“Keep On Keepin’ On”

Sometimes there is nothing more difficult than continuing on in spite of everything being more or less okay. Most of us have times in our Recovery when there is no drama to focus on, there are no crises to deal with, no celebrations to be had. Life, through some seemingly bizarre set of circumstances, becomes calm and uneventful for a while.

Right now, there are a number of folks reading this and laughing. I understand how that feels. I remember a time when it seemed there would never be an end to the ups and downs. Even after I had gotten clean and sober, the chaos and insanity of my old life persisted. Through working my steps, by working my program, things changed. I began to experience those minutes, hours, then days of serenity. Gradually, and with time, the ups and downs became the exception rather than the rule. I had a whole new challenge in front of me: how to live when life wasn’t crazy.

The ups and downs of our old life can be like an addiction all on its own. We get so used to the insanity that we feel like we don’t know how to live without it. Some people get into Recovery and continue on with the drama and trauma. They find all sorts of ways to ensure that it continues, usually without even realizing they are doing so. Some fall into traps of severe codependence, involving themselves in others’ lives and issues unnecessarily. Some get involved in chaotic relationships. Sometimes we continue on with the chaos and insanity simply because it’s all we’ve ever known, or because we don’t feel as though we’re really alive without it.

Letting go of the chaos and insanity, allowing ourselves to have those moments of serenity isn’t automatic. Sometimes we’ll reach a ‘bottom’ with it. We’ll throw up our hands or hang our head in despair, and decide deep within our being that we just don’t want to do it like that anymore, or can’t. We decide to find another way. Getting used to that other way, like other aspects of our Recovery, takes time and practice.

There have been times for me when the peace was too much to take, and I found ways to bring chaos back into my life. It’s not something I regret, but these days I definitely have more interest in letting go of the chaos, allowing it to pass out of my life. There are risks there. Part of my disease is a need to self-sabotage. One of the common dangers I am vulnerable to is boredom. But with time and practice, I have learned to accept that sometimes life really is okay; the even keel isn’t such a bad thing. And the more I experience it, the more I prefer it to the insanity. The more I allow it to happen, the more practiced I get at doing so.

The spiritual principle that jumps out at me during these times is that of Perseverance, the principle behind the tenth step. It can mean soldiering on when times are tough, or that when good things are happening in our lives we allow them to happen, or simply being content in our times of peace and serenity. If there isn’t much happening in our lives at a particular moment, our job is to accept the reality of what is. It’s called dealing with life on life’s terms, even if life’s terms happen to be that not much is going on.

If our lives are crazy, we can accept it and handle it accordingly. If things are peaceful and uneventful, we can accept that, too. We don’t have to move backwards, back towards insanity. We can take a moment to be thankful for what is, what life and our higher power has given us, even if it happens to be a bit ‘blah’. For myself, I’ll take blah over chaos and insanity any day. After all, this too shall pass. And when I think back on those dark days when I never thought I would have times of peace and serenity, I am filled with gratitude.

“A Spiritual Message”

The twelfth step talks about carrying the message to others. It’s about being of service, and there are many ways to be. We can hold service positions. We can sponsor others, pass on the knowledge that was passed on to us. Even just showing up at a meeting is being of service. If we share, we can help others by letting them know how we’ve dealt with one of life’s trials (or triumphs) without being loaded. Even if we say nothing, just our presence is enough. There would be no meetings if no one showed up.

I’ve heard some people talk about the message as “The Message of (insert fellowship name)”. There’s nothing wrong with that. I prefer to use my own words, and to be a little more specific. To me, the message is that there is another way to live besides being loaded. Even more specifically, that there is hope. A big part of the program is learning to simplify, and that’s the best way I know how to simplify the message: that there is hope. Hope for a life without the stuff, hope for real happiness, hope for true freedom. Not just freedom from active addiction, but the freedom to be who we really are as we have been created.

There are people who disagree with me. Some in Recovery are absolutely adamant that the program promises nothing more than the freedom from active addiction. While this is true, I have always taken it a step further, because for me freedom from active addiction has meant the freedom to be the real me. It’s meant the freedom to be the best of myself. It has meant the chance to work on issues that have plagued me for as long as I can remember, long before I ever first picked up. More than anything, it has meant the opportunity to learn how to truly love myself and let myself be loved.

We don’t have to take advantage of this opportunity. Nowhere is it written that, in Recovery, we must learn how to love ourselves. Nowhere is it written we have to be the best of ourselves, and it is certainly not promised anywhere that this is what will happen. It’s up to us. Like so much of the program, it is in our hands whether we take advantage of these opportunities.

I’ve known more than a few people who get into Recovery and become stuck. They live clean and sober, true, but the old behaviors still tend to rule their lives. They still take advantage of others, or they’ll still let others take advantage of them. They seem to remain permanently unhappy. There are some patterns there. If someone doesn’t work their steps, or if they are convinced that they can’t change or refuse to, then they tend to end up in the stuck place. My program says that others are free to work their program their own way, so I do my best to let them. I still feel for them, though. It’s the same kind of sympathy that I feel for those who are still dealing with active addiction.

I suppose it all comes down to that spiritual principle of Willingness. You have to be willing to let the program change your life. It only works if you work it, we say. Recovery is not for those who need it but those who want it, we say.

The twelve steps are not the only way to live clean and sober, just one way. I have found that, for me, they work in powerful and amazing ways. They have given me a way to live free from active addiction. They have given me a way to deal with myself and with life that works. Today, they are my guide for dealing with reality. They help me to live in reality, a way to face what is. They are not a be-all, end-all, they are a guide. They are not rules, but suggestions. They are a set of tools that works.

This is my message: there is a reason to hope. The steps really do work if you work them. The principles of the program are spiritual in nature, and you don’t even have to be an addict to let them work in your life. Being honest with yourself and others is a path to surrender and acceptance of the real, of what is. Having hope that there is a power greater than yourself which loves and cares for you, living with the faith that it will love and care for you if you allow it to, brings about a peace within. Having the courage to face life instead of running from it builds inner strength. Integrity, willingness, and humility help us to remember we are part of a larger whole. Love and justice are guides to treating the others in the world and in our lives with the dignity and respect we all are deserving of. Perseverance is how we make it through when life confronts us with its inevitable struggles. Being aware is how we stay connected to the spiritual. Being of service is how we get outside ourselves and help others.

The choice is ours. We can tear others down, we can tear ourselves down. We can continue to be stuck living for ourselves if we chose to. Or we can chose to lift others up, to lift ourselves up. We can help others and let ourselves be helped. It’s up to us.

“Uncle Steve Watches A Lot Of TV”

Ah, the chattering brain. I can’t claim to love it. Some days I downright hate it. Thoughts of imaginary conversations, endless postulates of ‘what-if?’, circle around and around, driving me to distraction and madness. Maybe I’m overstating things, but not by much.

Spending time in my imagination instead of in reality goes back as far as I can remember. As a kid, I was picked on a lot. My way of dealing with bullies was to go into my imagination where I had superpowers that would allow me to defeat them or escape from them. Probably one of the reasons I don’t remember being at home is because, when there, I was living in worlds I’d created in my head instead.

I had plenty of fear when I was a kid, too. Fear of other people, fear of what they might say to me or do to me if I said or did the wrong thing. I developed a habit early on of practicing my conversations ahead of time. When I got older and started becoming interested in girls, this tendency amplified. Dramatically. If I say this, then she’ll say this, then I can say this. Or what if she says this? Well then, I’ll say this and this and in case she says this then I’ll… and on and on and on.

A real turning point happened a few months after I got clean. I was seeing a therapist at the time, and I told him about a grand realization I’d just had: that in all those imaginary conversations, the person I was talking to was imaginary. As in, not real. As in, I was really only talking to myself, hearing the other person say what I wanted to hear them say. He did me one better and told me that I wasn’t real in them either. In those imaginary conversations, I was saying what I wanted to hear myself say, being an idealized version of myself and not the real me.

Thanks to my Recovery, I’ve had the opportunity to see how these habits aren’t necessary any more. I’ve had the chance to realize that they aren’t all that helpful, and that sometimes they are in fact a huge hindrance. In time, I came to see how all these imaginary conversations and scenarios were part and parcel of my disease. They all stem from my inability to accept the things I can’t change, manifested as attempts to control.

When we try to control the uncontrollable, our lives become unmanageable.

Letting go of this habit is not something that happened overnight. In fact, it is still something I struggle with, just not nearly as much as I used to. When I first started working on it, I tried to do so with an iron grip. Whenever I noticed I was having an imaginary conversation, I came down on myself, chided myself, told myself not to do it. I’d deliberately think of something else, or run a favorite song through my head.

As time has passed, I’ve learned to be more loving towards myself. Nowadays, when I hear the imaginary thoughts, I work a mini- first step. Sometimes it’s as simple as, “Yep, I’m still an addict.” Sometimes, when the thoughts are persistent and don’t fall away, I take the time to do a little inventory. I check in with myself. I try to feel everything that I’m feeling. I examine my fears, knowing that much of my attempts to control stem from that. I push through the imaginary stuff and get to the real. Saying a little prayer never hurts, either.

I’m working, too, on learning to love this part of myself. Lately, I’ve been doing it in metaphor, which seems to help with the more difficult aspects of my disease. Instead of coming down on myself, or thinking ‘there I go again’ with the imaginary thoughts, I think of it as good ol’ Uncle Steve watching TV.

The shows aren’t real (even if they’re reality-based), the commercials are downright annoying, and sometimes he has the volume up way too loud. Like some people who take their TV shows way too seriously, he gets caught up in the drama, the characters and the possibilities, wondering what’s going to happen next and unable to turn away from the screen for fear of missing some crucial happening. But none of it is real. Sometimes I want to watch what he’s watching, too, but then I remind myself that it’s ‘only a TV show’ and more often than not I am content to just let him watch it.

I’m not sure if my over-active imagination counts as an actual character defect but, if it is, then using it in this way, thinking of my addict self as Uncle Steve, is using that defect as a positive trait. It’s a way of embracing that part of myself, accepting it, while at the same time not allowing it to rule me or run my life.

I don’t mind that Uncle Steve watches a lot of TV. I’d much prefer him do that than tear up the house in a drunken stupor, or—worse—go outside and mess up the neighborhood. Uncle Steve tearing up the house? That’s me back in active-addict mode. Uncle Steve messing up the neighborhood? That’s addict-Zach creating chaos in the lives of others. So, yes, it is just fine with me if Uncle Steve watches TV all day long. Even if the volume is too loud sometimes.

“A New Kind Of Friendship”

In my active addiction, I was a big isolator. A lot of my time spent loaded was by myself, and it was time that I guarded jealously. I hated the world and couldn’t wait to get away from it. Responsibilities were something to do as quickly as possible with the minimum amount of effort—if I did them at all. Do the bare minimum, then go get loaded and retreat from the world. It hated me, after all. Or so my thinking was at the time.

I never had many friends. Some people, when loaded, become social butterflies. Not me. I was never one of those who loved to get loaded then find my new best friend. I never had more than a handful of people I spent time with, and that number had dwindled down to practically zero by the end of my using career. At the end, I had only two people I ever saw who I would even consider calling my friends: my main using buddy, who I’d usually go in on a bag with, and the dealer.

When I first started using, and for a while after, it was a kind of gateway to friendships for me. I’d already been a loner, always feeling that no one would ever want to talk to me or find me interesting. It’s a little difficult to describe, though. Hanging out, getting loaded with others, I felt more included than I had before, but I still felt that I didn’t belong. I still felt like others were always looking down on me, that I wasn’t good enough. In the program, we talk about feeling ‘less-than’ and I definitely did. Even when I splurged and shared my stash, I could never shake the feeling that I still wasn’t fully welcomed. I wasn’t ‘a part of’.

Other people had always let me down, so it didn’t occur to me that there was anything unusual about my using friends letting me down. That was the concept of friendship that I had: people who let you down. When I was loaded, I could convince myself that they really cared for me. I was very good at justification, making up excuses for them for why they were never there for me. And, after all, I didn’t think I was worth being there for anyway.

Looking back on those ‘friends’, I see now how little I had in common with them. Every once in awhile I’ll run into an old using buddy. We’ll talk, and the feeling is reaffirmed for me: they were people I hung out with to get loaded or be loaded around. There were no other reasons. I may not have thought so at the time, but looking back it is abundantly clear to me. They were addicts as well. When we are in the grips of active addiction, we aren’t capable of genuinely caring about others. When our connection to the spiritual is being blocked because we’re loaded or consumed with trying to become so, we are locked inside ourselves and the only thing we can conceive of or care about is us.

We’ll love you until you learn to love yourself.

For myself, I had no concept of what a real friendship was like. I had never experienced it, never known what it was like to be truly accepted for who I am just as I am. I had never felt that kind of love. I didn’t get it from others growing up; I didn’t get it from my family. It wasn’t until I found my way into the rooms that I began to learn about what real friendship could be.

Now I have people in my life that I know genuinely care about me, and I about them. They are people who I share common interests with, who we enjoy doing things together or talking about subjects that matter to us. The people close to me are close because we have a love for each other that is not based on being loaded. When I ask them about what’s going on in their lives, it’s because I actually want to know. How they are doing with work, family, their relationships, matter to me. Subjects for discussion are talked about because they interest us, not as small-talk leading to who makes the call to the dealer.

Early on in my Recovery, I received some very good advice: that I get to be choosey about who I spend my time with. For the first time, I began to act on the belief that I deserved to have people in my life who are good for me, and that I didn’t have to keep others in my life who weren’t. After so many years of feeling less-than, after always taking what little scraps of so-called friendship I could find, this advice was difficult to follow at first. But as I built more and more actual friendships, the false ones became easier to let fall away. As I began caring about myself, accepting that I was worth having people in my life who truly cared about me, it became easier to let go of those who didn’t.

Change your people, places, and things.

This is one of the big suggestions that so many newcomers have a hard time with. On the face of it, changing the people we spend time with makes sense for one very simple reason: don’t hang out with the people you used to get loaded with and your chances of not getting loaded go up astronomically. In reality, this suggestion is about getting yourself away from people who are incapable of caring about you. They may think they do, but it’s because they don’t have any concept of what it is like to genuinely care about someone else. We may think they care about us, but it’s because our ideas of what it means to care about someone else have been twisted by our disease. More often than not, we don’t feel we deserve to have people in our lives who care about us. How could we? We don’t know how to care about ourselves.

When we feel our selves are worthless, that we don’t deserve to be treated with love, dignity, and respect, we attract others into our lives who fail to treat us with love, dignity, and respect. When we don’t love ourselves, when we feel that we deserve to be treated badly, we attract people into our lives who treat us badly. Giving up this feeling of worthlessness is one of the greater challenges of Recovery. For many of us, we have spent our entire lives thinking of ourselves this way. It was definitely like that for me.

Meeting people in the program who loved me was the beginning. At first it didn’t make sense, and like so many others, I had difficulty accepting that love. In time, and with practice, I learned how to love myself. I’m still learning. I hope I never stop. And I have people in my life now who I can genuinely call friends to thank for it.

“The Way Through”

There’s good days and there’s bad days. Bad days can be anything from a series of bad news or events that never seems to end, to purely internal feelings of aggravation, frustration, sorrow, loneliness, or despair. Remembering that all things pass and acting ‘as-if’ are invaluable tools in times like these. Some days I want nothing more than to curl up in a ball, hide under the covers, and stay there. A dark winter with a cold spell that seems to last forever can be death to even my best moods.

I force myself to go in to work, even if I’m hating my job, and I act as-if I’m grateful. I try to remember there are many less fortunate than me, people who are out of work; people who are without homes or shelter, who are out on the streets in the bitter cold. It’s hard to remember these things when I’m stuck inside myself, but acting as-if can lead me to a place where remembering how fortunate I am defeats the defeatist attitude. Acting as-if I’m grateful I have a job can lead to my actually being grateful I do.

Here in America, we have a cultural thing that is really frustrating to me sometimes. Particularly around the holidays, the Christmas season, the need to be happy is almost militantly enforced. It seems as though cheerful music flows out of every speaker system. Wearing a frown becomes something of a sin. Even at other times during the year, there is something culturally improper about being unhappy. It almost feels like we aren’t allowed to be unhappy. Those who are less fortunate are all too ready to point out to the miserable how they should be grateful for their privilege. Those who are better at the always-be-happy skill are quick to tell those who aren’t displaying the mandatory smile that whatever the problem is, it isn’t so bad—and they offer this advice without so much as asking what the non-smile wearer is upset about or having a hard time with.

It almost feels as though, for an entire month, we aren’t allowed to express the full range of human emotion. To me, the greatest irony is that so many people are miserable during the holidays. Many people are poor and, as such, are seen as less-than because they don’t (re: can’t) participate in the consumer frenzy. Many do not get along with their families; holiday get-togethers are torture as they struggle to maintain composure and get along with people they can’t stand or have nothing in common with. Many have no family, or none they can spend time with. Many have no significant other in their life to snuggle up with in front of the proverbial fire.

And all the while, those of us who choose not to display the requisite happy mask are looked down on with disdain, pity, or outright hostility because we aren’t playing along. To those who are genuinely happy during the holidays, you have my blessings. I’m honestly happy for you that your lives are so wonderful. You are the fortunate few, and I’m glad you can enjoy your joy. To those who aren’t so lucky and choose to fake their way through, pretending everything is wonderful when it isn’t, I have nothing to say except that denial doesn’t work for me anymore.

I’m a big believer in feeling my feelings. If I’m unhappy, I am allowed to feel that. This doesn’t mean I get to spread my misery around—far from it. The importance of acting as-if is never greater than when I’m in a bad mood. But for me, pretending to be happy when I’m not is not the way through. Denial of what I’m feeling only serves to make me even more miserable because it comes with the flavor of I’m not allowed to feel how I feel, that my feelings aren’t valid. They are. It’s a fine line to walk, between feeling what I’m feeling and not allowing others to tell me how I should feel, while ensuring that I don’t spread my dark mood to others who aren’t experiencing one. After all, if no one has the right to make me happy, I certainly don’t have the right to make others miserable.

The holidays really tap my spiritual energy. Most of us have dysfunctional families, and mine is no exception, but it is not my place to pass judgment. No matter how chaotic or insane, my job is to accept them for who they are. I don’t have to try to change them or even spend energy wishing they were different. They are who they are and are allowed to be so. Maybe they aren’t who I’d prefer, maybe my relationship with them isn’t what I wish it could be, but any focus besides acceptance is a form of denial.

I want very much to launch into a tirade about all the things wrong with them, but I know that is not the way. Their problems are their own. They get to have them. They get to deal with them if they so choose. For someone raised in an extremely codependent household, this can be very hard for me to do. I was raised to solve others’ problems. It is a relief and a blessing to know that I don’t have to do that anymore, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t take work to remember. At least I’m spending my energy towards the goal of acceptance instead of feeding in to an emotionally unhealthy task—particularly because it’s futile. Striving for acceptance keeps me away from the feelings which would inevitably come after I failed to succeed at something I can’t succeed at.

For those of you who are lonely this time of year, I send this out: you are loved. Whether we are close, haven’t seen each other in years, or even if we have never met, I love you for who you are, just as you are.

“Negative Egotism”

Some people have difficulty recognizing when their Higher Power is working in their life. This is not a problem I share. I may have difficulty accepting what I am being told, I may have difficulty recognizing or understanding the lesson, but it is usually quite clear to me when that force is at work. It’s a kind of synergy, a string of coincidences that add up very clearly to something more at play. Perhaps I’m struggling with a particular issue and the Just For Today reading just happens to be on that exact subject. And then I go to a meeting and the topic happens to also be on it. Outside, someone will talk about or ask me about, again, this same thing.

There is an ebb and a flow to it; sometimes there is more of this synergy happening than others. Lately, there has been quite a bit. With the guidance of my sponsor, I have been re-working Step 6. At my regular step-study meeting this week, we read and discussed Step 6. I get the ‘Just For Today’ through my email and today’s just happened to be titled ‘Calling a defect a defect’. It is helpful to know that the power greater than myself is there and wants me to succeed. That doesn’t make it easy, but it does make it easier.

One character defect I struggle with in particular is egotism. Not thinking I’m the greatest, but thinking I’m the worst—negative egotism. I can be exceedingly hard on myself. My instincts seem permanently wired to look for the worst of myself, to the point that it becomes impossible to see any of my good qualities. I get lost in the things I’ve done wrong and can lose all sight of anything I might have done right. This is still egotism, in that I am focusing on me.

The way I was raised, I learned that being proud of my accomplishments, my achievements, my good qualities, was sinful—the sin of pride. This knowledge is something that is taking me a while to unlearn. I try to remember that true humility includes being honest with myself about not just my flaws, but my strengths as well. It is hard to shake that feeling, though, that I am a bad person if I feel good about myself.

I have an especially hard time giving myself a break. I learned to be a perfectionist, was raised by parents who were constantly struggling to be ‘perfect’. I think my father considers his perfectionism one of his best qualities. He doesn’t see it as a detriment. To him, it is an asset. I’m going to try to be spiritual here and venture a guess that, maybe because he works so hard to be perfect, because he holds that bar so high for himself, that he is more successful in his endeavors. He sets a hard, harsh course, one he knows he will never achieve, in an attempt to get as close to that high standard as possible. Maybe it works for him. Maybe, for him, it is a good thing. On the other hand, the man does practice his signature.

For me, one of the greatest benefits of Recovery has been learning to accept that I am not perfect. That doesn’t mean it isn’t something I still struggle with. That instinct, those tendencies, still play out in my life. And there are still plenty of times where I fall short of some unreasonable bar that I hadn’t even realized I’d set for myself. For me, when this happens, I immediately come down on myself. I’ll launch a tirade of insults, tell myself I’m worthless, that I’m nothing, that I’ll never succeed, etc. And all of this because I didn’t achieve something I’m not capable of achieving. I beat myself up for failing at something I wasn’t capable of succeeding at.

It is as though I have the idea stuck in my head that I should be able to fly. I jump from the ground, don’t fly, and curse myself for it. So I find something to jump off of. I fall, and again curse myself. Thinking that I am the failure, I find a taller building, and again fail. Knowing the problem is with me, but completely misunderstanding what the problem is, I find taller and taller buildings to jump off, hurting myself more and more with each fall to the ground. Eventually, I am in enough pain from my failures that I am forced to admit I can’t fly after all. Recovery has helped me to accept I can't fly, but there always seems to be that nagging voice telling me I should be able to.

(As a short aside, this is the perfect example for why I have found it useful to eliminate the word ‘should’ from my vocabulary—it forces me to focus on what is, not what might or could be.)

Being hard on myself, being unable to recognize my good qualities and be grateful and properly proud of them, is only one of my character defects. Thank God for the program and the 12-steps. It gives me the chance to work on this issue. Being sober gives me the opportunity to be who I truly am, as I have been created. Working my program helps me to be a better me. Listening to the voice of my Higher Power working in my life helps me to stay focused and let’s me know that God really does want me to be not what my disease tries to make me into, but who I really am.

“One Moment of Many”

Something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is the idea of having a life in addition to my Recovery. Not outside of, in addition to. Recovery is my foundation, and it is important, but so is living. The program gives me a way to live, but simply existing in the rooms is not living. Meetings are important; working my steps are important; prayer and working with others, all important as well. But they are not ends unto themselves. They are means unto a very specific end: the ability to live my life. Not too long ago, I read a ‘Just For Today’ that discussed letting go of ones progress in Recovery.

Letting go is probably one of the scariest things anyone can do. It certainly is for me. The idea of letting go of my progress in Recovery? Terrifying. All kinds of questions come up. What if I relapse? What if I cause more chaos? What if I revert to old behaviors and begin hurting those I love all over again? After spending so much time and energy trying to repair damage from the past, the last thing I want to do is start creating more wreckage.

The JFT says letting go is an act of Faith, and they’re right. It’s a powerful, enormous act of faith. It’s having faith in God to take care of me and give me what I need, be that opportunities, choices, or presence of mind. But it’s also an act of faith in myself: that I can trust myself and my healthy instincts; that I will continue to learn and to grow, and that I don’t have to force it. I can have faith that things will happen naturally, as they are supposed to; as God intends them to.

It isn’t easy, but it is simple.

Another thing I’ve been thinking a lot on lately is the topic of abuse. A great many of us who find our way into the rooms of Recovery have suffered some form of abuse in our past. I don’t know if there are any official statistics out there, but I’d guess the percentage to be pretty high. It’s one of the miracles of the rooms that we can be around others who have endured similar pain. Sharing about this issue in particular with someone else who has experienced it can be a life-changing experience. For the first time, we can begin to feel that we are not alone in our suffering.

My journey in understanding the abuse I suffered is an ongoing one. Sometimes I devote more attention to it than others. I’ve done a lot of research over the years. I’ve been in and out of therapy since I was about 16 years old. The fact that I have yet to find peace on the subject tells me that there is still more work to do.

Given all the psychological and psychiatric professionals I’ve been to over the years, it’s frustrating to me that I don’t have more resolved feelings about this issue. The only things I know for certain are what *didn’t* happen to me. I wasn’t ever beaten. I wasn’t molested. No one in my family ever called me a worthless sack of shit. And yet… I have to admit that I don’t really know these things for sure. I have large gaps in my memories. I don’t really remember my childhood. Part of that is undoubtedly because I wasn’t allowed to have one. I remember thinking at a young age that my dad didn’t know how to let kids be kids. But I can’t recall any examples of how I learned this.

I don’t have any memories of being at home, playing, being a kid. The few things I remember are things I did and was punished for: the time when I was about five or six that I got caught peeing in the backyard; my various attempts at pyromania. I try to come up with some more examples and can’t seem to. I think back on the times I was spanked and have difficulty referring to it as abuse. I know people who got themselves a whoopin’, and what I went through was definitely not a whoopin’. The only thing traumatic about it was the way my mom would be constantly screaming at my dad to stop. Having just written that, it occurs to me that I might be minimizing. Sill, when I think of what others have endured, it really doesn’t strike me as all that bad.

I recently found a website, mainly geared towards therapists, which has some thorough and detailed information regarding signs of abuse. The things listed really give me pause to stop and re-evaluate my opinion of my past. Lack of confidence; low self esteem; strong feelings of inadequacy; inability to trust; problem relationships; sexual dysfunction; food / drug / alcohol abuse; low or over emotional control; panic attacks; phobias; illness; self-harm; sleep disturbances; flashbacks; inability to touch or be touched; depression; suicide attempts; high / low risk-taking; security seeking; alienation from body; aversion to making noise; memory blanks. My personal list checks off 16 of those 22.

Maybe I’m overindulging, here. Maybe my need to be critical of myself and desire to control are over-reaching. It could just be that my childhood sucked and that there isn’t any deeper an explanation. It could be that what I most need to do is simply let go and have faith that everything is okay. There’s nothing wrong with being grateful for where I am now. Trying to force the issue is an attempt at control. Trusting God to reveal new information to me when I’m ready for it is an act of faith. At least I have my Recovery; at least I have a clear head now and the courage to examine these issues should I so choose.

Letting go; it’s the ultimate act of faith.

Penny Parks Foundation - Abuse Information

"Healthy Romantic Relationships Is Not One of the Promises"

I love The Promises. They are dog-eared in my copy of the AA Big Book and are definitely one of the more frequent passages I turn to. I'll never forget hearing them for the first time. Very new to sobriety and recovery, my reaction was a firm 'yeah, right!' It was inconceivable to me at that time that I could Recover from my addiction, let alone experience any of the things listed out. How one's perspective can change.

As I have gained time and worked my program, I have indeed been 'amazed half-way through'. I have found a new sense of freedom. I have come to know peace--something I never in a million years thought I could find. The passing of living in fear and of financial insecurity are nothing to be sneezed at, either. Nowadays, when I hear The Promises read at meetings, it brings a smile to my face. I confess, I mentally put a checkmark next to each. I am filled with gratitide and a joyful amazement. I never would have thought it possible, but they really do come true.

However, there are many things that aren't included in that list.

They do not say that our familial relations will be repaired. They do not say we will achieve reconciliation with the loved ones we have harmed. They don't say we will be rich. They don't say we will have healthy relationships, not with people of either sex or our significant others. They most certainly don't say, "all your dreams will come true."

I've heard it shared in meetings a couple of times that the only thing the program really promises is freedom from active addiction. Period. That's what it's for; that's what the twelve-steps do: they show us one way to live without getting loaded. And the Big Book is very clear on this point. If you can find another way to live without getting loaded besides the program, then more power to you. I think that perspective is a bit harsh, and can be discouraging to newcomers, but the point is a very valid one. The things missing from the list are not missing by accident.

My romantic relationships have almost always been chaotic and disastrous. Even in Recovery, they continue to be. I have friends who waited a long time before attempting to date again, much longer than the suggested time of one year. Many in Recovery refer to romantic relationships as 'the last frontier'. This tongue-in-cheek comment is usually grumbled. It is one of the more unfortunate truths of Recovery. Most of us, myself included, do our best to remember that romantic relationships are difficult for everyone, but that can be small comfort. I've heard more than one old timer say that when they feel attracted to someone they just met, they run the other direction as fast as they can.

I battle loneliness. I battle feelings of failure. These two join together and create a terrifying force when I attempt a relationship. Or to date someone. Or to even just give a woman a call. The addict side of my brain feasts on my insecurities. You could say it's Uncle Steve's favorite dish. There are many ways my disease tries to tear me down. Fighting against it on this issue often seems impossible. Sometimes I can overcome it. Sometimes not. Even if I do prevail, it is an exhausting struggle. I try to remember that, were it not for my Recovery, I would not have a clear enough head to even try.

I do know that I have no more desire to cause chaos in my life or others'. I have put girlfriends and wives through Hell. Even in Recovery, I have still caused far more chaos in women's lives than I would prefer. I remind myself that the goal is progress, not perfection. A big part of what my Recovery has done is to give me the option to stop causing others pain and to stop hurting myself. I may end up like those old timers who run the other way, but I hope not. Like so much else, I can do my part and the rest is up to God.

"Who Hates Their Job? I do, I do!!"

In my homegroup, one of our opening readings is a list of Common Dangers--situations which might lead someone in Recovery back to using. A lot of these are common sense, such as being around people who are using, or spending time at the places where you used to get loaded. Some are less intuitive, like suddenly having a large influx of money, or boredom. I like to joke that the former of those two is a problem I would love to have; the latter is one I struggle with a lot.

As a practicing addict, I was definitely one of those who lived the fantasy of functionality. I may not have had a career, but I usually had a job. I even managed to stay employed through my detox period, something I know is not exactly common and that I probably don't give myself enogh credit for. We addicts are notorious for being hard on ourselves, and it has always been my feeling that my working through detox isn't that big of a deal because the skill level required to do my job is so far beneath what I'm capable of. Maybe one day I'll be able to look at it differently.

I'm currently working the same job I had while going through detox. My situation there is the same one many other Americans are in right now: wages are stagnant, and opportunities for moving up are non-existent. I'm grateful to have a job--especially in today's economy. Still, it is nothing like what I was raised to believe would happen. Growing up, I was taught that if I went to college, then I would receive a good-paying job for my reward. That when I began working, I would start out at the bottom and could gradually work my way up. Both of those promises have been proved false, and sometimes I feel angry, that I was lied to, and frustrated that so many others of my generation are in the same boat. We did our part; we lived our lives as we were taught to. We sacrificed, we worked hard, and our reward has turned out to be not the so-called American Dream, but nothing more than to keep on being stuck in the situations we are stuck in.

Recovery has helped me to deal with some of these issues. I know now that nowhere is it written that life has to be the way I think it should. I know also that indulging in negativity--like complaing excessively about things I can't control--is not the way. It is not accepting life on life's terms. Negativity damages my spirit and it spreads like a virus, infecting the others around me. It's easy to be grateful for what I have when I look around and see so many others who are less fortunate, but at times it feels a bit like being grateful for having crumbs to eat instead of starving to death. I take some consolation also at the fact that not being negative does not necessarily mean being positive instead; I can be grateful I have a job and still hate the fact that it bores me to tears.

Moving beyond my period of detox, I began to see just how far beneath my skill level the job I was working really was. I felt very much like my brain came back online. For so long, I'd thought all I had for gray matter was a four-cylinder engine. As the haze cleared, I rediscovered the V8 I'd been given by my Higher Power, and I remembered also how one of the reasons I'd started using was to dumb myself down. Waking up from the slumber of active addiction, I found myself working a job that didn't challenge me, that didn't interest me, in a work environment full of people who were nothing like me. All these things are still true today.

Many people hate their jobs. I'm not sure how the Normies deal with this. Truth be told, I'm not really sure how other addicts deal with it. I know that some handle it by working harder and looking for new challenges where they are, while others do what they can to work towards something different such as going back to school. I am taking the baby steps towards that second option, but the first is actually a danger for me. Maintaining healthy boundaries is important. I am currently doing a job by myself that was previously done by three employees. For me to take on even more duties (without an increase in pay) would be letting my employer take advantage of me. The fact that I knew nothing about how to do my current job when first I started and now do it better than anyone ever has also helps me to stay strong on this issue.

I'm loathe to admit it, but a large part of my energy regarding my job is spent in my head. I have all kinds of imaginary conversations with my various bosses. Usually these are confrontational. I know that it's just me trying to find a way to express my anger at my situation, and I'm grateful for my Recovery and how it helps me to keep those thoughts to myself and not act out on them. I pray a lot. When I catch myself getting angry and caught up in those imaginary dialogues, I force myself to be honest and talk with my Higher Power about what is real--whether it's that I'm tired, or just the same old anger and frustration. Almost always, the root of it all is that I am simply bored.

If I turn the wheel and change my perspective, I can see how my frustrations with work lead to positive things. Because my job is what it is, I am taking action to improve myself by going back to school and pursuing a career in something that does interest me. If things weren't as bad, I'd have no incentive to do that. The negativity that my job brings out in me gives me lots of opportunities to practice working my program. And the program only works if you work it.

My Recovery teaches me that I am worthwhile, that I am more valuable than the slave I sometimes feel like. I am a person, not the cog in a machine I am regarded as. This is validation that I give myself, that all us addicts need to give ourselves. We do what we have to to get through. The Program teaches us strength and courage. We can make the change for something better if we choose to. The grace of a loving Higher Power will always give us what we need.

"My Story - Intro"

(This blog is first in a four-part series, "My Story")

INTRO

I'm a marijuana addict; my name is Zach.

Pot isn't the only drug in my story. There are others, including alcohol, but pot was my main drug, my drug of choice. I spent the bulk of my nine year using career high, usually all day long. In all that time, I was never able to quit. I could put a few days together. One time I made it to two weeks. Today, I am clean and sober, thanks to the program. Relapse is not a part of my story.

Let me break this down succinctly: I've been in jail; I've been institutionalized; I have been abused and I have been an abuser. I don't really enjoy telling war stories. The only thing that the tale of the time I stumbled on the Mexican mafia's pot farms proves is that I should be dead. Most of my time high was spent by myself, alone and isolated. I hid from life because I didn't know how to handle it. I hid from myself because I didn't know how to handle me.

I still suffer from the disease of addiction. It is an incurable, fatal illness that I will die from if I don't remain vigilant in working my program. I have three suicide attempts in my history which I survived thanks to the grace of my higher power. I believe this disease develops through excessive use. I also believe that people can be born with it. I am one of the latter. When I look back on my life, my thoughts and my behaviors before I started using, I see the disease all too clearly. It was like a predator waiting for prey to walk into its trap. It is my belief that I was always going to end up addicted to something. It was just a matter of time and to what.

Some people believe predisposition to addiction is genetic. I don't know about all that, and I have no interest in a nature versus nurture debate. I heard someone say once that nature loads the gun and nurture pulls the trigger. Fair enough. In the end, though, what matters most is that I am an addict. I will always be an addict. It is what I am.

Thankfully, it is not who I am.

"What It Was Like"

(This blog is second in a four-part series, "My Story")

WHAT IT WAS LIKE

I grew up in a religious household. Every Sunday my dad dragged the family to church where we all pretended to be the happy, perfect family we weren't. Alcohol was essentially forbidden in the house and I learned that anyone who drank was an alcoholic and a horrible human being. Drugs weren't mentioned at all, and through that silence I learned to think of them as an unmentionable sin. I also learned to be very judgmental towards people who drank or did drugs.

My family doesn't really talk much. When they do talk, everything said is phrased very carefully in order to avoid offending or upsetting anyone. My parents (mom especially) tried their best to 'protect' me from what they saw as a big, scary world. As a result, I grew up extremely sheltered and naive. My parents didn't have any friends, so it didn't occur to me that it was unusual that I didn't have any either. If I'd had friends, maybe I might have learned earlier that, the way things were in my home, it wasn't like that for everyone.

Technically, I was allowed to spend time with other boys, but none ever knocked on my parents' door asking if I could come out to play. When I got a bicycle, I was only allowed to ride it up and down the street where I lived so that mom could always see where I was. Both my parents worked. When I was five, they enrolled me and my sister in a day care. It wasn't specifically just for girls, but there weren't any other boys there. Years later, I asked my parents what possessed them to think it was okay for me to be in an all-girls day care. They told me, with stunned looks on their faces, that it never occurred to them that there was anything wrong with that. It's not a stretch to say that I learned how to be a girl, not how to be a boy.

My father, even though he was around, was what therapists refer to as "emotionally unavailable". The only involvement he really had in my upbringing was to spank me every once in awhile. The irony is that I was an exceptionally well-behaved child who never got into trouble. When I was punished, it was for doing things that weren't wrong, but that I did because I was a child. I learned that I wasn't allowed to just be a kid. I learned that a father is someone who ignored me, who told me to be quiet, who punished me for being who I am. He would tell me he loved me, but words without action ring hollow, and I was able to tell the difference even if I didn't understand it.

I learned to depend on my mother for the love and support I needed. This wasn't exactly a good thing. Mom worried constantly about every little thing and the less control she had over something, the more she worried about it. She kept me at arm's length, constantly questioning, nagging, and nitpicking. The psycho-babble term for this is "enmeshment". Think of it like codependence on steroids. In my baby books, she wrote that at age two she had 'difficulty making me mind.' I guess no one ever explained to her that two-year-olds are just like that. It was at that early age I learned that the only way I'd receive love was if I was a perfect, good little boy. I learned this lesson well.

If you asked them, I don't doubt my parents would claim that they loved me unconditionally. I knew the truth: I wasn't allowed to be myself. Who I was, just as I was, wasn't good enough. I had to be perfect according to their definition of what that meant. Psychologists call what I experienced as a child emotional abuse--neglect and abandonment. I sometimes wish that I had been physically or sexually abused; it would be a lot easier to get my head around. It would be something tangible for me to grab on to, as opposed to the consistent nothing I did get from my parents which was, after all, normal to me.

One thing Recovery has done for me is I don't blame my parents anymore. They're human beings who did the best they could with the limited tools they had. They've lived most of their lives out of fear. By their example, I also learned to live in fear. I learned to cover everything up with a fake happy smile. I learned that the way to handle life was by pretending everything's wonderful. One of the things that ultimately led me to using was my inability to continue that charade.

School was a terror. You'd never know it to look at me; I perfected the art of acting happy early on, though I do wonder if my teachers ever asked themselves why I broke down in tears so often. I used to think that it just took me a long time to learn not to cry. Now I understand that the loneliness and pain I refused to let myself feel was constantly bubbling over, triggered by and bleeding through with every new hurtful incident. To call me sensitive would be the understatement of the year. As a bright child, I discovered that doing well in school only lead to more bullying, not less. I learned to skate through, that with practically no effort I could do well enough that my teachers never hassled me and the bullies picked on me a bit less. Occasionally, my parents would wonder why I wasn't living up to my potential. My skills at changing who I was for other people were growing by leaps and bounds.

Eventually, that skill progressed to such a degree that it became a matter of pride. I learned to shape myself into whoever I was with wanted me to be. I learned to say what I thought others wanted to hear. I learned to speak words that would cause them to say what I wanted to hear. Conversation became like a game to me, one I thought of myself as being very good at. But it didn't win me friends. No one respected or admired me. Because I had been socialized as a girl, the other boys did what boys do: they tried to turn me into a man by inflicting pain and suffering. Acceptance and inclusion were foreign concepts to me--nothing more than big words in the dictionary.

I endured an utter lack of affirmation for the real me. Any time I showed my true self, I was punished for it. Any time I tried to act from the place of who I really was, my attempts went nowhere. Standing up for myself only made things worse, so I learned not to. I developed what is referred to as "learned helplessness". Consider it a permanent case of the Fuck-It's.

"What Happened"

(This blog is third in a four-part series, "My Story")

WHAT HAPPENED

Relationships were my first fix. I discovered that I could use the turmoil of teenage love to shape my emotions. Suddenly I had reasons for all the feelings I felt. If things were good, I had a reason for my manic highs. If things were bad, I had an explanation for my sorrowful lows. I learned that I could use the girls I dated as a way to make myself feel better. Because I was so good at being what others wanted me to be, I was an attentive boyfriend, and I had an odd talent for picking the girls that thought no one would want to be with them. This was, of course, projection: the truth of it was that I thought no one would ever want to be with me.

My world centered around whoever I was involved with. My self-esteem was tied entirely to how good a job I did at making my girlfriend happy. I was only a good person if I was perfect at being whatever she needed me to be. At the same time, I was judgmental and egotistical. I would throw my girlfriends' flaws back in their faces. I'd throw temper tantrums when they didn't do what I thought they should, or say the things I expected them to say. And it was always their fault for not living up to my expectations. It was always their fault for being who they were, not who I thought they should be.

I thought that it was my job to change them. I thought that by simply being with me and following my example (the way they should), my girlfriends would be magically transformed into the beautiful people I knew they could be. It took Recovery for me to understand how dishonest this was: I didn't date them for who they were, but for an imaginary idea I had dreamed up in my head. And for sex. I didn't accept or love them for who they really were; I didn't know how to. All I could see was what I had created in my head. I would become bitter, spiteful, and resentful when they failed to be who I thought they were. And all the while I secretly hated myself for not being perfect at who I thought they wanted me to be. I was a failure for not being able to make my relationships work. I was a failure for not being perfect.

My other relationships were much the same way. The few friendships I had didn't last and I could never understand why no one respected me, even though I did everything I could to turn myself into who they wanted me to be. No one called me. The times I called others, I felt like a horrible burden for bothering them. Most of the time, I didn't even have anything to say. I didn't know what I wanted; I couldn't tell you how I really felt. I'd learned that I wasn't allowed to want things, and my true feelings were either buried or hopelessly amplified out of proportion. I had no sense of self, only an empty hole in the center of my being.

I'd made two suicide attempts by this point. I'd been married and divorced. I'd been in a mental institution and in jail. I withdrew from college before I could flunk out--or before they could kick me out. My parents had had almost nothing to offer me through any of it, aside from my mother's frantic hysteria at what the world had done to her baby and my father's wisdom that life was 'basically unfair'. To this day, we've never really had a conversation about any of it. In time, I got back on my feet and went back to school. That was when I finally found marijuana.

I use that word because it felt like something I'd been waiting my whole life for. I was a daily toker virtually from the word 'go'. I'd struggled with insomnia as long as I remembered; now I could get to sleep at night. I had friends now, I was included. I never would have believed you if you'd told me they only cared about my pot and not about me personally.

More than anything, I'd found a way to quiet my chattering brain. All the crazy thoughts, all the obsessions, the never-ending cacophony in my head would cease when I was high. My constant frustration at life never going my way disappeared. After a year or so, I resigned myself to the idea that life was never going to go the way I wanted, so I decided that I'd simply smoke my pot. It was, after all, the only thing I'd ever found that brought me happiness. That was my definition of happiness, being numb.

The years began to pass. I graduated college by the skin of my teeth. I almost missed the ceremony because I'd helped bail my roommate out of jail the night before. I never got fired from a job, but that was because I never took one that drug tested. I was too lazy to go to the trouble of faking my way through one, and too afraid of what would happen if I failed it. The jobs I took were far beneath my skill level and abilities. I resented having to work at all. The only thing I wanted was to smoke my pot.

Eventually, one of my connections got me a job working for a record company. As a kid, that had been a dream job to me. The thing I really loved about it, though, was smoking on the long drive in, smoking on my morning break, smoking and drinking at lunch, smoking in the afternoon, and smoking on the commute home. Each day, by the time I made it back to my apartment, I had nothing left for my girlfriend. My first Friday there, I passed out after a company lunch and woke up at 9:30 pm with my face in a toilet. It never even occurred to me that I might have a problem.

Over the next few years, my relationship deteriorated and my employment stagnated. I never progressed at my job and had no ambition to do so. I had an affair, then patched things up. We got married, looking very happy on the surface, but underneath that veneer it was as bad as it had ever been. I took a job in town, thinking that would give us time to work on our marriage, but all it really did was give us more time for fighting. Her denial was as strong as mine and never once did she suggest that I quit the weed. Once in awhile she would say she didn’t like that I was ‘dependent’ on it. We finally split, and I was glad to see her go.

With my wife gone, I was ecstatic. I had the place to myself and was free to come and go as I pleased without having to endure her constant nagging and nitpicking. But I discovered that I had the same problems I always had: I hated life. I hated the world I lived in. I hated that nothing ever went my way. The rare times I had tried to quit smoking, that was what always came back to me as the reason why I smoked—I couldn’t handle life without it. The thing I couldn’t admit, that was still buried in my subconscious, was that I hated myself, too.

Without my wife’s income, I was forced to downgrade my living situation. There was never enough money. I was constantly scraping by, constantly overdrawing my bank account. But if I found myself with a little extra, I didn’t use it to buy gas or groceries. The herb was my escape, but it no longer kept me from being miserable. The only thing it did was help pass the time until the next event came along that I had to deal with. I didn’t care if my refrigerator was empty or my car in disrepair, so long as I had my pot. It was the only thing that mattered to me. I’d cut off all communication with my parents. The only people I spent any time with were my connection or the smoking buddy I’d go in on a sack with.

The reality of my situation began to penetrate the thick fog surrounding my brain. I’d look around at my apartment, full of decades old hand-me-down furniture, and wonder why my place still looked like that of first-year college student. My work situation turned out to be yet another dead end with no opportunities for advancement. After a bad experience with another substance, I realized that I wanted to quit. Not just what I had tried, but everything. Especially the pot. To my subdued surprise, I discovered that I couldn’t. If I had it, I smoked it. Period. If I didn’t buy any, I’d end up smoking what my friends had. If that failed, I’d scrape resin. If I didn’t have any, I’d find someone who did.

It was a friend of mine who told me about the rooms of Marijuana Anonymous. His wife had done an Intervention on him. When he told me the story, I wasn’t amazed so much by how he had been able to successfully quit, but by the fact that he was choosing to remain sober. I thought to myself, “that must be how you do it.” I smoked my last bowl on Sunday—thinking the whole time about how I didn’t want to—and tried the next day to make it to a meeting. I couldn’t find it. The day after, I tried again and succeeded. And so began my Recovery.

"What It's Like Now"

(This blog is fourth in a four-part series, "My Story")

WHAT IT’S LIKE NOW

Recovery for me has been a process of learning a new way of living. I've had to unlearn most of what I learned growing up. It isn't easy to let go of those things. I didn't learn those things by chance. I learned them and practiced them in order to survive. It was what I had to do. One of the things that makes Recovery so difficult is that the program asks us to abandon all the thinking and behavioral patterns that kept us alive. But we have to abandon them because they no longer work—if they ever really did; because if we keep on in the same way, we will die anyway.

From my very first meeting of Marijuana Anonymous, I knew I was in the right place. I was surrounded by people like me. I could hear it in their stories, in their jokes. They welcomed me with open arms and gave me a slew of suggestions to follow to help me stay quit. I did my best to go to 90 meetings in 90 days. When there weren’t MA meetings to go to, I attended other fellowships and was surprised to hear how much their stories reminded me of mine, too. It was probably the first time in my life that I felt a part of something. It was definitely the first time I ever felt included, or that I belonged. To this day, when I feel myself going through hard times, one of the best things for me to do is to get myself to a meeting.

I got a sponsor and started working the steps right away. When we had finished the third step, he told me there was nothing more he could do for me. I got a different sponsor who could take me through all twelve. Having a sponsor gave me someone I could call when times were tough, and there were plenty of those. Working the steps helped me to see the patterns in my life, how the disease had affected everything about it. More than anything, the steps gave me a new way to live. They gave me a set of tools to help me deal with things I’d never been able to before, especially myself. The gears of my life slowly came to a stop and began turning in a different direction.

It was suggested that I get into service and I did so. At first, I made coffee and handed out birthday chips. As I accumulated time, I took Meeting Secretary positions, then a Group Treasurer position. I have held one service position or another virtually my entire Recovery and intend to continue doing so. It was how I starting learning to be responsible, and it puts me in a position of visibility to newcomers. I chair speaker meetings and carry the message as best I can that there is a reason for hope, that people can change, and that life really can be different. When the time came, I started sponsoring others.

I’ve learned to experience my emotions, not repress them. I’ve learned how to deal with them appropriately, as an adult not a willful child. Each day, I get better and better at accepting the things I can’t change and at taking action on the things I can. I now live life on life’s terms and I know, without a doubt, that there is nothing so wonderful that getting loaded won’t ruin it and nothing so terrible that getting loaded will make it better.

There have been so many benefits of the program, I couldn’t list them all. It was through sharing at meetings that I learned to speak in my own voice, not just say what I was expected to or what others wanted to hear. I’ve gained a freedom I never thought I’d feel by accepting that I am not perfect and not going to be. Being imperfect is what makes me human. I’ve learned to accept others for who they are and not expect them to be perfect either. Most importantly, I am learning better each day how to love and accept myself for who I am, as I am. I know, now, that I am enough.

I’ve learned also that I must remain vigilant in working my program. If I don’t, old patterns of thinking and behavior return and my life begins heading back toward what it used to be. I must be active in my Recovery, and the best way I’ve found to do that is by helping others. As the saying goes, I only keep what I have by giving it away. I share at meetings. I use the phone. I write this blog.

Life isn’t easy. It’s full of ups and downs, good times and bad. I do my best to be honest with my sponsees about this. Recovery, learning a new way to live, takes time—and time takes time. The difference today is now I get to live my life. I get to be present for it and deal with it with the best of myself, not the worst. I know that, when things are bad, the way through is not to wallow in self-pity and isolation, but to pray and seek support from my friends in the program. We help each other.

I have a new definition for happiness now. Happiness is the freedom of a new way of life. It is the relief of knowing that I don’t ever have to use again. It is the joy of being able to experience the full range of what it means to be human.

"I Know Too Much Now"

I've heard it shared a number of times at meetings by people as they accumulate more clean time that they 'can't relapse' because they 'know too much now'. On my more bitter days, I try not to smirk as I think ruefully how that hasn't stopped anyone before. They don't say relapse is a part of Recovery for no reason. When I'm in a better place, though, I understand exactly what they're talking about.

Hard times are part of life. When we get clean, life doesn’t become all wine and roses. Life is tough, sometimes rough, and occasionally so hard we haven’t the faintest idea how we’ll get through it. Thoughts of getting loading can float into my mind as casually as wondering what I'm going to have for dinner. It happens when things are good, too, but for me it’s mostly when things are hard.

The promises from the Big Book tell us that fear of financial insecurity will leave us. I can agree that the fear has left me, but that doesn’t mean I like being broke. The same is true for loneliness; I have friends, and I’m okay being without a girlfriend, but that doesn’t mean I don’t wish for more friends and a partner to share my life with.

When I think about 'going back out' (as we say) it’s a multi-layered thought now. It’s not linear; I don’t think, “Man, I want to get high/drunk!” and then chide myself because it will result in disaster. A lot of people do what they call ‘playing it through’ where they imagine getting loaded, then continue on with the fantasy to all the chaos that inevitably follows. I don’t ever quite get to that point. When thoughts of using crop up in my mind, they are always accompanied by a deeper layer—the knowledge that all I’m really wanting is to escape.

Escape was my main reason for using. I used to escape from thoughts I didn’t want to have, from situations I didn’t want to deal with, from emotions I didn’t know how to handle. If life threw something at me that I couldn’t or wouldn’t accept, I got loaded so that I didn’t have to. I was like a two-year-old stamping his foot, arms crossed, shouting ‘no’. Ironically, the only action I knew how to take was inaction. Before I got into Recovery, I had never learned how to deal with anything, really. The only tool in my toolbox was denial.

The knowledge I have gained from my Recovery is that I can handle whatever life throws at me, even if I don’t want to and even if it doesn’t seem like it. Bad times pass. Good times, too, for that matter. I’m a person of action now, and I take action when the situation calls for it. I have a whole new set of tools, thanks to the program. I don’t always like using them, but I know now that problems don’t go away when I run from them. Feelings don’t go away when I use to escape from them. Life doesn’t stop happening just because I’m loaded.

The ‘too much’ that I know now is that escaping through getting loaded isn’t really an escape at all. No matter what I fix with, it doesn’t change anything in reality. It will all still be there, waiting for me when I come down. And the chaos that would result from my getting loaded would only add to whatever it is I’m [not] dealing with. That’s why I don’t pick up, because I know too well that it does nothing for me. And I haven’t forgotten that the drugs and booze stopped working for me a long time ago.

It’s why I got clean in the first place.

"Thinking Outside the Self"

I was listening to a radio program the other night, one of those mostly-boring speaker droning on to a quiet audience types of things. But the subject was the history of how cultures have approached the spiritual. The speaker talked (in a very English accent) about the use of reason versus the use of faith. One thing she mentioned was how reason and faith used to walk hand in hand, that you didn't have one without the other, and that it's only within the past couple centuries that we've separated the two.

Another thing she talked about was how the idea of approaching spiritual texts and myths in general with the question of whether or not they're "true" is putting the cart before the horse. Spiritual guidance is something you live by; you have faith, do the action, then see its effects in your life. The action comes first; the "truth" of it becomes apparent after. I think just about anyone who has been through the 12-steps of Recovery will agree that our spiritual program definitely works like that. If you spend your energy trying to figure the program out, you won't get anywhere. If instead you just take it on faith and work the steps, you'll see the truth of them as their effects show in your life.

We didn't think our way into becomming addicts; we can't think our way out of it.

Another guest started talking about how self-centered we are these days. There's so much emphasis on self-improvement, self-discovery, and of course looking out for #1 is a huge part of our culture here in America. His point, though, was that any time we put someone besides ourselves first, that is a huge paradigm shift. Yes, thinking of others first, instead of yourself, is a revolutionary, radical concept.

In my active addiction, I always put myself first. I was raised in a religious household, so I had been taught to think of others, to sacrifice myself for others. I knew how to give the appearance of putting others first, but the times that I did, I did it out of selfish motivation. I didn't help others because I cared about them, I did it because I didn't want to listen to them whine about their problems. If I saw someone in pain, I tried to alleviate that pain not because I wanted them to suffer less, but because I didn't know how to and couldn't deal with emotions. I focused on other people's problems, trying to fix them and change them, because if I did that then I didn't have to deal with my own issues.

My helping others was an escape from myself. I didn't know how to deal with me, so I used other people in order to avoid doing so. I know other addicts have different experiences when it comes to selfishness, and these are just some examples of mine. I also know these kinds of issues are something many addicts struggle with in their Recovery. It's one of the reasons a lot of us end up in the rooms of Codependents Anonymous, Al-Anon, and Nar-Anon, in addition to attending our regular fellowships.

The chaos of our old lives was the result of self-will run riot. More often than not, we addicts come in to the rooms as deeply insecure, raging egomaniacs. The 12 Steps teach us how to live a spiritual life. As the literature says, we don't learn to think less of ourselves, we learn how to think of ourselves less. It is said that this is a selfish program, a statement that is sometimes misinterpreted. What we learn is a different kind of selfishness: we learn that it's okay to take care of ourselves. We learn how to be good to ourselves, to treat ourselves well. We learn to love ourselves. Only after we can do that, can we honestly and truly love others.

The whole point of the spiritual is to step outside of ourselves. Living a spiritual life means we remove ourselves from the center of the universe and instead assume our proper place in it--as one of many; a small piece of a much larger whole. The speaker on the radio made the point that being compassionate is the easiest way to do this. When we practice compassion, we try to see things from another's perspective. It gets us outside of ourselves and we begin thinking of others.

Compassion. Compassion towards others. Compassion towards ourselves. These are the cornerstones of the spiritual life.

"Crazy Thoughts"

I'm not sure how I feel about the word 'crazy'. I've used it. I've said it many times to describe myself. I've definitely used it to describe others and their chaotic lives. Still, there's something about the word itself that doesn't sit right with me. Maybe it's my growing serenity chaffing against the attempt to think of myself or others as less-than. Or it could be the way our society uses this word as a label, then discounts those it's applied to. Or maybe it has something to do with the old saying of how a crazy person never sees themselves as crazy; if you think you are, you probably aren't.

I much prefer the program phrase of 'sick and insane'. That describes my disease with a lot more accuracy,

In the AA big book, there's a great story, a parable really, about a man who can't stop himself from running out in front of fire engines. He does it again and again, eventually landing himself in the hospital. After he has healed from his injuries, he pledges from the bottom of his heart never to do it again. Then, when released, he immediately steps in front of the first fire engine he comes across. I know of no better metaphor for the sick insanity of this disease we suffer from.

Sick and insane doesn't just apply to the compulsion to use, though. It is our very thinking that has been twisted. It can be hard to recognize those thoughts, and difficult to separate them out. Learning to not act on them, learning to not obsess on them or let them control us, takes time and practice. For me, the more I care about something or someone, the more vulnerable I am to this part of my disease. And my god, the thoughts I have are about as sick and insane as they come.

My best friend can tell you about the time I thought he was a government plant, set up to monitor my movements and activities. After all, how could anyone get along with and have so much in common with me unless they were the product of psychological study and deliberate deception? When I was going through my last divorce, I was convinced that my soon-to-be ex-wife was in a threeway relationship with my sister and her boyfriend. I remember dating a new girl once and being certain she was secretly a sex slave for some college fraternity. These are some of the more extreme examples, but there are plenty of mundane ones, too: my boss is plotting a way to fire me; my ex is banging a friend on the sly, etc. When I'm in a good mental place, I can laugh at these thoughts; when I'm not, they ARE my reality.

Having some clean time and some Recovery under my belt, I'm able to deconstruct these obsessions. My best friend being a Fed is really about my own lack of self-confidence and how I feel that I could never really have that much in common with someone--that no one would ever want to be friends with me. The thing with my ex-wife and sister is the manifestation of the betrayal I felt at my family's siding with her during our divorce. Plots by the boss are actually my own fears of losing my job in these unstable economic times, combined with how I don't fit in with my coworkers. The thoughts of lovers running around behind my back are fears of betrayal coupled with my hatred of secrets, all stemming from growing up in a family of emotionally unavailable people who always talked around everything and never directly about anything--especially if it was something important.

Like other addicts, I have far more experience suppressing my feelings than actually dealing with them.

I'm learning, though, how to deal with my emotions. I'm learning how to deal with obsessive thoughts, as sick and insane as they are. Talking about them helps. Hearing about others' struggle with similar issues helps me to not feel so alone. A hearty laugh from my sponsor helps me to remember that I am still an addict, no matter how caught up in the insanity I may get. The difference is that today I don't have to let these thoughts rule me. Today I have a solution. Today I have a clear head and the blessing of my Recovery to carry me through.

The AA big book has some great suggestions, too, on how to handle things. Given that the majority of the people in my life now are other addicts, it's not just my own sick insanity that I have to deal with. When confronted with another's disease I've found it very helpful to remember: we are ill. Others are to be treated as you would a close relative who is dying. Remember that they are suffering from a disease, that they are sick and insane, and that without help and love and support, they will die. Compassion is the key--towards others and the self. We are, all of us, a bunch of sick people.

God knows I am.

"Nothing But The Funk"

I struggle a lot with loneliness. It gets real frustrating, continuing to struggle with this same problem. The oddest part is how it does go away at times. But during those times, I don't sit and think about how nice it is to not be lonely. It's as if the entire concept vanishes and I forget the painful stab. When it returns, as it inevitably does, it can feel like having to learn how to deal with it all over again.

When I'm in that bad place, my perceptions are off. I hear laughter and am bitterly jealous of the one laughing. I see a couple holding hands and dwell on my own long list of failed relationships. On the blackest days I wish catastrophe upon them. My self-pity infects me. It turns everything light to dark.

A pity-party is a party of one.

The worst part about this state of mind is how it feeds on itself. Negative thoughts lead only to more negative thoughts. When others try to help me, and I'm unable to let them, I become bitter and resentful. I push them away, thinking something wrong with them for caring about me. The disease is sinister. When we don't care about ourselves, it is nearly impossible to conceive of others caring about us.

We do get stuck. The feeling is as familiar to me as breathing. I think of myself as worthless. I hate myself for so many things that no list could contain them all. Most often they are things I am not: I am not attractive; I am not rich and successful; I am not lovable because of my multitude of flaws. I forget--so easily--that I don't have to do anything or be anything other than who I am as I am.

This is something (I presume) normies know without question. For me, though, growing up I learned the opposite: that I must change myself, that I must be someone else in order to be lovable. This common thread cuts across almost all of us with the disease. How and why we learned it varies; for me, it was childhood abuse in the form of emotional abandonment. And even now, in Recovery, as I struggle to unlearn what I have learned, this spectre haunts me.

A part of me will always be on gaurd, waiting for the other shoe to drop--as though I'm half-expecting the bullies from elementary school to leap out and persecute me once more for being 'different'. Or it's interacting with my parents, telling them some exciting aspect of my program only to have them listen politely and then change the subject. Just once I wish they'd show curiosity about the things in my life of importance, or listen without responding like they're humoring me.

I am enough.

I remind myself that the bullies are long gone. I counsel myself that my family is who they are and it's wasted energy to expect any different. It helps sometimes, but mostly the only thing that truly helps is time. 'This too shall pass' remains one of the most powerful pieces of advice I've ever heard. I try to have faith that the funk won't last. It never does.

“Jails, Institutions, and Death”

I like to go to a lot of different meetings. I have my homegroup, where I’m in service, and I almost never miss those meetings, but I really enjoy attending meetings that I’m not a regular at. When I feel myself dipping, having a hard time, one of the things I’ve discovered that works really well for me is to go to a meeting I’ve never been to before. It doesn’t matter if it’s AA or NA, I can hear my story told. I learned early on to listen for the similarities, not the differences.

Historically, there has been a lot of grief between the two fellowships. This is something of a tragedy, in my opinion. The disease is the same, even if the manifestations are different. We are all there to help those who still suffer, after all. We only keep what we have by giving it away. My sponsor has often suggested that, when I’m feeling low, one of the best things to do is to reach out to a newcomer. The need to help those who still suffer is one of the cornerstones of the program. Most meetings take a moment of silence at some point, usually at the end, to remember those who do.

I can understand the need for multiple fellowships. The experience of addiction manifesting itself as alcoholism is best related to by another alcoholic. The same applies for a meth addict, or a pothead. What sometimes gets to me is the idea that, because someone is ‘only’ an alcoholic, they can’t help someone who is a drug addict. Or maybe they think that they don’t have to. Too often, it seems to me like an excuse to act (or fail to act) out of fear. The sociologists call this a fear of the Other—someone who is ‘different’ than ourselves. For those of us with this disease of addiction, though, we are all far more alike than different.

Whether someone is a recovering alcoholic or drug addict doesn’t matter nearly as much in the long run. Without the program, the disease leads to the same places. Both alcoholics and addicts end up in jail. The AA Big Book is full of stories of institutionalizations. Whether you’re an alcoholic or an addict, the disease will kill you if you don’t maintain sobriety and work a program of Recovery. I’ve heard it said that we have about the same chances as someone diagnosed with cancer.

NA meetings seem to focus a little more on the nearness and reality of death that this disease brings. Spend enough time in NA meetings, and you will experience it for yourself; someone close to you will die. It is a harsh, harsh truth, but a truth nonetheless. It has happened to me.

For a long time, I was lucky. I was in Recovery for over a year before someone close to me died from this disease. I knew of people who had died. When I was in high school, my grandfather died from it, but at that time I knew so little about the disease, I didn’t fully understand what had happened. Also, my family is one of secrets, where very little is talked about that isn’t superficial.

I had attended enough meetings, though, to know that death would touch me at some point. I remember sharing in a meeting about this. I said that I knew it would happen, that someone close to me—someone I loved—would die from this disease. It scared me to realize that, and I said so. Two weeks later, it happened.

We had a newcomer at my homegroup. After he’d been coming around for a little bit, he asked me to sponsor him. I sensed in him a strong willingness; he seemed done. He had seen his share of insanity and was truly ready to learn a new way of life. I gladly agreed to sponsor him. He was my first sponsee.

I told him to call me everyday. He did, and I got to know him a little. He was an artist and a student. He hung out with the group after meetings. A sort of quiet guy, but he didn’t stay on the edges; he contributed to the conversation and was even able to be of help to some others in the group. We didn’t talk much when we talked on the phone, but I didn’t think much of it since using the phone is one of the hardest things for those of us in Recovery to learn how to do. I took the fact that he called me at all as a good sign. I took him to a candlelight meeting and he really seemed to relate to the speaker. I was hopeful for him.

Unfortunately, I’m not a mind reader. Six days after he asked me to be his sponsor, I got a call letting me know he had committed suicide. My only wish is that he had called me first, so that I might have had the chance to help him.

My higher power is a strong force in my life. Sometimes, I almost wish it weren’t so. My sponsor tells me that, when things like this happen, it shows the faith my higher power has in me to handle them. For my part, I felt a whole lot of not much. He was close to me, but also very new in my life. If anything, I felt guilty that I didn’t know him well enough to properly grieve his loss. My disease sure noticed the shock, though. Old behaviors showed up in force. Old patterns of thinking took back over. It took work to get through, work that I am still doing.

Knowing the disease kills doesn’t stop the feelings of loss when someone dies from it. It prepared me, but only partially. There are a lot of things in life that don’t make sense, and learning to let go and accept them anyway is a huge part of Recovery. I talked with his mother about his history. Like myself (and so many of us), he had been in jail. He had been institutionalized. I have no explanation as to why I survived my suicide attempts and he did not. Sometimes there are no answers.

Before he died, he gave me one of his paintings. It had hung in his last art show. It hangs now in my living room, a testament not to the disease that kills, but to a man I wish I had had the chance to know better.

“The Importance of Acting As-If”

I’ve heard a number of times now about the ‘sophomore slump’; that the second year of Recovery is often harder than the first. The pace of change slows down, there’s less direct work to do, and the program you work becomes more maintenance-based. Life settles down a bit. The emotional rollercoaster that is early Recovery evens out into a more ‘normal’ human experience.

As my life has evened out, I've found that normalcy can be real hard to deal with. Even though I hated the insanity and chaos of my previous life, it was familiar to me. It was what I knew. There was a comfort in that familiarity, as sick and twisted as that may sound. Having to live a life where everything is more or less okay is a challenge. Refraining from sabotaging myself is not easy sometimes. Being able to relax and enjoy when things are good can be downright difficult.

Good feelings are as hard to deal with as bad ones.

Maybe even more so. I don’t have nearly as much experience dealing with good feelings as I do the bad ones. I think that’s true for most of us. Until we begin Recovering, our lives are filled with strife and sorrow. When we get clean and start working a program, our lives begin to change. After accumulating some clean time, the chaos and insanity begin to fall away and we are faced with a new challenge: living a ‘normal’ life.

I use the quotes there because, for addicts like myself, life will never truly be what the Normies consider normal. I am still an addict, I always will be. Hell, I even try to avoid buying sweets because I swear I can fix on anything. You should see how fast I go through a box of donuts. I have to admit, though, that’s a much better problem to have to deal with than wandering around downtown at some absurd hour of the night asking complete strangers where the party’s at.

And this is really what I’m trying to get at: life HAS settled down for me. I’ve learned volumes since I began my Recovery. The desire to use has been lifted. The promises are coming true for me. I no longer find myself drawn to drama, am instead repulsed by it. I have learned to let others have their chaos and insanity, to help when asked, and otherwise leave it be. Personal boundaries are no longer the great mystery they once were.

We will intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle us.

When I call my sponsor these days, the bulk of the issues in my life are things that so-called normal people deal with: a job that I hate, parents who don’t love me the way I wish they would, relationship issues, etc. His most frequent response is to laugh and tell me that there are countless others out there who would kill to have my problems instead of their own. It’s been a good reminder that I need to continue practicing that spiritual principle of Humility.

I have been through the hell of active addiction and lived to tell about it. That makes me one of the lucky ones. I am active in my Recovery. I do my best to work a strong program. It doesn’t mean life without the stuff is less difficult, merely less insane. A number of folks get clean and don’t go to the place where I am now at. They remain hooked into drama. They find other ways to fix. They stay insane.

My disease still tells me that every little thing that goes wrong is a crisis of epic proportions. My desire for a fix is always looking for a way to escape from whatever I might be going through, good or bad. I once heard an old-timer share about wanting to have ‘arrived’ at a place where everything’s fine and how hard it can be to deal with the fact she will never reach it. This woman had over twenty years clean time.

We act ‘as-if’.

The idea of acting ‘as-if’ is one I still struggle with. Somehow it doesn’t seem to fit in with the whole ‘rigorous honesty’ aspect of the program. The literature tells us it’s invaluable. My sponsor says the importance of acting as-if can not be overstated. Maybe it’s the way we addicts make up that last bit of distance between ourselves and the Normies.

An example that comes easy is how each morning when I get into work (at the job I hate), my brain immediately launches into a near-constant stream of conversations with my superiors. I get accused of being lazy, of being at fault for things I'm not, of being told how I’ll never succeed or be successful. This is, of course, my disease at its worst. In truth, I am almost never told anything of the kind; I don’t need anyone else to tear me down—I do it all by myself. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember.

Another frequent thought is that I’ll never find someone to share my life with. I have felt deep love, both for and from another. Yet even in the past when I have had a woman in my life, my brain didn’t cease it’s cacophony. Being without one, Uncle Steve’s tirade can rise to a fever pitch. Ironically enough, it’s always the same old chorus: that there is something inherently wrong with me, that even if I miraculously do find someone who wants to be with me (and that is good for me), that I will sabotage it as I have so many other relationships in the past. My disease tells me I’m utterly incapable of sustaining a healthy romantic relationship.

Acting ‘as-if’ is how we circumvent this insanity. Even though I have Uncle Steve telling me I’m worthless at my job, I act as if I’m not—because it isn’t true. When my disease tells me I’ll always be alone and deserve to be, I act as if that isn’t the case—because it isn’t true. It’s not about being dishonest, it’s about not letting the disease control my thinking. It’s about not letting the disease drag me down. It’s about not listening to the sinister side of the evil which resides permanently in my brain. Of course it never sleeps. Of course my disease never relents. It. Wants. Me. Dead.

Acting ‘as-if’ keeps me alive.

“The God Thing”

There are so many amazing benefits of the Program, I’m almost hesitant to single one out. If I were to, though, I’d have to say the concept of a God of your own understanding has to be one of the best. A lot of people come into the rooms feeling that God abandoned them, or that religion is a load of crap, or some variation of the theme that the power greater than us is nonexistent or at best irrelevant. It’s my experience that nothing could be further from the truth.

I’ve heard people say from time to time they don’t believe in God. I look at them, smile a little, and ask them to tell me about this God they don’t believe in. They say he’s judgmental. They say he only cares about certain people and not others. They say he’s vengeful. They say he’s indifferent. When I hear these comments and others like them, I chuckle and say, “Yeah, I don’t believe in that God either.”

It can be tough to believe in a higher power that is loving and compassionate. Most of us, when we come into the rooms, have virtually no concept of what those things are. If we do, our concepts have been twisted by the sick insanity of the disease. We think love is the drunk father who shouts at us and punishes us for things which aren’t our fault and that we had no part in. We think love is the abusive partner who beats us or berates us, always apologizing later. We think compassion is the mother who worries constantly, catastrophizing about things she has no control over while telling us our own concerns are unimportant. Learning about real love and true compassion takes time.

And time takes time.

This is a spiritual program. The disease of addiction is a spiritual malady. It’s a disease of the mind, body, AND spirit. Our mind tells us that we need something external to be okay, to belong, to be worthy of love and acceptance; our bodies tell us we will die without it. It is our spirit, though, that withers beneath it all. When we use, we cut ourselves off from the spiritual. It might not seem like it. Altered states can seem very spiritual. I’ve spent many hours thinking I was having a spiritual experience. I look back on those times, now, and I’m pretty sure I was just high.

The true genius of the program, though, is that it encourages us to find a God of our own understanding. This makes perfect sense to me. We are all individuals. Each of us has our own unique perspective on life and the world we live in—why should our understanding of the power greater than us not be every bit as unique as we are?

Many in the program use the rooms and the people in the program as their higher power. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. We share our deepest selves in those meetings and receive love from the others in them. We experience the healing that comes from revealing who we are and having it affirmed, not shit on. When we are low, we can go to a meeting and feel better. When we are teetering on the edge, itching for a fix, we can call others and ask their help. More often than not, the person we reach out to is there for us in a way that is above and beyond anything we could have expected.

Go to meetings, get a sponsor, and get a God. If you don’t have one, you can borrow mine.

The God of my own understanding is beyond my understanding. I believe in an infinite God. Like the Gnostic Christians of the first and second centuries, I believe that God is not something external and separate, but something internal that is in us and in everything around us. The native Americans believe that everything has a spirit. These two concepts are far more similar than disparate. The God I believe in is all-encompassing, that is to say, that God is everything and everything is part of God. I even harbor a minor resentment about the use of the ‘G’ word because to use any one name or concept to describe my higher power is to put limits on something which I feel has none.

More than anything, though, I know that I am not God and that I cannot truly know for certain what God thinks, feels, wants, or doesn’t want. I know that, while I might have the occasional glimpse or flash of understanding, more often than not I am truly in the dark when it comes to the greater plan. I am okay with that. There have been far too many times in my life where I was certain about something and it turned out I was wrong. I am perfectly okay with not being one hundred percent certain on this issue. It is my personal opinion that this is what true faith is—acceptance in the absence of certainty.

It is not crucial to say ‘yes’; it is, however, important to stop saying ‘no’.

How do you let God work in your life? How do you learn about what that higher power is like for you? Like so much else in the program, the answer is simple: you ask. If you feel silly praying, start your prayers by honestly admitting that is how you feel. If you want to know what God is like, ask to be shown. If you are unwilling to learn, ask for the willingness to be willing. Start with the acknowledgement that you don’t—and can’t—know everything. It has been my experience and the experience of countless others that the more willing you are to let your higher power work in your life, the more it will.

I was at a meeting once and heard someone share about how they were afraid of a particular thing happening. They mentioned how, before they came into the program, they might have prayed to God that this thing didn’t happen. Now, they pray that if this thing did happen that God would give them the strength to get through it. That is the program at work. You don’t ask God to do what you want, you allow God to work in you, through you, and in your life. You live one day at a time with the faith that, while sometimes you might not get what you want, you will always get what you need.