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About pattypowers

Patty is a nationally recognized certified recovery coach and writer. She lives in New York City. View all posts by pattypowers →

Love Dressed Up in Fur

June 20, 2014All Things Recovery12 step, AA, accountability, addiction, alcoholics anonymous, Alcoholism, cats, depression, dogs, Drugs, exercise, family, Feelings, fellowship, fresh air, gratitude, health, lonely, love, meetings, Narcotics Anonymous, Newcomers, nurture, pet stories, pets, recovery, Relapse, relapse prevention, relationships, sober, Sobriety, Stress, substance abuse, supportpattypowers

I’m writing this from Ontario Canada during an impulsive visit to see my folks. I come from a dog family. I can’t recall a time when my parents didn’t have a dog. In fact, I was so used to having a dog around that when I moved to New York City at 18 the first thing I did was buy a Maltese I named Soprano. That dog was my loyal companion for nine years. When I moved to Los Angeles in 87 not expecting to survive my addiction, I left Soprano at my mom’s house. Even when I had no hope for my own life, I managed to put her safety first.

After I got clean, pulling Soprano out of her cushy retirement home (my mom’s) didn’t seem fair and it didn’t occur to me to replace her. She was, to me, irreplaceable. Besides, my social life in early recovery kept me too busy to want to get “tied down” with another pet. By the time I moved back to New York and discovered a “no pet” clause upon signing my lease I’d grown used to living pet-free. I’d forgotten the brand of joy that comes from a furry friend.

Three years ago my parents bought Harley (the dog in the photo). A Jack Russell puppy is not the sort of dog you’d expect a couple of 70-somethings to own. The dog has boundless energy. I made it my mission to lavish playtime on him whenever I visit. What happened was this: Harley opened up a place in my heart that I forgot was there. The dog-shaped hole. Now I have this new unrest inside of me that is crying for a dog of my own. This will mean either leaving the apartment I’ve been in for 21 years or it could mean leaving New York. Dog-ownership’s going to require a major lifestyle change – but I feel it coming because of the longing I now experience whenever I see a dog on the street.

I once had a friend in recovery who suffered from severe depression and suicidal ideation. He tried every medication but found no relief. Instead of tormenting himself, he began adopting cats. At one point he had close to 20 of them. I’m sure his neighbors were horrified but he loved his cats and felt responsible for them. He said that no matter how he felt he could never kill himself because he wouldn’t want his cats to starve or be put in a shelter. Years later he said that his cats had saved his life until he was able to find the right medication.

Animals have the ability to soften us, to make us laugh, and to help us learn how to play. They provide companionship, get us outside for long walks, and they’re able to lure strangers into conversations with us. A pet can teach us patience, kindness, and accountability. They bring out our best qualities. A relationship with an animal is a channel for love. For many addicts, this may be the first love they are comfortable experiencing.

Animal-assisted therapy is being used in a wide variety of settings to help people with acute and chronic illnesses including addiction. Numerous treatment centers now see value in allowing pets to accompany clients into rehab. Equine therapy has also proven beneficial as a treatment modality. This is based on the many physiological and psychological benefits documented in patients during interactions with animals. These include lowered blood pressure and heart rate, increased beta-endorphin levels, decreased stress levels, reduced feelings of anger, hostility, tension and anxiety, improved social functioning, and increased feelings of empowerment, trust, patience and self-esteem.

Owning a pet is a long-term commitment and not one a newcomer in the early stages of rebuilding a life should take on. Wait until you have income and housing stability first. But you don’t have to be a pet owner to enjoy the benefits of animal love. There are other options. Fostering dogs and cats is a short-term commitment. Walking dogs or playing with cats at no kill shelters is another option. Pet sitting for friends is a way to get a quick no-strings hit. Or you can hang around the local dog runs and befriend some of the regulars.

Furry friendships bring out our gentler side and this can be a game changer on a tough day.

Stress is not required

May 15, 2014All Things Recovery12 step, AA, addiction, Alcholism, alcoholics anonymous, angry, anxiety, clean, depression, disease, Drugs, exercise, family, Feelings, fellowship, fresh air, gratitude, HALT, health, heroin, lonely, meditate, Meditation, meetings, Narcotics Anonymous, Newcomers, obsession, panic attack, recovery, Relapse, relationships, sober, Sobriety, Stress, substance abuse, support, tips, triggerpattypowers

Before I got clean I would sit around thinking about all the extra money I’d have if I ever stopped getting high. I had a hole the size of a quarter in the sole of my boot and every day I would do the math of my drug expense and think “I probably cook up and inject the equivalent of a few pairs of expensive boots every week”. After I got clean, however, I realized there was very little in the world that could compel me to come up with money the way drugs did. I didn’t have the extra hundreds in my hand because suddenly I was doing things like paying rent and feeding myself – stuff that hadn’t mattered before.

The same thing goes for creative and career dreams that once had a specific place in my fantasy life while I was getting high. I imagined all the things I would do once all my time wasn’t spent on feeding my habit. And, like most people in recovery, the minute I got clean I felt like I had to make up for all the lost years – starting immediately.

So whether or not I followed through on my to-do list of steps to take to realize my dreams, every waking hour I carried inside of me the insane pressure to be doing more than I was. No matter what I accomplished in the course of a day, I always felt like there was more to do. My head rambled on a continuous to-do list no matter whether I was actively productive or laying in bed at the end of the day. It was akin to holding down a computer key. And no matter what I accomplished or how happy and satisfied I felt, a voice in my head always insisted on more. It always left me feeling like I was not doing enough. This managed to keep me in some state of anxiety. Ongoing low-level stress is that “on edge” feeling that has the power to turn sour and turn into sadness or depression. It’s that inner voice, ignored or not, that insists that all is not well despite evidence to the contrary. In recovery-speak we call it “beating ourselves up” or negative self-talk. And it is a place the disease uses to distort our perception that the glass is always half empty and that we are never enough. Without drugs, our disease manages to stay alive inside our habit of creating a life that is too busy for us to find balance. Balance is always key to well being because it reduces stress.

Try to imagine our brain looking like dry riverbeds in the California desert. Every time we experience stress it’s like a flash flood. Every time we got high or drunk, every traumatic event was experienced as a full-on flash flood. What we end up with is a very deep river bed. It takes a lot of stress to fill these up to the levels that drugs would fill them. So, drug free, these pathways keep waiting for the big rain. When we first get clean the immediate drop in the water table (so to speak) is why we feel completely insane with anxiety. This is that feeling of exposed raw nerves during withdrawal. As we stay clean, the stress is lowered, in part because our brain slowly adapts to a lesser level of metaphoric rain filling our riverbeds but it is also because our new behaviors begin to deepen other pathways. In recovery, our healthy behaviors actually re-route our neurological pathways. We repair much of the damage active addiction caused our brain and begin to balance out our equilibrium. Nonetheless, our ridiculously imposing to-do lists keep our brains dampened by a low level of stress which in turn keeps our disease engaged enough to trigger other negative feelings. If we feel bad enough long enough, using starts to seem like a reasonable solution to “take the edge off” our feelings.

This is why it is important to create a daily routine that balances the workload with self-care and relaxing activities. This is why people go to the gym before or after work, why it feels like a weight has been lifted after yoga class, why laughter at a dinner with friends feels so good. Without these things, life becomes a soul-sucking job and no matter how successful we are, if we put pressure on ourselves every minute to be productive, if we hold our own whipping stick, at the end of the day no matter how much we’ve accomplished the feeling of being spent outweighs the satisfaction of a job well done.

I am not suggesting that we need to shoot lower with our goals or modify our dreams to less than we desire. I believe we need to accept our human limitations and that we’re best able to live a life of lower stress if we plan our day to include healthy decompressing time. This needs to be as high on the priority scale as anything to do with work and life errands. I realize that parenting involves placing other people’s needs at the top of the list and that there is often very little or no time to breathe on weekdays. So how can parents create daily balance to take care of themselves? One way would be to use family car time to play games, tell jokes or sing songs. Consciously create pleasurable activities wherever you are. For parents who have to kill time while their kids are in afterschool activities, bring along a book (fiction not self help). Audio books are great for taking a breather from self-obsession. Breathing meditations or guided meditations downloaded onto an IPod can be done anywhere (even at your work desk or in the office restroom). Take a few minutes throughout the day to stretch your body, to step outside and take in any natural beauty you can find. All of these little actions will add up to a big payoff – even for people who don’t get time alone until everyone else is in bed.

It takes practice to create stress-reducing activities and – trust me – the addict mind and the stress riverbeds in your brain will put up a lot of resistance – but a conscious effort will result in change. In time, self-care behaviors will come as effortlessly as breathing. It takes time to re-route our brains away from the pathways that were created prior to recovery but it will happen. Peace of mind and the ability to take on the responsibilities of a full ambitious life can co-exist.

Why am I hating everyone I love?

April 30, 2014All Things Recovery12 step, AA, addiction, alcoholics anonymous, Alcoholism, angry, anxiety, change, depression, Drugs, family, Feelings, fellowship, HALT, heroin, lonely, loved ones, meetings, Narcotics Anonymous, Newcomers, obsession, Powerless, Relapse, relationships, sober, Sobriety, Stress, substance abuse, support, tips, triggerpattypowers

Almost everyone who gets clean and sober goes through a period where they experience a ton of negative feelings toward the people they love the most. I’m not talking about people they love who they’ve recently met in recovery. These feelings are specifically ignited inside of us by people who have known us the longest. I’m talking about our family members and long-term romantic partners. The ones where our love-roots go deepest. Why are they the ones who make us feel the craziest after we get clean?

Often these are the people we still share the least about ourselves with. When we were getting high, we withheld information to protect them because we knew our self destructive actions would have caused them incredible pain or we simply hid our lives rather than risk them getting in the way our our drug use. Once we get clean, they usually have no idea what we are processing or the amount of work that goes into our healing. We start to resent them for not taking interest in our recovery and we feel unsupported. We compare the depth of our new recovery relationships and feel cheated at home. We can’t believe they expect that now we’re off drugs, we’re “back to normal”. It’s very possible they avoid asking questions that may yield answers because they feel safe in their denial and do not want anyone (us) to mess with it. There are many reasons why the people who love us the most keep up an impenetrable shield.They simply may not be ready.

In recovery we share intimate parts of ourselves with our support group only to return to our loved ones and have it feel like no one is interested in truly knowing us. This is never more painful than during the early months of recovery. Not getting what we believe we need from our family has the ability to make us feel unsafe, unloved, misunderstood, insecure, resentful, hurt, and it turns us into character assassins (as we start deciding what is wrong with them). This is when we must lean into our recovery support group and to remember to keep breathing and to keep our mouth shut. Damage control not only saves them from attack and injury but also saves us from the remorse shame and regret we will surely feel if we inflict pain on people we know we truly love – even if we aren’t particularly feeling it at the moment.

In early recovery we are finally becoming honest with ourselves, doing the hard work of looking at our wreckage, at our shortcomings, and we’re becoming acquainted with our emotional life. It takes a while to land into our feelings and start to heal old wounds.Demanding other people to meet us half way is unfair. Remember, it was our suffering that motivated us to seek recovery in the first place. Pain was the impetus. God only knows what pain our loved ones have endured in their own lives or in relation to us while we were wrapped up in ourselves. They’re going to change when they’re ready – and maybe never. True acceptance of this fact might not happen for years but punishing them because they do not meet our new expectations is – well – it’s selfish (and not very spiritual). Especially when we don’t know for sure if what we’re thinking or feeling is accurate. This is why we practice unconditional love and patience with the people we love. We need to trust that how we feel right now is not permanent. Things are going to change. We’ll keep changing and this will have a positive impact on our relationships over time – whether we believe it or not.

Keep breathing, bite your tongue, leave the house to take walks when you need personal space. When you are at your wits’ end and don’t know what else to do treat them with kindness, forgiveness and compassion. Take your cell outside and rant and rave to friends who will let you unload. Get through the early months of recovery without causing more harm to yourself and others. Love is complicated. No matter what happens with these relationships, whether they turn out according to your greatest hopes or not – you will be okay. Trust the process.

Our buttons get pushed because we crave connection and love. We also probably harbor some fear of what they might have on us that we aren’t prepared to hear. Sometimes this fear is what’s causing us to want to write these relationships off. The good news is that by working on yourself and finding peace you will inspire others to do the same. Families can heal together. Time is where the magic happens.

Spring’s Emotional Overhaul Part 2

April 15, 2014All Things Recovery12 step, 12 step programs, AA, addiction, alcoholics anonymous, Alcoholism, angry, anxiety, clean, cocktails, depression, disease, Drugs, exercise, Feelings, fellowship, fresh air, gratitude, HALT, health, heroin, holidays, meditate, Meditation, Narcotics Anonymous, Newcomers, Powerless, recovery, Relapse, relationships, SADS, sober, Sobriety, Stress, substance abuse, support, tips, trigger, weedpattypowers

I’m a recovering addict who doesn’t like to feel shitty. I’ve discovered through years of trial and error that taking positive actions (especially when I don’t want to) that support my emotional and physical well-being pays off. I’ve lived through 25 years of season changes without getting high and have learned how to surf them with some grace. This is what I hope to share in my blogs – practical tips on how to cope with whatever life throws your direction without getting high.

Believe it or not – changing seasons have the power to wake up the disease (of addiction) and this can cause a lot of emotional discomfort.

I wrote Part One of this blog two weeks ago and since then everyone I talk to says they’ve been feeling crazy. A lot of people are going through a hard time this month and people in early recovery seem to be feeling it the worst.

The good news is that, for the majority of people I’ve spoken to, the root of their discomfort is connected to the change of weather and not their deep core issues. Though many of them fail to recognize this. When recovering addicts feel bad, the first thing they do is intellectualize and over-analyze their emotional life to get a false sense of control over it. When this fails they get filled by overwhelming helplessness. Some people will be experiencing some level of seasonal affective disorder because they slacked off on basic daily doses of fresh air and exercise all winter and they probably lived on comfort foods rather than a healthy balance of fresh vegetables and fruit. The good news is that these feelings – like all feelings –will pass. The current blahs and waves of depression hitting you this year don’t have to be repeated.

Recovery lifestyle changes are easier to embrace when you are given a choice between feeling good or feeling lousy. If you read this blog regularly you’re probably sick of hearing this – but trust me, physical activity pays off long-term in so many ways. You don’t have to become a crazy gym fanatic. Hike, walk, jump rope, bicycle – just move your body in the winter months. When its zero degrees no one wants to go outside. Do it for springtime sanity. Play it forward.

The change in weather is going to have an affect on you. Your energy may feel unsteady. Some days you’ll feel tired yet the weather is making you believe you should be super energized. A voice in your head is now blaming you for not having energy – like it’s somehow your own fault, like you are ruining a perfect day by being tired. Jeez – there’s nothing like the negative self-talk of the addict mind! Instead of staying stuck inside your head try this – accept that today you’re tired. Set lower goals and be gentle with yourself. Maybe you just need some rest. A lot of people experience a shift in their sleep patterns. Be patient. Don’t judge yourself. Honest – it is all going to even out.

It’s not just us – everything’s messed up. Trees were without buds late this year then almost overnight flowers opened. We are not alone. A shift is happening and nothing seems to be running smoothly. (It was seventy degrees yesterday and tonight its twenty-four). Whatever your body is doing energy-wise allow it to be where it is at. Stop expecting more of yourself. The renewal energy of spring is going to happen for you. It’s always our internal struggle with acceptance that feeds the disease. When our body feels off and we decide that our entire life feels off. We feel like shit so our life is shit. The worse we can make ourselves feel, the more that cocktail two tables over is going to call out to us, the more we’re going to want to linger in the scent of a joint that passed us on the sidewalk. The disease will point out drug or alcohol solutions to these feelings whenever it can – and our job is to recognize where these triggers are coming from – the dis-ease we feel internally. Recognize it and let it go. Getting high will not make things better. It is not the solution. Trust me – during springtime these ideas are going to pop into your head without warning. This is a trick so don’t turn it into something wielding power over you. Call a friend in your support system. You never have to tough it out alone.

This is the rollercoaster of seasonal changes: Lust, thirst, anxiety over lust, anxiety over cravings, melancholia over memories (which are often memories of times when drugs and alcohol still worked and these may involve outdoor patio cocktail memories), loneliness will accompany lust, financial insecurity may arise at the thought of needing new clothes or appear as harsh self judgment over not having money to buy thing you feel you can’t live without.. While beauty starts to spring up all around us with the rebirth of spring, on the inside we may be digging ourselves deeper into self-centered despair. Again, this is when you need to reach out and get together with friends. At a time of turning the soil over on our most powerful negative feelings, we need to step into the sunshine of community and of service – volunteer to garden in the community or find a volunteer position that is of personal interest to you. Get out among people.

If you are in early recovery and unsure what is going on inside of you – what is real from what may be the obsession or a general sense of hopelessness the solution is always in connecting to other people in recovery and disclosing what you are going through. You do not have to tough it out alone. These feelings are temporary. They may last a day or a week but they will pass. Soon you will land in a comfort zone and will be present to experience the vitality of the new season. This rollercoaster ride will come to an end.

Spring’s Emotional Overhaul Part 1

April 1, 2014All Things Recovery12 step, 12 step recovery, AA, addiction, alcoholics anonymous, Alcoholism, clean, damage control, depresseion, depression, disease, disease of addiction, Drugs, exercise, Feelings, fellowship, fresh air, gratitude, health, health and wellness, heroin, holistic, Intervention, lonely, Meditation, meetings, Narcotics Anonymous, Newcomers, obsession, Powerless, reality tv, recovery, Relapse, seasonal affective disorder, sober, Sobriety, substance abuse, support, triggerpattypowers

Congratulations – if you are reading this it means you made it through the winter without killing yourself. Believe me I’m not trying to be glib. While seasonal depression hits addicts and non-addicts alike, taking lifestyle and recovery actions to ward it off during winter months can be a matter of life and death for us. Here’s a spooky fact – I wrote the opening sentence this morning then left my computer. By the time I returned this evening I’d been told of two suicides, both women with substantial clean time. While I am not certain of their situations and it’s possible other mental health issues or clinical depression may have played a part, Seasonal Affective Disorder is no joke.

For most people living in winter weather zones, this year was a doozy. If you follow this blog you’ve seen how almost every week I am writing about actions to take to arm yourself against winter depression. Some of you may have followed my suggestions and others may have felt okay at the time and didn’t see any point in it. The fact is, adapting seasonal lifestyle changes pay off later. They are preventative actions no different than when people go to meetings regularly so they have a built in habit of reaching out for help when cravings to use hit them. Here is the SAD’s risk for people in recovery – when we slip off into the emotional darkness, winter depression can inspire fantasies of suicide but thats not all – after a while our head will come up with some crazy ideas that sound sane to us such as, “Getting high is not as bad as killing yourself.” Our disease will use depression as a way to isolate us from our support group, from 12 step meetings, and from joyful activities until the darkness feeds off itself. Our addict-mind will utilize the strength our disease gains from our isolation to suggest that getting high is almost a kind of harm reduction when weighed against the threat of suicidal thoughts. Remember – the disease is subtle and patient. You must always have strategies to weaken its grip on you. This is why ongoing recovery requires vigilance. Lifestyle changes and taking affirmative actions (even when you don’t want to) are as vital to long term recovery as connecting to whatever sober support system you attend.

In 1995 I experienced my heaviest case of winter blues. Throughout the long winter I didn’t feel depressed at all, which was pretty amazing considering I probably saw daylight for less than ninety minutes per day. However, as soon as the weather cracked, the birds started chirping, and the temperatures started hitting 50, it felt like I was trapped inside a bubble, like a force was preventing me from connecting to other people or feel the joy of spring everyone else was experiencing. By the fifth week of telling myself that “this too shall pass” I wondered if maybe I was becoming a danger to myself in a real sense. Should I write down suicide hotline numbers or admit myself to Bellevue? I also blamed myself for hitting this emotional low at 7 years clean and I felt a lot of shame over not being able to pull myself out of what I mistakenly thought was self-pity. Then one day I woke up and it was gone. Joy, optimism and energy returned. I believed there was a wealth of information out there to prevent this from happening again and I have adapted it to my winter health and wellness recovery routine. This doesn’t mean there aren’t some days I feel like crying or don’t want to go outside but I’ve experienced such a great payoff for the small price walking for an hour in the cold every day that I push myself out the door no matter how much I might not want to go.

If you slacked off on self-care all winter chances are you’re feeling pretty lousy. Free-floating depression, lack of motivation, a desire to hide out from people, and a lot of beating yourself up for not trying to take better care of yourself … Am I close? It’s time to put the hammer down and stop hating on yourself. That was then and this is NOW. This is a new moment.

Close your eyes and take a few slow deep breathes. Let your breath, your pulse, your heartbeat pull you into this moment – be here now. Whenever you catch your internal dialogue starting to engage in negative self-talk inhale deeply and blow all that crappy carbon monoxide and soul sickness out of your mouth forcefully. Don’t worry – this isn’t a “let’s ignore the reality of all our unresolved issues and pretend that we are happy” exercise. It is an exercise in taking the opposite action to what you feel inclined to do. Addicts tend to invest so much into their emotional suffering that if they put it on hold for ten minutes to do something positive they feel almost like they have betrayed their dark side. hahaha. Trust me – I am speaking from personal experience. Taking positive actions does not mean that your suffering was not real. It simply means that you can occupy all spaces at all times and all are equally authentic. So CHOOSE JOY. Dress appropriately for the weather and take a good forty-five minute walk. Stay mindful and pay close attention. Look for signs of spring. Are there buds on the trees, new flower stalks sprouting from the ground, does the bark have richer color? What about the birds? Can you hear them? Can you smell spring in the air?

Today in NYC it was still pretty chilly but I got on my bike and rode until tears and snot ran down my face from pollen allergies. Ha – fuck it – I’m happy to take any sign of spring even one invisible to the eye. Today my sign was pollen and I was filled with gratitude and there was excitement in my heart.

You can give yourself an emotional overhaul. Start by making a decision to let go of yesterday’s mood and breathe your way into some optimism. Get fresh air. Buy some really colorful fruit and vegetables. When you are in the store think COLORS and pick food that is yellow, red, orange, purple, light green, dark green and blue. Throw it all together in a salad bowl – combine fruit and vegetables. Colorful, tasty and alive – like you want to feel. Now eat it while you watch a comedy you know makes you laugh super hard.

In no time we’ll be complaining about the heat so make it your mission to stay mindful and pay close attention to every detail of spring as it unfolds. A lot of restless energy and emotions will be thawing out – including your libido – so prioritize connecting to your recovery support people and share whatever craziness is making you feel unhinged. There is comfort in discovering that all the addicts in recovery you talk to will be be relating to your feelings. You aren’t alone.

In the next blog (Part 2) I will talk about the seasonal roller coaster of emotions specific to this time of year and how to find acceptance and do damage control. Remember, as long as we have war games strategies against the disease of addiction, we will not lose the battle.

FAITH SIMPLIFIED

March 19, 2014All Things Recovery12 step, AA, addiction, alcoholics anonymous, Alcoholism, Drugs, faith, Feelings, fellowship, God, gratitude, HALT, health, letting go, Meditation, meetings, NA, Narcotics Anonymous, Newcomers, recovery, Relapse, relapse prevention, relationships, sober, Sobriety, Stress, substance abuse, support, tips, trustpattypowers

I was telling a non-addict friend about how hard it is for addicts to let go of control. We are such control freaks that the lesson of “letting go” is our greatest struggle once we enter recovery – nevermind letting go on a deeper level.

I know this is pretty cornball – especially since last week I prefaced my blog with a Peggy Lee song – but I’ve been trying to find a way to write about having faith and this song suddenly popped into my head.

I really don’t know why songs that were background radio music during my childhood keep filtering into my consciousness these days but they do let me know that the answers we discover for ourselves through trial and error in the personal growth of our recovery – well – they are not new answers.

When it comes to things like “having faith” or “letting go” there are two choices on how to live: Do you want to experience the stress and emotional exhaustion of trying to control the outcome of situations, exerting your will and best laid plans? Do you want to ignore fear and allow it to be disguised as diligence and motivation to push your plans through by force? Do you want to hold onto to the superstitions or OCD behaviors that covet obsessional thinking, behaviors that create a tightening in the chest, that keep you living in the state of anticipation and dread while relying on your horoscope, your psychic, your tarot cards,or whatever extra-worldly help you hope will bend the future to your liking?
OR do you want to take a few deep breathes, acknowledge your dreams and fears, and practice living in the present moment, trusting that however the future unfolds everything will be as it should be.

If you have any doubts about letting go of fear – which shows up in the desire to maintain control even when it’s truly impossible – try this exercise: make a list of all the times you forced things to go your way. Don’t let your selective memory list only the times there were good outcomes. List the times when shit hit the fan and things didn’t work out or when the outcome was terrible. Now revisit that emotional place – do you remember how nuts you felt, the inner panic, the adrenaline spent on the mental hamster wheel of obsession compulsion and fear? Now list times when you “let go” and gave up control, times when you let life happen. When you were disappointed, how bad did the bad feel? How often were you surprised by the outcome?

Does this mean that to live a life of surrender we stop taking action? Hell no! In fact, by taking one step at a time toward your dreams it is the same as showing the universe what your intention is – then allow the future to unfold however it is supposed to. Sometimes you don’t get what you want but you definitely will end up on a ride worth taking. LET LIFE SURPRISE YOU.

Is that all there is?

March 12, 2014All Things Recovery12 step, 12-step fellowships, A&E, AA, addiction, alcoholics anonymous, Alcoholism, angry, anxiety, cocaine anonymous, depression, disease, drug-free excitement, Drugs, existential despair, Feelings, fellowship, gratitude, HALT, lonely, Meditation, Narcotics Anonymous, Newcomers, Powerless, recovery, Relapse, relationships, sober, Sobriety, Stress, substance abuse, support, tipspattypowers

When I was a little girl I would listen to Miss Peggy Lee singing, “Is that all there is? Is that all there is?” Even at seven years old I felt this song deep in my bones. Listening to it now, it so profoundly describes a feeling so familiar to addicts and alcoholics. In the song the solution is booze and dancing but in recovery how do we get through those days when we feel bored, lonely, unsatisfied and empty – days when our disease holds us hostage to these disproportionately magnified feelings?

I looked in the mirror and a blonde woman with a suntan stared back. I didn’t recognize myself. Was I really wearing pink gym shorts and sneakers? I ripped off my tortoise shell sunglasses and started looking for track marks, scars, something to prove it was really me. New Age music came over the speakers and two men began discussing their mutual enlightenment.

“John, when I first heard you lead a meditation, I found myself carried away by the melodic rhythm of your voice and suddenly I envisioned myself conducting and entire symphony around you.”

“Oh that’s beautiful” replied John as he droned on about his twenty-five years in Twelve-Step communities. That’s when it hit me. My track marks were gone. My punk rock youth was over. And all I seemed to care about was healing my inner child and shopping at the Beverly Center. My God – what happened to my personality?

I wrote the above story when I had just over two years clean. I’d been on a pink cloud most of that time, super-happy with the life I’d put together from scratch in recovery. There’d been no warning signs that everything would change with one glance into a mirror. Shortly after this experience, I shut my down my life in Los Angeles and spent six months alone in a car traveling the country, reflecting and writing a novel. Rather than allow my existential identity crisis to push me toward a relapse, it motivated me to pursue my dreams.

Fast-forward to six years later. I’m in a therapy session saying, “I go to meetings, I work out, I’m of service, I eat healthy, I have good friends, I’m in therapy – but really- big fucking deal. Is this it? Is this all there is? I feel so bored and crazy. Where’s the euphoria?” I knew I was going to leave her office and stir up the pot. The feeling of restlessness and urgency was familiar – it was what drove me out to buy drugs back in the day. I knew I didn’t want to get high but I craving something to make me feel more alive and, like with drugs, felt powerless to stop myself once the idea got into my head. Within days I’d seduced a dangerously attractive unavailable young active alcoholic and I’d started smoking. I have to admit I felt pretty badass and was charged with the electricity of that euphoric high I’d been craving.

Within weeks I was back in my therapist’s chair only now I was crying. I felt lost from myself – anchorless. All I wanted was to go back to the way I felt before I abandoned myself with escapist behaviors. And I was pissed. Why does everything that makes me feel more “alive” always have the price of self-abandonment attached to it?

I mention these two stories because in both cases I was hit by the same feeling – that life on life’s terms was not enough. At the time I didn’t know how to value peace of mind and I didn’t know how to find comfort in the grey areas of day to day life on its own terms. I was still grieving and romanticizing aspects of the unpredictability of my former drug-using life. I wanted drug-like excitement without picking up a substance.

While the first existential identity crisis lead me on a six-month odyssey of America rediscovering and challenging myself, it wasn’t an impulsive act. That road trip required patience and planning. The second story illustrates a pretty typical addict response to feelings of restlessness. It’s usually knee-jerk compulsive self-destructive behavior disguised as fun.

In recovery there will be days when life on life’s terms will not be enough to satisfy you; days when boredom will make you pace like a wild animal desperate to break out of the cage. The disease gets a lot of mileage from the language of denial. I considered myself “unstoppable” rather than compulsive. If I’d been able to recognize that the intense pull toward acting-out was a compulsion I was powerless over, I could have applied some recovery principles to it. Instead I saw surrender as a compromise of “my free spirit”. Besides, even in recovery I’ve often been willing to suffer the consequences to get what I want when I want it. Thing is – although the consequences are always the same, when I set out on a mission for thrills. I forget the price is always some version of feeling lost from myself, of being lost and anchorless at sea.

The ability to sit with my feelings – especially the ones that can be avoided by thrill-seeking behaviors – didn’t happen over night. First I had to become willing – which happened when I was no longer willing to pay the price that came with avoiding them and then I needed courage to have blind faith that if I sat with my feelings they would not destroy me. I quickly discovered that the emotional discomfort didn’t last long. Feelings pass – even cravings for excitement pass.

The key to gracefully getting through the existentially angsty days is to let go of the need to make shit happen as a solution to feelings. Sit with the feelings no matter how much the disease is screaming for you to not sit still. Trust me – this can save you ridiculous amounts of negative consequences and inner turmoil. Meditation and breathing can help with this. If you suspect that you’re meant to shift gears or make major changes, you will know it because the need to force change won’t be there. I am NOT saying that life in recovery can’t be exciting. Maybe it will be more exciting if you can stop imposing your old ideas of excitement onto it and see where you end up.

Dancing with Myself

February 28, 2014All Things Recovery12 step, AA, addiction, Alcoholism, dancem dancing, depression, Drugs, exercise, fellowship, fitness, gratitude, HALT, health, music, Narcotics Anonymous, Newcomers, recovery, Relapse, relapse prevention strategies, SADS, sober, Sobriety, Stress, substance abuse, support, winterpattypowers

If we get four more inches of snow this week it will beat NYC’s snowiest winter. Crazy! I’ve been so distracted by the constant below-zero weather I hadn’t noticed the extra snow. I have, however, noticed that the winter blahs are catching up with me – even with my active daily participation in an anti-seasonal affective disorder regiment (an hour of fresh air, exercise, and mega amounts of citrus and dark leafy vegetables). I’m not the only one feeling this way. Almost every conversation lately is about being over the weather, the need for a vacation to sunny states, and seemingly serious considerations about moving away. Although I’m dedicating this week’s post to everyone who’s had to put up with this year’s brutal winter, I’m hopeful even warm-state recovering addicts will accept my challenge.

There are two things about “cabin fever” that are especially treacherous for recovering addicts. There’s both lethargy and lack of motivation and way too much time to think about ourselves. When we’re actively participating in our life time spent overthinking is minimized. Isolated and inactive, we can think our way into despair and anxiety. I propose it is time to start moving. Have some fun and lighten up your mood.

When I was an only child in a household where there was active alcoholism, I found solace by creating dance routines in the basement. I spent a lot of time in a fantasy world where one day I would get to be one of the dancing Golddiggers on the Dean Martin Show. To prepare myself for this destiny I’d turn up the volume on my favorite tunes and dance my ass off. While my amateur dance routine days have come and gone (ironically exhausted by years on a strip club stage), this winter I keep renewing my spirit by blasting music and dancing like a fool.

Go to your music collection or to Pandora and locate the favorite tunes from your life and turn up the volume. Dance like a fool in the privacy of your own home. You can dance with your friends, with your pets, or by yourself. Try those crazy moves you know you can’t do and laugh a little. Sing along. JUST START MOVING! I guarantee that if you can keep this up for 30-45 minutes you’ll flip out by how much better you feel. Free your body and mind, dance as wildly as you can, break out in a sweat, and enjoy the fact that you still have a heartbeat (even if it feels like its going to pound right out of your chest). For 45 minutes a day you can lift your spirits and get a break from thinking about yourself. It’s a win-win and a perfect way to begin March. By the time the weather breaks you’re going to be able to translate this dance time into exercise time. For anyone who’s been on the fitness fence, take this post as a challenge. Who knows – maybe it will kickstart the desire to include regular exercise into your life.

Remember – recovery happens in mind, body, and spirit. Dance your way out of the winter blahs. You can lighten your existential load by weakening the grip of seasonal affective disorder. Have some fun!

ACOA and the Recovering Addict

February 19, 2014All Things Recovery12 step, 12-steo fellowship, AA, ACoA, addiction, adult children of alcoholics, Alcoholism, anxiety, clean and sober, cocaine anonymous, Drugs, emotional pain, Feelings, fellowship, heroin, meetings, Narcotics Anonymous, Newcomers, obsession, pain, recovery, Relapse, relapse prevention, sober, Sobriety, substance abuse, support, tipspattypowers

For ten years I lived in a cute one-bedroom railroad flat. It was a great apartment by New York standards. A railroad flat is a series of rooms that open into one another. From the desk in the furthest room I could see clear to the other end. I sublet my place in 2003 and moved into an enormous apartment in Los Angeles. The rug, which had been wall to wall in my largest room in New York, was now an area rug in the living room. There was a dining room, a large kitchen, 2 huge bedrooms, a balcony and a backyard. I arranged the furniture and put my desk in my bedroom. It took several months before I noticed that I only left my bedroom to go to the kitchen. With all this glorious space, I continued to live inside the square footage of my NYC apartment. I was going to have to make a conscious effort to spend time in different rooms until it felt natural. I’m sure people who’ve spent extended time in prisons share this experience when returning to the outside world.

Children adapt to their environment in similar unconscious ways. Children growing up in a household impacted by addiction or alcoholism will turn their fear and pain inward and adopt negative belief systems about themselves and the way the world works without question.

If you grew up in an alcoholic family and are now in recovery, you’re probably doing things and feeling things that don’t make sense to you. You watch friends who got clean around the same time as you did move forward in their life and you start thinking that maybe you’re just too broken – even for recovery. You suspect that the happiness you see in others isn’t in the cards for you so you try to practice acceptance and find gratitude for what you do have. You slogan yourself to death and jump into step work – but progress is slow and most days you are a breath away from losing whatever good mood you are having. When you’re happy you feel anxious because you know something will fuck it up, when you fall in love you brace yourself for heartbreak. You can’t understand why you can’t even really enjoy the good times without anticipating disappointment. You question whether you aren’t working a good program or think maybe you need to have more faith, do better step work, find a new sponsor, or take more commitments. (For anyone sober outside of a 12-step fellowship, you may often feel hopeless because you are out of ideas how to think your way into feeling better). You know something isn’t right but you can’t put your finger on it. You do a lot of comparing of yourself to others.

Growing up in a dysfunctional or alcoholic family, feelings from childhood have shaped your relationship to yourself and to the world and these don’t miraculously heal without being addressed. Children of alcoholics adapt the same way I adapted to a small living space. Even when there was room to move around, I didn’t. If you feel like something is keeping you boxed in – even in recovery, it is time to uncover how being a Child of an Alcoholic affected you.

The damage done in alcoholic households vary but one thing is common – children don’t feel safe. For some children of alcoholics, violence and emotional abuse is the norm and for others it’s the internalized disappointment from years of broken promises. Safety and security can be threatened by the fear of drunk driving accidents, threats of divorce, or the ongoing silent treatment between parents. Whatever forgiveness or acceptance you have gained by saying “They did the best they could with the tools they had” these words do not heal the child who was frightened, wounded or abused. Until a recovering addict addresses their ACoA issues, they continue to live inside a box constricting their freedom to grow in recovery, to find peace, self esteem, love, and to enjoy their life without waiting for the other shoe to drop. For some addicts and alcoholics, staying sober is impossible unless their ACoA issues are excavated and healed.

There are a number of books written about ACoA and trauma, there are therapists who specialize in Adult Children of Alcoholics, and of course there is the ACoA 12-step fellowship. I think 12-step fellowships are especially healing for recovering addict/alcoholics because the empathy, compassion and camaraderie provide a lovingly safe place that many ACoAs have never experienced. This safety will give you the strength and courage to work on ACoA issues (with outside help) so that you can truly experience freedom from the past. ACoA work will take you out of the one room (of your sobriety) and teach you how to move around the entire house.

This is the Laundry List (taken from www.adultchildren.org) :

The Laundry List – 14 Traits of an Adult Child of an Alcoholic
1. We became isolated and afraid of people and authority figures.
2. We became approval seekers and lost our identity in the process.
3. We are frightened of angry people and any personal criticism.
4. We either become alcoholics, marry them or both, or find another compulsive personality such as a workaholic to fulfill our sick abandonment needs.
5. We live life from the viewpoint of victims and we are attracted by that weakness in our love and friendship relationships.
6. We have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and it is easier for us to be concerned with others rather than ourselves; this enables us not to look too closely at our own faults, etc.
7. We get guilt feelings when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving in to others.
8. We became addicted to excitement.
9. We confuse love and pity and tend to “love” people we can “pity” and “rescue.”
10. We have “stuffed” our feelings from our traumatic childhoods and have lost the ability to feel or express our feelings because it hurts so much (Denial).
11. We judge ourselves harshly and have a very low sense of self-esteem.
12. We are dependent personalities who are terrified of abandonment and will do anything to hold on to a relationship in order not to experience painful abandonment feelings, which we received from living with sick people who were never there emotionally for us.
13. Alcoholism is a family disease; and we became para-alcoholics and took on the characteristics of that disease even though we did not pick up the drink.
14. Para-alcoholics are reactors rather than actors.

Is the FUN over now that I’m clean?

February 5, 2014All Things Recovery12 step, AA, addiction, Alcoholism, clean, disease, Drugs, Feelings, fellowship, fun, gratitude, HALT, heroin, life on life's terms, meetings, Narcotics Anonymous, Newcomers, obsession, Powerless, recovery, Relapse, relationships, sober, Sobriety, Stress, substance abuse, supportpattypowers

I was so grateful to finally get clean it never occurred to me to question what fun would look like in recovery. Although it made me sad, a part of me was prepared to adapt to a fun-free existence if that was the clean and sober trade off .

When I had less than 90 days clean I ended up at a 12-Step picnic in Griffith Park in Los Angeles. I’d been exposed to the hip Hollywood recovery crowd at a world convention a few months before I got clean. When I got out of rehab in New Orleans, I boarded a Greyhound Bus back to LA. I knew I needed these people in my life if I was going to make it. The only person I recognized was a teenager with 6 months clean who I’d lived with in someone’s kitchen when we were using. I kept my eye on him for some sign of acknowledgment all day while going through the motions of selling sodas for the hospitality committee. The day was a series of my self-conscious awkward attempts to fit in.

The picnic ended with a meeting. Everyone shared their gratitude for the gorgeous day and the fun they’d had – everyone that is except me. I wanted to cry. If this was what fun was going to look like in recovery, God help me. I only had one idea of fun and it was a memory or fantasy I’d been chasing for a million years. Fun would be a hotel room, a lot of drugs, a lot of money, and a lot of sex with someone who I was attracted to and excited by. Anything less was not going to cut it as fun in my books. The happier people sounded the deeper inside myself I went. I was consumed by such immense sorrow it left me lost and alone. I hated this and was not having fun. “Patty, would you like to share?” Suddenly everyone was looking at me and before I knew it I was saying out loud everything I’d been thinking. Fuck it. Too late now for pretend gratitude. When the meeting ended people told me to hang on, that it would get better. More people talked to me that night than in the previous week of meetings strung together. By the time I went to bed, I felt pretty good. I had hope that there was life after drugs.

I share this story because everyone experiences something similar to this when they first get clean. I had absolutely no clean fun reference points. I’d been high from 12 to 28 so whatever fun I’d had happened under the influence. The only thing now that was impeding my ability to have fun was my self-obsession. Feelings of insecurity, self-consciousness, and adolescent awkwardness permeated my every activity in public. The pressure I put on myself to “appear cool and unaffected” was killing me. In truth, life without drugs was unchartered territory and I’d always relied on the comfort of the emotional detachment heroin had provided in social settings. Without it I felt exposed and vulnerable.

In spite of my cynicism, I said yes to every invite and we traveled in sober packs – to concerts, to parties, to dance clubs. Soon my life was as rich as it had been before drugs isolated me. Along the way I developed deep friendships that exist to this day.

The interesting thing is rediscovering what fun means to me as I get older. Every few years, I have periods where I no longer know where I belong socially. Things that interest me now tend to be more solitary. Too much solitude- even if it’s spend doing things I enjoy – becomes lonely and I’ll think “I need to enhance my personal life, meet new people, go out and have fun” but these thoughts are filled with that question “What does fun look like to me now?” Sometimes I will go out and realize I am the oldest person in the room and start to wonder where my peers are. It can make me feel as awkward as my early days in recovery. Thankfully I have enough experience to know that if I keep an open and curious mind my experiences will reflect this. When I shared my thoughts at that picnic years ago, I discovered that I wasn’t alone. I find this to be true now too. I talk to other people who are single and over 40 or over 50 and ask them what they do for fun and – maybe it’s my generation – but it seems a lot of them are asking themselves this question and have started trying new things, testing new waters and are more than happy to include me.

It is so easy to get caught up in life and responsibility that we forget to play. If we lose our sense of playfulness and joy old ideas will creep in that say the only real fun is found in a bottle or a substance. Don’t let your disease trick you with this lie. If you feel like your life is lacking fun, commit time to exploring different things until you discover what fun looks like for you.

Patty Powers

Recovery Coach // NYC