. It may have been withdrawal or maybe it was all the late night after-meeting espresso I was drinking. Who’s to say? I promise though, you will sleep again.

Did you follow the suggestions I left last week? They’ll help speed up your physical recovery and lift your spirits out of the darkness. If you didn’t and you still feel crazy and your body feels like shit, do it this week and see if you can feel a difference. It’s important to have a daily plan – an addict new to recovery with too much time alone, too much time alone with their mind, with an idle body and a lousy diet will not fare well. This doesn’t mean you won’t stay clean but you’re making a choice to make this process harder on yourself. Plus, if you don’t see things getting better, you’ll convince yourself that it sucks to be clean and lose the desire to keep trying. The most common bullshit addicts tell themselves when they decide to use again is “If it gets bad, I know what to do.” (meaning: get clean and go to meetings). There are two flaws in this logic. One, they are forgetting what “if it gets bad” really means. It means loss, suffering and more pain. Two, how long did they fantasize about getting clean before they ever got around to doing it this time? Months? Years? How long will it take before they are ready to try again, really? So if you didn’t follow the suggestions in last week’s post, maybe now is a good time to commit to them. Feel better physically and mentally, and start creating new habits to fill your time. Remember staying clean works by having the willingness to go to any lengths – which means doing things people suggest that worked for them even when you don’t want to.

“Nothing happens until something moves.” -Einstein

If you did follow the suggestions you’ve been eating 3 times a day and drinking a lot of water, you’ve been getting outside for a walk every day, you exercised at least 3 times, you’ve had some quiet time, you’ve been to at least one meeting a day and you’ve started building some friendships up with people who are clean and sober. So what’s going to change going into week three?

What you eat affects your energy and your mood. I‘m going to emphasize diet this week because you want to feel better – right?

If you’ve been piling on lumberjack-size portions at every meal, look out. Everyone starts to freak out at 30 days that they have gained a ton of weight. I believe that, in some respect, the body’s in shock and the metabolism isn’t up to par but I also know that 3 pieces of pie or potatoes at two meals a day is going to put on the pounds regardless of your metabolism. It’s fine to load yourself up on food the first couple of weeks. I always make large portions for my clients because I am trying to help them land back into their body and feel a little grounded but by week three it starts to change.  This week I want you to have salad with 2 meals a day. I don’t care if it’s a small salad on the side of your plate or a large bowl. If you hate lettuce, slice some tomatoes and cucumbers or any fresh raw vegetable – I don’t care what it is – have a small portion of raw vegetables with lunch and dinner (or a larger salad sometime during your evening). I want you to also have cooked vegetables twice a day with your lunch and dinner. This doesn’t have to be huge. It can be a small portion – but not canned vegetables. I am not counting yams or potatoes as vegetables. In fact, whenever you have yams, potatoes, rice or pasta, make those portions smaller than you have been doing your first two weeks clean (if you were loading up on them). Don’t stuff yourself full of bread as a meal either.  I am not putting you on a diet by the way. Just have regular sized meals that include salad and vegetables. Fresh fruit is good with breakfast, and as a snack. Be sure to eat fresh fruit at least twice a day – during or between meals.  If you eat fruit daily, you’ll notice you’re less likely to grab for pastries or sweets. One of these days I will do a blog specifically about food since it can improve mental clarity, energy and it’s a fact that poor diet contributes to depression.

Fresh air and walking: did you get outside much last week? I don’t mean walking from the car to the door. Did you go for walks like I suggested? This week I want you to walk further. Add ten to fifteen minutes to last week’s walk. It’s Day 15 – you can do it.

What about exercise? If you skipped this one last week, this is the week to really give it your best shot. Whatever you decided to do – swim, jog, the gym – make sure you do it 30-45 minutes three to four times this week. It’s going to alleviate anxiety and help you sleep better. Remember your pleasure receptors have been messed up with drugs so you want to get them activated again. Hitting an endorphin high with exercise will not only feel good but it will start repairing the damage you’ve caused. Any age, but especially if you are over 30 – make sure you stretch before and after your work out. You can find stretching techniques online.

Meetings and fellowship: did you go every day? If you didn’t, what was your excuse for not going? Did you use every day? You should definitely go as much as you used. They suggest 90 meetings in 90 days for a reason. It takes 90 days to create or break a habit. Plus, the truth is, if you go every day, you’ll start to know people and they’ll notice if you stop coming around and call you – but no one will call you if they don’t know you. They’ll also notice when you feel like shit and ask what’s going on. It’s better to have people watching out for you than being self-reliant because as smart as you are, you couldn’t figure out how to control your using/drinking. In fact, your best thinking got you here. Learning how to live with the joys and disappointments in life without getting high over them takes time. Which brings me to:

Have you been calling any of the people you met in meetings? Have you gone out for coffee or a snack with anyone or with a group after a meeting yet? This is the hardest thing for many addicts/alcoholics who are newly clean and sober but it is the one thing that will help you to stay clean. I know – you don’t relate. You think half of them are assholes. You wouldn’t have gone to a bar with any of them. You’d have never gotten high with them.  Well, this may be true but remember –  you may know a lot of things about a lot of things but you don’t know how to stay clean and they do. Let them teach you how. This week make an effort to get to know a few people. Go out one or two times with people from your meetings. You don’t have to stay long. Just make the effort. It might make a difference between staying clean or getting loaded this week. (By the third week I’m with a client I make them go on “play dates” without me. It’s hell getting them to do it. Unlike them, you haven’t had me taking you out with a group of people every night after meetings so you probably aren’t at this stage yet. If you are, terrific – keep building up your support group. If you aren’t, make this week a week where you at least go out with the group one time. Definitely start calling some of the people on your list.

Yoga:  Ha, I could actually see you cringe as I wrote that word. If you have an ounce of adventure in your spirit, go to one class somewhere this week. Everyone else, go to Youtube, the library, a yoga or book store and get a dvd of the easiest yoga they have out there and try it at home. Just give it one try and see how you feel afterward.  If you spend a lot of time at the computer, you’ll feel your shoulders open up in a way they haven’t in years. You’ll feel all the tension you’ve been carrying around leave. Doesn’t that sound appealing? Tai Chi is another thing that works your core and reduces stress. Just try something this week. You can knock off one workout if you do it.

If you have the money, this week treat yourself to a massage.  There are schools that charge a low fee. See what’s available where you are located. It’s a treat but you’ve worked hard to get here. Plus, it’s like having someone take the psychic sludge off your Being that you’ve been piling on while you were using. Ha – that sounds hippy-dippy but there’s something to it.

By staying busy with this schedule, you’ll have less time for mental torture. It will still come up but like I mentioned earlier, these thoughts will pass. Any real wreckage from your past will get taken care of once you find a sponsor and start working the steps. Rome wasn’t built in a day and you don’t have to clean up your entire life this week. Keep the focus on right now. This is a time where you are taking baby steps to learn how to live without drugs and alcohol. It is a HUGE positive thing you are doing. Don’t diminish it by telling yourself you’re a fuck up and things will never get better. They will. You’ll see.

And if you can’t sleep and feel crazy, go online. http://www.Intherooms.com has online meetings, groups, and members you can instant message with who can help you.

Have a great week.

 

 

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More Holiday Thoughts

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I posted two blogs already about the holidays but the amount of email and conversations I have lately seem to keep going back to this subject. Here is what I noticed: people who have been clean and sober for a period of time (18 months or more) have a built in memory of the sneakiness of the disease at this time of year so they have upped their recovery time, maybe by going to more meetings or by making extra effort to connect with their sponsor and support group. They are not living in fear of the holidays – they are simply taking the actions needed for a smoother ride through the month. Almost everyone I know who has less than a year down to early days in recovery do not seem to think the holidays are going to be an issue for them. Some have even thought it out logically and are convinced that all this ‘high alert” stuff program people keep talking about will not apply to them.

I don’t fault the newcomers for it. From their point of view, they are being honest in how they feel. What they don’t seem to have yet is an awareness of how the disease of addiction continues to lurk, waiting for an opportunity to strike. Before I got clean, the insanity in my thinking and the level of stress I experienced was intense and only seemed to hit a level of calm and clear thinking after I used. Part of this was because the stress of withdrawal was removed by using but since the disease lives in the obsession/compulsion part of my mind it would come up again even while I was high – to get more, to say that amount wasn’t enough or it wasn’t strong enough – get more. Basically, the disease really only ever had one thing to say “MORE” and the rest of me – body spirit and mind – was enslaved to make it happen. Trying to exert control over it “I’ll get more tonight” resulted in a subtle level of mental agony and physical discomfort until the whole idea of getting more “tonight” turned into “getting more within the hour”. I’m sure we all know what it was like to be controlled by the disease, cave in to the compulsion and obsession by putting everything we wanted to do second to feeding the disease. When we first stop using, we are so amazed to look back at how completely enslaved we had been. We recognize how – despite our intelligence – the disease was more powerful. So we get clean and around the holidays, a sort of amnesia comes over us in early recovery. We can’t seem to connect with how powerless we had been. We feel like the disease is in the past (if it even is a disease) because we’ve been free from that level of obsession and compulsion for a while. In fact, most days, we feel all right.

“What’s this holiday panic we hear about in meetings?” This is how the disease works – newcomers often hear the experience of old-timers as if we are all panic-stricken about the holidays, living in fear of using. Meanwhile, this “panic” is not happening. People with clean time are simply stating that this is the time of year to be vigilant because the disease is “cunning powerful and baffling” and is capable of sneaking in and gaining a foothold if we are complacent about recovery. We say this because we have years of experience going through various feelings, early recovery emotional rollercoasters, core issue trauma and pain surfacing out of nowhere at this time of year and we have watched many people relapse. Old-timers are not biting their nails anticipating crisis. Instead we acknowledge the power of the disease and do what we have been told so that we can stay one step ahead of it – so it can be a smooth sailing holiday season. But – the newcomer doesn’t hear this – the newcomer hears fear but since they don’t feel the fear themselves this must not apply to them. This warning must be meant for someone else who is new at the meeting. Not them. But this line of thinking is precisely how the disease gains foothold, making them believe they are the exception to the rule. Closing their mind to recovery tools that will strengthen and protect them.

What I know as an addict with 23 years clean who has watched numerous friends with 20 years relapse, is that when it comes to the disease, we are never fully free of it. It lurks in the shadows of our Being waiting for ways to make the “program” experience of others no longer apply to us, as if we are cured. Someone’s advice on jobs, dating, or financial matters – it really may not apply to me. But their experience with recovery usually does. I am not immune to relapse but as long as I continue to take actions the disease can not blind me and move me away from recovery, there’s a good chance I will stay clean.

This time of year – if you are new to recovery and you hear people sharing about their struggles during the holiday season recognize that this sharing is recovery in action. If you feel fine but notice yourself attending less meetings, feeling like you are “over” some of your friendships with people you’ve met at meetings and decide it’s time to clean house on your cell phone, you start spending a lot of time alone because it feels better than being with others – beware. Take the opposite action to what your head is telling you is true.

If you are new and starting to feel like this recovery job takes up too much time and you miss the simplicity of your life before you got clean – this sort of thinking will put you in a dangerous place this month. Even if it’s true you that miss your old life and old friends and hate going to so many meetings – do yourself a favor, put in the extra time this holiday season and trust me – it won’t always be like this. Being self reliant shouldn’t come so early in recovery. Remember – your best thinking is why you ended up in meetings in the first place. This holiday season, keep and open mind and let experience members guide you. This is not the time to do it alone.

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Tips for Staying Clean through the Holiday Season

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Increase (not decrease) your meeting attendance.

Find out what is happening in your fellowship – marathon meetings, dances, social events. Whether you are seeing family or alone for the holidays, stopping by these events is an excuse to leave an uncomfortable situation early (if you have to be with family or in social situations where there is alcohol) and for newcomers it is an opportunity to meet members on a more social level and make new friends. Remember – volunteers are always needed and welcomed.

Ask around and you will hear about social gatherings and parties various members of your group will be having in their home. Usually someone is having a party or members are organizing group activities.

It is better to be tired from too much fellowshipping than rested and alone at home.

Pay attention to HALT (Don’t get too hungry, angry, lonely, or tired)

Don’t bottle up feelings. Tell people what is going on inside of you. (No one is sick of hearing it).

Be of service – Google volunteer organizations in your area. If you have free time, helping others will lighten your mood and energize you. Many places are happy to have one-time-only volunteers.

If you have to spend time with people who push your buttons or be in an active environment, prepare an exit strategy. Plan ahead to meet someone from your support group afterwards. Be accountable to someone.

If you are leaving town, get a meeting list for that area. Find an alternative place to stay so you have options if you need them – put the info in your phone (local taxi and hotel).

If you are newly clean/sober, stick close to your new friends in recovery. One holiday season away from your using and drinking friends won’t destroy the relationships that matter. Put yourself and your recovery first.

Keep phone numbers of your fellowship friends handy and use them to check in and stay connected.

Get fresh air and exercise daily to keep the blues away.

Don’t over-indulge in caffeine or sugar and drink plenty of water.

Set aside time to meditate or reflect on the positive changes you are making.

Gratitude is a mood changer.

 

 

 

 

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