Addiction Recovery

Recovering From Your Addiction

It really doesn’t matter what you suffer from in addiction, whether it is from sex, gambling, drugs, alcohol, co-dependent, etc. The fact remains that there are certain basic steps (or actions) that must accompany your recovery if you are going to recovery. I am not so sure if in fact we will ever completely recover, but I have had enough experience to know what the basics to recovering from the addiction that I have. I also know that once I think that I have pretty much recovered from one particular area, I can also see other types of what I would call addictions that arise, if I don’t pay close attention to them than I might let them get away from me and than it could end up being a very serious deal. I will use the phrase or word (Step) here for what I feel is the necessary process for recovery, you can substitute that word with anything that you want, action, phase, it doesn’t matter the word just the results.

Step 1 Toward Recovery

The first step is by far the most important part of recovery. It is the foundation of our recovery and unless we take this step and actually mean it, than there will never be any sort of recovery or the amount of recovery time.

For me I had to admit that I was a hopeless, helpless, homeless, dope fen and that I knew that I was addicted to the substance that kept me trapped in a world of life that I loved. And yet this world in which I love so much was killing me and taking everything away from me. It had taken my wife of 15 years, children, dogs, business, friends, family, etc. The only thing that it would give me back was such things as jail, paranoia, homeless, etc. So I had to come to grip with the fact that if I didn’t want to die, or that I didn’t want the life that I loved (basically for the sex) than I had to give up the substance that was causing so much pain in my life.

So I had to take the first step and that was to give up the substance that was causing all of this pain. Now I know that sounds easy but it isn’t easy at all! There are still times today, that I would love to go get me a bag of dope and get a good fix, but I also know that if I start I can not stop, or knowing my luck I would probably be locked up somewhere for the rest of my life.

Step 2 Toward Recovery

The next step is that what everyone talks about is a Power greater than yourself. But I will not emphasize the word God here.

It has come to my attention this time in my recovery that I had to find something, or someone in order to help me and to listen to what I was going through and to also have someone help me to sort things out. I guess a confidant and I had to completely trust this person or thing with all of my self in order for this to work. I had to let go of all of the thoughts that they will talk about me, they really don’t care, they think that I am nuts well that might be true. But the point is that I had to realize that I needed human contact in whatever form that I could get in order to help me to reestablish some sort of communication and interactions.

This Power I don’t have to define, it probably isn’t anything or anyone would assume it to be either. But what I have come to realize that this Power or the way in which I use this Power seems to work out and helps me from all sorts of issues that would have flipped me back into active addiction before. This power can be anything, anyone, or place that you choose, and it is all you have to do….You don’t have to be a holly roller for this deal to work, and you don’t have to call it God, or HP, or Power, you just need to have established something outside of yourself that you can connect with and that is it. Really this is pretty simple if you disregard the religious part that everyone assumes if this makes you cringe. You don’t have to assume that when someone mentions God that they even are using it in the terms of the religious God which helped me to bring my own Spirituality’s into more action that works.

I found this on the Internet today which just reassured me that what I am doing today seems to be spiritual enough to keep me clean I hope that you enjoy it also as much as I did.

Butt Prints in the Sand

One night I had a wondrous dream,

One set of footprints there were seen,

The footprints of my precious Lord,

But mine were not along the shore.

But then some stranger prints appeared,

And I asked the Lord, “What have we here?”

Those prints are large and round and neat,

“But Lord, they are too big for feet.”

“My child,” He said in somber tones,

“For miles I carried you alone.

I challenged you to walk in faith,

But you refused and made me wait.”

“You disobeyed, you would not grow,

The walk of faith, you would not know,

So I got tired, I got fed up,

And there I dropped you on your butt.”

“Because in life, there comes a time,

When one must fight, and one must climb,

When one must rise and take a stand,

Or leave their butt prints in the sand.”

~~Author Unknown~

Step 3 Toward Recovery

Following through no matter what! OK here is the hard part but the most rewarding if that is really what you want to call it. You have to follow through with the decision to stay off of the addiction that got you to admit that you needed to change, that you didn’t want to keep living the life that you were, or that you were so tired with the legal system that you didn’t want to continue in that life as well. Here is when WE have to take the action and no God on earth or in heaven is going to do this by itself…..

The spiritual literature that I read also makes mention of many things and we all are given free will to do as we will. So with that being said we know that it is ultimately up to ourselves to make sure that we continue to not use dope, alcohol, sex, gambling, whatever it is that you need help with you can not go back to the demon that is bitting you at the behind. If you do or if I do, and I have a lot of experience at this as well, …. we will be lucky if we survive it. Not only that but it will be so much harder to get back any sort of amount of clean time from our addiction once we have broken our recovery process from addiction. It will take a lot more work and each time that we decide to use instead of continuing in the process recovery it gets that much harder to even get recovery from whatever ails us.

We take responsibility for our actions and we made a decision to do something about our addiction and now we have to take the responsibility for our recovery. No one or nothing else is going to do the recovery work for us not even God. It is up to us because we all have our own self wills that we make our own decisions for us. So ultimately we have to take the responsibility to do whatever we have to in order not to return to our addiction in which we are recovering from.

Part One Copyright © Victor W.

written: 2/17/08