How Will You Choose?

I love to tell the story of one of my darkest moments in my first year of sobriety.

The winter was approaching, an invasion of Iraq was imminent, and the banking and real estate industries were in crisis. I had gotten sober 9 months previously. I was learning to grow a backbone and in the process had managed to lose my job. There were massive layoffs in my industry.

I was so worn down from it alldrugs were the glue that I had used to hold my world together, and I had chosen to forgo them in favor of learning to live sober. I had no expectation of being able to stay clean through the holidays.

My house was in default and I had collected my last paycheck. No severance pay. I was gripped with fear of being put out in the street, of having to live under a bridge. I figured I could resist foreclosure until February, but my heat would be cut off. Using my last money to buy a truckload of firewood and some canned tuna seemed like a prudent move.

There was a guy in the rooms who sold firewood, and I paid him $70.00 for the wood. As he unloaded it, I told him how scared I was.

He said, "It is OK, God will take care of you."

It was one of those ah ha moments. I saw that I needed to focus less on the darkness in the world that seemed ready to swallow me, and more on my faith in God.

That faith gave me the courage to find a friendly landlord to lease office space and start my own practice. I did not have a single client and had no idea how to get one. A friend gave me a referral, I bailed my house out of hock, and have never looked back.

As I walked into a meeting this morning I saw a dirty looking guy standing out front. He had the unmistakable look of someone who was using or drinking heavily and living under a bridge. It was the man who had delivered to me the firewood, and carried a message of redemption that saw me through one of my darkest moments.

He did not look good. He said he was not doing well. I related to him how he had helped me 18 years ago. He pretended to remember, but I could tell his mind was too far gone; he had no recollection. I told him I was glad he was at the meeting and thanked him for throwing me a life rope when I really needed it.

The moral of this story is that we are addicts, and when we get clean and work a program, we can, by virtue of our experience, transform the lives of those around us.

And, like it or not, we can fall right through the trap door in our bottom and never find our way back out.

We each have this choice only for this day.

How will you choose?

August
Wow, very powerful. Thanks for sharing August. Just what I needed to hear this morning. Puts me in a completely different space.

Thank you.
That was really good. Thanks August. I just got home from my daughter's apartment. I haven't been out for awhile and don't really know what to do with myself these days. I don't like to count days but its been 32 and I'm having alot of anxiety. I'm still thinking that its normal, I'm still just balancing out I hope. I keep telling myself nineteen years with a 2 yr. break twice in between is a long time and a month isn't going to be enough time. Hopefully soon tho, I'm just looking at it like everything I feel is just balancing itself back out and sooner or later things will be level. Am I on track?

Hope your doing well. If you talk to Lisa tell her I lover her and the reason I haven't posted to her is because I know she's going through alot.

One more thing, I know I have to go to a meeting, but why, when I think about it do I get so nervous and anxious that I have to not think about it. Make sense? I don't know, I've never been this unsure of everything before.

Roe
One more thing, I know I have to go to a meeting, but why, when I think about it do I get so nervous and anxious that I have to not think about it. Make sense? I don't know, I've never been this unsure of everything before.

Roe, two years is not a lot of time compared to 19 years in the trenches. I used for 18 years, and each year it seemed that I got back a little of what I lost, but it is a continuing journey toward recovery.

As slow as the traffic is on the recovery lane, the lane back to addiction hell is pretty fast from what I hear. Seems that we often times have a brief honeymoon with the drug and then it is right back to where we left off, with all the horrible side effects. I could explain it in terms of physiology, but who cares? It is the reality of addiction.

So the choice is a tough one, get better slowly, one day at a time, trudging along, or hop on the express lane to hell. Most of us know what hell looks like and me Ill take the slow road to happy destiny any day.

OK, here is where the rubber hits the road. Why is it you that you have such anxiety around the meetings? Hey how about I lay a bunch of psychobabble on you? Or I can lay it down in simple terms.

Roe, your anxiety is your disease trying to feed itself. Your disease does not want you to get better; it prefers that you stay isolated where sooner or later it knows you will cave. The disease is the enemy, Roe. Do not let it win.

Here is another way of looking at it. You walk into the meeting and you think to yourself, "everybody knows that I have failed," and your ego cannot handle it. The amazing thing is that when we find the courage to act against the impulses the disease throws at us, when we do admit defeat, and I mean total defeat, we open ourselves up in a way where something really miraculous can happen. This is the only way the program works. You have to set aside your pride, and walk through the door naked and exposed.

Roe, you can listen to those voices that want to protect that ego, or you can try to act differently than what your addictive voice says to you. It is only when we act in the face of those addictive voices that we start to heal.

Hope some of this helps.

August
It does help. And I am going to have to even if I feel like the room is closing in on me. I know I don't have to talk, and I hope nobody says much to me. But there is something I've been trying to deal with separately.

My husband. He's got all kinds of psych issues. Has been on disability/retirement pension and va pension for about 8 years. He's here all the time. Has a history of alcoholism and likes pills too. he was really peed when I cancelled my script. Says he likes them for mood stabilizers. He'll go for days (he's been since Friday) of sitting and just not talking to anyone and being all depressed. I'm good at ignoring him but I've always held everything together for the kids.
So I'm on my own with this. I thought I could do it and keep his issues at bay, but I can see where he's going to be a detrement to my efforts at recovery. From what I've been reading, he's what they call a dry drunk. He's had "slips" over the past five years that have landed him in jail and its been pretty serious. Assault on an officer and DUI and driving without a license. We're still paying fines. He's on psych meds, but is anti-social and associates with nobody, won't even answer the phone.

So for sure I have to get out of here probably at least every other day. I'm going to find one, (I'm going to look at one of Tim's posts, he posts links to them) and just go. I've been to a couple on other attemps at quitting, and it wasn't bad, should it be aa or na? Do you think if I do this three or four times a week, that I'll be ready to go back to school in May? I started an 8 month medical assisting course, but failed a month and am suppose to go back and finish. I failed because of the pills. I made an excuse as to why I failed, but its the pills.

I really want this. I'll do almost anything, I'll have to just pretend I'm okay, nobody has to know how I feel, about the anxiety and stuff, but if I run into people like you guys, I'll be okay. I'm gonna look for that link and just go in and sit down. Because I need support more than anything because I can see that I'll get none here, I knew I wouldn't, but like I said, I can just ignore his stuff and work on mine right?


You are a good man August West, thank you.
Roe, if you really want it and it sounds like you do, you need to put one foot in front of the other and walk through those doors. It does not matter if you feel like doing it or not, or whether it is what you want to do. The key is to do it even if you do not feel like doing it. This is the way we get better. I may give you a one-day pass if you get hit by an earthquake, but aside from that, today is the first day of the rest of your life.

Roe, sounds like you also could benefit from some Al Anon or Narc-anon. Rarely have I seen someone fail to benefit from the sister programs when it comes to dealing with an addict spouse, and that includes dry-drunks. Just because your husband is not pouring alcohol or drugs in his body on any particular day does not mean he isnt one of us.

Co-dependency is not a gender specific disease. However, I think there are certain cultural stereotypes that tend to make women more vulnerable to co-dependent tendencies, and I think they often have a hard time breaking old habits, particularly in long term close family situations. Lisas difficulties kind of highlight this. Even though she is a strong willed woman, she is really struggling with questions as to where she can draw the line with her son.

There are some good resources around hereMomn More seems to have her act together in this area. Tim posted some links on the More Bad News thread.

My fiance alternates meetings (AA and then Al Anon), and frankly, the thing that made me begin pursuing a relationship with her were the changes I saw come about when she got serious about Al Anon. It will do you good to get out of the house. I will say that my fiance prefers Al Anon meetings where most attendees are also in recovery for their addictions.

I think AA or NA is largely a matter of personal preference. Meetings tend to take on a certain character, and condemning all of them because you do not feel that any one is a fit is just more of our disease talking. In the beginning, I would suggest trying at least one new meeting a week until you find one that feels right to you.

I think I gravitated to AA because it was the original program and I preferred reading the original literature. Messages tend to get a little diluted as they pass from hand to hand. I had to mentally substitute my drug of choice for the word "alcohol,"and I tend to avoid talking about drugs a lot since it seems to offend some of the old timers. Small prices to pay.

Roe, I care about you, gal, and I want to see you succeed. I will not tell you that it will be a cake walk. We both know better. But I know that there is some good strong stuff in you, and I suspect you could ascend to heights you cannot even imagine if you can just get a toehold in recovery.

Hang in there and let me know how that meeting goes later today.

With love,

August
Thats funny, we must have got on at the same time. I just posted to Jeff and am going to look in that link. I am going to find one today. I don't know how many there are around here, but I went to bed with meetings in mind and woke up the same.
I have to August, I can see where people need more than just themselves.

I'm really happy for you. You're the best.

Love,
Roe

I'll let you know how it goes.
August,
That link is the alanons, am I suppose to go there first?
Roe, I think it would be better if you first located a meeting for your addiction to drugs but then to find a meeting in Al Anon or Narc Anon. Lets first look at our disease, and then think about how our relationships are keeping us in our disease.

Good luck, let me know how the meeting goes.

Being one of the lucky ones, I have to get to work.

August
Wow what a powerful story. And one that shows we as addicts can sometimes save others but we can't save ourselves!
Great story David and how true.Look how far you've come.
Hi..were you able to help out the guy who helped you??? One good turns deserves another, no?
Mocha, I stopped and related to him how much he had helped me. This was the only way I knew to help him. He as pretty beaten down, and I know from experience how worthless and useless we get in that position. So here is a guy who probably does not believe that he has any use to another human being, and in essence, I thank him for saving my life.

In doing so, I tell him first that he is important, and he has profoundly impacted at least one other human being during his stay on the planet.

Second, it implies that he did this while he was sober. None of us are of much use to others while we are using, but we addicts do not like to face up to that one.

That is about all I could do other than tell him that I was glad to see him. Until he gets back on the wagon and starts working a program, there is little that any human being can truly do to help him.

Hope that makes sense.

August
Yes..it definitely makes sense! You did what you could..now the rest is up to him....thanks for your reply! Have a super day.