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First of all, I am making amends to all who suffered through my tantrum of judgment last Thursday night in the rooms in Santa Fe. I realized that judgment only begets judgment, that my disease of addiction comes with the Self-awareness that is a mirror of my raw, albeit true negative behaviors or traits… also known as Defects of Character. Even though I believe that I am READY for sobriety, FEAR is a cruel taskmaster…taskmistress(?)

In 87 days clean, I am more unhappy with myself than ever. Let’s discuss the difference between a reason and an excuse. While I am NOT my disease of addiction, nor defined by my many mental illnesses of PTSD, Bi-polar disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder, etc. (the label list goes on and on… and drums keep pounding a rhythm to the brain), I know right from wrong. There are reasons for my illnesses, but they are NOT an excuse for relapse –for NOT “DOING THE NEXT RIGHT THING.”

Fear of growth is NOT an excuse. I either grow up, or party on…all the way to hell.

I am being a responsible adult for the first time in years, paying my bills, saving my 401k and planning for retirement. Do I really want to live in fear of throwing it all away for pain??? I am living instead of surviving; thriving instead of manipulating.

I’ve learned that I can’t put more into another person’s Recovery than what they are putting into it. I am still the newcomer myself. Boundary Bitch, the goddess of my recovery. Let them fan the flames of my desire…to stay clean just for today; just ONE more day. I want to feel a part of it, not apart from it. I don’t want this sly, cunning, sleazy addiction to trick me back to insanity by hearing the voice inside me change it’s tune from desperation, to “it wasn’t that bad.” They say that “pride covers a multitude of sins” and I have had a lot of practice swallowing. If I can’t, then I’m unteachable, which means I can’t grow, which by it’s definition means that I am retarded. I am not retarded, just insane, since I know that the definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior over and over again and expecting a different outcome. People aren’t gonna listen to what I say, they’re gonna listen to what I DO.

NO MORE WALLOWING IN SELF-LOATHING, SELF-REJECTION, JUDGMENTALISM, HARSH SELF-CRITICISM, NEGATIVITY, OR EGOTISM. TIME FOR SELF-ACCEPTANCE AND LOVE. Time for h e a l i n g.

Tonight’s meeting’s final lesson: sharing in the room is like praying –I can follow up my words with a call to action.

Peace, love and blessings to all who read this and those who have been clean much longer than I, and contributed to it.

Serenity check…Daily Maintenance Program? As usual, Just For Today is dead on. I have been struggling with my suffering. My right jaw and lower molars in excruciating pain. Painkillers didn’t help –prescribed notwithstanding. Nothing helps but numbing gel. I was so low that I could actually see my relapse coming in detail. I had to do something. To top it all off, the Wicked witch at work was bullying me hard. I felt like I was about to snap.

So I went to my new friend. A psychiatrist with a caring heart. God has put two women in my life with the initials AJ. This newer one saved me from myself. I am truly grateful for her.

I went to my meeting. I shared there too. And I learned something important:

You cannot rely on yesterday’s Recovery. If you turn it over, but don’t let it go, you’re upside down. And…this is a simple program for complicated people.

Are they all cliches? Not to me, because they are new pieces of shared information that impact me and resonate with me. Thanks to those of you who shared them.

A relapse could lay the groundwork for freedom, or a grim and obstinate willfulness to hang on come hell or high water until the pain stops is my only option. I have reached the decisive turning point. I can’t go back to using… I JUST CAN’T. I NOW SEE I WILL HAVE TO USE AT THE LEVEL I DID BEFORE OR HIGHER AND THUS WILL DIE!!!

GOD HELP ME PLEASE!

My Higher Power is the only thing that can help me with this. I AM tired physically and mentally, and I know that if I don’t use it, I will lose it. Apathy, procrastination, resistance to change…are all my enemies.

I can stare down the road of disillusion, degradation and Death. Or… return to the place where empathy becomes a healing therapy…an NA meeting.

I choose that as survival mode. Surrounded by people who are also addicted–who get it. I know why it is so important to be with others who are like-minded. They can help and understand. I know also that this Blog has contained excerpts from the literature, however it is so real, and so true. I will not make it through relapse, especially if I do not have my friends in the rooms to share with me, and empathize with me. I intend to get through this crisis of pain.

Peace Love and blessings to all who read this.

I am still working on my Step 2 – coming to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity. Sanity is down the street and around the corner from Suffering. I have been dealing with excruciating pain in my left elbow which has now raced down my arm to my left hand. At first I thought it was bursitis… now I am thinking it’s arthritis, but believe me it’s severe. Then, to add insult to injury, I have been suffering with pain in my right lower molars that shoots all the way down to the bottom of my jaw.

I got to the point where I could no longer tolerate the pain, so I called the endodentist and he agreed to work me in. Until I could see him, I took combined doses of Tylenol and ibuprofen…it didn’t help. I ended up being referred from one specialist to the next. The next Endodentist decided to give me a root canal and in the process, the crown in the molar behind, came off. After that, I was so numb from all the novacaine shots that during my meeting, I kept drooling all over myself and could barely read aloud.

I was given my first prescription for pain (Percocet), and promptly panicked (please forgive the alliteration). I immediately called my sponsor for help, but no answer. I was really hurting so I took one as directed…and immediately spit it out. I didn’t sleep at all that night. The next day as the pain became more intolerable I tried once more as directed. Again, no joy. I called the doctor and asked about antibiotics. He said that I might have an infection below the root canal…. Great. NOW what?

I guess I will suffer through the weekend and see if it clears up.

Back to Just for Today….Nightly inventory will benefit me since judgments are toxic to my recovery. I also learned that the inventory should include both good and bad things I am feeling.

Will keep you posted on the progress and outcome of this challenge to my recovery.

Peace, love and blessings to you all.

I have heard it said in the rooms that my addiction disease of addiction is just waiting for me in the parking lot doing push-ups. I thought at first that this was just something people say… and that it was corny and untrue, but I have learned the hard way that my people always know better. I have been having some scary using dreams and hardcore cravings. We had our first meeting in Los Alamos last Tuesday night and while it was a phenomenal success, I have not been to a meeting since. I was sick with a flu and fever, plus a bad molar infection and finally, my elbow has been excruciatingly painful. I now realize that these excuses are the reasons that I need to be working my program for recovery harder than ever! –Bald tires and gas costs aside, I am heading directly for relapse!!!

It doesn’t help that I am hearing in therapy that relapse is common, normal and okay. I know that all may be true, but downplaying it makes it worse to me. I know that doctors and therapists say this so we don’t get discouraged when or if it happens, and we come back and try sobriety again, but some of us are holding on by a thread at times just to maintain our sobriety and clean time.

If my disease of addiction IS DOING PUSH-UPS, IT’S GOTTA BE STRONGER THAN ANYTHING NOW!!! I have to go to my battle stations and have a strategic plan. So just for today I will: a) spend time in prayer and meditation with my Higher Power, the God of my understanding; b) work on my Step 2 and also make a gratitude list; c) call my sponsor; d) use my DBT skills to use the 3D approach to avoid Acting Out behavior and relapse.

I pray someone reads this blog post and comments back to me. Peace, love and blessings to all who read this.

I would never want to recover the life I had before my disease of addiction took control of my life.  I think I was in so much pain; in a stranglehold of fear; bottled and repressed years of anger; I only dissociated to escape that pain and found nirvana in my addiction. Yecch! I went back and looked at an old bank statement to see just how much damage I was doing to myself financially.  Needless to say, I wanted to throw up. Somehow, in one month, the last month before I became sober, I managed to spend my entire monthly income to keep my addiction going.  I saw my own notation of how to control my use –a brief equation of total narcotics possessed, divided by the number of days I needed them to last.  Again, needless to say, it didn’t work. What a waste…a waste of SO MANY THINGS!  A waste of money, of time, of opportunities lost, freedom lost, a waste of life.

I do know that in active recovery, I stand the chance – the last chance in my case, to rebuild my life; to rebuild lost friendships, and other relationships lost to my addictive behavior.  How will I ever make amends to them all?  No clue.  Just this…one step forward at a time.  I don’t want to keep looking back –it’s painful, ugly and non-productive…it serves no useful purpose to me anymore.  I just have to keep trying to solve the next problem in front of me.  Did you ever see the movie The Martian? I love that movie for exactly this reason: after being left behind and stranded on Mars, this guy has to face his mortality dead-on.  His choice was to die, or to choose to survive, and at the end [spoiler alert, sorry], he makes that a final statement in the movie…“just solve the next problem in front of you, and then the next problem, and the problem after that, and if you solve enough problems, you get to come home.”

So what am I saying today? I guess I am saying that I choose to survive; to recover.  I choose to be present and grateful for another day clean.  Today I choose not to use; not to get high; not to relapse…then I choose to solve the next problem in front of me [which in my case is to pay a hell of a lot of bills somehow].  I know I will make it somehow–because I won’t look back.  I’ll stay in the present today.  I won’t look to the future, because that just spawns fear.  I have no control.  I give this to my Higher Power. I know He will bless me with enough to slowly begin the financial healing process too.  When it seems overwhelming I will stop, breathe, pray, and change my focus to completing the task at hand. Then I will reach out to another addict and go to a meeting. This is my plan of recovery. I cannot wait for our very first meeting in my hometown of Los Alamos on Tuesday nights at 7PM at the ToTH church!

Peace, love and blessings….