“Recovery Happens”

(This blog is third in a three-part series, “Time Takes Time”)

Life is stressful. Dealing with life on life’s terms is HARD. Especially for those of us with this disease. We don’t have the years of experience dealing with it that normies do. We don’t have experience dealing with other people, with ourselves, or with the world around us. For a multitude of reasons, we weren’t given the tools we needed to live our lives. We learned how to deal with life by getting loaded.

The program of Recovery teaches us a different way. It teaches us how to manage our stress levels. It teaches us how to handle our emotions. It teaches us volumes, and we re-wire that new information into our brains by doing. Every time we deal with life without getting loaded, we help to undo some piece of the damage caused by our disease.

But it takes time.

You’ll hear people talk about how they stopped developing when they starting using. This is a truth. Normies have their whole lifetimes of experiences in dealing and coping with the shit life throws at us. For many of us with this disease, the only amount of time we have is the length of time we’ve been sober.

When people talk about ‘being two’ (my current age), they mean it more literally than figuratively. The NA folks really have a point when they say give yourself a break. Acceptance is so crucial. When we start working the program, we don’t have the experience of dealing with our lives and so we deal with them as best we can. And we create chaos. And we create wreckage. It. Happens.

It takes time to learn how to deal with all the many convoluted complications life confronts us with. It takes time to learn how to process our emotions. It takes time to get to know ourselves and learn who we really are. And while we’re doing all that learning, life keeps on happening.

So we do the best we can. We try to remember that we aren’t perfect. One of my favorite sayings is that if you aren’t making mistakes, you’re not learning. It’s so true. In the program we say ‘make different mistakes’--it’s an acknowledgement that we are going to screw up, and that if we can learn from our missteps, we can make changes in our lives and keep moving forward.

Never forget—we aren’t supposed to be sober; we’re supposed to be loaded. We’re supposed to be dead. As I heard a speaker say once, “the biggest miracle in any meeting is when someone gets up and takes a 30-day chip.” We always have a choice. We can keep moving forward, or we can go back out. If we’re not doing the one, then we’re doing the other. You’re either moving away from your next drink/hit, or moving towards it. We don’t get to stagnate. If we stop moving forward, the disease pulls us back. It will pull us all the way back out.

It takes time. It takes time to learn a different way of life and, as we learn, we are going to cause chaos and wreckage. The program gives us a way to handle that. It gives us a way to deal with it. And as we keep working the program, we create less chaos and less wreckage.

If you’re reading this blog and you’re new to Recovery, keep at it. If you’re an old-timer and you’re reading this blog, keep at it. We must maintain a constant vigilance. The rewards are there. The miracle is there. It will happen. Don’t quit before the miracle happens.