Category Archives: 12-Step Programs

Earning Trust And Respect In Recovery

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One of the common issues facing us in early recovery is the lack of trust and respect from others in our lives, whether family, friends or employers. While some — especially family — are often willing to accept our new, sober selves and welcome us back into the fold, there will always be some who find themselves unable to trust, and others who will continue to think of us as they did when we were active in our addictions — as worthless drunks and junkies.

And why shouldn’t they? Compared to the chaos that we created when we were using, and the length of time involved, why should a few weeks or months of new found sobriety impress them? Most of us used for years, eroding the trust and often respect of practically everyone around us. How many unkept promises, how many financial fiascoes, how many drunken escapades, how much despair, worry and heartache did it take to damage those relationships?

That being the case, it’s not the least bit surprising that it might take quite a while for folks to trust us, and to see that we really are trying to do the next right thing. The remains of our addict personalities (which certainly don’t disappear simply because we put down booze and/or other drugs) don’t help the situation, either. Defenses built up over years against our behavior can’t be expected to disappear overnight. If we were in their positions, we’d behave the same way.

So, what can we do about it? Simply continue to live our sober lives. The only way that we can reasonably expect others to begin trust and respect us again is by earning that respect and trust — the same way anyone else would — by showing ourselves to be worthy of it. This doesn’t happen overnight, just as it wouldn’t with a stranger that we happened to meet. We would watch that person, trusting them a little more each day, until we came to consider them a friend we could count on. Is it not reasonable to expect that the same would be true of people who knew and were affected by us in our addictions? Where we have no reason but caution to be leery of strangers, those folks have plenty of reasons to worry about us. Most will get over it in time; others may never feel the same way about us as they used to. If that is the case, and if we have been unable to repair the relationships despite our best efforts, then we have to accept that things may never be the same. That can be painful, but we have to live with what is, not with what we might wish it to be. We need to remember that while we are responsible for making amends and righting wrongs to the extent that we can, we are not responsible for the way that others react to our efforts.

So we stay sober. We take care of our recovery by sticking with our support groups and doing what we need to do. Then we get jobs, pay bills, go back to school, carry out our obligations to our families and others, and generally live trustworthy lives that command respect. This isn’t going to happen overnight — but the chances are good that it won’t take nearly as long to regain people’s regard as it did to damage it to begin with. Remember – they want to give us the same regard they used to, they’re just afraid to. It’s up to us to prove that it’s safe for them to do so.

It’s amazing how we often get what we are looking for in recovery, simply by living clean and sober, one day at a time.

The Way Things Ought To Be

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Every addict I’ve ever met has, in one way or another, had the same answer to his or her own happiness: If (he) (she) (they) (it) (the world) would just do things our way, that’s what would save the world and make us happy.

Those of us with fake self-esteem (the noisy ones) let everyone else know our solutions. If we’re the doormats — the ones who always seem to get hooked up with the noisy ones — we may not explain it to the world, but we still have our own ideas about what would “fix” our problems. All of these visions of The Way Things Ought To Be (TWTOTB) have one thing in common: they all depend on things outside ourselves, “the things we cannot change”.

The big problem is that things outside ourselves are often under the control of someone else, and some things, at least in theory, are under no one’s control — certainly not ours. Just as there can only be one boss in the workplace, whose ideas of TWTOTB most likely differ from ours and who may not want to listen to our counsel, so can there only be one, or at most a few, winners of the lottery. If we pray to win the lottery we are, in effect, praying for millions of othe people to lose. Many of those may need to win more than we do. Disregarding the likely failure of a millions-to-one gamble to provide a solid financial future, most folks of our kind who have won have failed to prosper regardless of the millions of $$, ¥¥, €€ or whatever, and such windfalls have been the downfall of many an addict.

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An oldie, but a goody: Concerning a “higher power”

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I heard another newcomer at a meeting complaining about how she’d had God shoved down her throat by her parents, and she wasn’t having any part of this Higher Power stuff, blah, blah, blah.  I find this sort of thing tedious, to put it lightly, having listened to and read about it frequently over the years.  Even when I was claiming to be an atheist I thought it was shallow and ill-considered.  So, since it’s my blog, I thought I’d write about my take on the issue.

It seems to me that if there is a Higher Power, in the sense of someone or something unknowable that affects the physical world, then it must be right here, right now.  I have to admit that I have yet to develop that faith.  Frankly, I find the concept of some metaphysical being busy watching over the entire universe a bit difficult to fathom, while still entertaining the idea that I can appeal to that entity for help with my little problems.  

On the other hand, I find the idea of a god within me, you, and perhaps every other living thing or even the Earth itself not only (remotely) possible in a physical sense  — or at least not impossible — but rather pleasant.  The idea of something that permeates my world and provides a gentle push occasionally to keep things running smoothly for those who wish to have things run smoothly is comforting and engenders hope.  I hope that I may come to believe in that sense, someday.

That said, I most emphatically do believe in a higher power in recovery.  The fellowships, their members and my other supports are my higher power at present, and for now they seem to be enough.  Their collective wisdom provides guidance, and their attempts  and successes in sobriety and recovery give me hope.  They’re there when I call on them — not always individually, but invariably in the collective — to provide the sympathetic ear and moral support that I need to further my own recovery.  And I am here for them, which makes me part of someone else’s higher power, I suppose.

That being the case, I want to register my strong opinion that using the “God Issue” as an excuse for turning away from the 12-step fellowships is simply an excuse for not pursuing recovery.  In my 1/3-century-plus of hanging around AA, NA and some of the other A’s, I have never been told by anyone whose opinion I thought worthwhile that I was required to believe in someone’s God-with-a-capital-G in order to stay sober or work a program of recovery.  That is borne out in the basic texts of every fellowship that I have encountered, if a person cares to read beyond the “G-word.”

We don’t have to believe in God to work a good program of recovery.  Period.  But we DO have to believe in some power beyond ourselves, because the humility to accept new ideas is absolutely essential in order to drag ourselves out of the morass of our own twisted thinking and into a place where we can begin to change. As an old sponsor of mine used to say, “There may or may not be a God, but if there is, you ain’t it!”

So spare me the stories of the Gawd of your childhood and the atrocities committed in His name, then or now.  Spare me the sophomoric, angst-filled testimony of how you can’t “get into” AA or whatever because you have to believe in god.  One more time: You can work a perfectly good program without believing in God, regardless of what the Bible-thumpers in the rooms might say.  As is announced at meetings, the opinions there are those of the individual members, not the fellowship as a whole.

The only higher power you MUST have is the people who will help you drag your sorry butt out of the hole of addiction and into sobriety.  If you get careless and start believing in something else — well, I envy you.

Bitch, whine and debate, or Experience, Strength, and Hope?

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The other night I was at a meeting where the chair asked for a topic, and one of our more “intellectual” members raised a hand and commenced a five-minute dissertation on how they didn’t understand why we say in the rooms that it takes an addict to really understand an addict, why they shouldn’t just be able to speak openly about their addiction to any friend and get useful feedback, etc. They used the words obviously, clearly and in my opinion a lot. This sort of thing does nothing to promote discussion about recovery; it merely exercises the ego of the speaker.

Our fellowships are not debating societies. They are about getting a sponsor, developing a support system, working the steps and practicing the 12 principles* in our daily lives. If I want to bitch, whine or debate, I need to do it outside a meeting with my sponsor or a support, not hijack a meeting with subjects that have little or nothing to do with the process of recovery. Better yet, at whatever point in recovery I may be, I need to remember that I’m the problem, and projecting my complaints onto other people or ideas is not conducive to a genuine pursuit of sobriety.

Maybe that’s what I’m doing now: projecting my issues.

Or maybe not.

  • 12 Principles? What 12 principles?

About Me

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I was born at an early age, drank alcoholically from the first beer, used recreational drugs (and some not so recreational), eventually reaching the point where none of that stuff was fun any more. It was just work: work to stay supplied, work to juggle my reality and everyone else’s, work to keep people from finding out (I thought), work to simply live — and life sucked. Somewhere along the line I married another addict, and for several years that sucked too. There was no question in my mind that I had a problem, I just didn’t know the problem had a solution.

Finally, I was unable to keep all the balls in the air, and the world came tumbling down in the form of foreclosures, evictions, pawn shops, beat up old cars with all sorts of garbage on the dashboard, and eventually professional disgrace and the threat of losing my job.

Like many men, the job thing was the last straw for me. I knew that my wife and I would be living behind the dumpster at the Golden Arches within days, and I agreed to go into a residential treatment program. Two weeks later, my wife entered treatment at the same facility. The rest is not history, it’s more of a miracle.

Now, thirty-odd years later, I’ve had the opportunity to make most of the mistakes that folks can make in recovery, apart from actually picking up a drink or a drug.* Among other things, I’ve learned that relapse occurs before we pick up — that actually using just makes it official. I’ve worked in the recovery field. I’ve had the good sense to realize that it wasn’t for me, and got out of it. I’ve hit a lot of meetings, talked to a lot of alcoholics and addicts, and learned some of what they had to teach me.

And my wife? She got her degree in Social Work, Magna Cum Laude, at age 50, and her C.A.P. (Certified Addiction Professional — with international endorsement) a few years later. She’s also a Certified Mental Health Professional. She has worked in the field for many thousands of contact hours, and specializes in addiction (of course) and grief therapy.

We should both be dead, but we made it out the other side.

Please hang around. If you feel like reading my stuff, fine, but whatever you do, keep coming back. Don’t die. Please!

Yours in recovery,
Bill

*I use alcoholism, addiction, alcoholic and addict interchangeably. They’re the same disease, and we’re all just bozos on the same bus. That’s the first thing you need to learn.