Welcome to my Recovery Blog.
I created this blog for anyone learning how to do life without drugs or alcohol. There are 60+ entries covering situations and feelings most people come up against in early recovery and useful tools to get through them sober.
Stay tuned – I’m revamping my website.
Love,
Patty
In 2011 the internet and recovery were finding one another. It was a groundbreaking time. I’d just finished doing a series for A&E called “Relapse,” bringing the concept of sober coaching to the small screen so viewers could watch the process as active addicts and alcoholics moved from active addiction into recovery. Prior to the premiere, I was interviewed by a website called The Fix, also about to launch. They invited me to join a panel of recovery advocates and experts for the first ever live video Town Hall Recovery Forum being hosted by a website called InTheRooms. This was going to be the first time this new technology would bring together the recovery community. Kenny Pomerance, co-founder of IntheRooms, walked me through a trial run to work out any technical glitches. I believed in their their vision of 24-hour worldwide accessible free sober support. During this initial call, I felt that kind of connection you feel when you meet another person in recovery who you know beyond a shadow of a doubt if you’d met them at a meeting they’d become your new best friend.
When In-the-Rooms began hosting live video 12-step sanctioned meetings, this same intimacy and connection has been experienced by thousands of people worldwide seeking the support of one another. Since that Town Hall Forum, my travels have allowed me to spend real-life time with Kenny and RT. I’ve met their wives and friends, we’ve attended rallies and conventions together, and I’ve hung out at the ITR headquarters. Our friendship has made my life richer.
Below is an article written by Kenny (Mr. Clean) celebrating the 10th Anniversary of InTheRooms:
It’s hard to believe, but InTheRooms.com is 10 years old this week! A little over 10 years ago, I had an idea. My kids were very active on MySpace and on Facebook. I remember thinking, “wouldn’t it be great if there was a social network for people in recovery”? My good friend RT and I were wrapping up a marketing program at the time, looking for a new project, when I laid the idea on him. He immediately said, “Let’s do it!”. I thought he was being facetious, so I said, Hey, I’m serious about his”. His response was “So am I”! That’s how this started. We sat down an drew up lists of features that we wanted to see on this new Recovery site. We then transferred those lists on the back of RT’s daughter’s used science board (the original we still have today).
I have to admit, that without RT, InTheRooms never would have happened. I have had many great ideas and inventions over the years…most of them never came to fruition. I’m a dreamer, and “follow through” has always been an issue, but RT is much more of a “concrete thinker” and way more focused on the endgame. Stephen Sondheim had a great quote “Having just the vision’s no solution, everything depends on execution”. RT made our vision into a reality.
What a journey this has been. When we first started out, anonymity was a critical component of the site. People were very cautious about adding personal pictures and information on the Internet. We wanted to be behind a firewall that protected our members from the search engine “spiders”. To this day, nothing placed on ITR will ever show up in a search engine! The addiction “stigma” has significantly relaxed over the last 10 years, with people now posting their anniversaries on Facebook and Instagram for all to see.
One of the first items that we put on our “wishlist” was to have live online meetings. We soon found out that the technology wasn’t there to support them…and we put the meetings on hold.
What we weren’t prepared for, were all of the people that started their Recovery on InTheRooms. We built this site initially for people that had already had some experience in Recovery. What we found though, was that there were many members that had never been to a “face to face” meeting, and ITR was their “lifeline” to recovery. Once we started our live online meetings, that concept really took off. We found that people that had health issues, transportation problems, people on house arrest, were not able to get to meetings, parent’s that couldn’t afford babysitters, were creating support networks within the ITR community. Many other sites have tried to have online meetings. To date. ITR is still the only place that continues to have consistently running live online meetings
We love our InTheRooms members. We’d be nothing without you guys! Your loyalty, love, and service keep this site going. RT and I are forever grateful for your support!
If you have never visited InTheRooms.com. Please do, it’s FREE, you have nothing to lose. If you are a member and haven’t logged in a long time, please come back to see all the new features we have and how we have matured. We currently have 522,000 members in 136 countries. We have 33 Fellowships represented and 500 live online meetings a month to choose from. We cannot wait to see you.
Kenny P
Amid the heavy media coverage of the opioid crisis in North America, a portrait of the type of addict who enters recovery is finding its way into the minds of the general public. Anyone who’s ever watched Intervention or any HBO addiction documentary sees how low things must go before addicts and alcoholics stumble into recovery. Homelessness, degradation, loss of ties to family and loved ones, health consequences and shattered lives. While this “at home entertainment” is partially responsible for normalizing conversations about addiction at the dinner table, it does a disservice to other substance abusers because the “rehab-ready” bar is set so low. What happens to the woman drinking a bottle of wine when she gets home from work, night after night? Or the man who’s discovered that a few benzos throughout each day improves his performance on the job? Or the mom who found a doctor who refills her script and never questions the back pain she initially got Vicodin for in 2011? What happens to this population of high-functioning drug and alcohol users when even their friends say they aren’t bad enough to “qualify” for rehab or AA?
I wish there was a way to write this OUT LOUD so it jumps off the page at the reader:
It doesn’t matter how much you drink or what drugs you’re taking, if you’re reading this it’s because something has changed. You can’t seem to escape a gnawing sensation in the pit of your stomach telling you things aren’t right. Maybe the feeling’s coming from somewhere near your heart or it’s a nagging voice in your head. Your secret life involving drugs and alcohol torments you but the few times you’ve tried bringing it up to a friend, they laugh it off. Why wouldn’t they – after all, your life is completely together. They’re certain you don’t need AA or, god forbid, rehab!
You start drinking a little bit more to make these feelings disappear for another night, another month, until one day you start google searching “addiction” and “recovery” on your computer. Maybe that’s how you found yourself here, reading this essay.
After a few nights on the internet, you’ll start having thoughts like “I need to get clean and sober” which you’ll immediately counter with “What’s the rush?”. Now you’re back to the impossible task of moderating and controlling your drug and alcohol use. When control proves to be impossible, you’ll still dance around giving it up altogether. Maybe you’ll frame quitting with “I’m going to do a 90-day cleanse” or “I’m just taking a break from …” All this bargaining and deal-making is normal. It really doesn’t make any difference what you tell yourself or your friends. The only thing that matters is that you give yourself a chance. Experience firsthand what “being in recovery” means and what it feels like.
Quitting drugs and alcohol will sometimes make you feel like a fish on dry land. You’re wrestling with a force trying to undermine your efforts at every turn. You’ll find yourself debating whether or not you really needed to get clean and miss your first support group meeting. You start building a case that you don’t really qualify for a support group with “real” drug addicts and that this is something you should be able to do on your own. Next comes the bargaining process. It’s not that you’re against sobriety, you happen to love sobriety – but what are you going to do when they make a toast at that wedding you’re attending in eight months? You aren’t giving up on recovery – you want it, you really do – but it’s not the right time. You can’t be rude to the bride and groom. Next spring you will get sober.
Despite all this madness going on in your head, you decide to let people in recovery teach you how to do it. They help make the transition less agonizing. You follow their suggestions and immediately experience relief, hope and enthusiasm. You think a lot about gratitude until you lay your head down. That’s when the wheeling and dealing thought process begins, insisting you need to cut back on some of this recovery stuff. This happens to everyone but never fear – it’s not the new normal. You’ll wake up with another day clean and sober.
Here are some simple suggestions to make this as easy as possible:
Find a support group and ask them what worked for them. Call these people (or instant message if you find them online).
Get fresh air for at least 30 minutes twice a day.
Exercise – even if that means putting on your favorite tunes and dancing in your apartment even if you feel embarrassed in front of yourself.
Drink a lot of water.
Eat healthy food even if you keep consuming food that brings you comfort. Get nourishment.
Don’t stress out over sleep. Sleep might suck for a while but your life won’t fall apart over it as much as it might if you keep on the path of drugs and alcohol.
Don’t spend all your time worrying about the future. Look at an object in front of you and describe it in your mind in such detail that if you were on the phone with a painter he’d be able to capture the image perfectly.
Remember – when you start ruminating over anything that brings you anxiety or feelings of despair, take an action to get out of your head. Be a train conductor of your brain and switch tracks. A few jumping jacks will do the trick.
Every time your head tells you the words forever, never and always recognize that it is a trick. Approach recovery one day at a time and let life surprise you. This is a brand-new experience. There’s no point projecting what it’s going to be like or what it will feel like. You’ll only find out by living it.
People in recovery like to overthink things. It’s probably a holdover from active addiction. I realize not everyone in recovery is a member of a 12-step fellowship but there are definitely perks for those in them. The collective wisdom passed down from one recovering addict to another is of immeasurable value. All over the world, recovering addicts share similar eye-opening revelations they’ve experienced and these shared insights turn into the often-repeated sayings we hear in meetings.
“We can’t think our way into new feelings but we can act our way into new thinking.” (Or some variation of this). We hear this solution – that action changes feelings – yet we continue to overthink, ruminate, and obsess in a vain attempt to control how we feel. Overthinking is never a solution. Usually all it does is increase stress and keep us trapped in our discomfort and confusion. We long for change yet we fear it – unless, of course, we are in control of it. There’s no comfort in familiar misery but in early recovery the concept of “letting go” is confusing and difficult to grasp. We usually let go when the pain is great enough. Until then, we hang onto our old belief in self-reliance that’s hardwired by fear. Without solutions we stay trapped in our heads with emotional discomfort.
For anyone new to recovery the greatest suffering happens when we are left alone with our mind for stretches of time. Once the substance or compulsive behavior is gone, our brain experiences a dopamine deficit and this creates anxiety until it finds homeostasis. Our mind’s racing and it feels like we’re going crazy. Even the air stings our raw nerve endings. What’s a newcomer to do?
You can reduce the intensity of withdrawal and early recovery anxiety by taking actions but this requires a conscious daily commitment on your part. Trust me, the addict-mind will try to hold you hostage in prolonged isolation. It’s easy to lose hours sitting at the kitchen table thinking your way into a level of anxiety that’s paralyzing. This makes it hard to get the day started or find motivation to create new habits of self-care.
Here are actions to take:
Call people and make plans so you aren’t spending too much time alone. (Maybe this means going to a meeting or getting together with other people in recovery).
Get outside – take a long walk, look at whatever nature is around you. Fresh air lowers stress.
Do something physical – go to the gym, take an exercise class, yoga, a bike ride, jogging, jump rope, swim or play a sport. Get your body moving for at least 30-60 minutes. (Make an effort – baby steps if you haven’t been active in years).
Eat healthy food and don’t skip meals. Newly clean and sober people have a tendency to go for sugar, bread, and caffeine – mood-changing foods. What they don’t realize is that the mood this diet may lead to is depression and lethargy. Be mindful to get in enough healthy food to balance this out.
If you do all of the above on a regular basis, your body will respond positively. You will sleep better and have more energy. You will also experience less mood-swings.
Cravings always come from feelings. Stress is where they begin. You have the power to control this – the choice is yours. Action not thinking is the way out.
Whenever you start to feel anxious – if you talk to someone who triggers you, if you have to go somewhere or deal with a situation that’s stressful – have quick stress-deactivator tools on hand. Here is what to do: before entering a situation that’s triggering take ten slow deep breaths. Inhale through your nostrils until you feel completely full of air and then blow this air slowly out of your open mouth until you feel like an empty balloon. This will relax you. Anytime you feel any level of stress, breathe like this. Whenever you feel your stomach or chest tighten, excuse yourself from the person or situation and get some fresh air or go to the restroom for some deep breathing. This only takes a few minutes. YOU HAVE THE POWER TO STOP STRESS FROM BUILDING UP BY ADDRESSING IT AS IT HAPPENS.
Allow yourself several minutes throughout the day to deactivate stress. This is damage control. This way day to day stress won’t pile up until thoughts of using pop into your head as a solution. This will leave you more room for joy.
When I was getting high I didn’t spend time thinking about what life would be like if I wasn’t getting high. That’s the truth. I knew a day would come (which I could hopefully put off as long as possible) when I’d have to give up certain drugs or get serious about trying to control them. Living without drugs and alcohol never crossed my mind.
When I finally got clean it felt like I’d landed on a parallel universe, one where everything was familiar yet indescribably different. My awareness of small moment-to-moment experiences ran at a high frequency and anything could trip me up. I was consumed by a self-consciousness I hadn’t experienced since puberty. Every single thing I did was a “first time clean” experience and I knew it because my awakening emotional life was now along for the ride. Learning how to live life on life’s terms that first year was like an acid trip without the acid –exciting, terrifying, and uncomfortably amusing. There’s much truth to the saying “Buckle up. You’re in for the ride of your life.”
July 4th is almost here, the first long weekend of summer. There’ll be barbeques, house parties, rooftop parties, fireworks, and gatherings of family and friends. It’s a big party weekend and days leading up to it kick up a lot of feelings for people in early recovery. Everyone’s asking, “What are you doing for the fourth?” adding to the insurmountable social pressure you’re already experiencing. You’re worried that if you don’t make a plan you’ll be alone or forgotten. You already know how the holiday plays out with your family so that’s out. A few people are going to watch fireworks but so far no one’s directly invited you along. Horrific feelings of anticipated rejection are eating you alive. When did you become so sensitive? There are incoming calls from numbers you deleted when you first got sober but you don’t pick up and old friends are suddenly texting you invites to parties where you know everyone’s going to be getting wasted. Those used to be great parties. You used to love the Fourth of July. You start fantasizing about showing up just to see how everyone’s doing and forget to mention the texts to anyone in your support group. This stupid holiday has had you vacillating between excitement and dread for over a week. Everyone around you seems to be unaffected by it which only isolates you more in your head. Maybe you won’t do anything – just stay home and wait for July 5th.
I’ve included the inner dialogue in the above paragraph so people having their first clean and sober Independence Day will know that thoughts and feelings like these are pretty common in early recovery. It’s hard not to trip when fear of the unknown is equally matched by a selective memory replaying scenes from holidays gone by before drugs and alcohol had become a problem. Stay safe and have fun. Enjoy this weekend. You have many holidays ahead and you’ll be comfortable to go anywhere in ways you can’t even imagine yet. There’s a lot to be gained by spending your first sober Independence Day with people in recovery – even if you barely know them. Find out what’s going on and invite yourself along. One thing is certain; by the end of the day you’ll know them much better.
There’s a saying that’s so familiar yet one most addicts and alcoholics in recovery continually forget. “Pain is optional”.
How many times do we have to hit the same wall before we start doing things differently? The answer varies from one recovering addict to the next. In early recovery, we blindly make choices that lead us toward pain. Often it ‘s because we haven’t yet acquired a deeper personal insight into how the disease of addiction manifests. Pain still masquerades as a familiar friend, a constant gnawing, a sense that all is not well or that the other shoe is about to drop. It’s fighting for territory against the threat that recovery might actually take hold. That’s why in early recovery we stick super close to our support group. We hang onto, “This too shall pass” (which it does) and we start to taste freedom. We gain tools for living and for coping with our emotions. This is recovery. Life gets better and we start to feel good.
Then something interesting seems to happen to everyone once we put together some clean time: we make choices that lead us back to emotional pain. Sometimes we can look back and pinpoint our choice and see that is happened when difficult feelings surfaced around fearful situations or insecurities. Other times, we can’t explain what the hell we were thinking. There are even times when we knew there’d be a price for acting out and we simply didn’t care and headed toward our desires with complete abandon. We may have even claimed that we were willing to pay the price for it.
The first time I consciously chose to act out was around the six or seven year clean mark. I wasn’t completely satisfied with where my life was at. Though I could easily say it was better than it had ever been, it wasn’t aligning to where I wanted it to be. A lifestyle of healthy activities and self-care had become the fabric of my routine and no longer felt like individual achievements that excited me. I was bored. That was the crime – boredom. I remember telling my therapist that I just wanted to feel euphoria. It was springtime and I was restless. For me, that meant I wanted to make love, romance, or a sexual adventure happen. I even said to her that I knew there’d be a price and I was willing to pay it. Several weeks later I was back in her office crying that I felt empty. I may have even said “godless”. It was a familiar existential yearning and despair that reminded me of how I felt coming off a coke run. I didn’t like it. Her response stuck with me. She said that when I was telling her I was willing to pay the price, she knew that I had absolutely no recollection of what the price felt like. When I was feeling it though, it was all too familiar. A time travel of sorts to an emotional place I’d worked hard to get away from.
The disease of addiction is like that. Call it denial or call it amnesia, the disease is always going to resurface and lead us toward pain if we allow it. In recovery we have a choice most of the time. It’s found in the pause and patience we practice before acting.
Yesterday I was talking to a friend who’s been in recovery for over thirty years. For 16 of them she worked vigilantly to find peace, unaware that she was also being undermined by an undiagnosed bi-polar disorder. Later she experienced the long slow death of her mother and several years after that her life was upended by one of her kids becoming addicted to meth. She navigated these minefields by staying deeply engaged in her recovery process. Yesterday she was telling me how fantastic she felt and how happy she was with her life. For a steady period of time now it’s been blossoming. The fruits of her labors include a successful business, drug-free children, a reinvigorated sex life with her husband, and an upcoming dream vacation. Next she admitted to sending several emails to someone who’d caused her years of emotional turmoil and her disappointment that he hadn’t responded and how she was now thinking of inviting another former relationship back into her life. Of course as she casually mentioned both of these people, she wasn’t remembering the turmoil or emotional abuse that comes with them. Until she spoke her plans out loud to someone, she had been unable to see what these tentative actions could bring. We wondered why sometimes it’s so hard to allow ourselves to be happy. After philosophizing for several minutes we remembered the disease. Of yes, it may be decades later, but it’s still there trying to orchestrate pain back into our lives IF we allow it.
It can be argued that this experience isn’t exclusive to addicts and alcoholics but for us the consequences are greater. If we feel bad long enough our brains are wired to remind us that there is a solution – if only temporary – to our pain, The long game is for that solution to be found in drugs and alcohol. This is why we learn to pause, to share our secrets, and to recognize that we always have a choice. The road does get narrower. We learn that when we act out in certain ways, we volunteer for the inevitable soul-emptiness we experience when we surrender our serenity. The trick is to be able to remember this truth.
The following post is based on a series of conversations that keep popping up lately. I use a masculine pronoun but this story is not gender specific. Perhaps this blog will hit home for some people new to recovery. To be clear, the situation I’m describing involves having a partner who’s a casual consumer of substances – not someone heavily dependent or in the grips of their own addiction.
You did it. You’re finally clean and sober. What an achievement! Maybe you’ve even been exercising, hitting some yoga classes, and spending as much time as you can with your new sober friends. In fact, the only thing that feels shitty is going home to your partner.
Driving home you find yourself praying his car won’t be in the driveway. Sometimes just the thought of him unleashes a flood of negative feelings you swallow down. You walk into the house and feel the hate rising when you see him. Oblivious, he smiles and asks how the meeting went. Then he gets up to give you a kiss and inwardly you collapse into confusion, wondering if you’re going to have to divorce him. You see, he isn’t tormented over his substance use and has no desire to stop. Because he suffered through your suffering, he was 100% behind your decision to get clean. Compared to what you’ve heard from other people in recovery, you have it easy. No complaints when you head out to a 12-step meeting after dinner, always willing to watch the kids, to leave parties early, and not force you to go anywhere you feel jeopardizes your recovery. Yet, you resent him so much for not offering to quit using for you that you’ve convinced yourself the clock’s ticking on this relationship. When you aren’t angry, you feel guilty or jealous. Sometimes you start wondering if being sober is worth it.
Do you remember what motivated you to enter into recovery? It was the solution to your pain and suffering. Try not to lose sight of this simple truth. After you’ve been sober for a short time and the pain diminishes, you may get amnesia and forget why you are sober. What’s really happening is that with the pain of using gone, you’re starting to experience an avalanche of feelings. This is the “roller-coaster” you hear people in recovery talking about. Usually it’s like being hit by waves of anxiety and depression. Your mind will try to search for something to blame it on. Fear of feelings always underlies our attempts at control. If we can figure out who or what is at the source of our emotional discomfort, we can get rid of it. Or in this case, get rid of him. The disease-mind will start laser focusing on the problem and convince you that you have two choices – leave him or drink. Black and white thinking. Divorce or drink.
While it’s normal to feel disappointed that you can’t always get what you want, you do have a choice about whether to see the glass half full or half empty. Loving support is valuable. Stay in conscious gratitude for anything that is making it easier for you to attend to your sober needs. At this time keep the focus on yourself and stay close to your support system. Continue to exercise, meditate, go to meetings and talk about your feelings with your sober friends and therapist (if you have one). Remember, no one responds well to the pressure of recruitment. Try to accept that for now he may not have the same relationship to drugs and alcohol that you have. If he isn’t suffering, he isn’t suffering – and without a private pain connected to his using, there’s nothing to motivate him into recovery. Very few people surrender in any kind of real way if it is forced upon them. No one knows what the future holds but one thing is true – the disease-mind uses words like “never” and “forever” in connection to all unpleasant feelings and difficult life situations. This is untrue. Our lives (and our inner-lives) are ever-changing. Keep the focus on yourself. Practice patience and tolerance, and apply the golden rule by treating him with the love compassion and respect that you want for yourself. Stay close to your support and allow time to pass. More will be revealed.
The emotional roller-coaster has very little to do with anything other than your brain chemistry responding to being cut off from drugs and alcohol. It will eventually come to an end and your emotions will stabilize. You’ll experience moments of equanimity and be able to assess your situation, your needs, and your relationship more clearly. This may be a time to consider couples’ therapy to work through any distress that may linger.
Applying “live and let live” isn’t always easy, especially when it involves your intimate romantic relationship or life partner. As a newcomer it’s better to trust in the process of recovery and allow some time to pass rather than take impulsive actions in response to chaotic feelings. Avoid causing irreparable damage you may regret.
Have you ever changed the time on your clock as a solution to constant lateness? Let me guess. This was successful once or twice and then you started factoring in the minutes left in “real-life” time and were back at square one – experiencing insurmountable stress around being late.We’ve all been there.
The craziest part of this scenario (as if trying to trick ourselves with a fake time wasn’t crazy enough) is that, as addicts, we suffer from what I call “reality-amnesia”. This means, despite evidence that this mind-trick to control time and reduce stress didn’t work 100 times, we focus on the two times it worked as proof that it’s a viable solution. I think “reality-amnesia” is at the core of the expression “doing the same thing expecting different results”.
This destructive relationship to time isn’t unique to addicts. What is unique is that if left unaddressed, it sustains ridiculously high levels of stress and an accompanying inner-monologue of negative self-talk that makes living in the moment impossible. In other words, it keeps you trapped in the same familiar loop of beating yourself up that you were in before getting clean and sober. The crazy part is that this form of self-hating behavior is optional. Yes – optional.
There are many reasons why creating a daily and weekly schedule makes sense for people new to recovery. The main one is to reduce stress and to build in activities that make you feel good. The other is because people in early recovery are prone to feeling easily overwhelmed and when life gets busy, amnesia sets in and an inner bargaining voice takes over pleading a case built on “logic” for skipping activities conducive to long-term sobriety (such as staying home instead of going to a meeting or not responding to calls from your sober support group). It’s so important during the first six months clean to create healthy habits to improve coping skills, reduce stress, and increase feelings of wellbeing. This includes building mutually nurturing relationships with other sober people. The way to do this is to plan out a schedule so that you can pace yourself in a healthy way.
Make a schedule to include your recovery activities (12 step meetings or alternative, fun activities with sober friends) as well as exercise, yoga, meditation, fresh air. Permit yourself an appropriate amount of time alone to rest and rejuvenate yourself (hot bath, Netflix, gardening or whatever you do to unwind). Inner peace comes from balancing life-tasks, health and wellness, recovery activities (therapy, 12-Step, or whichever alternative you follow), time with friends, and quiet time.
Keeping everything in your head without making a schedule you can look at is another version of hell for the newcomer. As soon as the alarm clock goes off your inner monologue starts up. It sounds like a never-ending to-do list that is at battle with the negotiating inner-voice confusing you further with all its “give up this so you can do that” bargaining. Before you’ve even opened your eyes you’re feeling overwhelming pressure. This will distract you with inertia. Next thing you know it’s time to be out the door and you aren’t ready – now you’ll be late and the familiar stress of the race against time is upon you hardcore.
As far as playing “beat the clock”, if you wake up Monday morning with a prepared schedule that includes travel time, it will be easier to pace yourself appropriately. The key is to follow this type of routine for 90 days. In that time many of the activities will be producing good feelings and will be noticeably reducing stress.
I challenge you to use a written daily/weekly schedule for 90 days and judge the results for yourself. Less stress is possible by stopping the game of beat the clock. The choice is yours.
Does anyone remember the Scorsese film “After Hours”? At the start of the film Griffin Dunne watches his last $20 bill float out a cab window and it is a catalyst for a night of chaos in downtown 1980s New York City. Every scene builds with chaos and insanity and a colorful cast of menacing weirdos. To the average audience it probably seemed like a high-stress falling down a rabbit hole Alice in Wonderland but to people who’ve lived with addiction it’s more like watching “chaos-lite”.
In case you ever forget what life was really like in active addiction, listen to the stories being recounted by people who are newly sober. The events taking place and the cast of characters usually falls somewhere between the epic Dante’s Inferno and Monty Python – and this is recounting twenty four hours or less. They’re recounting only one story from one of many hundred days spent living on the edge. The stories that come out of these experiences are riveting. They easily rival the big screen. They have it all – drama, action, comedy. In the telling (and the spirit-saving grace of irony) hilarity helps to make the pain bearable. For anyone who has lived it through this lens, it is like living life at a distance. To survive, we learn to detach.
I call this “my life as a movie” storytelling. Almost all emotional context is missing from these stories. Although they are personal, they sound like re-telling a movie recently viewed. It is common among addicts. The unreality life takes on under the influence. The more unbelievable things get, the better the story.
I have to admit that I was pretty entertained by the craziness of my life when I was getting high. Drugs exposed me to people and situations that kept me amused and curious. For a while, the unfolding story brought me as much pleasure as the high. Life felt epic. Managing crisis after crisis was a challenge and I was good at living by my wits.
The progression, like addiction, is that the pain usurps the pleasure and the entertainment value is lost. Instead of hilarious characters, you discover yourself surrounded by people you don’t care about and who definitely don’t care about you. It’s more evidence of being trapped by the lonely prison of addiction.
When you get clean and start attracting attention for your storytelling it can kick up bizarre feelings. On one hand, what you lived through and laugh at was really painful but you will start to miss it. Life clean may feel uncreative and uninspiring. The transition can be painful for people who found twisted pleasure and ridiculousness in pain. Getting clean may feel like going from Technicolor to black and white.
What is happening is that your current story is becoming more complex. Now there is an emotional life that accompanies you throughout each day. It may feel difficult at first and your head will romanticize the past as being more “care-free”. Find some humor in this – maybe you’re confusing “care-free” with “pain-free” which was not the case. Our distorted perceptions can amuse us while we land back into reality if we let them. Adjusting to new circumstances takes time. Find people in recovery to seek out new experiences.
I think it’s important for people who relish chaos and living by their wits to discover activities or hobbies they can become passionate about. You can have big experiences and be clean and sober. Trust me, there will be plenty to laugh at.
Maybe what you need is to challenge yourself physically or intellectually. Facing yourself and your fears clean is a challenge that should not be under-estimated. You can’t go from living a completely external existence to living a completely internal one. Stay engaged because you can’t afford to lose interest in your own life. Get involved in your fellowship, do service in your community, create friendships, find out what floats your boat and dive into the stream of things. The worst thing you can do if you are an adventure seeker is to dial your life down to a low frequency. Community is where you will find the laughter.
Not everyone found personal thrills from living on the edge during active addiction. They may not relate to this blog however the recovery advice stands alone. Passion, fulfillment and a sense of purpose will enrich everyone’s personal recovery.
Eventually traveling the road of recovery you’ll discover that the thrill of drama and chaos becomes less attractive. You’ll make choices that enhance inner peace without losing your personal edge. There will be no need to push the envelop all the time. This process happens naturally so don’t bother trying to rush it. Stay in the recovery game and change happens.
I began 2014 with a commitment to spend the year blogging more about how to enrich an already clean and sober lifestyle – how to have more fun and increase feelings of wellbeing. For 2015 I want to get back to basics and address early recovery – creating coping skills, what to expect, and how to ride out the tough spots without relapsing.
There is a misconception that the majority of people who get clean do it as part of a New Year’s resolution. If that were the case, every January there would be ridiculous amounts of people celebrating anniversaries in 12-Step programs. I’m talking out of the ballpark numbers. The truth is, attendance at most 12-Step meetings doesn’t go up noticeably in January. My guess is that many addicts spend January and February deep in self-loathing for not being able to comprehend why their countless attempts to control or abstain keep failing. Maybe January is a month for New Year Resolutionists to hit bottom. This year my blog is geared to helping people create lifestyle changes to support sustainable recovery, ease stress, and put an end to isolation.
Whenever I begin working with new clients one of my goals is to create new healthy lifestyle habits, create a weekly routine and to guide them through their resistance to all of it. There’s a predictable pattern. They start out willing to do whatever I suggest because they want to stay clean and sober and are motivated by fear of failure. A couple weeks into this routine and they’re complaining that they’re exhausted, that they can’t keep going at this pace without everything in their life falling apart, and that I can’t possibly understand how serious this is. I call this the “whiney phase’. This is when we fine-tune the routine to make sure there’s enough balance so they’re not in a genuine prolonged state of HALT (hungry angry lonely tired). This crankiness (which usually occurs between 14-30 days) passes and the benefits of implementing these new activities begin kicking in to bring on good feelings and a noticeable lessening of stress.
Anyone’s who been to rehab remembers the intense daily schedules – moving from one activity to the next. God knows I never was happy to be doing jumping jacks in a rainy yard early in the morning. Every day the addicts would get together and complain that the seemingly pointless daily routine business was because they needed to justify keeping us for 30 plus days.
Here is why it is important to create a weekly schedule in early recovery:
1. The worst-case scenario is for a newly sober addict to have hours pass with nothing to do except think. The disease is still very strong and loud in the weeks following that last drug or drink. The “feed me feed me feed me” mantra is the basis of restlessness, anxiety, depression, insomnia, mood swings, even physical symptoms of extended withdrawal. It can make us believe a headache is surely evidence of the need for a future lobotomy. And the worst part of all of this inner chatter is that left alone, our humor about ourselves dwindles rapidly. Taking the “edge off” becomes appealing and less frightening.
2. Exercise, yoga, meditation, healthy eating, time with friends, leisure time for activities (sports/movies/live music/dancing/comedy), 12-step meetings (or whatever recovery support groups you attend) added onto your daily routine will promote energy, mental clarity, reduce stress, improve sleep and leave you less time to think about yourself in negative ways. Regardless of what hopeless negative chatter your mind may want to kick up, you will have evidence that each day you are staying on point and are willing to go to ANY LENGTH to stay clean and move toward goals of happiness, inner peace, and freedom from fear of feelings. Your daily life is recovery in action.
How does all of this begin – especially for people who are new to recovery doing this on their own?
Create a hard copy (pen and paper) weekly calendar and a copy into your cell calendar with notifications. Each morning set alarm reminders on your phone for activities, appointments, meetings etc. Find a system that works for you. The main thing is that you plan your week ahead of time so you don’t spontaneously over-commit yourself at the expense of screwing up your day.
Here is an example of a weekly recovery plan.
Make a list of 12-Step (or alternative) meetings you will attend for one week. This way you won’t agree to working overtime or driving the kids without knowing what is at stake and having time to find an alternative meeting you can put into your schedule rather than believing you’ve screwed up and now have to miss the meeting. Remember – sustainable recovery is something you build through effort. By sticking to this early recovery lifestyle to-do list you have daily evidence that recovery IS your priority no matter what negative crap goes on in your head.
In your weekly planner include 30-60 minutes a day outside (walking, exercising, relaxing). Include 3-5 hour slots for fitness (whatever that looks like for you).
Make time to spend with other recovering addicts/alcoholics and a checklist of new people to contact via email, on www.intherooms.com chat, phone calls. Reach out and try to build a support group.
Always plan so that you have food and time to eat. Skipping meals or waiting too long to eat tends to make people cranky, outright angry, or weepy.
If you feel like you have been running non-stop to get everything done from the minute your alarm went off until you are about to turn in – take an extra 20 minutes to unwind with some music, YouTube a calming guided meditation, take a relaxing bath, or create your own end of day chill out space to reflect and unwind.
In the coming weeks I will elaborate on every activity that helps strengthen recovery and explain not only how to do it without it costing any money but also what the short and long-term payoffs are.
Remember – within the first couple weeks of following a daily recovery routine it’s normal to feel exhausted and overwhelmed and want to crawl back in bed and say fuck it. Power through this phase. Remember the agony of creating healthy habits is temporary and nothing compared to the agony of wanting to get clean and being unable to surrender again.