Daily Recovery

People, Places, & Things

Getting clean was hands-down the most daunting experience of my life. I knew that I would have to change everything about my life to get clean and stay clean. I know some people who were able to go through detox at a facility and return to their previous living situation and remain clean, but not very many. For most of us, myself included, getting clean requires changing nearly everything in your life. Toxic relationships need to be cut out. Places you associate with using need to be cut out. Activities that may act as triggers need to be eliminated. This is easy to say, but often harder to do— some of us have a significant other and children to consider, houses we own, work obligations, etc. Some of the things that are most important to us can also be dangerous to our recovery.

Early recovery is a trying time for all addicts. Our whole lives were centered around getting and using and finding the ways and means to get more. When we suddenly try to change this, our minds rebel with frightening strength as our bodies face the physical challenges of withdrawal. Everywhere we go can be a trigger—every person in our lives, our jobs, everything.

This is precisely why going to treatment is so strongly recommended for addicts entering recovery. In theory, we could get and stay clean by detoxing at home and attending meetings as frequently as possible, but in practice going to treatment and staying for the duration of the program is vital to most addicts. Sure, you get some professional attention from therapists, doctors, and other professionals, but the most important thing that I got out of treatment was a period of separation from the life that you had been living.

I can only speak from my own experience, but I could not have stayed in the place that I had been using and reasonably expect any amount of success in recovery, not for a while anyway. I had to remove myself from everything that I knew to relearn how to live without the substances that had carried me for so long. I walked away from my friends who were using and have not spoken to them to this day. I got a new phone number, deleted my old contacts, and moved to a different city to get clean. This sounds extreme, but it is what I needed to do for myself at the time.

I had to completely tear down my life to its most basic needs and rebuild from there. It was painful and frustrating at times, but as I progress in my recovery, I have taken each small step at a time towards living a happy, healthy, and productive life.

There have been moments, however, that have challenged my new way of life. Recently I was invited to a going away party for a very close friend of mine who has been very supportive of me in my recovery. He trusted me with a job at his company and has been one of my best friends for my whole life. Attending the party would be people from the people, and while they were not old using friends of mine, they still like to drink and smoke. It pained me greatly to decline the invitation, as it would have been so nice to spend some time with people who meant so much to me at one point in my life, but I have had to accept that I am an addict, and I cannot do things like that. It is not a good feeling to feel anti-social, but I am an addict in recovery and I need to make sure that remains the priority. If my old friends are truly my friends, they will understand that I simply cannot be around for that type of party anymore.

Over time, I have made new friends—I have found new things to do that don’t involve the use of drugs or alcohol. I have entered a new romantic relationship with a wonderful woman who is also in recovery. I have started to fill my life with new people, places, and things that are healthy for me in my recovery.

What I am trying to say is this—lasting recovery takes an incredible amount of determination to becoming the best possible version of yourself. Having the wisdom to remove yourself from the situations and people that contributed to your use of substances is vital to your recovery. Some of these choices may not be easy, as we become attached to a certain lifestyle when we are using that is often hard to break away from. At some point, whether we knew it or not, our whole lives became centered around our using; Our energy was spent getting and using and find ways and means to get more. We must break these habits and remove ourselves from the madness of addiction. We must make sweeping changes to our lives in order to succeed—do yourself and your recovery a favor and remove the things that are holding you back from becoming the best version of yourself.

-G.M.C, March 11, 2021, Day 479

Coming to believe

Coming To Believe—Its Not About Religion

There are so many resources about the science of addiction written by people much smarter and more educated than me— there are academic papers, books, documentaries, and more that are all based on hard data collected over decades of research. As someone who takes pride in living my life using logic and reason, it became somewhat of a sticking point for me to believe that the disease of addiction is spiritual in nature.

Yet, even in the best times of my life, I have always felt a restlessness that led me to experiment with various substances in the first place. I was looking outside myself for comfort through relationships, success, and most destructively, drugs. This mindset led me to state of obsession and compulsion that kept me coming back to these things that made me feel better; Sex, money, drugs, etc. temporarily filled a void inside of me that could never actually be filled. One potentially overused, but accurate, description of this is saying that I was trying to fill a God-sized hole with anything I possibly could… except for God.

If you are anything like me, the word God freaks me out. It freaked me out when I first came into recovery and truthfully it still freaks me out now. I hear the word God and I think of organized religion—I think about churches, crusades, pro-life protests, and all kinds of thoughts that all evoke a relatively strong negative reaction within me.

It came as a relief to me that the ‘God’ that is referred to in 12-step literature is the God of your understanding. It is a deeply personal matter and is totally unique to each addict. It is not the God of the Bible (unless you want it to be), it is not Allah (unless you want it to be)—it is merely a higher power that is caring, loving, and more powerful than the disease of addiction.

Coming to believe does not mean that you have to become a religious person—you just have to develop a concept of a higher power on which you can draw from. Some people find their higher power in meetings, as the power that exists when recovering addicts get together is something that I have found undeniable. Some of us find recovery after a run-in with law enforcement, in which case a P.O. or a judge can certainly be classified as a power greater than yourself.

I have found a sense of spirituality through a combination of working the steps, learning to meditate, and by attempting to live the spiritual principles that are taught in the program. I have learned to be honest in my interactions with other people, to practice kindness to others, but most importantly to be kind to myself.

Look for the signs —They are all around you.

When I was getting clean and going through withdrawals, I did not think that I could do it. While sitting in the detox portion of the treatment facility, I promised myself that if I could make it through the 30-day program, just to prove that I could quit, I would go back out and use again. I couldn’t cope with the idea that I would never get high again, so I promised myself that after a short period of abstinence, I would return to using.

I hear stories of people making friends in rehab, starting romances, or taking the time to make some grand choice about their lives—that was not the case for me. I sat by myself at lunch, angry at myself and the world for letting things get so bad. I hardly spoke to anyone and did just enough to get by with the counselors. When the time came for me to graduate the program, I wouldn’t have expected what was about to happen next. Somewhere in the 30 day program I had subconsciously changed and I wasn’t even aware of it. I didn’t want to continue living life the way I had been living and I wanted to get better. I sensed that I was coming to a crossroads in my recovery the moment that I left the treatment facility. I was either going to make an effort at recovery or I was going to die.

I left the facility and went to a meeting that same night. I didn’t even particularly enjoy the meeting—I sat silently by myself and I didn’t know how to act in a room full of people. I had spent so long isolated by myself that I no longer felt comfortable in a crowd of what seemed to be happy, normal people (despite the fact that it was a room full of recovering addicts). Yet somehow, when day two post treatment came around, I went to another meeting. I started to enjoy the meetings, still silently, just listening and taking it in, but I kept coming back.

Over time I made friends. A year and some months into recovery I have started a new romantic relationship with a girl that was first a friend who I attended a lot of meetings with. I have a sponsor with whom I speak regularly. I have a whole network of people that I talk to about just about everything going on in my life.

My point in all of this is that every one of these things are signs of a loving higher power working in my life. I didn’t think that Narcotic’s Anonymous would work for me. I didn’t think that a 12-step program would help me. I didn’t think that I would even make it through treatment. Yet I have stayed in recovery and continued to grow. Each day I spend clean I realize that my higher power is guiding me through all of this.

Give yourself a break and give recovery a chance.

Learning To Live

Several times over the past few weeks I have noticed myself slip into a mindset that has become foreign to me in recent years; I have had moments in which I become aware that I am feeling pure, unfiltered happiness. I have smiled and laughed more in recent weeks than I have in the past five years combined. Something is working for me, and I am certain that I know what it is: recovery.

On the 18th of February, 2021, I will have 15 months clean. In that time I have gone through the full spectrum of emotions as I learn to navigate life on life terms and how to deal with my feelings without using drugs. When I first went into treatment for opiate addiction, I had become a person that I no longer recognized on any level. As certain twelve-step literature will put it, I was physically, emotionally, and spritually bankrupt. I had been crawling around my bottom for months or more by that point in time and the pain had gotten so great that something had to give.

So it comes as surprise that my life could be so drastically changed in such a relatively short period of time. I don’t have everything back together yet; I still don’t drive because I have some hoops to jump through before I can get a car and license back. I am still staying with my parents in the bedroom that I grew up sleeping in. As an adult approaching thirty years old, these things can be difficult for my ego to accept.

Yet I think back to that disgustingly dirty living room littered with used drug paraphernalia and trash in all corners in the room because I couldn’t pay to have it picked up. I think of the two space heaters I ran at all times in the winter because I couldn’t afford to make the back payments on my gas bill. I remember the hours spent laying on the couch, sick to my stomach and in the grips of acute withdrawal, while I waited for the dope boy to make his delivery.

It is in remembering these moments that I realize how far I have come. I have been working at the same job for over a year now and in that time with the company I feel that I have earned a lot of respect and trust. I show up every day and I give them an honest day’s work. I actually care about the company and the quality of the work that I do for them. In August of last year I began a graduate program at the University of Cincinnati and I am pursuing a masters degree. I have even entered a new romantic relationship in which both of us are centered in our recovery; Thus far it has been the most beautiful and genuine relationship I have ever had in my life, to say nothing of her striking physical beauty.

The glue that holds my new life together, though, is the strong foundation of recovery that I have been slowly building up since the day I entered the treatment facility. Without my daily meeting attendance or the work I do with my sponsor, none of these gifts of recovery would be possible. Sometimes it feels like I am on such a good path now that it seems like I could perhaps stop going to so many meetings and spend more time working on my job, schoolwork, or on my relationship, but I am very grateful to say that I am not confused about what allows these things to exist in my life.

I sit my ass in a seat, be it in person or virtually (due to Covid) every single night so that I can get my daily medicine of recovery. I listen to what people share and I share my experience with other addicts who may be struggling. I got a sponsor and I call him regularly; We work the steps together, but more often than not I call him to simply check in and talk. I have taken the suggestions that were given to me and they have kept me clean as a result.

It is in meetings that I have learned about these spiritual principles that I try my very best to govern my actions throughout the course of the day. I have learned to be fearlessly honest about my recovery. I have learned to be open-minded and willing to put myself in new situations that will allow me to grow.

For the first 90 days or more of attending meetings, I didn’t say a word. I just took it all in because that is all I was capable of doing at the time. I couldn’t look people in the eye or hold a conversation, so I did all that I could do; I showed up each night.

Somewhere along the way I began to make friends. I found a sponsor and I call him often. Slowly, the hours clean turned to days, the days turned to weeks, the weeks to months, and the months into a year. I remember this time last year I had right around 90 days clean and I had hit a meeting every single night since I got out of treatment. Somehow the fellowship was working on me, whether I wanted to or not. All I had to do was show up each and every day and stay clean. The rest has started to fall into place.

If you are in early recovery and struggling just to make it through each new day, all I can tell you is to keep coming. Keep going to meetings and let it work its magic on you. This isn’t complicated… it certainly isn’t easy, but it is not complicated. Do something for your recovery every day and do your best to let new people into your life. Each day clean is a successful day and the reward for a growing string of successful days is getting your life back together. As addicts, we spent a long time destroying our lives. As addicts in recovery, we get that life back little by little each day we stay clean. We learn as we go and we start to make progress, just for today.

Building New Routines

Build a solid foundation for the rest of your recovery.

One of the hardest parts of early recovery, for me anyway, is developing a new daily routine. Many of us have spent the past several years of our lives stuck in a special brand of hell that we built for ourselves— our every waking moment revolved around the drugs. What had started out innocently enough had turned into a nightmare. Suddenly, however, we find ourselves in recovery attempting to put our lives back together with no real idea of how to do that.

Those of us in treatment were exposed to a fairly rigid schedule right off the bat, depending on where you did your program. Regardless, though, upon leaving the treatment center after any length of time we find ourselves back home, or perhaps somewhere entirely new, and facing the challenge of finding a way to develop a healthy routine that will help us avoid triggers and surround us with new people, places, and things that are conducive to recovery, rather than to relapse. The day to day routines we put into place in our early recovery need to self-reinforce positivity and growth, limit contact with triggers, and perhaps most importantly, keep us focused on our sobriety.

This was an aspect of my recovery that really worked out for me, sort of on its own. My sponsor encourages me to keep a, ‘God List,’ for things that have happened in my life both before and during recovery that help to develop an idea of how my higher power has worked in my life, and the sweeping change of pace, place, and face has been one of those things that has made the list.

The first few days I spent after finishing my treatment program were pretty rough. At that point in time I was still avoiding the idea of going to meetings. I was really reluctant to do so for many reasons, but mostly that I was just nervous to try something new. I am not totally comfortable meeting new people— especially meeting new people specifically to talk about my deepest, darkest secrets. Little did I know at the time, coming out of my comfort zone would be one of the most important aspects of recovery.

This leads me to the first thing that I think is of utmost importance to successful recovery:

Find a meeting to go to

It doesn’t have to be NA or AA, just find a way to get connected to other addicts and people at various stages of recovery themselves. Do an IOP (intensive outpatient program) if for no other reason other than to meet people. Facing your addiction alone is impossible. You will not beat it by yourself. Get plugged in with one group or another and surround yourself with people facing or who have faced similar problems. This goes a long way towards exchanging the negative influences in your life for people trying to accomplish the same thing. NA has done wonders for me. In it I have found a group of like-minded people who have become true friends of mine. I have people I can call at any time of day and I don’t have to be alone through any of this.

I’d like to build on this first point a little bit, as I truly think that it is the single most important aspect of building a solid foundation for your recovery. Plugging yourself into a recovery community is vital, but taking it one step further and actually building a network of people that you communicate with on a daily basis is just as important. Showing up to meetings and immersing yourself in a recovery community is just a start, and perhaps building a sober network comes naturally as a part of that, but it is important enough to risk repetition when I say that building your ‘network’ is a crucial first step.

Get phone numbers and use them. It took me a while to get comfortable with the idea of calling another addict on the phone for no reason in particular other than simply connecting with them. Learning how to use the phone now will make it much easier to do when you are having a weak moment. It could save you from relapse if you can effectively pick up the phone and call another addict for help.

Put a solid effort into building a network of people that you stay in touch with regularly. Call them and talk about your day— talk about your triggers, your challenges, your small triumphs. These phone calls will help both of you, whether it feels like it at first or not.

The more you are able to do this the better you will feel. I have bad days and really do not want to talk to anyone about it— or anything else for that matter. It is these days precisely though that it is most important to call somebody. Our disease grows in the darkness, and the more you keep to yourself the more likely that you will be tricked by your disease into putting yourself into a potentially dangerous situation. Call someone and talk about it. You will feel better, that I can promise.

Early recovery is tough, and while at that stage in the game you may be tempted to try and start fixing all of the things you severely screwed up in active addiction, leave that for another day (for now…). The most important thing during the first few crucial months is simply passing the time without using. Your body and brain are going to be seriously out of whack for a while, so before you go and try to make any serious amends or big life decisions, give yourself some time to physically heal and mentally recoup.

In order to do so, find something to do. Rediscover an old hobby, get a part-time job (but ease in to it, don’t get a job that will be a source of unneeded stress, just something to pass the time and get paid for it), read, cook, get a dog, anything that gets you outside of yourself while you take your much-needed time to heal

For me, I found a renewed pleasure in taking my dog for long walks early in the morning and at night. In between I have been reading a lot (I’ve always been somebody who reads a lot). I borrowed a friends PlayStation and bought Red Dead Redemption 2, which has been a lot of fun. Shortly after my 60 day mark I was able to land a pretty good job— a job that pays pretty well (when you consider the work I am actually doing) and doesn’t stress me out a whole lot. As time has gone on I have taken on more responsibility and it has really turned into a positive experience for my recovery.

I have always played music and as my brain started to turn back on I found a renewed love for the guitar and recording my songs. It took a while for my head to clear up enough to be creative, but I am once again playing and writing music— something I have always enjoyed and consider one of the loves of my life.

As my brain has turned back on I have gotten back into building guitar pedals and other electronics. I have a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering so it is a lot of fun for me to combine circuit design with my love for music.

All of these things I have mentioned are the things that have helped pass the first several months of my early recovery. They have sustained me and kept me out of my head (most days), which is just what one needs in early recovery.

My advice to you is to find something healthy you enjoy doing and do it.

Start a daily meditation practice

As I have talked about in previous posts, my budding interest in meditation and mindfulness is something to which I progressively attribute more and more of my success so far in recovery. I started small with a simple 10-minute, guided meditation each morning. Sitting quietly and allowing myself to feel whatever I am feeling without judgement has had a tremendous healing effect on my mind. I find myself significantly less anxious, I am sleeping better, and I have found that I have a much higher degree of calm in the face of everyday stressors.

As is often the case when trying to start other healthy habits, it can be hard at first to get a meditation practice going. As I have gotten more and more interested in meditation, I have found that I am able to go much longer in one sitting than when I first started, but I think that it is absolutely essential at first to avoid biting off more than you can chew. Don’t try to sit for an hour at a time when you are just starting, hell, don’t try to sit for a half hour at a time when you are first starting. Start small, 10 minutes or less during your first few weeks, and build up from there. Guided meditations are readily available on the internet and are extremely helpful at first. My meditation practice has grown to include both guided and unguided meditations, but the unguided only came after many, many guided sessions and after quite a bit of reading into the subject.

Give it a try. Working this into your daily routine will be so helpful to your recovery and all areas of your life. Scientific studies into meditation and its impacts on the human brain are growing, and so far the results have been incredibly encouraging. Meditation has been a huge part of my recovery thus far and I intend to continue my practice, probably for the rest of my days.

To summarize, one of the most important first steps in early recovery is to plug into a recovery community. Get phone numbers and use them— call other addicts in recovery and build new, healthy friendships that are centered around a mutual desire to recover. Go to AA, NA, SMART meetings, whatever you can find that you think will help you. The most important thing here is just finding a community that understands and relates to you. NA has really helped me because I am able to attend a meeting every single day. For an hour (or an hour and a half) each day, I know that I will be focusing on my recovery. This is a fantastic way to make sure you get a daily dose of recovery and will show you other ways to build healthy routines.

Second, do something to get outside of yourself and pass the time. In very early recovery, it is of utmost importance to simply pass the time without using. Your body and mind needs time to heal from all of the abuse that it has taken during active addiction. Rediscover an old hobby, or pick up a new one, read, write, listen or play music, get a part-time job, do whatever you have to do to find a way to fill up your days in a healthy, constructive way.

Lastly, try to work in a short daily meditation period once or twice a day. Sitting quietly and without judgement, let your mind clear itself. The benefits will be subtle, yet substantial, and you will find yourself calmer, sleeping better, and better equipped to handle daily stressors.

If you can work on adding these three things to your daily routine, you will be in an excellent position in early recovery. The rest of your day will take care of itself if you can firmly ground yourself in recovery from the get-go. Build yourself a healthy, new routine that gives you a solid foundation for your recovery.

-G.M.C., 5.28.2020, Day 190

Subtle, yet substantial— The benefits of meditation in recovery

Over the past six months I have developed a significant interest in meditation and the potential of a daily practice to make a noticeable impact on one’s life. Previously, I wrote a post about Dan Harris’s book, app, & podcast all sharing the same name, ‘10% Happier.’ While listening to one of his podcast episodes he made an announcement that anybody interested in the subscription membership service who did not have the financial means to pay for it, to simply reach out and say so. So I did just that, and true to his word I was given a complimentary promotional one-year subscription to 10% Happier, giving me full access to all of the courses, guided meditations, and talks that are included in the service.

It took me a little while to get into it. I explored the app slowly, doing a guided meditation here and there, probably once a week or so, and I eventually ordered his book. After reading his book, I definitely took a little heavier interest in the subject. It caught my attention because there were no lofty promises of freedom from all suffering, only a light-hearted story of his personal experience of his own growing interest in the subject of meditation and the benefits he was able to gain from building a daily meditation practice, as well as some solid scientific evidence that went a long way towards proving his point.

I started with just 10 minutes a day for the first several weeks. This was enough to keep me engaged with it, but not too much to the point where I was overwhelmed by it. It was a good way to start for me; It didn’t take too much time out of my day and I didn’t feel like I was biting off more than I could chew at any point. I simply chose the ‘Daily Dose’ guided meditation (there is a highlighted guided meditation every day taken out of the catalog that they call the Daily Dose) and set the timer for 10 minutes and I was able to successfully make it a part of my daily routine.

It doesn’t sound like much, and it’s really not, but very quickly I started seeing effects of it in my life. I choose to meditate early in the morning when I wake up, and very quickly I started to notice that I wasn’t nearly as anxious in the mornings afterwards as I normally am. This feeling of subtle calm lasted throughout the day! I wasn’t getting frustrated or flustered as easily— I was staying calm in the face of what would typically be mildly stressful scenarios for me. It wasn’t anything earth-shattering, I hadn’t become ‘enlightened’ (lol), but something had definitely changed in me. It was subtle, yet substantial.

This was enough to really grab my attention. I have been trying my whole life to find something that would take away my anxious tendencies. Despite what can be a rather crippling amount of anxiety, something that has had tremendous impact on my life at various points, I have never sought serious medical attention for it.

When I think about it, I think that this actually played a huge role in my interest in recreational drugs at a relatively early age, and I know for certain that heroin was something that I found that worked. Unfortunately, the cost of using heroin creeps up quickly on you. At some point you end up penniless, jobless, possibly with a criminal record and you are hooked on a dangerously powerful drug that leaves you unbelievably sick when you don’t have it. I learned the hard way that heroin is not a viable option in solving any of life’s problems.

When I first got clean, I was hit was a brick wall of anxiety. That feeling in the pit of my stomach was back with a vengeance in the absence of the drugs, and I spent day after day in its grips. So when I started meditating and noticed a significant change in myself I realized that meditation was extraordinarily powerful. I don’t want to say that my anxiety is gone, because it is not, but it has dropped to a very manageable level and no longer is a force that shapes my day to day life. Through meditation, I have found a healthy way to curb it, and this is what has really propelled my growing interest in the subject.

I am continuing to do my research into the subject, and I am continuing my daily meditation practice. If you are in the early stages of recovery, or about to enter recovery, please do yourself a favor and give this a try. I have struggled to find a way to communicate to people my newfound interest in the subject without sounding like a dbag, but all I can say is that the advantages of meditation in your life are subtle, but substantial. Do your own research and give it a shot, I promise if you give it an honest effort that you will start to enjoy the benefits that I have.

-G.M.C, 5.23.2020, Day 185

Take the good with the bad…

Learning to cope with bad days during recovery.

There’s a line in recovery literature that one of the guys that attends one of the meetings that I go to likes to quote, and I will paraphrase here: An addict who is not using is in an abnormal state.

Next time you are having a shitty day and thinking about getting high, think about what that means.

As drug addicts who have found our way to recovery, our lives at one point had to get bad enough on some level that we were forced to seek help. Our lives were totally defined by our substance use. It took a long time for us to find our way to our bottoms; One day at a time we inadvertently strengthened our dependence, psychologically and physically, until our every waking moment revolved around the drugs. From the moment we woke and until we finally nodded off to sleep, we were totally obsessed with using.

So it is surprising, speaking from my own experience, that one day well into active addiction, the gravity of my substance abuse really hit me. It seemed like all of the sudden I was in this crazy situation with no where to go and no way out. I couldn’t bring myself to ask for help yet; All I knew was that suddenly I was aware of how bad things had gotten and how dangerous of a predicament I was in.

The truth is, however, just as we can get and stay clean one day at a time, our addiction slowly progressed over a long period of time. It may hit us in a moment of painful realization that wants to appear as if our disease progressed overnight, and we have suddenly been thrust into the misery that is active addiction, but make no mistake, it took a long period of time for us to get here.

It only makes sense then that it will take an equally long time to achieve any sort of ‘normalcy,’ (if there is such a thing for us addicts). When we get clean and start to turn the minutes into hours, the hours into days, the days into months, and months into years, we are going to have to learn to take the good days with the bad.

As my good days have started to outnumber the difficult ones, it seems to always surprise me when I wake up from another using-dream that I just can’t seem to shake off as the morning progresses. After a number of overwhelming positive days during which I have been so grateful for the gifts my recovery has already given me, I suddenly have a bad day… and it hits me like a ton of bricks.

I want to illustrate this with an example.

I have a dog that is absolutely my best friend. She is a big Beligian Malinois (a common type of police dog) and has been my best pal and protector throughout the worst years of active addiction and into my recovery. A few nights ago she got very sick. She was throwing up and obviously not feeling well.

With the benefit of hindsight, I can now say that this is not unusual for dogs to get sick and need some time to recover, but at the time this was a catastrophic event in my mind. My disease likes to manifest itself as extremely negative thoughts, apocalyptic thinking, and a never-ending loop of thoughts of doom and gloom. So immediately I was fearing for my dog’s life. I thought for sure she had some fatal stomach illness, or perhaps ingested poison and was due to die at any moment.

This went on throughout the next morning as she was still uncharacteristically low energy, refused to eat, and didn’t want to go on our morning walk. This had me worried sick. I went to work having a genuine anxiety attack.

As the day went on, my mom was texting me and telling me that my pup was getting better. She was showing signs of recovering from her stomach bug and beginning to act normally. But I was still lost in my own anxiety. I couldn’t shake the negativity, and fears for the health of my dog somehow turned into this vortex of negative thinking in which I mentally exhausted myself with thoughts of all of the fucked up bullshit that I went through in active addiction. I thought of how I ruined my life. I thought about how shitty it is that I am 28 & living with my parents with no car, no license; I’m back in my childhood bedroom with no girlfriend and working at a job well below my ability and education.

What I am trying to communicate here is how quickly a relatively minor stomach issue that my dog had (she was fully recovered by the time I got home and I was greeted with her usual high-energy demands to go outside a play) turned into a totally catastrophic event that brought all of the negative feelings and emotions that had caused me to use in the past right back to the forefront of my mind.

It is so important to remember that this is a common symptom of the disease of addiction. Those thoughts I was having weren’t real. They were just the fucked up result of what happens when you let you disease run your head for a while. Mark Twain is reputed to have said, “Some of the worst things in my life never happened.”

So next time you are having a shitty day, keep in mind that these negative feelings will pass. You are an addict who is not using, and at times that will be difficult to manage. One bad day won’t ruin the progress you’ve made in your recovery. As long as you don’t use no matter what, utilize your network of fellow recovering addicts, and be mindful of your disease you will be okay.

G.M.C., 5.5.2020, Day 167

Spiritual, not religious

Lately I have been a part of several discussions centered around spirituality, discovering our own idea of a higher power, and how to reconcile spiritual principles in our recovery with those we may have been taught when we were younger in the form of religion. I don’t want to alienate those who take solace in their religion or established belief system, and that is not my intent when I say that in recovery I think it is important that every individual needs to find his or her own idea of a higher power. They may not call it God. Jesus may not be their savior. And that is perfectly okay, and it is a concept that needs to be respected and upheld when it comes to finding spirituality in recovery.

I heard a statement the other day that I could really relate to, ‘religion is for people who are afraid of going to Hell; spirituality is for people who have been there.’ I’d be lying if I were to say that suddenly, in the infancy of my recovery, that I believe in God. Jesus and the idea of a Christian God are ideas that still make me cringe a little bit when I hear those words. It has given me some comfort that by embarking on a recovery journey that requires a significant degree of spirituality, in fact it is a journey that is totally centered around it, that I don’t have to accept Jesus as my lord and savior. I don’t need to be born again. I don’t need to praise Allah.

All I need to do is believe in a higher power whose power is greater than my own and on whom I can depend on to guide me in my life and, most importantly, keep me clean. As I grow in my recovery and learn to live by spiritual principles such as honesty, open-mindedness and willingness, I am beginning to see the impact it is having on my life. In fact, I am starting to see evidence of a higher power everywhere I look.

When I first entered recovery, I was totally spiritually bankrupt. I was totally self-centered and my only focus in life was to find the ways and means to get high again. Nevertheless, I entered recovery with an attitude of open-mindedness and willingness to succeed in my recovery. I knew that I was living completely wrong. I knew that I needed to drastically change my ways if I wanted to survive.

So basically on blind faith, I entered a program in which I saw people that seemed to have gotten a grasp on their disease and who were living lives in a way that I wanted to emulate. When I asked how they managed this they always, 100% of the time, cited the spiritual principles that they were taught in the program as the sole reason for their success.

When they were able to become willing to accept a new way of life, without any reservations, and by living the values they were taught day in and day out, they were able to find recovery.

So if you are new to recovery and are turned off by the talk of God, please know that you are not alone. A higher power and God are not the same thing. You don’t need to be religious to achieve recovery.

All you need to do is find what works for you. You need to put your faith in a higher power by admitting you have no power over your own disease. Allow your program to lift you up. Take the suggestions you are given. If you do, I promise you that your life will get better. I promise.

If you are familiar with 12-step recovery literature you are going to find the language I am using in this post, and in most of my previous posts, to be rather cliche. I am well aware of the fact that my writing is indoctrinated with the core beliefs of Narcotic’s Anonymous, because that is the program that has been changing my life.

I don’t, however, believe that NA is the only way to achieve lasting recovery. I think that the principles that it teaches and the values it instills in its members are the foundational concepts that need to be worked into the day to day lives of someone who wants to achieve recovery.

And nobody said it was easy. It is tremendously difficult. But it gets better. Day by day you will grow stronger.

G.M.C., 5.3.2020, Day 165

Practice Makes Progress

Much like anything else that we may try to do, success in our recovery depends on the work that we put into it. Also like many other areas in life, whether trying to learn something new or develop a new health habit, we have to take an active role in our own recovery and work towards our recovery, at least in some way, every single day.

This doesn’t mean we have to toil over literature for hours every day. Developing a habit or routine and working a certain amount of recovery into our daily schedules is vital to our ongoing recovery. I wanted to briefly describe my morning ritual (which does indeed require me to set my alarm clock an hour earlier than I would otherwise, but it is very much worth it) that has seemed to help me tremendously over the past five months that I have been in recovery.

I am an active member of NA, as I have mentioned in just about all of my previous posts, so the program I am working is largely (but not entirely) based upon the literature of Narcotic’s Anonymous. However, the same idea can be applied to any program, 12-step or otherwise, that you may be working.

When my alarm clock goes off in the morning I get up and let the dog out while I start heating water in the kettle for coffee, and in the meantime I read that particular day’s reading in NA’s Just for Today daily meditation.

This is a short reading, never more than a single page long, but often has shockingly accurate (and often so very appropriate for how I am feeling at that exact moment) insights into our nature as addicts and important concepts of recovery. The daily mediation always ends with a statement starting with, “Just for today, I will…..” It gives me something recovery related to focus on throughout the day.

In this way, I stay grounded in my recovery from nearly the moment I wake up. A screen capture of today’s reading is below. The link I included above will take you to a new meditation for each day of the year, but you’ll notice today’s reading is from page 120, and this referring to the print edition of the collection of daily meditations. If you are working the NA program, I highly suggest you at least do this simple ritual every day. If you do nothing else all day towards your recovery, at least you have started your day on the right foot.

I don’t stop there, though. You’ll notice that the first line(s) of the reading are a quotation. In this case the line is from IP (information pamphlet) No. 19 called Self-Acceptance. On other days they may grab a line or two from NA’s Basic Text or other approved literature. It was suggested to me early on to not only read this meditation, but also the accompanying passage that the daily meditation pulls its quotation from. So today I read the IP No. 19, Self-Acceptance. The website that the link in the sentence prior to this has all of the official NA IPs.

I also keep a journal in which, in addition to a daily entry, I copy down the ‘Just For Today’ statement at the very end of the daily meditation. For example, today I wrote:

Just for Today: Self acceptance is a process set in motion by the Twelve Steps. Today, I will trust the process, practice the steps, and learn to better accept myself.”

At the top of today’s journal entry.

Recovery requires daily work. By starting every day with this simple routine, I am able to ground my day within the principles of my recovery and start off on the right foot. Your routine doesn’t have to be the same as mine, but I wanted to share this with anyone who may benefit from seeing an example of how to develop a daily recovery ritual and how to work it into your day.

In my next post, I am going to share another daily habit that I have gotten into recently: meditation. I have been doing a lot of reading on the subject and have developed a daily meditation practice that I perform every single morning after my reading. The benefits are subtle, yet substantial at the same time.

G.M.C., 4.26.2020, Day 158,

Feeling a part of

April 18th will mark 150 days clean. It has been a rollercoaster ride of emotions as I have navigated from one day to the next, each presenting its own challenges and small triumphs. It has been a period of tremendous growth for me as I’ve been learning a new way to live. I wanted to take a moment to share about what I think is probably one of the most critical aspects of recovery: building a network of other clean & sober individuals who are also in recovery. Doing so has taken me out of my comfort zone in many ways, but the rewards have started to become quite obvious.

I have never been extremely outgoing. I am a mostly introverted individual and have never been someone who has a huge number of people that I call friends. The friends I do have, however, tend to be very close friends and are people that I’ve known for many years. The problem is that none of these people, with a couple exceptions, are in recovery. Substance abuse has never been a part of their story beyond the binge-drinking habits of a typical college student, which they were eventually able to put behind them.

So when I first got into recovery I felt extremely alone. I had friends, yes, but most of them were rightfully busy with their jobs, spouses or significant other, children, and other ‘normal’ life events. I, on the other hand, was jobless, homeless, totally broke, and sitting in a detox in northern Kentucky wondering how the hell I was going to get clean and stay clean.

Time, as it does, passed and eventually I got out of rehab. I was very nervous to go to my first meeting and put it off for a few days, but on a Friday night I finally worked up enough courage to go to a meeting that was pretty close to my parents house.

It was terrible (or at least I perceived it to be). It was a speaker meeting and the story that the woman told was full of triggers and by the time she was done speaking I was ready to bolt out of the room. Something about it made me uncomfortable. It was a story I knew all too well and it brought back that sensation of crawling in my skin that was prevalent during withdrawal.

Somehow, however, I forced myself to go to another meeting the next night. It was a discussion format that is typical of a standard NA meeting and I found it much more manageable. I still didn’t speak to anyone or make my presence known in any way. I just sat and listened, taking it all in.

And so it went for the next thirty days or so. I went to a meeting every night of the week. Slowly, but surely, people began to make me feel comfortable. I still didn’t share anything, but I began making sure I at least did one of the readings each night. I started developing small relationships with people at the meetings that extended no further than the occasional nod or quick hello before I bolted out of the room at the end of the meeting. The important thing though was that I kept coming back. And I didn’t use no matter what, even at that vulnerable stage.

I am writing all of this because I want stress the fact that this wasn’t something that was comfortable for me in any sense of the word. It was genuinely difficult for me to force myself to keep coming back every night of the week and put myself in another meeting with people that I didn’t know and listen to them bare their souls for everyone to hear. The thought of sharing my own thoughts and feelings terrified me — and still does if I am being honest.

Right around my 90 day mark, after weeks of working up the courage, I finally asked someone to be my sponsor. I chose an old timer who celebrated 35 years clean at the very same meeting that was my first. I found myself listening intently when he shared. He appeared to be full of the kind of wisdom and knowledge and experience that I want to have someday. He is kind. Understanding. He really believes that the NA program can help any addict stop using, lose the desire to use, and find a new way to live. From what I can tell, he lives and breathes the program every day of his life.

Thankfully, he accepted when I asked him to be my sponsor and that moment marked what I think has been by far the most impactful moment of my recovery. The day after asking him I began to receive text messages from his other sponsees, from what I now know is my ‘sponsee family.’

People suddenly began reaching out. I was introduced to other members of NA outside of my sponsorship family who I now consider integral parts of my network and who I talk to on a daily basis. The moment I worked up the courage to ask someone to sponsor me a whole new world opened up to me. I was suddenly a part of something bigger than myself and had the collective wealth of experience, hope, and strength that I can now draw from at any time. I have started to work my first step and I am almost done. I talk to my sponsor nearly every day. If I don’t reach out to him, he typically reaches out to me.

My point in all this is that this whole recovery thing isn’t always comfortable in the beginning. As addicts we are coming from a place of fatal isolation, lonesomeness, and death. We are coming from a dark place and have no clear idea of who we are anymore. We are lonely and afraid. But when we dig deep and find the courage to keep coming back, day after day, things start to happen. We start to change. All of the sudden, after years of misery, we are a part of something positive and powerful.

I’ve been working again. I just got accepted to the University of Cincinnati to start studying to get my masters degree in Computer Science this coming fall. For the first time in years, good things are happening. So if you are new to this, please, I beg you to stick with it. You don’t ever have to use again. There is a place where you can feel a part of. Keep coming back.

-G.M.C., 4/5/2020, Day 137

Rebuilding.

As I approach my ninety day sober mark on the 18th of this month, I have been thinking a lot about this process from a higher level than I’ve thus far been capable. The change in my life the past three months has been truly remarkable; I started and finished an intensive outpatient program, I’ve started to repair the relationships with my friends and family and rebuild trust with them, and I’ve successfully detoxed from heroin for the first time in my life and have slowly begun to pick up the broken puzzle pieces of my life and reassemble them. Only in the last few days, however, I have realized that I am not only picking up and reassembling the fragmented and shattered pieces of my life, but rather I have the incredibly unique opportunity to put them back together and rebuild exactly the way I want them to be, the way it always should have been.

Emerging from the exhaustion, the filth, the ‘high cost of low living,’ (a phrase I’ve heard a number of times in the various meetings I attend) is incredibly difficult. No one can prepare you for the level of disappointment, the guilt, shame, and all of the other horrible thoughts and emotions that come along with addiction. When you finally hit the bottom, you are in a state of utter despair; a state of total emotional, moral, and spiritual bankruptcy. Getting through those first few weeks takes immense strength and toughness. You cry like a child, you curse like a sailor, you come to know suffering like you’ve never known it before.

All anybody, even those who have been in such a state themselves, seems to be able to say to you is, ‘it’ll get better.’ And every time you hear those words you want to scream at them and ask them, ‘When?! When will it get better?!’

But with each and every sunrise, you do start to feel better. Little by little, bit by bit, you regain your strength and slowly start to think clearly. As withdrawals come to a close you finally feel human once again, perhaps for the first time in years. You may not yet realize it, I certainly did not, but it is in this precise moment that you suddenly become more powerful than you ever could know.

All of the sudden you are back in control. You have reclaimed the reigns of your life from the poisonous and evil grips of addiction, at least for now. I won’t try and tell you that you are free of the disease, because the truth is that you will never be totally free of the disease again, and the moment you think otherwise is the moment that it will strike you down again. This is the start of your recovery, the starting point that returns to you your choice in life. It is a long road ahead of you, a very long road indeed. But unlike active addiction, the more work and the more effort that you put into your recovery the more positivity and opportunity for good will come into your life.

To be continued…..

G.M.C., 2.14.2020, Day 86