Category Archives: Process Addictions

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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Trust Your Gut

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There is nothing mystical about hunches, intuition, and trusting your gut. We are all the sum total of millions–billions–of experiences, and we remember most of them on some level. We are well-equipped to let our subconscious minds help us out with problems, armed as they are with that wealth of experience.

But we often–if not usually–force ourselves to ignore those gut feelings, the feeling that something is just sort of “icky.” We want to do something, say something, buy something, to fill that empty place inside, and we think up all sorts of ways to justify our wants to ourselves and ignore the message that our subconscious mind is sending loud and clear, if we choose to hear it. Then we go on with the self-deception and make up ways to justify whatever it is to others–our partner, our business associates, our sponsors, our friends but, ultimately, to ourselves.

Good, healthy ideas seldom need justification. Feeling a need to explain, to justify, should tell us that something’s wrong somewhere. It may simply be a neurotic need on our part to assure ourselves and everyone else that we’re really OK, but there’s also an excellent possibility that we’re about to venture where we ought to fear to tread, guided by the child inside who is telling us it’s OK because I Want, I Want, I Want. In either case, there are two possible clues: the urge to hide whatever it is, or the urge to justify it. Both should set off our alarms.

Buddhism Could Help Depression

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Previous studies have shown that adhering to the five precepts of Buddhism, which include not killing, stealing, committing sexual misconduct, telling lies, or using intoxicants, can improve the well-being and quality of life for both serious and non-serious followers. However, it was not clear until now if these precepts could also alleviate depressive symptoms for those at a higher risk.

How Buddhism Could Help Lower Depression Risk

Journaling In Recovery

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I’ve been journaling for going on sixty years, off and on. During that time I’ve filled up ledgers, spiral notebooks, diaries, the back pages of pilot logbooks, and several megabytes of disk space. My current drug of choice is the pocket-sized Moleskine notebook with the graph paper pages, or a similar one sold by Target for about half the price. Over the past few years I’ve started putting everything in it: shopping lists, notes to self, jotted addresses and phone numbers, the better to create a true daily record.

I say “drug of choice” because journaling has become an ingrained habit with me, if not actually an addiction. (Writing, on the other hand, qualifies fully, including withdrawal symptoms.) I’ve lost most of the journals I kept in my youth and through the years of my addiction; a shame, really, since if I had those I could actually write a book, although I can’t help thinking that the embarrassment factor might be seriously off-putting. Anyway, that doesn’t matter.

I do have my jottings for virtually all of the years I’ve been in recovery, and it has been highly instructive to go back and check out the cringe factor in those. When I read something and find it makes me squirm, I become aware of one more way that I’ve changed — or not changed — and it shows me a lot about my successes and also the areas where I need more work.

I consider my journals an integral and essential part of my recovery. For a couple of years I tried keyboarding, and it just wasn’t the same. I have to put pen to paper and actually write things down. My-wife-the-shrink informs me that physically writing things engages different parts of the brain, and the inability to make changes easily causes us to think more deeply and carefully about what we’re recording. I agree with that. I find that my handwritten musings have far more gut-level effect when I re-read them, so I have to assume that I’m digging deeper to begin with.

I require those I sponsor to journal, as well — those who know how to read and write. (The others go to literacy classes.) I give them each a notebook, so they’ll have no excuse for procrastinating. I don’t demand to read them, but when we meet I expect them to show me that they have been writing. Those who have remained sober and in contact often mention that they have continued to do so, and remark how much they get out of looking back at who they were early on. Some have remarked how much it helped them when they got serious about a 4th Step.

Try it. You may not like it, but you’ll benefit. The rules are simple: use the same book, use ink (no erasing), and write something every day — even if it’s just the date. No one but you will be reading it, so you have nothing to fear but fear itself.