Tag Archives: Sobriety

National Survivors of Suicide Day

November 17, 2012All Things Recovery12 step, AA, addiction, Alcoholism, anti-depressants, depression, Drugs, family, Feelings, fellowship, gratitude, lonely, mental health, Narcotics Anonymous, Powerless, recovery, Relapse, relationships, sober, Sobriety, Stress, suicide, supportpattypowers

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!

Friends dissing Recovery

August 16, 2012All Things Recovery12 step, A&E, AA, addiction, Alcoholism, clean, Drugs, Feelings, meetings, Newcomers, recovery, Relapse, relationships, sober, Sobriety, tips, triggerpattypowers

recoveryispossible

This week I’m taking the lead from my Facebook friends’ topic suggestions. Laurie CS wrote: How about respecting your recovery when others don’t (or just don’t have the understanding). I may have gone off-topic but it inspired me.

I was the only one in my crowd to get into recovery. Until then, I thought not shooting dope meant I was clean. Every now and then, a few of us would decide to get clean. We’d hurry off to a bar so that we could drink enough to make it through the day without using. Sometimes I’d go to Amsterdam to kick my habit. Drinking and smoking hash didn’t count. I’d arrive back in New York clean (as far as I was concerned). A few went on the methadone program to be clean. It’s not that we rejected complete abstinence. It simply never occurred to us.

I ended up in a treatment center outside of New Orleans and at 69 days clean boarded a Greyhound bus destined for Los Angeles. I arrived with $100 dollars and a desire to stay clean. In my heart I knew I couldn’t go back to New York – not yet. I started my life over from scratch, which included building relationships. I spent my first year clean surrounded by recovering addicts. We were young, crazy, clean and enthusiastic. Twelve-step meetings were our life. Together we learned how to expose our true selves to one another and the level of intimacy created a bond that I still have with those people. Our lives were about recovery – it’s all we talked about. I chuckle when I imagine what it would have been like to have been stuck in a restaurant booth behind us. One step short of Scientology is one way I’ve heard it put. I’m sure we were a bit fanatical and over the top but we were having a blast and the alternative – well, I probably wouldn’t be here to write about it.

At a year clean I flew back to New York City anxious to see my old friends. I knew it was a dangerous move but I loved these people and they were the only evidence that the stories I told had actually happened, that my past was real. Although I hadn’t really thought too much about it, I’d spent a year existing only in present time with people who only knew me clean. My old friends had lived through my relationships, my marriage, had known my dog, and met my family. I wanted that connection back. I hadn’t considered what they would think of the “new” me.

After a few drinks, they startled to dismantle my belief system. “All that happens is that they get you addicted to God” was a major point with them. I said that I wasn’t a believer but they didn’t want to hear this as they laid all their opinions of 12 step programs on me. And no – they had never been to one. “We’re worried about you Patty. They’re brainwashing you.” I was caught between wanting to cry and wanting to laugh. “You’re right. It probably is brain washing but I guess I needed my brain washed.” That sort of ended it for a while. I knew they loved me but I knew they did not want recovery. The funny thing is, I did not go to New York to get them clean. Truthfully, the lack of support was upsetting and my expectations on my homecoming had been shattered. I was experiencing so many feelings from heartbreak to disappointment to anger to shame that I knew in my gut that if I stayed in that apartment the entire week I could get loaded so I found somewhere else to stay for a few days. As soon as I was away from my old friends, I was able to get grounded again. When I called LA and rehashed the events, my friend Ron summed it up, “I guess you forgot you were powerless.”

Fast forward to four years clean. By now my life was full. Recovery was at the core of it but there was a lot of other stuff going on. I was writing again, performing, working. I had friends both in and not in recovery. I didn’t wear it on my sleeve anymore because the “inside job stuff” had happened. I’d matured and so had my recovery. I now had other things to talk about. I was married to a musician who’d had a long career in Europe so there was a never-ending stream of touring musicians coming through our house. These were his old “using” friends. I was enjoying the company of one in particular but after a few drinks he started spewing all of his opinions about the idiots who end up in recovery. “They are nothing but weak sheep who lack willpower”. Naturally, this led him to the God-addiction and brain washing argument. I laughed and asked if he was calling me a weak sheep. “Is that what you think of me and – “ I listed five of his closest, most respected friends who were now all in recovery. He was on his back staring at the ceiling, silently watching his cigarette smoke curling upward. “That is what I don’t understand. My friends are brilliant – yet everyone is doing this thing. It doesn’t make any sense to me.” The silence between us was filled with pain. He was surrounded by friends who were in recovery but it was not going to be for him. He drove his car at sixty miles an hour into a brick wall two months later.

Here’s some advice for anyone who is having a difficult time with friends not fully understanding or supporting their recovery:

Make sure you have a lot of other friends who do support your recovery.

You have to know why you are in recovery – what it means to you. Be unshakable. And you don’t have to defend it – just live it.

Check your side of the street. If you’ve been unintentionally trying to recruit them, lay off. If people want what you have they will ask you how you did it and if they don’t, they won’t.

Active addicts and alcoholics are uncomfortable with friends who have gotten clean. They are most likely the ones to start up these discussions. Avoid all conversations about recovery with people who are loaded. They will keep up the argument for days if you let them.

If you are too early in recovery to have boundaries, you shouldn’t be there. It is easy to change the subject or to cut out early. Save your recovery talk for people who want it.

Remember, if you are new, your foundation is still fragile. Don’t take unnecessary risks.

Recovery is YOUR path; every human being is entitled to choose their own path.

Expectations lead to disappointment.

Today I still get people telling me that after all these years I should be able to drink now if I want to. I used to have clever answers like “Well, if I have a drink now, I’ll probably rob you later.” Now my answer is, “I don’t want one”.

Oh – and my old friends that I mentioned – they’ve been back in my life for years. In fact, when I held a party for the premier of Relapse, they were the ones who stayed closing the bar, long after everyone had left, discussing how great the show was.

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

August 9, 2012All Things Recovery12 step, 1st step, AA, Alcoholism, clean, disease, Drugs, Feelings, fellowship, HALT, meetings, Narcotics Anonymous, Newcomers, Powerless, recovery, Relapse, relationships, sober, Sobriety, Stress, support, tips, unmanageabilitypattypowers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recovery is harm reduction for day to day living.

Anatomy of a Vacation

July 12, 2012All Things Recovery12 step, AA, addiction, Alcoholism, clean, family, Feelings, fresh air, gratitude, health, holidays, Meditation, Narcotics Anonymous, recovery, sober vacation, Sobriety, Stresspattypowers

I don’t know about you but getting clean made my life a whole lot busier. Twenty-three years later and the need for downtime and timeout from the day-to-day grind is as essential to my well-being and recovery as it ever was.

I’m writing this blog from my parent’s house in rural Ontario Canada. Every summer I spend two weeks here, a combination of amends and vacation time. My parents left the city of Toronto six years ago and moved to a town of eleven thousand people who are spread out across thousands rolling acres of farmland and forests. A seven-minute drive ends at a sandy beach on Lake Ontario.

Usually I spend the majority of my time here in the yard or in my room working on whatever project I brought along. This trip has been different. I’ve spent a lot of time playing ball with a twenty-month old Jack Russell named Harley. Most days I take Harley to a stone beach and throw sticks into the lake for him, go on long country bike rides, walk the dog to the horse farms, and at some point drive back to the beach for a long swim. This routine is broken up by whatever scenic drives my parents want to take. Occasionally I will go to my room and check email or my cell to see if I am missing anything from my life in New York. I’m not. Until tonight, I also haven’t been writing.

Vacations are a time-out from the daily grind of life. I don’t know about you but I tend to forget this. I hear friends talk about doing nothing on island vacations but that has never been my style. Normally a vacation means visiting a new city somewhere on the planet and exploring it from morning until bedtime. My vacations are usually heightened stimulation and inspiration and a break from my regular life. Coming to Canada and forcing myself to work everyday at my computer was as close to doing nothing as it gets for me. This year I am having a real vacation. I must under-estimate the sheer levels of stress city life imposes: the noise, the crowds, the pressures to be here and there, the effort to maintain healthy balance with recovery, exercise, leisure, work, diet – the effort to stay sane. I love city life but it is important to take time out. It took three days for my body wind down and a new level of rest come into me. I see this vacation as a re-up.

I arrived here with a lot of noise in my head. The list of what I need to get finished, emails that need to be sent, dates I need to schedule – there seemed to be a lot of things I “needed” to do – so much that I felt overwhelmed. Two weeks in a heat wave without air conditioning and I’d done nothing. So I arrived with stress and anxiety and exhaustion. This of course felt like low-grade depression. Free-floating waves of despair swept through me. I arrived depleted. Thank God. I was too beaten to summon the fight to keep going at my usual pace. Defeat was the silver lining of that heat wave.

Two days of napping and my spirit lightened. On day three I went to the beach. From that point on, my days have been spent as I indicated above. I now notice clouds, the smell of cedar as I bike past a forest, the sound of the waves hitting the shore, sunsets on the water. I have a sense of peace that is deeper than what I am able to get in the city with yoga, meditation and visits to the park. Sometimes you just have to step away from your life to get these needs met.

In recovery, I have learned to listen to my heart (or to my gut). It always lets me know what I need. This was even true in early recovery. You may not know you are stressed or burnt out until a friend tells you but if you take some quiet time, your body will let you know what it needs. It could be an air-conditioned movie to buy 90 minutes of not thinking about your life or texting anyone. It could be a long walk in the evening, a bike ride, a dance class. Your spirit will always cry out for some relief from the grind but it is up to you to feed it.

If you can’t get a vacation, give yourself one weekend day as a day for yourself and schedule in something that will feed your spirit: nap time, a country or beach walk, a river stroll, a picnic in the park with your favorite book – and please leave your cell and your i-pad at home for a minimum of 6 hours. I’ve checked mine and 8 days later, my real life has not fallen apart.

If your life is so busy that you can’t afford a whole day for yourself, schedule in several hours a couple times a week and use it to go outside. Pay attention to the small details in your view. We all have scenery, even in cities, so take some quiet time and look at whatever beauty there is around you. Think of it as a mini re-up.

Visiting parents can be the most stressful thing people in recovery can do and during the first 7 or 8 years of my recovery I never knew what to expect. Would I revert back to asshole teenage behaviors? Would old resentments take over my thoughts? Would I arrive with expectations and be disappointed? Would I blurt out something hurtful I couldn’t take back? Visiting family didn’t always feel like a vacation. Luckily, the ongoing process of recovery has healed a lot of old wounds, given me perspective, and has changed my relationships – even with my parents. I am enjoying a peaceful vacation without busy-ness, without having feelings I need to escape from, and in the company of two people I am grateful to still have in my life.

In recovery, we change and our relationships with others change. You may cringe at the idea of two weeks with family but if it is something you do, who knows, maybe one day you’ll discover yourself enjoying it. Summer is a glorious time. Wherever you are and whatever you do, set aside some time to enjoy it and be rejuvenated by it.

What’s all this talk about willingness?

June 22, 2012All Things Recovery12 step, AA, addiction, Alcoholism, Drugs, Narcotics Anonymous, recovery, Relapse, Sobriety, tips, willingnesspattypowers

When you get clean you start to hear a lot of stuff about willingness. Are you willing to go to any length (for your recovery)? But what does it mean? Where does willingness come from?

I believe the magic of recovery exists in the willingness to try. Imagine an arrow being shot into space and time. At the very tip of the arrow is willingness. It’s the first thing to pierce the air, changing the energy and molecular configurations around it. Simply by launching the arrow, change begins to happen.

Willingness is akin to saying “I’ll try ___ even though it doesn’t make sense to me and I see no point in it or understand why I’m doing it.” Willingness is trying something when a voice is crying out not to.

At the beginning of recovery willingness is usually born out of desperation. First we are willing to consider not using drugs. Next we are willing to not get high for 24 hours even though we don’t believe we can do it. We become willing to consider that maybe the people who are clean might not be full of shit with their suggestions on what to do next, how to make it for another hour or another day without using.

When we are willing to admit we need help it seems to come to us. Our life starts to shift. We begin to see that when we become willing, things usually start to change for the better. It becomes easier to not have to be in control of everything all the time. We allow for some sort of falling of the cards to take place.

Willingness comes out of a desire to believe that all is not hopeless.

Even when we don’t know what move to make next, especially during our darkest, most confusing times, change begins as soon as we become willing – even when it means being willing to wait to see where the universe will blow us next.

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

May 15, 2012All Things Recovery12 step, AA, Alcoholism, angry, clean, disease, Drugs, Feelings, fellowship, HALT, hungry, lonely, meetings, Narcotics Anonymous, Powerless, recovery, Relapse, relationships, Sobriety, Stress, support, tips, triggerpattypowers

caution_relapse

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.

For the Ladies: Hormones are a Bitch!

April 30, 2012All Things Recovery12 step, AA, Alcoholism, angry, disease, Drugs, Feelings, fellowship, health, lonely, meetings, Narcotics Anonymous, Newcomers, PMS menstrual cycles, Powerless, recovery, relationships, Sobriety, Stresspattypowers

Let 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.

Too Much Too Soon – How to sabotage getting clean

April 4, 2012All Things Recovery12 step, AA, addiction, Alcoholism, clean, disease, Drugs, exercise, Feelings, HALT, Narcotics Anonymous, Newcomers, perfectionism, recovery, Relapse, relationships, Sobrietypattypowers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Therapy & Psych Meds in Recovery

March 22, 2012All Things Recovery12 step, AA, addiction, Alcoholism, angry, anti-depressants, anxiety medication, clean, depression, disease, Drugs, exercise, Feelings, health, holistic, meditate, Meditation, meetings, Narcotics Anonymous, panic, panic attack, recovery, Relapse, relationships, Sobriety, Stress, support, therapist, therapypattypowers

In the early years of my recovery, a lot of my friends tested positive for HIV and the AIDS virus. I went along with all the lifestyle changes to support them. Overnight we became non-smoking, macrobiotic, vegan, aerobic-class enthusiasts reading A Course in Miracles and quoting Marianne Williamson. Considering we’d all been art-damaged, punk rock-nurtured criminals and sex-working gay & straight IV drug users, throwing ourselves enthusiastically into every possible holistic and spiritual way to heal ourselves expressed our collective desire to live. And we never missed an opportunity to laugh at ourselves. Some of our adventures in spirituality-seeking bordered on the ridiculous but we needed more miracles – the first miracle being that the desire to use drugs had left us.

Years passed, we accumulated clean time, and life-saving HIV cocktails became available. The miracle had happened. Without the threat of impending death motivating lifestyle change, some people started picking up and putting down cigarettes again, ordering steak, going from sex-abstinent to sex-abundant, opting out of cardio for yoga. Over time, we exited the self-help route and found therapy.

In recovery we continue striving to enrich our lives, our relationships with others and most importantly, our relationship with ourselves. I encourage people to seek professional help whenever needed. However, Rome wasn’t built in a day. For many addicts, learning how to live with our feelings must come before we are ready to dig deeper. We do this by staying clean, building a foundation, and gaining courage by living life on life’s terms. For others, staying clean would not be possible without healing the wounds of trauma with a professional early on. Wherever you fit in this spectrum, the combination of listening to your heart and the suggestions of those with more experience will be your guide.

Therapy is a commitment to show up and be honest so it is important that you find a therapist who is a good fit. This can be done with a little research and interviewing. You can often get names of therapists from various centers connected to organizations dealing with GLBT, Women’s Services, victims of violence or sexual abuse, sex workers, runaways etc. You can Google “therapist, your location and whatever specific issues that may concern you” and see what comes up. You can ask your doctor, ask friends about their therapists. Once you begin seeking, names will come. You can find sliding scale often connected with larger university mental health facilities, some therapists take insurance and others are cash only. Prepare questions for the first meeting – it’s okay to ask them about themselves and their practice. You will intuitively know who you feel safe with. Remember, you are building a new relationship so don’t expect an instant fix. It takes time for many of us to build trust before we are able to be thoroughly honest. This is not surgery. Healing happens over time. Therapy is really a case of “more will be revealed”. The willingness to begin is all you need to start the ball rolling toward change.

People often ask “Was it worth it?” and want to know what I got out of the experience. Often during therapy I’d be asking myself the same question. I tackled many different issues according to what was happening in my life, how I was handling situations, and feelings. For example, nothing ever seemed to get me angry yet I would cross a line (usually because I felt I wasn’t being heard) and literally see red and start swinging. I knew this was strange and wanted to know how to have a different experience. That was one reason I sought help. In retrospect, what I have gained from therapy is that I now experience my feelings as they come up. I don’t intellectualize them and I don’t check out. This has enabled me to live fully in my body and be present in the moment in my life.This had not been the case for most of my life. I numbed out feelings that either were painful or scary first with drugs and then clean with escapist behaviors. These days I wouldn’t even know where the switch was to flip it to the “off” position if I wanted to. I believe this change is definitely the key to the contentment I feel most days.

I’m going to talk for a moment about medication. Personally, I’m not against meds in recovery. I do not believe we have to suffer to prove our willingness to be clean. I also know addicts have a history of preferring a pill to hard work, that we are self-deceptive and very skilled at deceiving others. So this is my own personal philosophy on the matter. I was offered anti-depressants a number of times by my therapist. It is her job to offer solutions – and medication is a solution. I decided to exercise, meditate and get fresh air to see if it helped first. I also pinpointed things in my life I could change (people, places, jobs) that were bringing me pain. I did the work and felt better. The depression lifted without medication. If you do not try alternative methods first, my guess is you want a pill to fix it. Now there are people who will not find relief from depression or anxiety no matter what holistic avenues they take or what lifestyle changes they make. And there are people with other mental health issues. It is important to be completely honest with your psychiatrist and to choose one who has a lot of experience working with addicts. I know a psychiatrist in NYC who believes no one needs more than 3 medications to deal with disorders common to addicts. I’ve had clients come to me who have a regiment of 8 pills a day. Since I’m not a doctor all I can do is insist they get a second opinion. Also, if you came into recovery on anxiety meds, Adderall, antidepressants and sleep medication, my question is always “Did your doctor know you were abusing drugs? The symptoms that he treated, could they have been partial withdrawal symptoms from your drug of choice?” I don’t care if you’re 30 and you have been on these meds since you were 16. It is possible you were misdiagnosed because you were using at the time. Be willing to get honest with a psychiatrist who specializes in working with addicts in recovery and trust him to evaluate you.

At the end of the day, we have to learn to be honest with ourselves and honest with mental health professionals. We have to be willing to make lifestyle changes and to heal old wounds in order to find peace and comfort in our skin if we are to stay clean and sober for the long haul.

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.

Patty Powers

Recovery Coach // NYC