The Road Called Recovery
From WildIrish317
Day 65. If I didn't know any better, I would say I'm "cured". However, I do know better. I am through withdrawal, and moving down the road they call recovery. The trick now is to stay on this road and not get sidetracked into relapse.
So, I've mastered the Law of Addiction. My addiction is arrested. I'm through the withdrawal, the suck. I'm on the road of recovery. Now what? How do I stay on this road?
The first rule to recovery is:
You don't recover from an addiction by stopping using. You recover by creating a new life where it is easier to not use.If you don't create a new life, the Nic bitch will lure you back into using her.
There are tools to help us create a new life. You can find them at
www.addictionsandrecovery.org. I want to discuss them briefly here because they are important.
The three tools are:
1. Avoid high risk situations.
2. Learn to relax.
3. Be honest.Some common high risk situations are described by the acronym HALT (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired). You can't always avoid these situations, but learn to recognize them and be on guard for the Nic bitch, because she's watching and waiting.
We used nicotine to relax. We need to find something to replace that. Drugs and alcohol are not your best choice, as these are addictive substances as well. Meditation is a good tool for relaxation.
KTC has a good thread on meditation: Meditation Group.
(Athan unable to find link to group, lost in transition from tapatalk? Will update when reestablished here) It has a good beginning, morphs into a roll post, and then has some more tips and tricks at the end. I also tie flies to relax. My mother played the piano to relax. (I used to think she just liked to play. Now I realize she would do it when she was upset.)
The following is a direct quote from linked web page. I can't think of a good way to summarize it, and there are a lot of important points about being honest.
An addiction requires lying. You have to lie about getting your drug, using it, hiding its consequences, and planning your next relapse. An addiction is full of lying. By the time you've developed an addiction, lying comes easily to you. After a while you get so good at lying that you end up lying to yourself. That's why addicts don't know who they are or what they believe in.
The other problem with lying is that you can't like yourself when you lie. You can't look yourself in the mirror. Lying traps you in your addiction. The more you lie, the less you like yourself, which makes you want to escape, which leads to more using and more lying.
Nothing changes, if nothing changes. Ask yourself this: will more lying, more isolating, and more of the same make you feel better? The expression in AA is - nothing changes if nothing changes. If you don't change your life, then why would this time be any different? You need to create a new life where it's easier to not use.
Recovery requires complete honesty. You must be one-hundred percent completely honest with the people who are your supports: your family, your doctor, your therapist, the people in your 12 step group, and your sponsor. If you can't be completely honest with them, you won't do well in recovery.
When you're completely honest you don't give your addiction room to hide.
When you lie you leave the door open to relapse.One mistake people make in the early stages of recovery is they think that honesty means being honest about other people. They think they should share what's "wrong" with other people.
But recovery isn't about fixing other people. It's about fixing yourself. Stick with your own recovery. Focusing on what you don't like about others is easy because it deflects attention from yourself.
Honesty won't come naturally in the beginning. You've spent so much time learning how to lie that telling the truth, no matter how good it is for you, won't feel natural.
You'll have to practice telling the truth a few hundred times before it comes a little easier. In the beginning, you'll have to stop yourself as you're telling a story, and say, "now that I think about it, it was more like this..."
Show common sense. Not everybody is your best friend. And not everybody will be glad to know that you have an addiction or that you're doing something about it. There may be some people who you don't want to tell about your recovery. But don't be reluctant to tell the people close to you about your recovery. You should never feel ashamed that you're doing something about your addiction.
