Hey everyone, Ive been in the program for almost a year, i went through a long detox and treatment, and never felt better. I'm so incredibly grateful for this program and the brothers and sistas that helped me so much through my hardest times. (I still have them!!) I remember the first month I was hit with the most sick realization that I had not even really been living at all for the majority of my life. Anyway I went to meetings everyday, which was really hard at first because I had such bad anxiety from my benzo and opiate withdraw, but I sat through them and then got an awesome sponsor who took me through the steps up to step 9. I got my hand up in meetings and shared. I had a job, and am living at a sober living, Everything that the program promised came true, and I was on a major pink cloud.
I started getting bored, well, I didnt go to a meeting for about a week and a half, then I found out that a lot of people that i thought were completely sober, were going out once in a while and drinking. WOW. that really turned everything upsidedown. So right around my 6 months that i worked so hard for and my step 9 ( which I really couldnt handle- I just froze at that step, I couldnt start writing my family amends, that was so completely overwealming for me....which means that once I do that It will prob be a lot easier to stay in the program. Anyways obviosly i drank, and went on a bender, which of course ended up with a needle in my arm again, and an aquiantance overdosing and dying. I kept going after that. Now i can put together about 5 days and then i go out. besides locking myself in the house, which was sort of how i stayed sober in the past, I dont know what to do.
Im going to meetings again.. someone told me a while ago that when you start to get discouraged its a warning signal that you are crossing the god line. right now ive been angry at god, for putting me in this spot. and thats about it
Well glad your still trying Sarah I give you credit there girl.
One thing we all do to often is BLAME we refuse to take responsibilty for our own lives and the fact that and this is painful sometimes to see and admitt this part but, we got ourselves where we got ourselves, God didn't make no junk but we treat ourselves like it.
So first things first start taking care of and loving yourself even if you don't see much to love theres a good person there some where , she posted this thread and is asking for help so you must care a little about Sarah.
I can totally relate I was angry at God at one time blasphemied the hell out of him yelled to the stars,begged for help begged to die.
Then I began asking for some help and it came to me and I went with it finally, I surrendered that using wasn't working any longer and I was sick and tired of all the consequences to my using and I began to have a little faith in a higher power, that being NA and my higher powers direction, I am coming up on a 3rd Bday now but I haven;t forgotten my relapses in the past last one was after 5 years of being clean.
So get up dust off yourself and I found this when I came back and it helped me not beat myself up,
"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorius triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. " Theodore Roosevelt
I thank God that you're still alive and posting on the board!
Frankly, I don't know what the difference between and alcoholic and an addict is as I believe, as this program tells us, alcohol is a drug and we are people with the disease of addiction who must abstain from ALL drugs in order to recover.
So, what I know is there is no recovery without abstinence and there is no lasting abstinence without a surrender to the truth, to the fact, that I can't use anything in a controlled manner. I suffer from obsession and compulsive behavior. I get locked and loaded on a thought (obsession) and when that happens I need to use the tool known as the telephone and the other one known as contact with a power greater than myself. Exposing the disease and the lies it's telling me (I can drink, just leave cocaine alone, I can just do one, I can just use today and quit tomorrow) to someone else produces a miraculous effect and that is, it takes the power those thoughts have over me away.
I'm compulsive meaning that if I don't use the tools during the obsession phase, I'm screwed because once I act on those disease born thoughts, I can't stop and I have no control and I am defenseless against my disease.
I needed a power greater than myself in order to stop and stay stopped. That power can manifest in a meeting through the sharing of others, in a phone call to another recovering addict who can just stay on the phone with me until I don't feel like using anymore, through the literature, through me when I sit down with a pen and paper and get the toxic shit out of my head and I can look at it, in black and white, like an uninvolved party... Change my perception and then my emotions follow.
Get involved! Get excited about your recovery, about a new way to live... It exists! Keep posting but don't believe it to be a reasonable substitute for meetings if you have access to them.
{{{{hugs}}}}
__________________
The truth does not change based on my inability to stomach it - Flannery O'Connor
My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance and in inverse proportion to my expectations - Michael J. Fox
Oh, and I believe it's perfectly OK to get mad at God. I got mad at God when my child died, REALLY mad.
But sometimes I need to look at who I'm blaming for what. God doesn't put me in spots, I do that. I have free will, an overabundance of self will run riot, and it is me who chooses what spot I go to. God is just there for me when I choose to move out of a particular spot or situation. God gives me the power to choose and then to choose differently, to create and recreate my reality. God never infringes on my free will. God never came down and took the dope out of my hands or stopped my car when I was heading to cop. God did, however, provide me with a program, that I could choose or not choose, and the strength to not pick the dope up again as long as I stayed surrendered to the TRUTH and tapped into that power greater than me which is constructive instead of repeatedly going back to that power greater than me which is destructive.
__________________
The truth does not change based on my inability to stomach it - Flannery O'Connor
My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance and in inverse proportion to my expectations - Michael J. Fox
I started getting bored, well, I didnt go to a meeting for about a week and a half, then I found out that a lot of people that i thought were completely sober, were going out once in a while and drinking. WOW. that really turned everything upsidedown. So right around my 6 months that i worked so hard for and my step 9 ( which I really couldnt handle- I just froze at that step, I couldnt start writing my family amends, that was so completely overwealming for me....which means that once I do that It will prob be a lot easier to stay in the program. Anyways obviosly i drank, and went on a bender, which of course ended up with a needle in my arm again, and an aquiantance overdosing and dying. I kept going after that. Now i can put together about 5 days and then i go out. besides locking myself in the house, which was sort of how i stayed sober in the past, I dont know what to do.
