Tag Archives: obsession

Becoming the friend you want to be

August 13, 2013All Things Recovery12 step, AA, addiction, Alcoholism, anxiety, beer, booze, clean, depression, disease, drug abuse, Drugs, exercise, Feelings, fellowship, friendship, grief, HALT, help, heroin, Intervention, meetings, meth, Narcotics Anonymous, Newcomers, obsession, recovery, rehab, Relapse, relationships, remorse, shame, sober, Sobriety, sobriety tips, Stress, substance abuse, support, tips, treatment, trigger, weedpattypowers

When I used to try to kick heroin by the second night my brain would be up caught in a video loop of every terrible thing I ever did to anyone who ever cared about me. I’d never been held accountable for the majority of it. Only I knew how far I’d fallen from being the kind of person I wanted to be. I loved my family, my husband, and my friends yet at the end I was alone. It was my form of damage control. I hated what and who I’d become and I couldn’t stop using. I was truly hopeless. Nothing stirred the heart-sickness in me more than replaying the ways I’d behaved with the people who’d cared. The pain this caused was so unbearable that I could never stay clean through it. I always picked up on the third day.

I’ve watched countless addicts go through this exact same process while detoxing. Witnessing their despair while the unrelenting disease of addiction kept replaying these old tapes, I was able to make a connection between these specific feelings and the addict’s overpowering obsession to use again. Despite all the other major destruction we create while using, it is the shame, remorse, guilt, and regret from the pain we have caused others, from seeing the evidence that we are no longer the person we know we can be, are meant to be, that causes us the most grief when we are getting clean and in early recovery.

When we get clean we usually aren’t aware of when we bring old behaviors into new friendships until there are consequences. How many times have you canceled plans with a friend at the last minute because something more exciting came along or because you just didn’t feel like doing anything never considering that it showed a lack of respect for someone else’s time? Or worse, lied to get out of a commitment and got caught? When have you given an honest unsolicited opinion and not realized how hurtful it was until your friend stopped calling you back?

Each of us have our own moral compass that guides us to live in accordance with our higher self. We usually know when we’re off course by a feeling in our gut that tells us something is not right. This is a good thing. It teaches us how to be the person we truly want to be. In recovery we learn how to be a better friend – and this matters because when we hurt people in recovery, not only do we feel shame, guilt, remorse and regret, our disease will start to play the old tapes of a lifetime of bad behavior to others and amplifies our shame. These feelings have the power to trigger cravings again.

What qualities do you value most in a friend? Do you value loyalty, trust, support, a sense of humor, someone who accepts you without judgment? Someone who is forgiving? What else is important to you? Does this describe you?

To get an honest appraisal of your friend-skills ask yourself these questions. Also note when your behaviors line up with what you’ve listed as qualities you value in a friend.

Do you play different roles – strong with some and helpless with others?

Are you a people pleaser continually brushing aside feelings of resentment or anger?

Are you a giver or a taker or do you fall somewhere in the middle?

Are you a fixer or the friend always asking for advice?

Do you strategically seek out friendships that get you closer to the dream job or a person of romantic interest?

Do you have friendships of convenience but you never get invested emotionally?

Do you sustain long-term relationships, and if so what do those relationships look like.

The difficult part is to see where your behavior benefits you in some way. When you are giving is it because there is something you want in return? Do you manipulate others to get your own way? Do you use guilt or the silent treatment rather than communicate how you feel? Do you keep score? Do you ask for advice to avoid personal responsibility?

Some of you will be pleasantly surprised to discover that you are what you seek. Anyone new to recovery may find this exercise very uncomfortable – but don’t despair because there is a solution. List every behavior that you want to eliminate and for the next week make a conscious effort to take the opposite action. Put in some effort and change happens. You’re worth it.

With Willingness We Find Our Way

July 28, 2013All Things Recovery12 step, AA, addiction, Alcoholism, anorexia, anxiety, clean, depression, disease, Drugs, eating disorders, Feelings, fellowship, HALT, health, meditate, Meditation, meetings, Narcotics Anonymous, obsession, panic attack, Powerless, recovery, Relapse, sober, Sobriety, Stress, support, tips, trigger, willingnesspattypowers

We all have different paths (and are entitled to them) but we share the same goal – freedom from self-inflicted pain, a loving relationship with self, and to find inner peace. As long as we have willingness, we will find our way.

I have a friend in recovery who HATES it when I break things down in terms of the “disease” of addiction. Although she has been clean for four years and attends 12 Step meetings, she has never been able to open her mind up to the possibility that addiction is a disease. For me, the disease concept is the one thing that’s made it possible to unravel my twisted thinking and impulsive wiring toward self-destructive behaviors and has allowed me to develop new skills to break the cycles.

In her defense, I have always had the same sort of recoil from talk about higher powers, although conceptually I see how beneficial they are to the process of finding meaning and safety. In either case, a certain amount of fantasy and creative imagining has to be invested – though there is neurological evidence of the brain disease of addiction. My friend has made it clean four years without a disease concept or a God. She has made it on willingness to follow direction from people who have more experience dealing with life clean and sober. That has been enough for her.

At two years clean she developed an eating disorder. We were just getting to know one another while I was in her city when she confided to me a violent episode that had happened in her youth. From the moment I returned to New York and our friendship turned to instant messages and emails, it became apparent that her anxiety was going through the roof. She was crying all the time and her legs were cramping uncontrollably. She was sleeping two or three hours a night and forgetting to eat. Whatever suggestions I gave, she’d forget as soon as we said good-bye. At first it was impossible for me to understand why she wasn’t taking any sort of self-care actions when she was so clearly in physical and emotional pain. It only made sense when she told me that I was the first person she’d ever told the story about the abuse.

It made perfect sense to me what was going on when I broke it down in “disease” terms. Something terrible had happened to her. She was a victim yet carried the blame and shame. The disease loves blame, shame, and secrets. For fifteen years this had been her secret. While her love for her young daughters was the impetus for getting clean and attending meetings to stay clean, she’d chosen a sponsor who used her as a babysitter and was uninterested in moving her forward in step work. In fact, as her weight fell away and she decided to go to therapy at my insistence, her sponsor shamed her over it, saying that she looked great and it was all in her head – as if she’d concocted the anxiety to get attention. It was a replay of the relationship she’d had with her adoptive mother. Every step of the way toward seeking help, her disease struck harder. The trauma she’d experienced at 15 continued to hold her down. This wasn’t surprising considering most addicts have trauma in their background. Whether we used because of the trauma or if it was a catalyst to fuel the disease is like asking the chicken and the egg question. The facts on paper: 30 year old woman with an addict birth mother, drug and alcohol use, sexual trauma at 15 and an increase of drug abuse – rehab at 28. Shedding light on her secret was followed by extreme anxiety that preceded anorexia.

In recovery terms, there were actions that could have helped but she was incapable of taking them. To her credit – and I believe this should be typed in bold for anyone reading this paralyzed by feelings and behaviors yet unable to take action – she continued to attend meetings throughout the next eighteen months of physical and emotional hell and new women came into her life with substantial clean time and they led her to a new sponsor. This carried her until she was ready to get help. She hated going to meetings, hated hearing about the disease and about God but she went anyway. I believe WILLINGNESS is the launch of an arrow, its tip cutting through space changing all of the molecules in its path. It causes change to happen.

The most interesting thing to me in witnessing anorexia in action is that early in the process, there were very strong parallels to how the disease of addiction works and the tools we use in recovery may have altered its course. At a certain point the anorexia took on its own twist and it needed very different tools to heal it. Ultimately the process will involve intensive trauma work.

I began writing this blog entry because I wanted to discuss the disease concept and how grasping a thorough working definition will help you to address any issues, past or present, in order to have sustainable long term recovery. It has been a very long and difficult path for my friend but through trial and error she is discovering for herself that the disease concept gives our creative mind a chance to understand how it operates on us individually so that we can change its course before it either leads us in a direction of relapse or toward death by other means.

In upcoming blogs, I’ll be writing more about my theory of the disease of addiction and a way to gain an understanding of how it seems to trick us into behaviors away from health, wellness, and inner peace and how recovery tools really can combat it.

This friend wrote a blog that I posted earlier this year for Eating Disorder Awareness Month. I am very happy to announce that she is currently seeking help at an inpatient treatment facility. I believe she will flourish and become a positive power of example to many others she will encounter on her journey. I have her permission to write this entry.

Recognizing Springtime Triggers

May 10, 2013All Things Recovery12 step, A&E, AA, adderall, addiction, Alcoholism, ambien, booze, clean, disease, Drugs, Feelings, fellowship, fresh air, gratitude, health, heroin, klonopin, lonely, meditate, Meditation, meetings, meth, Narcotics Anonymous, Newcomers, NYC, obsession, oxycotin, Powerless, reality tv, recovery, Relapse, relationships, sober, Sobriety, support, tips, trigger, weed, xanaxpattypowers

Spring has finally sprung. If this is your first season change clean and sober I’m here to discuss a new trigger that is probably creating some discomfort for you. Sometimes it’s just reassuring to know that the weird shit tripping up your mood, your mind, and maybe even your overall wellbeing is nothing unusual in the realm of recovery. I always find comfort in knowing that my twisted assessment of my own mental health isn’t unique. In terms of recovery, identification is a step toward dismantling the power of disease-thinking (the stuff that can lead us away from recovery and toward relapse).Disease-thinking (our addict-mind) has a way of taking an hour of emotional discomfort and convincing us that these bad feelings are NEVER going to go away EVER, that life is going to suck always, that pain is here to stay. It’s almost comical when years into the recovery process you catch yourself investing in this lie until a light bulb goes on and you remember that you’re temporarily lost in a hall of mirrors and that – yes – this too shall pass.

The number one heart-stopper for people in recovery seems to be the first sighting of outdoor cafés that serves liquor. I mean – the whole package will hit you and wax poetic nostalgia – those balmy evenings or lazy Sunday afternoons lounging around killing a few margaritas or sangria or wine or beer or whatever you ever drank outside. In the memory you are peacefully alone and buzzed or having an amazing time with friends. You are younger, better looking, happier, fitter, richer, more playful – basically your memory will go back to a time when getting loaded was without consequences and when you really had your game on. And during that moment of memory you will feel your heart breaking and a voice will pop into your head that will tell you that this is where you draw the line. “How can you give up the outdoor summer partying? You will never stay sober. You will never again feel that happy.” The whole of your Being will be filled with longing. (Mind you – what I’m describing happens within seconds of catching a glimpse of that place from the corner of your eye but it will hit you with such force that it will be impossible to comprehend that it is simply a feeling and that it’s going to pass).

This is a perfect example of how the disease works. Total amnesia of all the pain and suffering that came along as a result of substance abuse. The focus is narrowed down to specific body memory of relaxation, joy, and probably a time where there was far less responsibility and accountability in your life. This is the siren song the Viking heard before he jumped ship.

I don’t know anyone clean who hasn’t felt this pull especially after a long winter. In a way there is some genuine grieving of youth involved and if you’re newly sober you will still be grieving the loss of your long -term relationship to drugs and alcohol. It’s important to talk about these feelings with someone to take the power out of them. It is also important to believe that this feeling will pass. I would suggest you begin creating new memories of outdoor cafes with sober friends and not to park yourself alone at one of your old haunts because – what’s that saying? If you hang around the barbershop too long, you’ll probably end up getting a haircut? In a few weeks you’ll cease to notice anything particularly seductive about these establishments.Until then, the initial sightings will trigger you the same way that passing your old drug-buying block or neighborhood bar did when you first got clean.

To snap out of the obsession find some nature – whether it’s a garden, a tree, the beach, the sky, or a green lawn and spend ten minutes there. Notice the details of the beautiful planet we get to live on. Take deep inhalations through your nose and pay attention to how the air feels entering your nostrils and how warm it feels when you exhale through your mouth. Make a mental gratitude list. Then get on with your day.

My first four years in recovery were spent in Los Angeles and weather never triggered me but ever since I moved back to NYC, I experience nostalgia for long ago good times whenever there’s a radical change of weather. Outdoor patios, the cozy warmth of a moodily-lit bar during a snowstorm, and even the sound of the ice cream truck will remind me of how much I loved getting high. Luckily I can still access the much more detailed story of all the suffering that occurred on all the other days so I don’t get too seduced by my strolls down memory lane – but they do still hit me because I’m an addict and my disease is always looking for a way to invalidate my life in the present moment so that my fantasy life of this painless past can sing to me until it can get me to jump my Viking ship. I’ve gotta take my hat off to the determination of the disease of addiction. It might be weakened to a minimal heartbeat but that f**ker wants to get its power over me back. It’s not a quitter. This is how I know I am not cured.

Feelings are like our internal weather – the “nature” part of our human nature. Sun, clouds, rain, wind sun again. Let them move through you and do not fear them. It is wonderful to be clean and alive and human. We are fortunate to be able to have feelings! After all, we know the price of the alternative.

Eating Disorders in Recovery & our response to them

February 27, 2013All Things Recovery12 step, A&E, AA, addiction, Alcoholism, Anorexia Nervosa, anxiety, binge eating, bulimia, clean, DBT, Dialectic Behavioral Therapy, disease, Drugs, eating disorders, EMDR, exercise, Feelings, fellowship, gestalt therapy, gratitude, health, hungry, lonely, meditate, Meditation, meetings, Narcotics Anonymous, National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, Newcomers, obesity, obsession, over-eating, Powerless, recovery, Relapse, relationships, sober, Sobriety, Stress, therapy, tips, trauma, triggerpattypowers

National Eating Disorder Awareness Week (Feb. 24-March 2, 2013)

In 1990, I saw the profoundly disturbing movie Eating by Henry Jaglom. Prior to this, I was oblivious to eating disorders. The film was about a group of women cooking for a celebration. Throughout the film, they individually act out in their respective eating disorders. Watching their secrecy, shame, self-loathing, and powerlessness triggered an overwhelming sense memory in me. What they were feeling was no different than how I felt shooting coke in a locked bathroom. It made me realize how similar eating disorders were to addiction. Seeing this film helped me to feel empathy and compassion for my women friends who continued to struggle with bulimia even after years in recovery.

Our society isn’t very compassionate toward people who have diseases that manifest in self-destruction. “How can I feel sorry for him? No one is putting a gun to his head forcing him to take heroin.” While society is finally becoming educated in substance abuse and depression, eating disorders make people uncomfortable. It is cruel when adjectives such as lazy, greedy, and glutinous are used to describe over-eaters and those suffering from obesity. It is just as cruel to pretend there isn’t a disease affecting the health of a friend. People in 12-Step meetings become uncomfortable, even angry, if a member shares about vomiting after meals even if they share that this behavior makes them want to get high. The whispering and dissing of the “skinny girl” is harmful and hateful. Eating disorders do not arise out of thin air. Childhood pain, violence, trauma, abuse, and sexual abuse are often at the core.

Recovering addicts and alcoholics with eating disorders are fortunate to already have a language to describe their experience. They have recovery tools and support. They know how to walk into a fellowship for their specific eating disorder and ask for help. Yet, even with this leg-up, the road to ED recovery is riddled with potholes. I know many women with decades clean and sober whose recovery from bulimia continues to be two steps forward one step back. Binge eating relapses keep them trapped in a cycle of shame, self-berating, hopelessness, and despair even while they are role models of recovery in their primary 12-Step group.

Sustainable recovery from eating disorders is very difficult and painful and we (society as a whole and those of us fortunate to be in recovery ourselves) should be extending kindness, support, and compassion to anyone who is suffering so that they do not have to isolate in secrecy and shame. We can help by encouraging them to be honest and courageous, and by guiding them to professionals who can give them the help they need. Our generosity and love does not have to be insular. We have enough that it can be shared beyond the confines of our particular substance abuse group.

A dear friend in recovery became anorexic this past year. At first, I tried helping by applying what works to cut through the denial and arrest the disease of addiction but this was different. I realized she needed professional help and we found a therapist willing to work within her budget. After several months, it was clear that she needed a higher level of care – inpatient. Unfortunately, unlike drug addiction, there is very little help available in America for anorexics without financial resources. Anorexia Nervosa is a disease that leads to death – if not from starvation, it can cause a heart attack, fainting behind the wheel, shattered bones, and major organs shutting down. Many anorexics commit suicide before their bodies fail. Yet even with the high suicide rate statistics, there is very little help offered to people without $30,000 to spare or comprehensive health insurance. In my friend’s case though, it’s going to take more than good insurance or extra cash in the bank. Even after being discharged from therapy and told she needs a higher level of care, the denial continues to convince my friend that this disease can be self-managed.

No one could force me to get clean and I can’t force her into inpatient treatment. I hope she becomes willing. I continue to encourage her to not give up, to pray to whatever she believes in or doesn’t believe in, to blindly ask the universe or her own heart to guide her to safety so she can live. She asked me to dedicate this week’s blog in honor of Eating Disorder Awareness Week.

You may have friends in recovery living in shame, guilt and secrecy, suffering from an eating disorder they have not made public. These friends are your opportunity to practice empathy, compassion, tolerance and patience. Help them to feel safe enough to bring their ED out of the darkness. Eating disorders are not gender specific. Men this is your opportunity to bring your ED out of the closet so other men will not feel so alone. Together, in loving kindness, we can all recover.

For anyone reading this blog who may be suffering from an eating disorder, there is plenty of information online for local helplines, resources, 12 step groups. Not everyone needs to go to a treatment facility. Most eating disorders can be arrested and a healthy recovery can occur using a combination of 12 step meetings, therapy, trauma work (such as EMDR or gestalt therapy), and Dialectic Behavioral Therapy (DBT) groups, mindfulness (such as meditation, yoga, breathing exercises). Your life is worth it.

The following is a guest blog written by my friend who has Anorexia Nervosa. I asked her to write about her inner experience living with this disease. Perhaps next year she will be able to share her recovery from this illness.

Anorexia? WTF Happened?

During the course of this vicious anorexia cycle, I have confided consistently with one person. This alone may have saved my life— so far.

I don’t exactly remember when the idea had surfaced that I had an eating disorder. At some point in late 2011 something started happening internally that resulted in an increase of anxiety, not sleeping, not eating, horrible leg cramps, night terrors, depression, anger, and hopelessness. By April 2012 I had been in therapy for five months and remember feeling completely disconnected from my body. My mind was constantly spinning and I had 3 years clean from drugs and alcohol. I wanted to escape the screaming in my head and the pressure I constantly felt. Using and suicide bounced in and out of my mind.

I had slowly stopped eating. Well- I wouldn’t eat a couple days, but then would eat a few days and be fine. I didn’t really obsess over it and it was just one of those habits I think I had always had- since childhood. The idea of eating never really mattered to me much and the thoughts of over eating (or watching others over eat) grossly disgusted me. My frame is naturally small and the most weight I had ever gained was through both my pregnancies which I absolutely hated. Even though I had lost all the weight I had gained through my practically back to back pregnancies, my body was left with deep stretch marks which leave me with a strange self-conscience feeling I still have to this day.

Eventually, my first therapist kicked me out after about 10 minutes of what ended up being our last session. She looked at my sick body and advised me to come back after I sought help for my eating disorder. I hadn’t really talked much to this therapist but felt extreme anxiety when I knew I had an appointment that day and felt like I had been hit by a bus when I left. I don’t remember talking to her too much about anorexia.

Over the last year, I’m not sure why I have constantly denied that I could have an eating disorder. Most of the last year and a half has consisted of not eating, weighing myself obsessively, checking my BMI to see if I’m actually underweight (thinking that as my BMI is normal than I must not have a problem), puking every 3-4 days when I do actually eat, migraines, performing google searches about eating disorders, crying, punching walls, throwing chairs, anger, hiding out…

My health has been questionable. My digestive system feels fucked up. My heart rate and cholesterol are high. I’m almost positive I am anemic. I’ve passed out, lost track of time, been in four car accidents, fallen asleep at the wheel. I have severe leg cramps every night which leave me falling down. I lost 30 lbs on my already somewhat small frame in the course of 4-5 month period and my weight was declining weekly. People were commenting on my body and it infuriated me when they questioned if I ate or if they told me that I’m getting too thin. I read articles and books about how to get help. I went to eating disorder meetings. I wrote letters to the fucking universe expressing my anger and pain and needing help.

Yet with all of the evidence pointing toward the clear fact that I do have an eating disorder problem, I continued to fight it (I still fight it).

I want help and I don’t want help. I want to fix my own problems and my own pain. I don’t want to let one more person close to me. I don’t want to become vulnerable.

I did eventually go to another therapist who specializes in eating disorders. I made as much of an effort as possible to kick this shit and feel better. I deactivated my gym membership, I gave up my scale, I wrote food logs. The terms were up front from the beginning with her. I had to stay honest. I had to do the work. If after a certain amount of time, no progress was made with my health, than she would recommend a higher level of treatment. This was and is one of my greatest fears. Needless to say, I was discharged in January of this year from my second therapist.

I actually made it to 4 years clean in January but feel like I am living my life in active addiction. I feel like I am in a downward spiral but not sure exactly what I am willing to do to get better. I still fantasize about all of this just disappearing on its own. I feel like my mind is playing tricks on me. I tell myself things like this: I haven’t thrown up in a while now, I ate twice every day for 5 days in a row (only skipping two days of meals), I haven’t weighed myself since being at Publix two weeks ago, I am sleeping more than I had been sleeping, and that I haven’t lost any weight since my last therapy session. All of these things I tell myself eventually convince me that I can fix this by myself because I am obviously doing better than I was when this ‘eating disorder’ surfaced.

I absolutely hate everything about anorexia. I hate what is happening and feel trapped. I hate feeling like there is something wrong with me and that I can’t control any of this. These are the same thoughts I have about addiction. I despise them both. I hate the internal fight of wanting to die and live all at once. And I hate feeling like I am being attacked by one or the other, if not both

Fuck addiction. Fuck anorexia.

Truth is- with all of my denial, anxiety, rage, depression, etc. – I do hope that I continue to hold on until I get better.

Will the truth set me free?

April 18, 2012All Things Recovery12 step, AA, addiction, Alcoholism, clean, disease, Drugs, Feelings, fellowship, honesty lies, meetings, Narcotics Anonymous, Newcomers, obsession, Powerless, recovery, Relapse, relationships, support, tipspattypowers

The disease of addiction thrives on lies and self-deception. The only way to get and stay clean is by learning how to be honest. Yep, us addicts have to learn how to do this.

When I was getting high I told myself, “This is the last one” thousands of times over the years. Sometimes I’d even throw away my paraphernalia to prove that I meant it. By morning (or even earlier) I’d be wading through rain-filled dumpsters searching for my old trash bags or laying out money on new syringes and cursing myself for being stupid enough to believe my own bullshit. This game was old. All I got from it was more self-hatred to use over. I’d become silent on the subject of stopping years ago – friends will only listen to bullshit for so long – so this dialogue was my own inner torture chamber. At some point my head said “This is the last time” and I quit falling for it. Repeatedly disappointing myself was more painful than accepting I’d never stop using no matter how horrible I felt.

In 1988 something miraculous happened that changed my life. While trying to get into rehab, a friend called and basically told me to come over for free drugs. This was in the middle of my withdrawal so the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. I have no idea how I was able to be honest with myself but I knew if I gave myself “one last time” it meant I was still playing the “getting clean” mind-game. The only way things would be different was if I did something different. I told my friend “Thanks but no thanks.”

The saying “You are only as sick as your secrets” doesn’t just mean that we need to reveal all our sneaky devious deeds in a relapse-prevention way. It means, in order to get clean and stay clean, we have to practice honesty with others so we can learn how to become honest with ourselves– and let’s face it – we have suffered the most from our lies. Trusting our own thinking is our greatest downfall and it is foolish to assume a major transformation in our ability to perceive reality and the truth happens simply by putting down the drugs. It comes from the work we do after.

This is why it is absolutely necessary to have at least one person we are willing to expose ourselves to fully – not just the questionable decisions we make, or the sneaky shit we are able to get away with but the very stories we tell ourselves in way of rationalizing or justifying these behaviors. It’s worth the risk to find that one person – whether it is a therapist or a sponsor or a friend. The only way we can begin to have an honest relationship with ourselves is to learn it by practicing honesty with another person. This can begin before putting the drugs down.

Here is how I approached this:

Before I got clean, when I’d feel uncomfortable or too exposed, judged, or if my behaviors caused too much drama, I’d move onto a new crowd or a new city. Sometimes this happened without me ever questioning how I lost touch with old friends. It was just the way I was carving out my path. Seemed perfectly natural. I embarked on my adventure into recovery using this model to give me courage. I was willing to be completely honest because I knew if it became unbearable, I could dump my new friends and find others. This gave me the courage to give it my best shot. The funny thing is that I am still very close to the original core group of recovery friends I made 23 years ago. In fact, honesty gave these relationships a level of intimacy I had never known prior.

Recently I was helping my oldest friend in the world get clean. Over the years, she would ask for help. She wanted directions on how to do it but reserved space to include her own ideas she still believed were valid and trustworthy. She was unable to see or accept that for years she had been trying to get clean this way and it never worked. Occasionally she could hear this argument and say, “This time I will try doing it your way.” She began to lower her methadone intake by 10 mg every couple weeks. I knew she was having trouble sleeping but it took several weeks before she admitted she was using wine to sleep at night (followed by a list of logical-sounding reasons why she couldn’t do her job if she was exhausted). I warned her that when she had her first days off of methadone she would be craving her nightcap. She promised she would stop when she began counting clean days.

By day 6 she said “I should have listened to you about the wine. The cravings are coming back and I am feeling worse today than I did on day one.” It took several email exchanges before she told me the truth. She had continued drinking wine before bed throughout those first 6 days clean and now she was thinking of nothing other than having a drink and taking the leftover methadone she had sitting on her dresser. “What leftover methadone? You shouldn’t have had wine or methadone in your house when you started counting day one.” It took 6 days of lying about her clean time until she was able to tell me the truth – and it was only because she was deep in the obsession of using again.

For two months she had suffered levels of withdrawal coming off methadone and if she picked up again, it would have all been in vain. On day 6 she told me the truth – or at least that is how it appeared. She overdosed and died on the 7^th day. Even her confession about the wine and methadone was only a partial truth. She never revealed that she had Oxycontin in the house. Maybe that is what she meant by the “methadone on my dresser” that she kept thinking about all day. She tried to tell on herself but was incapable of going all the way. I will never know what other secrets she had held onto. I firmly believe that if she had been capable of telling me the truth, she would have. She wanted so badly to be in recovery again and my heart is broken that she will never have another opportunity to do things differently.

The disease wants us to protect our secrets. Even clean it will tell us that we deserve the right to some privacy so we will withhold information and not recognize this as secret-keeping behavior. If you want to get clean or you want to stay clean for the long haul, share your secrets with someone – even if you aren’t ready to change the behaviors connected to them. Honesty is the first step. It will save your life.

What do you mean I have to feel everything?

March 12, 2012All Things Recovery12 step, AA, addiction, Alcoholism, angry, clean, disease, Drugs, Feelings, fellowship, HALT, lonely, Narcotics Anonymous, Newcomers, obsession, recovery, Relapse, relationships, sober, Sobriety, Stress, support, thinking, tips, triggerpattypowers

FEELINGS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s that noise in my head?

February 29, 2012All Things Recovery12 step, AA, addiction, Alcoholism, anxiety, clean, disease, Drugs, exercise, Feelings, fellowship, health, lonely, meditate, Meditation, Narcotics Anonymous, obsession, panic attack, Powerless, recovery, Relapse, relationships, sober, Sobriety, Stress, support, tips, triggerpattypowers

When I got clean I sofa-surfed. There was never a shortage of people who needed a little help with their rent in exchange for a place to stay. After nine months, I moved into my own place: an apartment next to MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. The Asbury is a gorgeous art deco building in a city full of peach colored pre-fabricated stucco luxury slums. Six floors above the street with a view of the park, I felt like I was living on Central Park West. It was $400 a month. They offered indoor parking for an additional $50 but it seemed pointless for a ’68 Dodge Dart.

A year later, I realized I was sitting inches from my television with the volume turned to the max. I asked a friend in the building what was going on, if there was construction or something causing the racket. She laughed. There’d always been constant noise. If it wasn’t the traffic thundering down 6^th Street during the day, it was police helicopters over the park, or waking to middle-of-the-night police microphones shouting “Get out of the car with hands raised. Lay face down and chin up in the center of the street.” Apparently this was life at the Asbury. Shortly after this, walking several blocks from my car to the building at 3am, I noticed how sketchy my neighborhood was. Rifles wrappers on the stairs of my entrance, blood on the sidewalk. I got it – you didn’t pay to park to protect your car. You paid to protect your life. At the time the Rampart Division had the highest crime rate in the city.

It took eighteen months of being clean to land back into my body. I was present. It was an amusing new experience because I thought I had been present. The reason I hadn’t noticed the noise in my apartment for a year was because the noise in my head was twice as loud. As for my neighborhood, I was so used to bad neighborhoods and a certain element of danger when I was getting high that it was normal to me. Suddenly I felt visible. Not a good thing for a girl coming home from work at three in the morning.

There’s a lot to be said about landing back in your body. For one thing, it means you are no longer completely consumed by the noise in your head. The noise that blinds us to so much outside of ourselves. Being a captive audience to our internal dialogue is nice way of saying self-involved and self-absorbed. It’s something all addicts and alcoholics have in common. It’s not big news that when left unchecked after days in isolation, we can go straight back to that place even with years clean.

Let’s go back in time. At the end of our using, our inner dialogue distracted us from the simple fact that our lives were unbearable, and drugs kept us numb enough that we didn’t have to “feel” our loneliness. Inner conversations kept us company, kept us distracted, and helped to keep us loaded by repeatedly traveling down memory lane until we felt horrible and worthless, filled with regret and remorse. We’d revisit every single resentment (no matter how old) toward whoever we believed had done us wrong, and when that soundtrack ended we worried about money and drugs. Once we’d get high, these thoughts were replaced by fabulous future events in which we all somehow imagined we’d have our shit together. Our thoughts kept us company in the abusive relationship we were having with ourselves.

It makes sense when people say the disease of addiction lives between our ears. After our physical addiction is over, it’s our head that’s always searching for something to make feel uncomfortable enough that we start to think about using. It starts out subtle – a series of random thoughts eventually moving toward the usual repertoire of negativity and anguish or it fill us with so much fear and anxiety it feels like we can’t breathe. If the pain is great enough long enough we’ll start thinking about getting high – maybe just one time – to straighten our “head” out. In recovery, we can’t afford to let pain reach this level.

Remember how the noise increased when we were detoxing. We thought we were losing our minds, convinced we weren’t going to be able to handle the insanity without getting high. But – we did. As the days and weeks passed newly clean, the intensity of our inner dialogue lessened and we began to feel better. This happened because we were in twelve-step meetings, in rehab, in outpatient groups, with a therapist, or surrounded by loved ones. We weren’t doing this alone. By moving out of isolation and connecting to others, our head began to quiet.

When I started writing this blog, it was because I wanted to talk about anxiety – but it’s all sort of connected.

When we isolate in recovery, the old inner dialogue – the one that likes to torment us – returns. The funny thing is that most addicts and alcoholics will be the last to recognize that they have cut themselves off from the world for too long. Instead they try to control their thinking. They’ll throw themselves into a home project or into workaholic behavior, hoping that if they stay busy and not “think about anything” it will go away. And when this fails, addicts spin out of control until they are wracked by anxiety. A small problem or decision can get caught in the loop of obsessional thinking until it becomes so intense that you feel like you can’t even breathe. Sound familiar?

Ever lay in bed watching the clock, freaking out as hours continue to roll by, now adding the fear of sleeping in to the anxiety list. Ever arrive at a destination without any recollection of how you got there? What roads you took? Were the streets empty or did you pass anyone while walking? Stay so busy that the hours flew by and when you looked at the clock it was four-am and you had to wake up at seven? Making wrong turns, losing your phone, umbrella, keys? Spinning, spinning, spinning, so you don’t have to think? So you don’t have to feel? While you’re busy trying to make the thoughts go away you’re actually making the world disappear.

When you get to this state, do you call a friend, make plans to get out of yourself by spending time with another person, confide in another recovering addict? Most likely, these things won’t occur to you until you realize you’ve been thinking a drink would take the edge off, until you realize you really want to get high.

Most of us started out drinking and getting high in a social environment, at parties, clubs, with friends. In the end we used alone. In recovery, our solution was based on connecting with others but as time passes we often we drift back into our cocoon without realizing it. We tell ourselves we’re tired, that we need quality time alone. Though this may be true, if we aren’t connecting with others, it’s easy to slip back to old ways. Without warning, the noise returns. Never underestimate how powerful the disease is. That saying “an addict alone is in bad company” isn’t talking about a cozy weekend at the cottage with a book and a fireplace. It means endless days avoiding the phone and avoiding people until, like old times, we end up either consumed by anxiety or inside an existential bubble – watching life with detachment. Most of you know what I’m talking about – that peculiar feeling that we’ve become somehow estranged from the world and can’t get back.

There may be other mental health issues going on but next time you feel depressed or crippled by anxiety, take an inventory of the prior week. Have you spent too much time alone, are you avoiding friends, are you returning phone calls? When these uncomfortable feelings come up do you coddle them or do you take positive actions such as eating properly, fresh air, exercise. Are you going to meetings or connecting with your support group? Are you helping others in any way? Is there balance between work and play? If you have been having difficulty sleeping, what actions do you take besides listening to your endless inner-monologue.

In recovery, there are always actions we can take to not remain stuck in painful situations. The antidote usually begins by reaching out to another recovering addict or someone we trust who can help. Without action, our thinking often leads us back to using.

Eventually you become capable of enjoying time alone and a new desire will rise up to seek out ways to quiet the mind even more – though this time instead of quieting it to rid yourself of pain, you are seeking a deeper level of inner peace. There’s a huge difference between peace of mind and inner peace. You have to stick it out in recovery long enough to discover what that means.

Losing Your Mind in Recovery

January 30, 2012All Things Recovery12 step, AA, addiction, Alcoholism, clean, Drugs, Feelings, fellowship, meetings, Narcotics Anonymous, Newcomers, obsession, Powerless, recovery, sober, Sobriety, Stress, support, tipspattypowers

I once heard a comedian say that we need to choose our words carefully because the term “global warming” sounds attractive to people who live in cold climates. Likewise, people new to recovery hear that they’re in for the “ride of their life” and to “hang on”, that there’s something called an “emotional roller-coaster” coming. Personally, I’ve always loved roller-coasters and so taking the “ride of my life” sounded pretty appealing to me. I blanked out the“emotional” part probably because my emotions had been in a sort of deep freeze. What I should have been asking, instead of nodding along was “What the hell are you guys talking about? What does this mean?”

Turns out it means living life on life’s terms. Experiencing emotions (the good, the bad, the ugly, joy, sorrow, heartbreak, disappointment) without running from them through escapist behavior or without getting high.

My initial detox was followed by the sensation that my nerve endings were completely exposed. Afterward, I began to float around on a pink cloud – ecstatic that my obsession to get high had miraculously disappeared. I glued myself to recovering addicts the first six months. This left little time to be alone with my mind.

Then my feelings thawed out and my mind got to work. One minute I’d be experiencing serenity and the next I’d be thinking about driving my car through the freeway guardrails. If this was the roller-coaster, I wanted back on the pink cloud.

Even with many years clean and finding comfort in the grey area (the place that exists when not riding the edges of emotional highs or lows), my mind is always on the lookout for ways to derail me. The difference today is that I know how to get myself off the (roller-coaster) ride before I create my own drama to add to the situation.

Addicts seem to have this in common: when things are going great, we anticipate disaster and when things are bad, we expect them to get worse. This can mean anything from falling for a new person and bracing ourselves to be dumped or feeling anxiety and spinning it to unbearable levels of despair without leaving our sofa. We really just want to feel good all the time. Unrealistic but – hell – we don’t cope well with change.

Addicts hate not being able to control the way they feel. When we got high, whatever drug or combo we picked determined how we would feel. We were in control. Without drugs, feelings can be scary and fear makes us feel even more out of control. Because we want instant relief, we try to figure out the magic step, magic meeting, magic conversation that will get us back to the serene place. We do these things and still feel overwhelmed. A voice in our head says “This is never going to get better” and points out that it’s actually getting worse. We start to believe we can’t handle it much longer. Disillusioned that the program isn’t working, we start to operate on self-centered fear. It’s a lot like getting tangled up in a net. The more we try to get out, the more tangled up we get. Now we start thinking, “Fuck it- fuck people, fuck meetings, I’m different, these people have no compassion, this shit doesn’t work” until the inevitable thought comes “If I have to feel this bad, I may as well be high”. So what’s the solution?

A good place to start is to recognize and admit that you’re powerless over this “feelings-control” default setting and its making you emotionally unmanageable. Make a decision to trust the process of recovery. I don’t know why but things tend to work out whenever I stop trying to control the outcome. Whenever I stop struggling, it becomes super clear what the next right action is. The drag about walking in blind faith is that I won’t know if the answer will come right away, in a few days, or weeks down the line. I hate waiting for anything but years of trial and error have taught me that it’s less painful to be in the not-knowing zone of hope than it is to be in the pain of trying to force shit to go my way. These days I opt for the least pain.

As soon as you make the decision to let go of the need to control your feelings or the outcome, take a long walk. Pay close attention to what’s in your line of vision. Get out of your head and into your body by being present in the moment to notice your surroundings. Take deep breaths as you walk- this means inhaling AND exhaling as far as you can go. You’ll notice when you get home how the stress has lessened. Watch a comedy and give yourself a few hours without having to figure shit out. A movie will buy you 90 minutes freedom from thinking about yourself. I’m not saying to abandon your responsibility to show up for your life – but give yourself a break and let go of the reigns. If you don’t let go, your mind will work itself back into a frenzy – unusually disproportionate to the situation at hand. By stepping back and bringing yourself into the moment and out of your self-obsession, you will intuitively know how to handle situations that overwhelm you. Sometimes taking action means letting go. It doesn’t sound like an action – but it’s the key to inner peace. and is equally successful for believers and Atheists alike.

Enjoy your week.

I want to take a minute to thank everyone for the encouraging comments and emails you’ve been sending. I appreciate them. Occasionally people send questions via the comment section. Please go to the top of the Recovery Blog on my website https://www.pattypowersnyc.com and send questions to the email listed.

LIFE WITHOUT DRUGS (21 days and counting)

January 21, 2012All Things Recovery12 step, A&E, AA, addiction, Alcoholism, clean, disease, Drugs, gratitude, HALT, health, lonely, Meditation, Narcotics Anonymous, Newcomers, obsession, reality tv, recovery, Relapse, sober, Sobriety, support, tips, triggerpattypowers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Starting the 3rd Week Clean and Sober

January 15, 2012All Things Recovery12 step, A&E, AA, addiction, Alcoholism, clean, disease, Drugs, exercise, Feelings, fellowship, gratitude, HALT, health, meditate, meetings, Narcotics Anonymous, Newcomers, obsession, reality tv, recovery, Relapse, sober, Sobriety, triggerpattypowers

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

Let’s talk about physical withdrawal. How quickly your body snaps back to feeling normal is dependent on your drug of choice, how big your habit was, and how long you were doing it. Most likely, if you were coming off legal drugs, you did it at a detox center or by gradually lowering your dose over time with a doctor. It takes longer to feel physically better when you get clean from legal drugs (alcohol, painkillers, benzos, ambien, methadone, suboxone). Illegal drugs are quicker. Heroin is a horrible kick but after 3-4 days the worst of the dope sickness is over. Meth, coke, crack and club drugs have no real physical withdrawal – other than feeling completely run down. Vicodin-Addiction-Withdrawal-Symptoms-273x300

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

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

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

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

“Nothing happens until something moves.” -Einstein

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a great week.