My life with addiction

Learnt a few new words.

Does this 'thing' have a name? Looks like I may have to get the NM to show me how our fancy telly works when I don't want to watch a Soap!

Just started on c5 plus 1 now called Danniella Weatbrooke I. Therapy.

Recovery is a word thrown around on here & GA rooms a lot.
Define Recovery.
What does that overused phrase mean to you?

Now there's a question.....

The very short answer to me : a move away from problematic behaviour to a more rewarding, progressive and spiritually enlightened life. I'll never fully recover and there is no end stop where I get off.

A: - Life

I see it as regaining health and mind and living a better quality of all round getting my self respect back and being proud of who I am today

So how does one define recovery. Because if you want it, you need to.

Take a little time to see what you come up with. Get a pen & paper & write out your definition. In my time in GA ive discovered very few people have a specific notion of what recovery was for them. I find it fascinating that thousands upon thousands of people are working at recovery without a clear idea of what it is.

Its like going to the travel agents, being asked where you want to go & answering anywhere away from here.
If that sounds simplistic, look back at how you defined recovery.
How focussed & definate was your answer. Or was it as I suspect, cliched & vague?

When asking sponsees for definition you get answers such as; Serenity, Peace of mind, liking myself, getting control of my life.
These responses are far to general to build a module for change upon. In fact they arent answers at all. They are questions posed as statements.

To continue the travel agent theme, its like describing your destination as some place warm. You just cant buy a ticket that way!
To go further you need to ask yourself specific, focused questions.

What would give you serenity?
What has robbed you of serenity in the past?
What for you constitutes peace of mind?
Why dont you have peace of mind now?
Is perfect peace of mind even attainable?
Why dont you like yourself?
If you had control of your life would you really be happy or just less worried about losing that precious control?
Is it really your own life you want to control or everyone elses as well.

So what does recovery mean to you??
Think about it! Write it down. If there is no clear, specific answer readily to hand then consider you dont know where you want to go in recovery. And if you dont know. You wont get there.

We all use our addictions as painkillers. We do what we do because we are trying not to hurt. Perhaps at the beginning we were just curious or looking for a little pleasure. But as the process slipped from use to abuse to dependency the addiction continued because it medicated pain, not because it was interesting or fun.
The lie at work in all addictions is that continued use will get rid of the hurt. The truth is it never does. It doesnt matter whether youre addicted to alcohol, overeating, certain kinds of people or gambling.
What do we have when we take away the object of that addiction, a lot of pain.

If you havnt dealt with your underlying living problems in any focused, consistant manner, pain pure & simple will keep you stuck in the dry drunk state of being. Dry drunks/Dry Gamblers tend to get resentful quickly. I stopped gambling so why arent i happy?

When does the real relief come to say a hospital patient. Not when the painkiller is taken away is it? But when the disease is cured.

Unlike many medical conditions, gambling addiction cannot be cured & does not go away. Actrue addict can never bet again, our disesase can only be arrested.

BUT. The living problems underlying our addictions CAN BE CURED. If only we begin to understand that dealing with these issues is where recovery takes place.

So what can give you these things you wish for in recovery? How do you obtain them?

By defining your own recovery you also define:
A. What the problem or issue is
B. What needs to be done about that problem or issue.
C. Where are you aiming to get too.

You will never progress further than your own definition of recovery!

Since few people define recovery for themselves to any specific, meaningful manner, they have not clearly identified the central problem in their lives & so they dont have a clear idea of where their recovery is supposed to take them.

For example ask a 100 gambling addicts what recovery is to them & the majority will say. Not gambling & clearing debt

Given that definition of what you believe recovery is then:

The problem or issue is?.........Gambling
What to do about it is?.........Not Gamble
My perceived recovery will then guide me too?.... Abstinence.

But if gambling is the problem & not gambling is the solution, then everything should be alright once the gambling has stopped. You named the problem, you took away the problem, therefore you have no problem, right??

Experience shouts deafeningly that this is certainly untrue & not the case for most.

Another example:

Ask 100 partners or parents of gambling addicts what problem brought them to search for help & they will probably describe a painful dysfunctional relationship. For them recovery might be defined as surviving the devastation of that relationship.

Given that definition.

The problem or issue is?..... The devastating effect of gambling addiction on my relationship

What to do about it?...... Protect myself from further devastation

Their perceived recovery will then take them to?.... Not being devastated

If that logic held up, then when the addict in your life stops using, leaves or even dies all your problems are history.if your gambling addicts gambling was the problem, then you dont have a problem any longer do you? Now that gambling isnt occuring anymore. Are you now recovered?
How many of the friends & family on here will tell you that that just isnt so.

Where all our lives & future happiness entirely hinge upon is how we define recovery.
How you define it. Not someone on here or at a meeting. Your friend, spouse, parent sponser, but you!

Please think long & hard again about your own definition of recovery. Write it down.

If your definition of recovery is...........
Then your problem is.........
And your hope for yourself is .........
And so im prepared to do work on & change this......

If you have to think long & hard about filling in the blanks, it probably means that you have not yet defined recovery for yourself.

So here you stand at the travel agents counter, not really sure where you want to go. If you dont have a clear definition you dont have a direction. How far can your recovery take you if youre not focussed on where you want to go. How far does any vague, unfocussed notion get anyone?

Recovery for me = taking committed action to live life according to my values

A simple definition, but not as simple as it looks

1) What are my values? Maybe an obvious question to some, but not something I had consciously considered

2) What actions can I take to live according to my values

...and this is where it gets more tricky

3) What is getting in the way of me living a valued life in accordance with my values? This involves

a) Awareness - developing an awareness of our processess and autopilot. What our fears are and how they dictate us.

b) Openness - be open to these fears and difficult thoughts without being dicated to by them

a) and b) require active practice. This allows me to act in accordance with my values. This is why a lot of my posts explore my relationship with fear - in particular my overwhelming need for acceptance/approval from others. As this has been the big thing holding me back from living according to my values.

Good post

Louis

Thanks Dan.

Thanks for the chat Dan. Meant a lot mate. Tri x

After about a year/18 months or so of stopping gambling, i began to see a therapist. My life at the time, besides the financial aspects didnt seem to be improving & i felt If anything i was spiralling even further out of emotional control. I wasnt gambling but happiness & joy still seemed something other people got & I was getting pretty pi ssed that it wasnt my turn yet to get some. I would sit in my GA room & hear everyone talk about how great things were & although I would spout the same expected responses, I really wasnt feeling it. I still felt numb, empty & a deep dissatisfication with the whole life thing.

My therapist would always bang on about my primary relationships, wife, kids, parents, friends, workmates & it used to bug the sh it out of me. He used to encourage me to think about relationship counselling constantly. I used to sit there thinking why would I be interested in that you buffoon, I have a gambling addiction! Thats why im here! I figured he was on some upselling angle.

My relationship issues are because i gamble duh. So stoppa the gambling stoppa the grief. So stop going on about this nonsense & lets talk about the issues at hand, my gambling & my debts.

I saw him for about 6 months. Much of what he told me was dismissed as irrelevent to me. It just didnt apply because I was special & unique right?

I bumped into him in a pub about 4 weeks ago & shook him warmly by the hand.
We spoke at length (& this time he didnt charge me £60 an hour) & I thanked him & apologised for not really even considering where he was trying to guide me. He had always tried to tell me that recovery wasnt about stopping gambling, drinking, drugging, eating. It was about Relationships.
How our connections to ourselves & others was the only place to find joy & fill the void. This is where the work needs to be done.

When we get given new information that goes against what we believe we do acouple of things to get us out of considering they may be true or have merit.

1. We invalidate the information. I would do this. After hearing or reading something that challenged my habitual way of thinking & doing, my tendency was to think; This is ridiculous stuff. Who would ever believe that? It cant be done.

2. We invalidate the source. We simply negate it by saying. This man/woman is an idiot. What do they know. They dont have a clue about ME. If they walked in MY shoes they wouldnt say such stupid things. Theyre nasty. Im not listening to such a moron.

This kind of thinking justifies me staying stuck where i am.

In our chat, he asked me when & how did it begin to compute.

I said, I finally began to listen, truely listen without prejudice. Began to accept my situation for what it was & took the first steps into accepting who & what I was.

I told him the penny finally dropped when i accepted & understood what had made me sick was my unhealthy & dysfunctional relationships with both myself & others & that the more isolated i felt inside, my coping system was to run faster away.

Cue smirking & raised eyebrows from therapist.

So if my aim in recovery was to get well. This is what needed to change. Yes i had to stop my gambling but that was the easiest bit.
What I needed to move forward & to get well was work at my relationships. Its the only place recovery can be found.

So how did you get there?

I set about unravelling 37 years of habits & learnt self defeating ideas & behaviours.
I learnt that I wasnt afraid to fail. I knew & was familiar with that feeling , i could deal with that..
What I was afraid of was finding success/happiness & how I may feel if when found i possibly lost it.

So what got you to the point where you could change old ideas & behaviours?

When i wasnt prepared to take my cr ap any more. The 12 Steps taught me finally how to live, laugh & most importantly love without restrictions.

Acceptance began with. Just for today I will not gamble & one day at a time I will make a concious effort to improve how I treat myself & others.

The void i felt my entire life upto that point had been spent in the pursuit to aquire materialistic things to fill my void, cars, money, pretty women & none of them even touched the sides.
People were the only things that have begun to fill it up. They were always the only that could ever do it. I just never saw it. Connection, community. Its how we are made. It is at the core of what makes us human. Without it we are empty.

We exchanged a swift man hug & wondered off home hopefully with a little smirk on both our faces

Interesting reading Dan

Regarding how we will dismiss information which challenges our unhealthy minds...

'Reason giving', as I call it, comes in so many sneaky forms. For me I would do this kind of 'rationalising' - which was attempting to justify by using an apparently cold, calculated, almost Germanic (?!) way of thinking. Of course all I was actually doing was mental gymnastics to make black appear white. Often relying on a very misguided notion that I was somehow intellectually superior or unique.

This does beg the question - who do we trust if, as addicts, a lot of our thoughts often aren't helpful?

Firstly, I think we need to trust in some kind of framework. The most successful one on here is GA, for me it was ACT.

Through ACT I learned to be clear on what my values are and then take committed action in pursuit of those values. Although I haven't gambled in a while, my mind still does the same reason-giving when I try and pursue my values. This isn't a problem I have, it's just what minds do. But if I am clear on my values and my goals in pursuit of these values, then I can pursue them more rigorously rather than go on autopilot guided by whatever (often self-limiting) thoughts I have.

Being guided by values is the opposite of being guided by feelings. If you wait until you 'feel right' before doing something, chances are you're gona wait a long time. The more we learn to act first without the good feelings, the more we develop genuine confidence in any particular area, and the more we can lead a more fulfilling life. Furthermore, the 'good feelings' do tend to follow after we act in accordance with our values. But even if they don't, then at least we're still living by our values.

Louis

Good post Dan,

I was pondering about recovery and abstinence the other day. Remember one person in the rooms sharing about his 10 years sobriety where he didn't drink...yet, he didn't work recovery either. Only 10 years later he digged deeper and found so many dots needing joining.
Recovery is tough. I know that. Not repeating the action is one thing, working at yourself and your feelings is another.
I can honestly say I'm only abstaining. I'm scared of recovery, I'm scared of change and what it can do to me.

Not much sense, but i guess you get my drift.
"Scared of happiness"..aj aj aj...golden words!..what if somebody will tk it away again? I just prefer to stop it myself..self destruction in other words.

Keep talking and sharing, makes difference for more than one soul reading.

Peace to you - Sandra x

You're obviously right, Dan, as ever. I posted this time round when I was irritated, knowing that it wasn't prudent. Am half expecting to be moderated.

re the counselling, I wondered what was going on with my husband! He does go - sometimes - but he doesn't get why he's there or what they're aiming for, says he gets more from meetings. Despite that, he's still making a huge effort with us his family, which is appreciated.

Hope all is good with you. Take care.

CW