Tag Archives: Powerless

Recognizing Springtime Triggers

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spring time triggers

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.

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Eating Disorders in Recovery & our response to them

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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.

eating disorders kill

 

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.

 

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Is there a faster way to learn patience?

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Vigilance – the process of paying close and continuous attention; wakefulness, watchfulness

Never-give-up

“Vigilance is especially susceptible to fatigue”

Staying in the recovery process requires vigilance. If change takes time and fatigue is the enemy of vigilance –what’s an addict to do? The answer is simple: we need to learn patience.

We want what we want when we want it and our society caters to this fact. The 60’s invented fast food drive-thru restaurants and instant add-water meals. God knows no one has time to wait for anything. If we don’t see results immediately, we lose interest in going to the gym. We can now get liposuction if we don’t have patience to diet. Who has the time to wash and cut vegetables, never mind prepare an entire meal? If we have to wait for anything our first thought is “What’s the point?” and then we lose interest – whether it’s in learning a new skill, preparing a healthy meal, or sitting to meditate. If we can’t be at yoga within minutes of leaving the house, forget it. And I’m not even factoring being a recovering addict into this rant. Everyone is born hungry.

While lacking patience can have consequences for anyone, for addicts impatience can lead to the “fuckits” – the precursor to relapse. This is why we have to keep being reminded that recovery is an ongoing process and that it requires vigilance.

In early recovery, it feels like we’re constantly being hit by an onslaught of feelings. After years of dulling or numbing ourselves with substances, the reawakening of our emotions is new to us. Fear seems to lie underneath every sensation. Even joy can be accompanied by the sensation of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Anger makes us want to use, sadness makes us want to vanish from existence. We look at other people in recovery who seem to be at peace with themselves and we want to know how they got that way. We want to be like them right away. We expect recovery to give us instant results. “I worked my steps and go to therapy but I’m still a mess. What am I doing wrong?” Instead of accepting that change occurs over time, we blame ourselves.

Sometimes we can will things to happen – or so it seems. It could just be that everything aligned and we get what we want right away. Instead of it being an isolated incident, it makes us think if we don’t get things right away, we mustn’t be doing something right. Anxiety builds and patience evaporates. Enduring time passing is not the same as being patient. Being patient is an act of faith – faith that time will pass and things will change – however they will change. Patience is not counting the days and minutes.

People always ask, “What’s the trick? What work can I do to acquire patience quickly?” (Yes I’ve really been asked this). Translated, I think they’re admitting that they understand the concept “change happens slowly over time” but want to know how can they exist inside of this unknowable timeframe without having an anxiety attack or pulling their hair out. The trick is to create mindfulness habits so they can slow themselves down – whether it’s by quieting the mind or reducing physical anxiety. This makes not only the passage of time more bearable; it will probably be more enjoyable.

There is so much information readily available on mindfulness techniques and practices. A quick search of Google or YouTube can bring up thousands of links. When I was in early recovery I couldn’t focus my attention on anything for very long before I felt like I was crawling out of my skin. The idea of meditation was nice but I drank far too much coffee to attempt it. I’d overthink everything and believed I’d need to take a class, join a group or read a book on it before I could start. If I was going to meditate, I wanted to do it right. Truthfully, it was easier to sit in a café with my friends drinking coffee than it was to set aside 20 minutes to try to quiet my mind. No one ever explained to me that if I could set aside this time, I wouldn’t feel that “crawling out of my skin” feeling as often or as intensely. Had I known what the payoff was going to be I might have tried it sooner. I was resistant because, deep down, I equated meditation with edgelessness. Now I know that is not  the case.

There are a few quick tricks anyone can do throughout the day. They are pretty low-effort but you’ll feel results immediately. You can do them at any time, anywhere.

Start by taking a few deep breaths. Get on your tiptoes and reach up over your head and stretch out all the way through your arms to your fingertips and wiggle your fingers until you feel the stretch go all the way to through your fingertips. Lift one foot off the ground and rotate your ankles and stretch out your toes. Now do the other foot. Meanwhile flex and release your leg muscles. With one hand to the sky and the other pointing to the ground lean to the left and feel the stretch move down your sides. Do the opposite side. Tilt your pelvis forward and backward then rotate your hips in a circular motion and reverse the direction. Roll your shoulders in a circular motion and reverse. Tilt your head all the way forward and all the way back, and then try to touch each ear toward your shoulder. Roll your head slowly in a clockwise circle several times then reverse. Squeeze your shoulders up toward your ears and release. Do this several times. Now bend forward and let your arms hang. Swing from left to right and slowly move up your body, both arms swinging from side to side. Raise your arms over your head and bring your hands together and lower them toward your heart. By now your body should feel relaxed and energized. You can do all of this in less than 5 minutes as often throughout the day as you can remember. In fact, why not schedule it into your phone now to do 5 times during the day until it becomes a habit.

Take a look around. Pay attention to the immediate details to your surroundings. It doesn’t matter whether you’re standing at the back of a restaurant or on the sidewalk, pay attention to the colors, the light, and the sounds. This brings you into the moment. When you are in the moment, fear doesn’t have power over you. By existing in the moment, you’ll be less distracted by your thoughts.

Another quick decompressing trick you can do is to take ten deep slow breaths. Inhale through your nose until your lungs and belly have expanded as far as they can and then blow all this air out through your mouth until you are completely empty. You should be feeling the muscles in your chest and stomach relaxing with each inhalation and exhalation. It may feel like your heart is racing but it’s really just the awareness of your heart and your body. It’s nothing to worry about.

By stretching and breathing, you’ll become conscious of your body and breath so this next trick will be quite easy to do. Whether your eyes are open or closed, feel the air moving into your nostrils. It should feel slightly cool on its way in and warmer on its way out. Control it by inhaling and exhaling slightly longer. Most likely you’ll have to yawn several times. Feel the stretch in your jaw when you do. By doing this exercise you’re going to start noticing the way the air feels entering and exiting your nostrils throughout the day. You’re building a relationship with your physical body and an awareness of the moment you are in.

You’re probably wondering what any of this has to do with patience and vigilance. By creating these habits and incorporating them into your daily routine early in recovery, you are exercising some discipline over how time is being spent. It gives you control over how you want to feel physically and emotionally. Less anxiety means less fear. And fear is what sends signals that say, “If it’s going to feel like this, why bother ?” Less fear means less pain. Vigilance is not giving up.

We are like a porcelain vase that fell off a table and shattered across the floor. A lot of damage has been done. We gather up the pieces and enter recovery hoping someone will tell us how to put it back together. And people tell us how – but they also say, “It takes time.” We start going through all the pieces and start to figure out what fits where so we can put the vase back together again. It takes time and patience but we know the pieces will eventually all fit. If we approach this task in a hurried, stressed out way, we’ll make a mess of it and end up taking longer to get it done. By practicing some mindfulness, we are able to enjoy the process and we’ll feel excited when it begins to look like a vase again. It takes vigilance and patience to put ourselves back together. Honestly, if the payoff didn’t exceed the work we put into recovery, no one would stay clean. This payoff is why we keep blindly moving forward even when we can’t see what’s ahead. Patience teaches us that the real prize is the journey.


 

 

 

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National Survivors of Suicide Day

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National Survivor’s of Suicide Day November 17 2012

Today I spent time thinking about those I’ve lost to suicide and their families.

I got news this past week that another friend from my early recovery overdosed and died. This makes six friends since March. Five had been in recovery at one point for anywhere from one to twenty years before they decided that they could drink or smoke weed without getting caught up in old ways.  The news is never easy. Over the years I ‘ve been clean, there’s been a lot of death. Overdoses and suicide top the list followed closely by AIDS and Hepatitis C. I’ve spent a lot of time searching for meaning, contemplating life and death, and coming to terms with it in a way that makes sense to me personally. At one point I started to numb out. I would hear of a new death and mentally delete their number from my cell phone – gone! They were gone. Over! The end! I noticed my lack of emotional response and figured, really, how much death can one take? Nowadays, I’m back to feeling that funk land hard in my stomach and the sad sound as my head whispers “Fuck!”

My best friend committed suicide in the mid-80s. I wrote about her in an earlier blog on my other site http://www.pattypowersnyc.blogspot.com/2011/09/finding-one-day-at-time.html. That death hit me at a time when my own life was spiraling out of control. I felt I understood what she was feeling at the time -that feeling of not wanting to play anymore, of being tired, of not believing things would ever change. Little did I know that within three years I’d find recovery and my life would change radically.

I’ll confess that, for years, I held a little idea at the back of my most private thoughts: I would do this life-on-life’s-terms recovery thing as long as I could but if I ever got tired and want off the ride instead of getting high, suicide would be my way off.

At seven years clean I was hit by a depression I’d never experienced before – coming out of the blue and unattached to any plausible explanation. There was nothing going on in my life I could pin it to. I felt like I was inside a bubble preventing me from feeling a connection to anything or anyone.  I spent days laying on the sofa telling myself “This too shall pass.” The next day I’d awaken to realize nothing had changed. I had no desire to get high and wondered how long I could live this way.  When would enough be enough and I’d check out? I was also writing a novel where the main character would attempt suicide so a variety of methods were at my fingertips. Needless to say, it wasn’t a good time to spend days alone with my mind. Was this feeling ever going to pass?  The day I woke up feeling alive again was one of joy and relief. Shortly after this, a friend’s son hung himself.

While laying in my self-absorbed darkness fantasizing about suicide, it never occurred to me to consider how my death would affect others. Witnessing first hand how his suicide impacted the lives of his family and friends eradicated suicide as my exit strategy.

There was a hint that the latest death may have been intentional because of his history with depression.  Addiction and depression are closely linked. Perhaps this has played a role in all the earlier suicides. Much has been discovered and documented linking addiction and depression since my early years in recovery. Back then many recovering addicts shunned the idea of taking any sort of pill. Instead they believed in toughing it out, working a stronger program, finding a god. Many struggled with undiagnosed mental health issues for years, living in pain, until they finally sought help. It wasn’t that recovering addicts wanted to martyr themselves. Antidepressants were a new concept and many of us twelve-steppers were naïve and ill-informed.

I think a lot about my friends who’ve died, wondering how many of those overdoses were suicide.  How many kept their depression a guarded secret in recovery? How could we have helped?

That is the biggest question survivors of suicide torment themselves with – “What could I have done?” It’s heartbreaking to see and hear the grief lingering years later, wrapped around them like a blanket for the remainder of their lives. If a loved one has committed suicide please find support groups and professional counseling. The impact of suicide can be trauma.

For anyone who is considering suicide I will pass on something someone said to me during a particularly difficult time:

Patty, life is like a long phonograph and right now the needle is skipping but there is still a long beautiful song left to play. I know the pain is so big you can’t breath and it feels like it will never go away but this is really just one moment in time of a very long story and when you get past it, you will always look back and remember this period as a hard one but you won’t even be able to connect with the pain that right now feels like its going to kill you.  It will just be a memory that things were rough. While you’re in it, it feels so much more meaningful – but it’s really a just rough patch in a skipping record. Not worth killing yourself over. Because then it’s over forever.

Hang on and ask for help!

suicide2

 

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

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This has been a crazy summer for me. Not “crazy” in a wild and fun way either (sorry to say) but crazy in an unmanageable “life on life’s terms” way. This is my first summer in New York City without air conditioning and the hottest recorded summer since the 1800s. They decided to re-wire my building (an old brownstone in the Village) and hired one electrician to do all the work. I struggled through one major heatwave after another, sitting inside my apartment feeling like a dog locked inside a car with the windows rolled up.  I found myself crying at my desk for no reason. I’ve discovered that severe conditions can bring on feelings of despair and depression – go figure! I had to turn down several clients because I was in no shape to help anyone and writing was impossible. Instead, I went to visit my folks in Canada for a couple weeks and expected to come back to air conditioning. Well –
what do you know – Con Edison went on strike so there is no one to do the inspection. There will be no air conditioning this year. The upside is that I knew enough to leave town to rejuvenate my spirit and have since put myself on graveyard hours so that I can bike in the cooler evening breeze for fresh air, write at night, and see as many matinees as I possible. I’m making my situation as manageable as I can because my mental health matters to me. I am powerless over the circumstances but not powerless over my ability to make choices to improve my situation. I needed topics for this blog to simplify my workload so I asked for help.I got a lot of suggestions. Phil wrote me this, which I felt was appropriate to use first:12_10 i didnt get clean for this shit_2

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

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

 

12_10 i didnt get clean for this shit3Clean and sober, unmanageability in our lives can look like this: jobs lost, apartment evictions, regularly living without a phone or electricity, calls from collection agencies, owing everyone we know money, significant others leaving after many tears, fights, and drama. From neglecting our health there can be   trips to hospitals. If we don’t change our behaviors we can end up in jail and there could even be times we end up in psych wards.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recovery is harm reduction for day to day living.

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

We feel a general crankiness toward everything.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

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For the Ladies: Hormones are a Bitch!

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hormonepic2Let me set the stage:  I wake up feeling relatively normal. It’s true the night before I was starting to have a few alienating judgmental thoughts about one friend or another but I didn’t trip on it.  Today I’ve been busy on the computer and taking care of a few things around the house. I  make it through the first half of the day without talking to anyone. Now it’s time to head uptown. On the subway, as people begin to crowd into the train, I notice a few minor character assassinations take place in my head whenever someone stands too close to me. When I switch trains, the walkways fill up with people who have no urgency in their step. I pick up my pace and aggressively snake through the crowd. It isn’t until I descend the stairs to my connecting platform that I spot the source of the pedestrian traffic slowdown. Two people are standing at the foot of the stairs having a conversation during rush hour. I shoulder hard into them on my way down but really what I want to do is grab them and throw them onto the tracks. How can anyone be so selfish and stupid as to block a stairwell in New York City during rush hour? These two clearly deserve to die.

I tell this story because this was a regular occurrence in my life. In fact, it was a monthly occurrence. This is how the first sign of my PMS would announce itself – homicidal fantasies. Like character defects that often only appear when dealing with others, the beginning of PMS would be undetectable until I was out among the human race. This would be my yellow warning light for what was to come.  In the hours after my subway rage, I would turn the anger and disgust toward myself. I’d become both judgmental and insecure. Character defects would flare up and I’d act out on resentments with gossip followed by shame and paranoia. In the end I’d be so raw and vulnerable and filled by self-loathing that all I could do was hide or cry. On day two my abdomen would swell and a visible layer of water weight covered my thighs, back and butt. Puffy eyed and dragging with fatigue, the countdown would begin. On the third day my period would start and with it came a sense of relief. It was as if the pressure valve had opened and my emotions were restored to sanity. Hormones are a bitch!

When women get clean and sober, like men, we ride the emotional rollercoaster of early recovery. People tell us what to expect and reassure us with “You’re where you’re supposed to be. This is normal.”  What no one tells us is that we are also powerless over our hormones and that they will make us emotionally unmanageable. Usually it isn’t until we have spewed venom and insanity to a female friend or sponsor that we are asked, “Where are you in your menstrual cycle?’ To which we respond with anger. The question sounds belittling and condescending. After all, doesn’t it dismiss the validity of the feelings that have consumed us?  There’s nothing like PMS to make a woman want to argue – even if it’s to argue against the very idea of PMS.

Many of us didn’t experience PMS during our using because we were too high to notice. We were always under the influence and intuitively used substances to control our feelings – including those of PMS. I know personally, I was on the Pill from 14 to 28 and my last year using my periods stopped coming so PMS was a non-issue. I decided to remain off the Pill once I got clean because I was single and knew I’d be more apt to use condoms if I had no other birth control. Now that I was single after a monogamous marriage, I didn’t trust myself when it came to practicing safe sex – since I had no experience with it. I figured fear of pregnancy would keep me on the straight and narrow of condom use. So from day one clean, I began experiencing my natural hormonal cycle for the first time since adolescence and I had no idea what to expect.

Newcomers, it is important to pay close attention to what is going on with your body so you can make the connection between emotional unmanageability and your menstrual cycle. All it will take is 4 months of charting the patterns and you will know pretty much what to expect for years to come. The reason this matters is because when you know your period is coming and the general pattern of your rollercoaster, it is much easier to accept “oh these feelings are hormonal and not connected to real life things”. This is damage control.  This will stop you from acting out on anger, nitpicky-ness, righteousness, or from damaging friendships. It will put feelings of inadequacy and loneliness in check. When you look in the mirror and hate what you see, you’ll know you are looking through a hormonal veil of distortion and tomorrow the reflection will be much different. This will save you a lot of agony. Recovery is life on life’s terms and hormones are part of life’s terms –so until you have experience riding this out clean, they will trip you up and cause you to suffer.

The easiest way to map it is this: keep track on the calendar of when your period starts and ends. Look back at the days leading up to your period when the rage and vulnerability came, when the distorted body image came, when the bleeding started. Often early signs of PMS will appear 7-10 days before your actual period but it is a window of 3 days prior that we become lunatics (even if we hide this fact from the world). You need to list your bizarre thinking, track your emotions, and note any physical symptoms (from water weight, sore breasts, cramps, constipation, lower back ache).  You will notice that your PMS is most severe every other month.

Talk about it. Find women’s meetings where you can say when you feel like blowing your brains out or throwing people under the bus even though you know its PMS insanity. When your head wants to take you down a dark street of the mind, tell yourself – this is PMS and probably not real. This helps you to keep perspective so you don’t have to end relationships, quit jobs, or disappear from the lives of everyone you’ve ever known. Trust me – there is so much comfort in knowing that the insanity is temporary, that nothing real has changed between Monday and Wednesday other than a shift in  thinking. We are powerless over our hormones and our thinking has become unmanageable and in a few days, we will be restored to sanity. Our job is to limit the damage we cause until then.

The fantastic thing about staying clean is that we begin to have an awareness of our body and our relationship to it. It begins by observing menstrual cycles but becomes so finely tuned that you will notice when any other area is off as well – when your body is fighting off a virus or flu, when your immune system is weak, when you’re in optimum health. Recovery is a process of moving from your mind (where the disease has held power) back into your body. Without this, it’s impossible to truly experience living in the moment.

I wish every woman in recovery would talk openly with one another about their experiences with menstrual cycles, PMS, safe sex, condom use, STD’S, abortions, and sex. It would save us all a lot of suffering. Sadly, these subjects don’t get enough discourse and women continue to struggle to find their way through these uncharted emotional territories  – often alone and unsupported.  In time, I will do my best to open up these topics in a very public way.

 wt__emotional_rollercoaster_by_raincookie-d3e8e63

 

 

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Will the truth set me free?

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truth will set you freeThe 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 7th 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.

 

 

 

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What’s that noise in my head?

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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 6th 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.

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Losing Your Mind in Recovery

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losing your mind in recoveryI 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.

cannot control let go

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.

 

 

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