Wrong Direction

It has been a while since I've posted anything here. A two month hiatus. Perhaps a dark night of the soul, much like St. John of the Cross. Okay, nevermind... probably nothing like St. John of the Cross and his dark night of the soul. Probably just procrastination.

When I'm not writing, it usually means I'm not doing any of that pesky "inner-work." It usually means I'm not feeling very connected - to my world or to myself. My favorite-ever quote is by William Faulkner: "I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it." That pretty much says it all for me. If I'm not writing about it, I'm not thinking about it. If I'm not writing, I don't know exactly where I am emotionally, spiritually, mentally.

The place I've been writing and posting my thoughts - thisisby.us - shut down on February 1st. I need to find a new writing home. I need to write somewhere that provides me with an audience, with feedback, with connections. Why? I don't need an audience and feedback because I think I have so much to say, but simply because having an audience and feedback keeps me motivated to write consistently.

For now, though, since I am a writer without an internet home, I will post my thoughts on recovery here. I have more than "recovery" thoughts, though... I'm multi-faceted. :) Two short stories I wrote have been accepted for publication in a book called Root Exposure, which will be published by Notes & Grace Notes sometime this month. I'm excited about that, as I've never published any of my fiction before. When the book is actually available through Amazon.com I will post a link to it here.

I am at a point in my recovery that is familiar to me. I've been here before. I'm bored with it. I'm tired of my weekly meeting. I'm tired of hearing the same old shit. I'm complacent about the very things that have kept me clean and sober for over 11 years. I haven't had a sponsor in a long, long time, and I haven't sponsored anyone since sometime last year. The universe has a way of knocking the complacency out of me, though. In the past month, two friends I've known in recovery for over ten years have died. Bo, who was 47, died of a heart attack. He had just recently come back after a relapse. Angie, who was 55, died of complications due to cirrhosis. I saw her a month or so ago and she didn't look good at all. We talked for a while because, like her, I too have cirrhosis of the liver. Seeing her looking so bad last month - yellowed skin, walking with a cane - scared me. And now she is dead. Gone. Damn. So what is the message, the lesson, the truth, I can take from these two deaths? The lessons for me are both simple and direct: Don't relapse and continue doing what my doctor tells me I need to do to stop the damage to my liver.

Which brings me full circle back to the past two months.

First, complacency in my recovery puts me closer to relapse. Relapse isn't something I worry about daily. It is not something I think about much. I don't want to return to using and drinking, so I just don't think about the possibility of that too much. However, if I stop maintaining my recovery... if I forget what got me clean and sober and what has kept me clean and sober, I am moving in the wrong direction. So remaining complacent in my recovery is not an option.

Secondly, I have slacked off on my health goals in the past two months. From June to October, I lost 30 pounds. I was playing tennis five times a week, eating right, going to the gym a couple times a week, and staying active. Since December, not so much. I've gained 8 of those 30 pounds back. I've stopped tracking what I eat, and I haven't been to the gym once. Due to the weather, I've only played tennis a few times in the past couple of months. All of this is very detrimental to my liver. I am moving in the wrong direction. So remaining sedimentary in my life is not an option.

I've been here before. I've veered off into the deep forest and lost sight of the path many times before. Once I know I've wandered too far off my path, then I can begin finding my way out of the forest. So now I know where I am - I can look around me and see the trees and the undergrowth. My task, then, is to work my way back to a place where I can see what lies ahead. My task is to dig out my compass and figure out where that damned path lies.

Is That A Joint?

Eleven years and eleven days ago, I smoked a joint. That was the last time I used marijuana. I quit using all other drugs, including alcohol, seven or eight weeks prior to smoking that last joint. Now, there have been times during these last eleven years when I've really wanted to smoke some pot. Like, I mean, really wanted to. Bad. But I didn't. As with the other drugs I used on a daily, or near-daily basis, I believed total abstinence was the way to kick it. I had tried to quit countless times, only to later decide I could drink just one or smoke just one or snort just one and that would be the end of it; I wouldn't feel the need to go out and find more and more and more and more and more and then a whole bunch more.

So, eleven years and eleven days ago, I decided that was it. Every day since then, I've re-made that decision. The days have added up. I went from wanting a drink or wanting to get high every day to wanting that every few days, then once or twice a week, then a few times a month, and before I knew it, there'd be these long stretches of weeks between cravings. Later still, there'd be months between cravings. Then the cravings pretty much disappeared - well, almost. Once or twice a year, I'd get a strong urge to partake of some mind-altering chemical concoction, but I wouldn't follow through on the urge. Most times, I didn't even consider those incidents as actual "cravings" any longer - just urges.

I had the day off today. I decided to drive to the mountains a couple hours north of where I live and shoot some pictures. I love the mountains and I love bare trees and frozen rivers. I put on my leather jacket, but when I walked outside, it was cold. Since I knew I'd be spending most of my time out of my car and in the woods or on the riverbank, I ran back into the house and grabbed a heavy coat from a closet full of jackets and coats, many which haven't been worn in many years. This particular one didn't actually ever belong to me, but it looked warm and I grabbed it. An hour into the drive, I reached my hand into a pocket of the coat where I had dropped some Nicorette gum (yeah, I'm still not smoking a year later, but I'm still chomping on Nicorette several times a day) and pulled out the Nicorette and a joint.

What the hell? Where did this come from? Who's jacket was this? I don't even know. I didn't even really care. I just knew I was holding a joint. Actually, it was about three-quarters of a joint, but a joint nevertheless.

I held it up to my nose and smelled the marijuana through the paper of the joint. It smelled good. I breathed it in deeply several times. I checked the pockets of the coat for more, but that was all there was. I kept driving, holding the joint in my hand against the steering wheel. I was trying to figure out what to do with it. From the time I was 13 or 14, until I was 34 years old, I smoked pot nearly every day of my life, several times a day most days. I smoked it through high school, through college, through various jobs, through everything. Being high became my "normal." After I quit smoking pot, it took a couple years until not being high felt normal.

My "new normal" thought patterns left me and I started thinking like an addict in active addiction. Me, driving along, trying to figure out what to do with it, suddenly made me laugh out loud. What to do with it?? Like, I didn't know? Ha! I thought.

I started having a conversation with myself in my head: I know what to do with it. I fucking know what to do with it. I'll light the damned thing. I'll just light it and see how it smells. Maybe I'll just light it and I won't actually take a toke. I'll just smell it.

Yeah, right, Maze. Like that would ever happen. If you light that thing, you're taking a toke, and if you take a toke, you'll take another one and another one until it gone. Then what?

Maybe that'll be the end of it. Maybe I'll just keep that little secret all to myself and never tell anyone and go on with my life like it never happened. I mean, come on, it's just marijuana. It's not like I found a bag of cocaine or anything. Who will ever know?

I will. How will I be able to sponsor others who are new in recovery with such a secret? How will I be able to face those who depend on me, my children, my family, my friends, my clients? How will I be able to sit in meetings every Monday night and share about recovery or listen to others sharing about their recovery, all the while living with this lie? And who the hell am I fooling? How long do I think I'll even continue attending my Narcotics Anonymous meeting if I smoke this? A week? A month? Then I'll decide I got away with once, why not get some more and keep it stashed somewhere so I can do it again... every once in a while? Not often, not every day, just every few weeks or so.

And just when did you ever smoke dope that infrequently? You'll stop going to meetings in a couple of weeks, buy a bag of pot, then you'll be smoking it every day. Then, since you're doing that, you'll figure you might as well buy some Kalhua, Bailey's, and Vodka and make some Mudslings and White Russians this holiday season. Isn't that your favorite time of year to drink? Oh, nevermind, I forgot it didn't really make a damned bit of difference what time a year it was... you just liked to drink, period. The Mud Slings and White Russians were your Winter Drink, but you had the other seasons covered, too. Don't forget that.

Oh, and you have cirrhosis of the liver, so drinking alcohol would be a real bright idea now, wouldn't it?

Oh yeah, I forgot about the cirrhosis. Damn, how could I forget that?

Well, maybe you'll just bypass the alcohol and when you get bored with the pot, you can buy a few grams of cocaine. You can't really afford more than that, so that means you'd buy that first little bit and then you'd have no choice in the matter because you'd be out of money so you wouldn't buy any more than that.

Yes, that stopped me in the past, didn't it? I had less money when I used it everyday, but I still somehow found the ways and means to get more....

Why don't you just shut the hell up and pick up the cell phone and call somebody, tell them what is going on?

Hey, good idea.

So that is what I did. I called a friend in recovery, someone I've known for ten years. I didn't give her any details at first, I just said, "Trace, tell me to roll down my window and throw this thing out." She said, "What thing?" I said, "I will tell you in a minute, just give me the damned instructions first." So she did. And then I did. I rolled the window down and threw the joint into the wind. It is lying somewhere on Highway 441 in the North Carolina mountains. I told Trace what was going on, and I felt better when I hung up the phone. Then I started feeling really sad. Then I was crying. Why was I crying? Why was I sad? Why, after eleven years and eleven days did I react as if I instead had eleven hours clean and in recovery? Does it ever stop?

No. It actually probably doesn't. Things like this don't happen frequently, but they do happen at least once a year, sometimes two or three times a year. Yet it always takes me by surprise. Always. At Thanksgiving, someone asked me why I still went to Narcotics Anonymous meetings after eleven years of being clean. I wish that person could have been inside my head, or even in my car today. That would have answered their question better than any words I could ever use to explain it to someone. I think, in answer to this person's question, I said something along the lines of: It is sort of like a bank account. If I keep writing checks on my bank account and never make any deposits, eventually (really quickly, actually) I'm going to start bouncing checks. Bounced checks will cause some very big problems in my life. Same with meetings. What I do to maintain my recovery is my spiritual and emotional bank account. Going to meetings, working on myself, living my life according to spiritual principles are all like deposits. When I'm confronted with a desire to get high or take a drink again, I'll have something to draw on, I'll have that reserve in the bank, and that means I'll have a better chance to resist such urges. If I don't resist, if I have nothing to draw on in such times, a return to active addiction is going to cause some very big problems in my life.

It probably didn't make much sense to that person, but it is an answer I've given before so I went with it. I didn't really even think much about it.

Until today.

Today that answer wasn't just an explanation, words strung together to answer a question... no, today, that was pure reality. I am thankful I've been consistent with the deposits because I sure drew on the reserves today.

Hold On

I once heard a Pueblo blessing:

Hold onto what is good, even if it is a handful of earth.
Hold onto what you believe, even if it is a tree which stands by itself.
Hold onto what you must do, even if it is a long way from here.
Hold onto life, even when it is easier letting go.
Hold onto my hand, even when I have gone away from you.


It has been many years since I first heard it, but I've never forgotten it. When I heard it that first time, and every time since, it spoke my soul. If you have ever heard or read words that speak your soul, you know just what I'm talking about. Sometimes it happens with a song lyric or a poem or a scripture or a story. It can even happen with a score of music or a painted canvas. The language of the soul does not need words, or even sound. You hear something, or read something, or see something, and it feels as if someone has taken a crowbar and pried you open to steal what is inside of you.

Hold onto what is good, even it it is a handful of earth.
There are times when it is hard to see the good all around you. Tragedy and chaos can come down hard and so suddenly that you're left reeling and disoriented. Things look bleak, you feel bleak, you wonder how everything got so bad, so quickly. The saving grace in such times is hope, no matter how small that hope may be. Hope can spring from the tiniest bit of gratefulness, from the least amount of good... the horse in the pasture, a child's giggle, a puppy chasing his tail, the scent of a fresh cut lawn, the smile of a stranger, or the handful of earth between your fingers.

Hold onto what you believe, even if it is a tree which stands by itself.
There are times when you may feel lost and without purpose. Where there once was certainty, now you feel only confusion. Something might happen, something that shakes the foundation of everything you thought you knew. Somebody you love dies. Somebody you thought you'd have forever walks out of your life. Or maybe you just look around at all the chaos of the world and begin to question your long-held belief in a god you've never doubted. There seems to be no purpose and no meaning. Where you once felt faith, you now feel empty. Faith is still there, only eclipsed for the moment, awaiting your return...observe the cycle of the sun and the moon, dig out that poem your child wrote to you when he was 7, walk into a church of unfamiliar creed or denomination and sit quietly in the back with your eyes closed, or look out the window and up the hill to the tree that stands by itself, where it stands every time you look out that window and up that hill.

Hold onto what you must do, even if it is a long way from here.
The natural cylce of human development takes you from total dependence on others to total independence. Your life begins connected, quite literally by an umbilical cord, to another human being. You are born, the cord is cut, but still you are totally dependent on others for your very survival. For many years, you struggle to break free, while at the same time running back to the comfort and safety of others. Eventually you do break free, you must. You become self-sufficient, independent, enough. You could move to a desert island and survive on your own, forever, until your death. You are enough for yourself. Don't hold onto what you no longer need, even if that means you must travel a long way from here, from where you have always been.

Hold onto life, even when it is easier letting go.
Our days are filled with joy and pain, not always in equal measure. When the pain overshadows any joy you may feel, when grief is stacked upon grief for days or weeks or even months on end, you may feel like giving up, checking out, letting go. And why not? How can you know if things will improve, if joy will return, if your grief will ever subside? Hold on and joy will return. All of life is a cycle. Grief subsides as joy returns. Without darkness, there'd be no light. Hold on for the return of joy, for it is certain to emerge again. Hold on for the light that comes around as the cycle of darkness fades. Hold on, even when it feels easier letting go.

Hold onto my hand, even when I have gone away from you.
People come in and out of your life. Some you may be glad to see go, but more often, you'll long for those who have come and gone from your life. If you accept that everyone - every single person - who passes through your life is your teacher, you'll better understand their departure. If you remember that those you've loved, then lost, have left a piece of their essence with you, you'll know they have not really left you at all. If you can hear their words in your memory, see their face in your mind, feel their touch in your soul, then they will eternally hold your hand.

Broken Hallelujah

Well baby, I’ve been here before.
I’ve seen this room and I’ve walked this floor.
You know, I used to live alone before I knew ya.
And I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch,
And love is not a victory march...
It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.
(Hallelujah lyrics by Leonard Cohen)

When I got clean this time around, I didn't do all those things that people tell you to do. I didn't pick up chips for a long time. I didn't have a sponsor for the first three or four months. And I got in a relationship a couple months after I got clean. I didn't mean to... it grew out of a friendship and blossomed into something nearly indescrible to me, even still. It was unconventional and it was different than anything I'd experienced up to that point in my life. Given all that came before it, and even the very good relationships that have come after it, I still would have to say that this particular relationship was the most pivitol of all relationships I've had in my life because it provided me with the capacity to bring to later relationships what I never knew I had to offer. It opened me up to true intimacy. It taught me how to be real, to be myself, to love with my whole heart.

Last evening I spent some time with this person, once my lover, now my friend. Our relationship changed from lovers to friends seven years ago. In between, there was an eight or nine month period when we didn't speak to one another, a time of re-adjustment, a time of licking our wounds and waiting for the scars to form so that we could move on with our lives without bleeding all over everything and everyone around us. After that healing time, we - at first, awkwardly- redefined our relationship. It wasn't long before this woman, my friend, meant as much to me as she did as this woman, my lover.

As broken as I was at the time of the shift, I knew that I had no choice really... this woman would always remain a part of my life in some shape or manner. By whatever name - fate, destiny, divine intervention - it was meant for her to be a part of my experience for the remaining days of this lifetime. Sometimes you just know this. No one has to tell you. No sign from god is needed. It just is what it is and there is no doubt that it is.

I watched her lips move as she spoke to me last night and I remembered the minutes and hours and days those lips explored every inch of my body. I noted the gestures of her hands, the way she slightly tilts her head to the right when asking a question, the way she gently brushes my arm with her fingertips when she is revealing something to me she has told few others. Her fingertips remind me of moments she and I, together, will never be able to recreate with another living soul. I saw the newly-emerging lines around her eyes, where once my lips brushed only smooth, soft and pearly skin. When she threw back her head and laughed at something I said, I was transported back to so many years ago, so many memories ago.

And I realized that I will never be in that place again. I will never experience that same ecstasy again. No other person will ever touch me in that same way again. My soul will never reach those same heights again. Nothing will ever compare to what we once had.

I met her at a time of great despair. I was broken and dirty and used and full of shame and fear and regret. I was raw and bleeding, no doubt. Her love transformed me. She didn't save me, please know this right up front. Only I could choose salvation. No one could do that for me. But her love motivated me. It inspired me. It sparked within me a flame that had long ago been extinguished. Before her, love was just a word. Love was what I felt for my favorite TV show, my favorite radio station, the ocean, the land, chocolate ice cream. Love was what I felt for my children, my parents, my friends. It had nothing to do with intimacy. That was a brand of love that could only flourish in a part of myself that I had long ago walled-off from the rest of me. The capability, the capacity of experiencing that type of love was stolen from me when I was twelve years old. It was snatched away before I knew what it felt like, before I formed a clear idea of all that it might entail. Just as my virginity was lost to me before I ever knew the meaning of the word, so it was with this intimate and foreign kind of love I'd never know until the mid-point of my lifetime, until I met her.

I learned everything about her. I probed and dug and explored the realms of her psyche, her body, her spirit. And then, suddenly, I offered her this same access to all of me. I was frightened, terrified really, but for the first time in my 34 years, I trusted, and in doing so, I began to heal. When the physical intimacy came to an end, when the relationship shifted into what it has become today, I emerged and went forth as something different than when I began. I left with more than what I brought to the table. I was no longer broken and dirty and used. I lost my shame and my fear and my regret. My wounds were no longer raw and bleeding, but scarred over and not nearly as evident or blatantly obvious to those I encountered from that point on.

And even though I was reminded last night of all that I lost when our relationship shifted those many years ago, even though her voice, her eyes, her skin, her laughter, her integrity, her friendship, her mere presence in the world, sometimes reminds me of what we no longer share, it also reminds me that I now have the capacity to go that far, to be that connected, to love that deeply.

As I drove home last night, I was thinking of these things as I turned on the radio. Once again, as is customary, the universe added the punctuation to my thoughts as Jeff Buckley's voice filled my car...well, there was a time when you let me know what’s really going on below, but now you never show that to me, do ya? But remember when I moved in you, and the holy dove was moving too, and every breath we drew was hallelujah!

Ah, halle lu jah.

Don't Be Dissin' My Lifeline

I read an article the other day that was trying to make a case against AA and NA and other 12 step fellowships. It is not the first time I've read such an article, but this one was quite long and the author went into a lot of detail regarding the origins of AA and quoted a lot of statistics "proving" that 12 step programs are full of religious propaganda and that they statistically don't work as a solution to alcoholism or addiction.

I get very defensive feeling when I read such an article. I hate that I do, but that is the simple truth... I do. It's funny, too, because I used to say the same thing. I remember when I was in a treatment center and I'd argue with the counselors and staff there about addiction. I'd argue that insurance companies shouldn't be paying out all this money for a "spiritual solution" to a medical disease. I'd argue that there were many levels of addiction - and I, of course was at one of the lesser levels - yet the medical community treated all addicts as if they were the same. I'd argue that if all it took was a meeting everyday to cure addiction, then there must not really be any such thing as true addiction.

I argued all these points right up until the day this program of recovery started working for me. I argued about it until it damn near killed me.

I still don't assert that a program of 12 step recovery is the only way to overcome active addiction, but I when I share my own experience, strength and hope I can honestly say that it has been working for me for over ten years. I tried a lot of different programs of recovery - MM (Modern Moderation), RR (Rational Recovery), various religions/churches, and a host of other self-created 'programs' that took a bit here from one established program and a bit there from another established program. I even attempted the ever-popular marijuana-maintenance program. They each put me on the path of recovery, but none kept me there.

I suppose the reason I defend this 12 step recovery program is because it has taken me places I never thought I'd go - spiritually, mentally, emotionally. I truly believed I was a hopeless addict, destined to die using. I have heard people say that all they really wanted was to learn how not to use. That's not all I wanted. I wanted so much more. I wanted to learn how not to use only if I got something better from doing so. I wanted to learn how to accept and manage my emotions, to become more mentally stable, and most importantly, to feel as if my life had some purpose, some meaning that would spark in me a desire to continue on.

To me, that doesn't sound so much like religion as it sounds like spiritual connectivity. That's what I sought the first time I got high. That's what I sought the last time I got high. And inbetween, I never stopped searching for it. Maybe I was searching in the wrong places, but I was still searching for something to make me feel whole, to connect me with the true purpose of this life. The 12 steps have guided me along this path. They have provided me with that direction I have spent my entire life seeking.

A Glimpse of Happiness

Some days I look in the mirror and think, "Damn, girl, you still look pretty good." Most days I don't think that. Most days it is more like, "God, when did you get so old?"

Time passes so quickly. That sounds so cliche, but the truth of that has become so clear to me lately. The other evening I stood at my kitchen window and watched my daughter and her friend, both sixteen years old, drive out of the driveway and onto the road. I watched the car until I could no longer see the tail lights. I wasn't sad, but I felt a tear on my cheek. I walked over to the refrigerator and looked at the picture of my daughter and this same friend who had just left the house with her. I took this photograph 14 years ago, when they were both two years old. The photograph shows them hiding in a kitchen cabinet, surprised looks on their faces as I clicked the picture upon 'discovering' them hiding in the cabinet. They are almost grown now. Soon my daughter will be gone, on her own, and I'll only have bits of time to share with her - rather like I have now with my son.

He is twentyfour and living in the next town. He visits me. I visit him. That little baby boy who became my whole world a half-century ago is now a man. A half-century may sound like a lot of time, but it really isn't. Sometimes it feels like it was just a little while ago I was teaching him to walk, to read, to throw, to run, to ride, to drive.

The daily glimpses of myself that I catch in this window or that mirror remind me that nothing stays the same. My eyesight is worse than it was twenty years ago, ten years ago, even one year ago. My memory has always sucked, but now it is not only obvious to me, but to others around me. My boobs no longer get the comments they once did. My hair doesn't feel as soft and it is not as thick as it once was. I've even shrunk an inch in height since the year I graduated from college. My babies will one day - sooner, rather than later now - have babies of their own. And time will just keep on ticking by, with no thought at all to the plight of my aging body.

One thing I realized looking out that kitchen window the other day, though... I was so happy to be in the moment I was in that day I found my daughter and her friend in the kitchen cabinet. And I was so happy in that moment I first looked into the eyes of my firstborn. And everyday, no matter what goes on around me, every single day there is a moment - usually many of them - when I can say, "I am so happy in this moment." In spite of all the time that has passed, in spite of the losses in those years that have come and gone, in spite of everything, I am truly capable of being happy in almost any given moment in time.

How do I know this? I see it in the eyes that look back at me every time I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

Empty Vessels

I've been suffering from what I thought was "writer's block" for the last month or so. Today I decided it was something else entirely.

Everyday I come here and open a window to post something new. Everyday I stare at a blank screen. Everyday my fingers long to stroke my keyboard, making words, forming sentences, creating a glimpse into my head, my heart, my soul.

There is nothing here. I read something earlier today on the concept of emptiness and what that does and does not mean.

I have been pondering the word myself lately, every time I click on post and end up clicking cancel after starring at the empty screen for several minutes.

I've been telling myself I just have a bad case of writer's-block. Now I wonder if the silent times, the stillness, the days and weeks of wordlessness are not a block at all, but rather a time of sowing. All of nature has a time of sowing, followed by a harvest of one sort or another. We plant seeds, which eventually become food or flowers or trees. We join sperm and egg, which eventually results in the birth of another living being. Very little happens without preparation, without the sowing time.

I know all of this on an intellectual level.

But when I'm in the midst of the stillness, the wordlessness, I ache. I want to express myself the best way I know how - the written word. I want to release everything building and forming within me. I can't, though, not during the sowing season, just as I can't produce an ear of corn simply by throwing a seed of corn onto the hard ground. There is a process at work. The tilling, the planting, the watering, the cycles of light and dark, the tending... all this comes before the harvest.

The author of the article I read on emptiness earlier today suggests that the vessel is just as important and useful and valuable when it is empty, as it is when it is full. He suggests that the vessel, in fact, is equally as important as what ultimately fills it.

For instance, take a bowl of soup. The soup itself is important - it provides nourishment, it is tasty, and it fulfils a purpose. But without the bowl, what would become of the soup? It would spill onto the ground, wasted and useless. The soup needs the empty bowl. So it is with me. My words, my stories, will eventually need space to become whatever they need to become.

The times I think my words are blocked are really just the times my words are forming.

Not The End, Just a Continuation: Step 12

Step 12
Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to addicts, and practice these principles in all our affairs.

After so much time between my last drug, my last drink, and today, why bother going to Narcotics Anonymous or Alcoholics Anonymous meetings any longer? I mean, seriously, haven't I got this recovery business wrapped up nice and pretty after ten years? Is it really necessary to keep going to these meetings and hearing the same things over and over, year after year, month after month, week after week?

When I first started down this road, I went to a meeting every day. I did that for four or five months. Then for the remainder of that first year, I went at least four or five times a week. As the years began to build up, I went less and less. Now, most weeks, I go to just one meeting. There have been times I thought I could just stop going all together, but after a couple of weeks, my thinking gets skewed. For some reason, it is very easy for me to "forget" I'm an addict. I start entertaining ideas of controlled using or controlled drinking. Or my thinking might become skewed in the way I handle things that are going on in my life. My weekly meeting allows me a safe place to process things with people I trust. So, the number one reason I continue going to meetings is for myself. I need what I get from my meeting. It is my ongoing maintenance to deal with the disease of addiction. I get sick without the maintenance.

The second reason I continue attending meetings regularly is to "carry the message." When I walked into my first meeting, there were people in that meeting that had more than a day clean - which is all I had. There were people there with a month clean, three months clean, a year clean, ten years, twenty years clean. If they hadn't been there to not only guide the way and share their own experiences with me, I wouldn't have stayed clean. I'd have lost hope. So, "carry the message" is simply offering hope to those who are seeking a way to get and stay clean. Carrying the message means I will continue to show up and offer up my own experience to those who don't know how to put together a day - or even an hour - clean and sober. Carrying the message does not mean I go out and recruit addicts still active in their addiction, dragging them to a meeting and cramming something down their throats. Carrying the message is very simple... all I have to do is continue doing what I need to do for myself and allow others to know who I am and who I was and who I am becoming.

Another reason I continue on in recovery and attend meetings is to learn better how to "practice these principles in all my affairs." Remember the principles associated with each of the steps... the honesty and integrity and willingness and acceptance and courage and hope and faith and love and all the other principles provided through working those other eleven steps? Living those principles in every area of my life takes practice. It takes reminders. It takes seeing how others do it and seeing what works for me. It is so easy to fall back into hopelessness or try to get through tough situations without any faith or courage. It doesn't take much to lose my willingness to go on. I can quickly fall back into being dishonest with myself and with others. My weekly dose of recovery, via that weekly meeting, is my GPS for continuing to move toward the place I wish to go, the person I strive to be.

"Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps...."
Learning to live these spiritual principles, and apply them in my life, that is the spiritual awakening of the 12th step.

"Carrying the message..."
Allowing others to witness the unfolding of my life, that is the only way I know to carry the message of recovery.

"Practice these principles..."
Living a principled life - with my family and friends, in my work, in all that I do - that is what it has been about, that has been the journey, and that is how and why I remain on this path of recovery.

Goodbye 44

Today I celebrated the end of my 44th year. I hate to let it go. I liked being 44. I like double numbers... 33 was my favorite year, but I really liked being 22, also. 11? Nah, not so much. That was a bad year for me with some life-altering, unpleasant occurrences. But 44, I'm really going to miss saying I'm 44. I may just continue saying I am - who would know? I mean, is there really that much difference between 44 and 45 in the grand scheme of things? I think not.

I don't feel 45. I still feel... the same. I feel the same as I did when I was 22 and 33, minus the constant buzz of mind-altering chemicals. Ha! Seriously, though, when I was a kid I used to think that every age would feel different than the one before. I used to wake up on my birthday and think, "I'm ____ years old today; do I feel any different?" I never really did, but still I assumed that as I got older I would feel very different. I think I thought I'd be another person, no longer myself or something. But the reality is that my body ages, I may gain some wisdom that comes with experience, but on the core level, I am still exactly who I was five years ago or ten years ago or twenty years ago. There is a central part of me that remains just as it has always been.

I came home from work early today and took a quick 30 minute nap before getting ready to go out to dinner with my family to celebrate the passing of another year. I must have fell into a deeper sleep than I anticipated because I had this dream that, when I first awoke from it, seemed so profound and full of meaning. When I told my family about the dream on the way to dinner, my daughter said, "that's really disturbing, mom." My son said, "Twisted." My former ex just looked at me and didn't say anything.

I dreamed that I was in a child's body and I was laying on a twin bed. My mother was in the bed with me, sort of holding me down, but not with any menace at all - just restraining me gently. Then my mother was suddenly a flock of birds and I was outside chasing the flock of birds, looking up into the sky as they flew several feet ahead of me. The flock of birds suddenly started to change colors, from a brown, fragmented group of birds to a red, connected entity (still a flock of birds, but more a whole, rather than individual birds). The red color got redder and brighter and began to look wet. I realized then that the red flock of birds was made of blood and as I caught up with the flock above me, the red blood began to drip on my head and shoulders.

Then I woke up. In the moments just after waking up, I felt as if I knew what the dream meant, and that it was important and full of profound meaning. Now, as it was when I was retelling it to my family, I can't figure out what I thought it meant. I lost the meaning. One thing I keep thinking of, one word that I can't get out of my head when I think of the dream, is "birth." Maybe I dreamed about my birth, it being my birthday. Maybe. But it seemed there was more to it, but like so many times, the profundity of a dream is lost shortly after waking.

It was an interesting age, a good year, and I'm glad I made it through.

Step 11: Conscious Contact

Step Eleven
“We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood God, praying only for the knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out.”
(Spiritual principle associated with this step: Awareness, Connectivity)

On the surface, this step seems to be the most "religious." When I first read it I thought, "I'm never doing that one; I've had enough religion in my lifetime." By the time I worked steps one through ten, I had a different understanding of step eleven.

For me, this step has been about deepening my awareness to that which makes me feel most connected. By connected, I mean 'spiritually connected.' It is that thing you feel when you drive in the mountains or stand on the shore at the ocean, when you don't think about what you're seeing, but you experience it. When you're standing there in front of the ocean or in the valley surrounded by mountains, it is that knowing you experience, that absolute and all-encompassing knowledge that you are nothing in comparison to the universe, and at the same time, you are very much an integral part of it.

'Spiritually connected' means knowing I have a place in the universe even if I can't find that place. It means knowing there is purpose and meaning even when I have no idea what that purpose or meaning is.

'Spiritually connected' means conscious contact with a god of my own understanding. Everyone has their own way to improve their conscious contact, their spiritual connectivity. The longer I live, the more ways I discover to deepen my conscious contact. I find it in music and art. I find it when I walk alone along the river or through the woods. I find it in conversations with children. I find it in what I read and what I write. I find it when I paint. I find it in conversation and in silence. I find it in intimate relationships, some sexually intimate relationships and all emotionally intimate relationships. I find it in recovery meetings and sometimes in churches. A couple months ago I discovered I find it ten feet under the water at the pool where I'm engulfed in silence and very connected to my non-breathing self. Now when I go to the pool, I can't stop going under water. I love discovering new ways of improving and deepening my conscious contact, my spiritual connectivity.

The rest of the step falls into place when I can deepen that conscious contact. The praying for the knowledge of God's will and the power to carry that outpart of this step occurs naturally for me if I'm developing that awareness and deepening that conscious contact. See, when I'm doing that, when I am connected to the moment, in the now and nowhere else, that in itself is my prayer for knowledge and power. Just being, that in itself is the only true way I know to pray.

Many Narcotics Anonymous groups use a 'reading' (as part of their meeting format) called, We Do Recover. It is one of my favorite readings: When at the end of the road we find we can no longer function, either with or without drugs, we all face the same dilemma. What is there left to do? There seems to be this alternative: either go on as best we can to the bitter ends - jails, institutions, or death - or find a new way to live. In years gone by, very few addicts ever had this last choice. Those who are addicted today are more fortunate. For the first time in man's entire history, a simple way has been proving itself in the lives of many addicts. It is available to us all. This is a simple, spiritual - not religious - program known as Narcotics Anonymous.

I especially like the last line. I am put off by organized religion, but I crave spirituality. I confused the two - religion and spirituality - for most of my life. I think I got a glimpse of the difference when I watched my mother lose her fight to cancer. I always thought of her as religious - and perhaps she was - but in her final years of life, and especially in the the final months of her life, I saw her spirit as I never had before. I saw her spirtuality beyond her religion. Dogma and doctrine took a backseat to love and connecting with the people she loved and the beauty of the world around her that she so loved. The closer she came to death, more and more of her spirit-in-the-raw came through. It was an amazing thing to see, one I will never forget, and the pivotal point for me in my own spiritual journey...

... which brings me to a spiritual truth (for me) that has, in essence, become my Higher Power, my Truth with a capital T: Everything that happens, every, single, individual thing that happens has a purpose within it. I often miss the lesson, don't find a purpose, even deny that there is reason within the things that happen in my life, but nevertheless, deep down, at the center of my spirit, in my core... I know there is purpose in and around all things. Using my mother's death as an example of purpose: My mother didn't die so that I could learn a spiritual lesson, but because she died I had the opportunity to learn a spiritual lesson - probably several. There is a difference there and that difference is the foundation of my concept of spirituality.

And within this concept I nurture my spiritual conscious contact, thereby carrying out what some deem as "God's will," but what I prefer to call "living the Tao."

A Life Uncommon

Set down you chains
And lend your voices only to sounds of freedom
No longer lend your strength to that
which you wish to be free from
Fill you lives with love and bravery
And we shall lead a life uncommon.
-Jewel, Life Uncommon

It has been years since I heard the song, Life Uncommon, by Jewel. Last weekend I came across a box of CD's that I forgot I had. There were about 30 CD's in the box, including three Jewel CD's. I took the whole box of them and put them in a CD case and put them in my car. I've been listening to new music - that is actually old music - all week long. And let me tell you, I've been jammin' out and rackin' up some soul satisfaction. Most of the CD's in the box come from nine or ten years ago, a time of great and profound change in my life.

When I first got into recovery, I made a list. When I wanted to get high, I had to complete all five things on my list before doing so. It was a little game I played with myself. I had a lot of experience getting clean, but very little experience staying clean. I was trying to come up with a roadblock - a rumblestrip, if you will - to deter myself from getting high just because every fiber in my being was screaming at me to do so.

Here was the list I made:
1. Call somebody in recovery and tell them what I'm thinking about doing.
2. Buy a CD and listen to every song on it.
3. Buy a roll of film, take all 24 pictures, take it to a one-hour developer, wait for the pictures, take them home and create a collage of some sort using at least half of the pictures.
4. Go to the next scheduled NA or AA meeting in town.
5. Go see somebody in recovery and tell them what I'm thinking about doing.

Needless to say, I bought a lot of CD's that first year in recovery. I don't know how many... I know I sold over 300 on Ebay a few years ago. And that was just the ones I didn't want any longer. I also created a lot of collages, called a lot of people, went to a lot of meetings, and hung out at a lot of people's homes. I utilized everything on my list often and religiously. But anyhow, the CD's....

This week, listening to this old new music, has completely filled me to the brim spiritually. Music has a way of doing that for me. I remember when that Jewel song, Life Uncommon, was my mantra... and lend your voices only to sounds of freedom; no longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from... that line meant everything to me back then. It was exactly what I had to do every minute or every day. When I heard that song this week, my heart skipped a few beats and then felt all fluttery in my chest. Today, all these years later, it is not such a struggle to not get high. It doesn't take all my strength nor my constant attention. That's not to say I don't do what I need to do to maintain my recovery... I do. But it is not like it was in those early days, in that first year where every day, many times a day, I craved that high, that drug, that state of mind that had become my 'normal.' Now the thoughts are fleeting and the cravings are psychological, rather than both psychological and physical. Now I have tools to get through anything.

Now, I can really say - and mean it, rather than just dream it - I am finally living a Life Uncommon.

Step Ten: Moving Forward

STEP TEN
We continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
[Spiritual principle(s) associated with this step: Self-discipline, Perseverance]

The 53rd passage of the Tao Te Ching says:

If I had even a slight awareness,
And practiced the great Way,
What I would fear would be deviating from it.
(Chang translation)

That sums up step ten for me.

I have set my foot on this path I've been traveling and I've come a very long way from where I started. I am not - nor will I ever be - as far as I can go, but I am a long way from where I started. Using the preceding nine steps as a guide, I have begun to cultivate the spiritual principles I always valued in others, those principles I wanted to claim as my own but could not because my actions were contradicting every principle I longed to practice. I have begun to practice honesty and hope and faith and integrity and humility and justice and love. Somewhere in me, deep in my core, I've discovered a willingness and a courage I never knew I had. My outsides are beginning to match my insides. My actions are beginning to represent what I know and what I believe and what I value.

The times I act dishonestly, I feel an emotional kick in the shin. When I throw integrity out the window, something inside of me snaps. When my ego blows humility out of the water, I feel like I'm drowning. See, now that I know, now that I have that slight awareness, now that I've practiced the great Way, my biggest fear is deviating from it because in my deviation I become sick.

This sickness starts with my emotions. I become guilt-ridden and feel shame and frustration and anger. I may become depressed or feel needy and dependent and afraid. Then, like cancer, the sickness spreads. My thoughts are hit next. I start to think about how worthless I am, how much I lack, or how insane I can be, how selfish I can be. I start to think that my journey so far has been for nothing, that I should just return to what I've always known, that I should seek oblivion. Then it spreads further, and suddenly I'm acting out on my negative emotions and my diseased thoughts. Suddenly I'm lying to people I love or stealing stupid little things from work. My sickness comes out my pores and spills into every area of my life. My sickness manifests itself in how I spend my money, my time, my love, in who I associate with or sleep with. And the behavior, in turn, fuels the already negative emotions, which fuel the cancerous thoughts... and the cycle continues.

No, I don't want to deviate from this path I've been walking. I've done so too many times since embarking. It is not pleasant, and in fact, quite painful. I'm getting better at keeping at least one foot on the path. If I had even a slight awareness, and practiced the great Way, what I would fear would be deviating from it.

That is step ten for me. Staying on this path. The only way to do that is to continue to take my own inventory, to continue to remain aware of who I am and what I need - and then to accept that and to allow that. The only way to stay on this path is to return to it as quickly as I can if I find I've wandered off into the forest. The only way to stay on this path is to continue to take personal inventory and when I'm wrong, promptly admit it... and then jump back on with both feet planted firmly in the middle of the dusty path.

I fear anything less because I've been where it leads.

Step Nine

STEP NINE
We make direct amends to such people, except when to do so would injure them or others.
[Spiritual principle associated with this step: Justice]

I find the spiritual principle associated with this step - justice - more difficult to wrap my mind around than I do the actual step. At first glance, the step seems easy - start apologizing to everyone I identified in the eighth step. How hard can that be? Well, okay, it may not be the easiest thing to admit to all those people that I lied to them, stole from them, betrayed them, or hurt them in some other way, but the instruction seems pretty straight-forward.

But justice? What does that mean? I am supposed to learn, to come to understand, to get the spiritual principle of justice through working this step? I thought justice was something the courts served up. A quick glance at a dictionary:

–noun 1. the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness: to uphold the justice of a cause. 2. rightfulness or lawfulness, as of a claim or title; justness of ground or reason: to complain with justice. 3. the moral principle determining just conduct. 4. conformity to this principle, as manifested in conduct; just conduct, dealing, or treatment.

Ah, number three calls justice a moral principle... that, in turn, dictates conduct. That sheds some light for me. See, if I lie to you, my conduct is not just. If I steal from you, my conduct is not just. If I betray you, my conduct is not just. In order to practice just conduct I must treat you with fairness. I must treat you exactly how I would hope to be treated by you. I certainly don't want to be lied to or stolen from, and I definitely don't like it when I'm betrayed. I can give you that same consideration. In fact, because of the previous work, because of the spiritual growth brought about by working the previous eight steps, I do in fact give you that same consideration. I want to treat you with fairness. I want to behave justly.

But there's still this whole issue of what I've already done, the harm I've already caused, the wrongs that need righting. The past. There's still that. At this point in my journey I am to make amends to those I've treated unjustly, unless in doing so I'd cause more harm to them or to others. I believe that others includes me. Some people don't interpret this step in a way that includes self in the word others, but I do. Why? Not to get out of making certain amends, which is usually the argument set forth by those who interpret the word others to not include self. It goes a little deeper than that for me.

I believe that most things are subjective. Very little is black and white, in my mind.
Let me put it this way:

The very thing
That in its midst,
Felt so wrong,
Became the right.
The very thing
That in its moment
Left me empty
Became the fullness.
The very thing
That in its midst
Brought such pain
Became the healing.
The very thing
That in its moment
Looked so dark,
Became the light.

Some needed amends are obvious. I am clear on those. If I hurt you in some way - and it wasn't necessary - then I need to make amends to you. Some pain that I caused, though, was necessary for my own healing, in order to take care of myself or my children. Some betrayal, on the surface, looked wrong and unjust, but underneath served an exigent purpose in my own process. In those instances I have to take care to make the amends I need to make, but at the same time, not to overthrow that which I attained for myself spiritually, mentally, or emotionally.

The instructions of step nine are easy to decipher; it is the implementation that is often hazy.

For example.

When I got married I made a vow... that 'til death do us part vow. I didn't keep it. Every time I went to treatment (3 times) from 1988 through 1997, I ended up relapsing withing months of leaving rehab (and once within weeks). Even though I was told, over and over again, by countless people who knew the struggle I faced, that I could not live with a using addict and expect to stay clean, I didn't listen. I kept trying. It almost killed me. Finally, I decided that in order to stay clean I had to move out and move on with my own life and leave my husband to his own path. That is what I did. In the process, I hurt him. He felt betrayed. In effect, I lied to him. I broke a vow to him, a promise to work through anything and everything, in sickness and in health, and so on. But I bowed out early to save my own life. In the process, I hurt my children. We all know the statistics and issues of children of divorce. I caused this harm... yet, I had to do it. I felt I had no choice. Even though I did hurt others, I made the only decision I knew to make at that point in my own journey into wholeness and health and healing.

That example is just one of many.

I have made decisions that have caused harm to others, but nevertheless, had to be made.
I have also made decisions that have caused harm to others that I could have easily avoided.
Differentiating between the two is the task that makes the implementation of step nine somewhat tricky.

Chasing The High

In the past few weeks, a couple of online friends, as well as one in-the-flesh friend, have suggested I read the works of Eckhart Tolle. I have this rule, this little head-game I play with myself: When three unrelated or unconnected people tell me the exact same thing, be it advice or a suggestion, I seriously explore that. That doesn't mean that just because three people tell me to do something I automatically do it - just that if three people tell me to do something, I need to look into that to see why I'm getting the same message from all these unrelated sources.

When the suggestion is reading material, I almost always take the suggestion and get the recommended book. So a couple of weeks ago, I ordered the Power of Now. A few days after I ordered it, there I read someone's blog that discouraged the ideas of Tolle (as expressed by Oprah Winfrey, at least).

Now, for some reason, when I have an identical encouraging suggestion from three people and I've acted on it, and then I start getting dissuasive suggestions on the same thing, I really perk up then! Then my decision to act on the suggestion is suddenly validated and confirmed.

See, I believe in life-lessons. I believe that somehow (and don't ask me how, because I just don't have an answer) all things work together and there are life-lessons, living lessons, directional arrows thrown out all the time. I can ignore the signs or I can pay attention... my choice. When I follow my 'three-person' rule and act on such a suggestion, and then opposition starts popping up, it somehow confirms for me that I am on the right path, that I am smack dab in the middle of a valuable learning experience.

So, the book comes in yesterday. Last night I started reading it. When I first read the Tao Te Ching so many years ago, I was transformed. Immediately. It wasn't like I had to read it and digest it and think on it... I could feel the transformation of my spirit as I read each line... and I'd go onto the next line, and feel - no, know - further transformation. And it continued like that, endlessly. If I pick up the Tao Te Ching today, the same thing will happen. It has never stopped and never will because, to me, that ancient spiritual text reaches into the core of me and says, simply, this is the truth, this is your truth.

As I began reading The Power of Now last night, the same thing happened. It put words to what I already know. That is the best I can do in trying to convey it. Like the Tao, it is unexplainable and essentially unnameable. I am not too far into the book... a few chapters. But, like the Tao Te Ching, every sentence is transforming and every concept presented is what I already know somewhere deep within, somewhere often illusive to me.

There is one concept I read last night that I've forever and always wanted to have words for, but never have been able to string them together. I still don't have words that would adequately allow me to describe this concept, but I am closer because of Tolle's words. It has to do with love and joy and peace. I've always thought of love and joy and peace as emotions, as well as ultimate goals for myself. But maybe love and joy and peace are not emotions at all, but rather a state of being. Maybe love and joy and peace are not ultimate goals, but rather who I am.


Tolle writes: "Glimpses of love and joy or brief moments of deep peace are possible whenever a gap occurs in the stream of thought... in moments when the mind is rendered 'speechless,' sometimes triggered by great beauty, extreme physical exertion, or even great danger. Suddenly there is inner stillness. And within that stillness there is a subtle but intense joy, there is love, there is peace."

Triggered by great beauty, extreme physical exertion, or even great danger. Yes. Yes. It is triggered, in me, by standing on the shore at sunrise or sunset, alone as far as the eye can see. It is triggered, in me, when I drive into the mountains and come around a curve and I am surrounded by the earth rising into the skies on all sides of me and following the way of the stream that winds its way through this land. It is triggered, in me, when I felt my children leave my body and enter the world, the moment I first looked into their eyes and first heard their voices. It is triggered, in me, when I take a risk, when adrenaline pumps through me and every cell in my body is activated and alive with some unexplainable current. It is triggered, in me, when I lose myself in creation, when I paint, when I write, when I photograph, when I shut down my left brain and allow my right brain total control.

And for me, it is exactly, precisely, the very state I sought when I used mind-altering chemicals. Could it be, could it possibly be that my entire addiction has always been about finding that state? There is a concept in addiction in recovery, something I've heard many times, something I've known to be true for myself, about 'chasing the first high.' Addicts spend everything they have, everything within them, chasing that first high, trying to recapture what happened inside of them that first time they used. It is a useless endeavor- it cannot be recaptured by using more, by using more often, by using different chemicals, or by combining different chemicals. Perhaps that first high was a glimpse into the love and joy and peace state of being we all have within us, only it was nothing more than a glimpse... and, as addicts, we spend the rest of our lives trying to recreate it, not realizing that we are actually going away, going further and further away, from that desired state every time we try to recreate it.

When Suicide Feels Like a Viable Option

A friend's daughter swallowed a bottle of Tylenol PM (acetaminophen and diphenhydramine) the other day. I hear she was picked up on the streets of a little town in Georgia, wandering, stumbling, lost. Someone told me yesterday that they transported her to Atlanta because her liver has stopped working.

When I used to think about the oh-so-many-ways to off myself, Tylenol was always at the top of the list. Somewhere along the way I heard that the liver can't process a massive quantity of acetaminophen. Adding diphenhydramine can only make things worse, I imagine. So, armed with this tidbit of information, Tylenol was often choice #1 in my diseased and warped brain. If you really want to die, this is the way to go. Not that there are not many other sure-fire ways to accomplish suicide. There are many.

My friend is trying to get her daughter on the liver-transplant waiting list. Without inclusion to this list, she probably will not recover, barring a miracle. This young lady has been in recovery from drug addiction for the past six months, maybe longer. Her problems obviously went beyond addiction. I understand that. When I stopped self-medicating and got into recovery, my depression took over.

Relapse was not only an option for me at various times during my attempts at rehab and recovery, but a necessity. My choices, at times, were clear: relapse back into self-medicating... or end it here, now. I always chose relapse. I knew how to self-medicate. I knew how to hold off that particular brand of darkness. When I had 18 months clean (this go-around), I came back to that familiar place, that call of darkness. I thought suicide was the better option. I couldn't go through another relapse. I wanted the quick out, not the slow and painful suicide of active addiction. I bought a gun. A pistol was always choice #2. Quick, easy, dramatic... but messy. After I bought the pistol, I got scared. What if it didn't work? What if I blew away part of my brain, but it didn't kill me? In the end, I talked to somebody about my plan. They intervened. I got help. It worked.

My friend's daughter is not the first person in recovery I've known to attempt suicide. A close friend, Jeff, shot himself in the head in his bathroom five years ago. He and I began our journey of recovery (this go-around) at the same time. He, too, sought help for his depression. Something didn't work. I miss Jeff. Jeff taught my son how to play the guitar. He married my friend. Jeff had five years clean and sober (and in recovery) when he put a hole in his head. The hospital kept him alive for a while, on machines, because he was an organ donor. I went to the hospital when I heard the news. I sat with my friend, his wife, and didn't know what to say. Maybe I didn't need to say anything. In a few hours time, it went from his wife and her mother and me in that waiting room to over 100 people spilling out of the waiting room, into the halls, outside in the courtyard of the hospital, and in the parking lot. Over 100 recovering addicts. Most understood. Addiction and depression often come as a pair.

Sometimes when someone in a meeting talks about specific drug use, talks in detail about the horrible details, I want to use. Why is this? You'd think, you'd think, you'd think it would be just the opposite. When someone describes how they dipped their syringe in a dirty puddle because they had no other water source, you'd think that would make me cringe and say, 'thank god I'm clean!' When I see the ugliness, in my face and corrupting my own family and children, as I described in last week's post, you'd never imagine it might trigger a craving in me. But you'd be wrong. The craving, the longing, might not come immediately - disgust and numbness might be the immediate reactions - but eventually, given time, after it sits with me for a while, I wonder how it would feel to use again, how it would feel to get high after so many years. I actually desire to do that, in spite of what I know, what I've done, how I've healed, what I want, and where I am.

I miss Jeff. He is not the only friend who has committed suicide, but he is the one friend I miss the most. Some part of me understood and connected with him - in life and in death. When I heard about my friend's daughter the other day, I started thinking about Jeff. I remember hearing his pain. I remember him talking about the pain he was in. I remember wondering if he was going to relapse. I may have wondered if he was depressed enough to take his life. I don't remember wondering that, but I may have. Somehow, addiction and suicide are connected for me. They are both escapes, one temporary, the other ultimate.

Just like hearing about someone's relapse, taking in details of active addiction, seeing the ugliness right in front of me... just like my unexplainable reaction to that, my desire for that, my triggered cravings in the face of that... so it is with suicide. I remember the peace I felt when I held up my self-inflicted demise as a viable option. Peace? Yes. Relief. Jeff's suicide triggered that desire in me, an envy I still can't explain even today. My friend's daughter has triggered something in me... some dark desire, some lost option, some longing for everything I've fought for so long. It makes no sense. I know this. I really do know this. Putting the words out here makes me feel insane. But there it is, here it is, consuming my thoughts.

Step 8

STEP EIGHT
“We made a list of all people we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.”
[Spiritual principle(s) associated with this step: Forgivenss, humility, honesty, willingness, self-awareness, love]

One of the hardest things to do is to admit when I am wrong. I don’t think I’m unique in this. I tend to justify my actions just as much as the next person. Even when I know I’m in the wrong, when I’ve done something to hurt someone else, when I’ve made a mistake, even then I don’t want to admit it to anyone. It is hard enough to admit it to myself. But, alas, if I carry that around with me – the knowledge and awareness that I am in the wrong, that I’ve knowingly hurt someone – and don’t do anything to correct or amend it, then it is going to eat away at me.

The first “eighth step list” I ever made was the longest eighth step list I’ve ever made. Since then, they are much shorter. Lately I’ve tried to keep it very unlist-like… the only way I know to do this is to become willing to make the necessary amends as soon as I’m aware that I’ve hurt someone in some way. But that first list I made, it was a doozy. I had to reach all the way back into my past and list everyone I’d ever hurt in my entire life. Think about that for a moment.

In the third grade I called Coach Kraft, “Coach Crap.” I got in trouble for it at home and at school, so shouldn’t that give it a pass and keep it off my list? Well, no… the step doesn’t say to make a list of all people we had harmed, excluding the times we got caught and punished. So yeah, Coach Kraft was first on my list.

In the fifth grade, we [me and other neighborhood kids] used to tell this little kid, Dennis, who was 5 or 6 at the time and had just been adopted by his foster parents, that he was adopted (which he obviously knew) and didn’t have “real parents” because he came from another planet, another galaxy, from a place called Zotz. There were these little candies called Zotz, you may recall, and we bought them all the time and told them that these were imported from his planet. He would go home and tell his parents what we were telling him, his parents would talk to me about it when they saw me and ask me not to tell him these things, and I’d get caught up in the crowd mentality and do it again and again. Not only did this hurt Dennis, but also his parents. I have no idea where Dennis is or where his parents are. Since I don’t know where they are, do they have to go on my list? Yes, this step is not about the actual amends making process, only about making the list.

In the eighth grade, I punched that black girl, Wendy, in the stomach. She called me some derogatory name based on the differences in our races, then she pushed me down the stairs. I was already on crutches after leg ligament surgery, so I couldn’t really defend myself, but as she came down the stairs after me, I took my crutch and jammed it into her stomach as hard as I could. She puked all over the stairwell. I know it hurt her pretty bad. But, see, she pushed me first. She hurt me first. Doesn’t that keep her off my list? Nope, it doesn’t. No matter what she did or didn’t do, I did not have to jam my crutch into her abdomen. That was a choice I made, a choice to hurt another person. So Wendy went on that first list.

In high school, a friend of mine (Nancy) went through this drug rehab program called “The Straight.” When she came out she wouldn’t speak to me any longer. As per the program, she was not “allowed” to speak to people she had used drugs with in the past. We had been friends since we were toddlers and this didn’t bode well with me. I tried to make her talk to me, but she never would. After many attempts, I started teasing her. See, every time I tried to talk to her she’d say, “The Straight loves you and so do I.” That’s all she’d say. Over and over, every time I’d speak to her, that is what she’d say to me. After a while, I got frustrated and angry and started lashing out at her, making fun of her and her other “Straight” buddy, Karen. Every time I’d see either of them I’d say, “The Straight fucks you up and so will I,” or I’d call them insane or crazy or weirdo or dumb-ass. Sometimes I’d follow them through the halls at school and talk about the drugs I used or the alcohol I drank over the weekend and actually try to convince them that they should forget all this brainwashing and come back to living in the real world, etc. I believe the program they went through was wrong and cultish and that there was some actual brainwashing done there. Many people who went through the program claimed that this was true after they’d been out a while and were no longer being influenced by the program. The program was eventually shut down. Does the fact that this program used mind-control and abusive practices make it okay that I told Nancy that she was brainwashed and said the things I said to her okay? Does it mean she shouldn’t go on the list? No, she went on the list, no doubt about that one.

After I got married and my finances were combined with my husbands, I became a master manipulator of money and a fine finagler of finances. I could hide large withdrawals and juggle accounts so well that unless you knew what you were looking for, it would look like all the bills were being paid and there was money to spare. Forget that I was spending way too much on drugs (in secret, of course)… somehow I always made the evidence of these expenditures disappear on paper. In effect, I was stealing from my husband and my family. Because it was partly my money, didn’t that make it okay? Wouldn’t that keep him off the list? No, it was still stealing. He didn’t know what I was doing. He thought we were financially okay. He really didn’t discover how not okay we were until the separation and divorce.

As I said, the list was very long. Many people that needed to be on my list were obvious. Some I'd committed crimes against, stolen from them, lied to them, manipulated them. I’d felt guilty about the harm I’d caused them for years. Others didn’t have a clue I’d harmed them in any way. They still had to go onto my list. And still others, like those few examples listed above, belonged on my list even though I tried to justify keeping them off the list.

Once the list was made, it took some time for the second part of this step to come to fruition. I had to become willing to make amends. This step doesn’t tell me to go ahead and make the amends. It tells me to become willing to do so. It sounds easier than it is. Willingness is not my strong suit. It took a while, but one day, as I looked over the list, I realized I truly was willing and ready to make amends to these people on my list. The list had been complete for a couple of months, I’d been reading over it regularly, and with that came first the feelings of denial, then guilt, and finally a recognition that making amends to these people would lift something from me that was weighing me down. I wanted that weight gone. I became willing to make the amends.

And with that willingness, even before the action of the ninth step when the actual amends begin, I felt a relief.

An Ugly, Ugly Night

I came home from a meeting last night and it was about 9:00 when I got home. As I came in the door, my 16 year old daughter, purse on her shoulder and keys in her hand, was heading out the door.

"Where are you going?"

"I've got to go to the other house. Dad's still there. Everytime I talk to him he says he's coming home, but then he never does. I went over there earlier to get some money and I think he was on drugs. I think he's using again. Now he turned his phone off and won't answer. We have to go see if he's okay!"

Her dad moved back in with me this past November. He stopped using six months ago and we decided to make a go of it again, eight years after the divorce. Nine years ago, I moved out. I had one year clean and sober and he continued to use drugs. I was determined not to relapse back into active addiction this time around. I had been through treatment three times (over a 7 year period) and every time I ended up using again. It wasn't his fault, but living with someone in active addiction while trying to stay clean is very difficult. I obviously found it more than difficult; I found it impossible. I walked away from a 16 year marriage nine years ago.

Yesterday he said he was going to spend the day working on the house we're trying to sell. It is the first house we ever bought together. It is the house I walked away from when I walked away from the marriage. It is the house he has been living in since the divorce. It is the house we've been working on, getting it ready to sell, so that we can buy a new house together, start fresh. It is the house my daughter and I found him in last night when he didn't come home.

He bought and used an 8 ball of cocaine yesterday. That is a lot of cocaine to use in one day, especially after not using for 8 months. We found him wild-eyed, in the woods behind the house, geeked to the gills, jaw twitching, paranoid as hell. My daughter had never actually seen him like this. She had heard about it. Me being in recovery since she was 6 years old, and being in recovery off and on during the first 6 years of her life, I have never hidden the ugliness of addiction from her. But hearing about it and seeing it are two different things, as she discovered last night.

She went off on him. She's 16 and I am not naive, so therefore I know she probably talks very differently around her friends than she does around me, but when I heard her go off on her father last night, I was at first shocked... then sad... and then proud of her for saying what she needed to say.

"Dad, what is your fucking problem? What the hell do you think you're doing? You are a fucking idiot! Look at you! You're pathetic! Oh my god, you fucking did this to mom, you fucking did this to your son, and now you're fucking doing it to me! How could you do this? What the fuck is wrong with you? Don't you love me, don't you love us? Haven't you been happy to be a family again? Oh my god, you are ruining everything! Mom can't live with you like this! Oh my god, I can't live with you like this! What the hell are you doing? Why are you doing this again? No wonder my brother, your own son, can't stand you sometimes... he had to see this, he had to live with this after mom left? No wonder he ended up leaving, too! My god, I couldn't live with this, either! What is wrong with you? Why would you do this to me, to us, to yourself?"

That was just a very small bit of the rant. I thought about stopping her. This was her father she was speaking to like this. She should respect her father. She is a child.

No, she's not a child. Not really. Not anymore. She's a young woman and she saw a side of life I have been able to keep from her, a side of her father that, while known, never seen close up and face to face. It is an ugly thing to see.

She turned to me. "Thank you for never letting me see this part of you, Mom! Thank you for that. I don't know if I could have stood it." She turned back to her father. "How am I ever going to look at you the same again? You're pathetic. I can't believe this is my life, this is my family. What are we going to do now?"

Then she broke. She cried for a long time. I hugged her, she sat on my lap. Her father sat in a chair, getting his things together, getting ready to go home, and he kept watching the door, watching the road, wild-eyed, crazy, sure someone would pull in the driveway or come to the door. Paranoia up close and personal.

It was all so ugly. What a horrible, ugly night last night.

My daughter drove my car home. I drove his truck home, with him geeking in the passenger seat, apologizing, begging for forgiveness. I remained silent. I couldn't speak. What am I going to do, that's the only thought I could form, what the fuck am I going to do?

I woke up this morning with the same thought. It was getting redundant. I decided to pass it on to him.

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know, I just don't know."

"You need to figure it out."

"Please don't throw me out."

"I can't live like this. You have to do something. You need help."

"You can help me. You've been helping me."

"No, I told you before, I am not your savior. I cannot save you. I'm doing good to save my own ass. I can't save yours, too. You must do it. I had to do it. No one did it for me. No one made me go to treatment. No one made me go to meetings. No one makes me go to meetings now. No one can save me but me. No one can save you but you. It's really that simple. Stop complicating it. Just get help."

"I hate those meetings. I will lose my job if I go into treatment. I can do this. I can stop. I've been clean for 6 months. I've been doing it. I can do this."

"Not here you can't. If you're going to continue doing this on your own, like you've tried over and over again for all these years, only to end up right where you are at this moment, you can't do it here. You can stay here if you do something different, if you decide to seek some help somewhere, if you go to meetings and get into recovery. You've been abstinent, but you haven't been in recovery. You could probably stay clean and abstinent for another several months... but then what? Then what? I'll tell you what. It's easy to predict the what. What will happen is what is happening right now. You'll use again because you can't help it. You'll use again because you have nothing to put in its place. You'll use again because it's the only thing you know to do. You'll use again because you're an addict. You'll use again because you'll need it again. I know. I know. "

"So what do I do?"

"Go to a meeting at 12:00 today. Go again at 7:00 tonight. Talk. Find someone after the meeting to talk to. Ask for some help. Get a sponsor. Or go to treatment. Call a treatment center. I called one last night, you refused to go. I can't make you. This is on you, now. I can't do it for you, I'm sorry. "

Then I got in my car and came to work. It was the hardest thing to do, to leave him standing there, to leave him in his pain, to leave him to decide.

But it is all I know to do.

I Ain't No Savior

I struggled to come up from the depths of my slumber. Still asleep, yet I knew I was being observed. Finally, I was conscious enough to have my brain signal my eyes to open. He was laying on his side there beside me, propped on the palm of his hand, looking at me.

“What? What’s wrong? What are you doing?”

“Nothing. Just looking at you. You breathe so well, as perfect as anyone I’ve ever seen or heard breathing.”

“Okay. That’s a very random thing to say to someone. No one’s ever said that to me before. Thank you? (I think).”

“No, seriously. You take deep breaths in through your nose and then you exhale through your mouth. It is all very steady and perfect. It’s quiet, no wheezing, nothing to break the rhythm except an occasional sigh, which in itself is just beautiful.”

Now I was getting a little weirded out.

It had been over eight years since I last had this man in my bed. Now this. Maybe I was dreaming, still asleep, just dreaming I had woken up.

He spoke again. “I’m sorry I woke you up. I can’t sleep. I just can’t sleep. I’m all fucked up from the hospital routine. Eleven days of nurses and respitory techs and doctors waking me up at all hours… I just can’t seem to sleep.”

Then he started crying. I was married to this man for 16 years. I was there with him when he buried his mother, his father, his brother. I was there when he shipped out to the Persian Gulf, and again when he returned. I was there for the birth of his children, for hospitalizations of his children. I was there as he dug graves for our family pets over the years. I was there. I had never seen him cry.

Except one other time. He cried when I told him I was leaving him almost nine years ago.

“What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

“You saved my life. You saved me. I would have died in that house, all alone, but you came and called the ambulance and came to the hospital every day, and you saved me. I would have left the hospital this morning and gone back to that lonely house and kept right on doing what I have been doing for all these years, and it would have killed me. But here I am, with you again, where I have always wanted to be. You saved me.”

How does one respond to something like that?

Part of me feels guilty. I didn’t save you: I almost destroyed you. I am not a hero; I am a traitor. If I hadn’t left you, would you have gone so far down the suicidal path you wandered so aimlessly all these eight years? If I had been whole, if I had been well, if I had been faithful, if I had been loyal, if I had stood by you as you stood by me, would you have come so close, would you have gone so far, would you have come face to face with death eleven days ago?

Part of me feels justified. I had to leave. I had to save my own life. I had to reclaim my sanity. I had to get better. There was so much healing to be done, and I had to do it alone. There was really no other way. I never stopped loving you, but I could not die for you.

Part of me feels angry. You could have had me back years ago. You made choices that made it impossible for me to return before now. You loved the drug more than you loved me, more than your children, more than life itself.

Part of me feels empathy. I know you loved the drug more than you loved me, for I once loved it more than I loved you. I know, I understand, I’ve been right where you are this moment.

Part of me feels grateful. Having you here makes me feel whole again. I want to wake up every day with you next to me. I missed you so badly. I longed for you. My family is complete once again. My heart is full once again. My home now our home…once again.

How does one respond to something like that?

“I haven’t saved you. I just love you. I can’t save you. You must do that – all I can do is love you.”

“No, you saved me. You're my savior. Your love has always saved me.”

How does one respond to something like that?

Paranoia Will Destroia

I'm surprised I haven't been busted, raped, ambushed or murdered in the last ten years.

I don't remember the last time I even worried about being busted, raped, ambushed or murdered. I used to worry about it a lot. Every day. All day long. For real. I'm not kidding.

Every time I had dope in the house or in my car or on my person, I'd worry about getting busted. That translates into 24/7 because I always had dope in my house, in my car, or on my person. Except when I was searching for it. I rarely ran out, though. On the rare occasions when I did run out, my obsession with getting busted quickly morphed into an obsession to re-stock. Drug-seeking was my career for a long time.

I worried a lot about being raped. I went into a lot of rough neighborhoods to find my drugs of choice. I didn't like going there, but I really had no alternative. Sometimes I found myself in houses or apartments with 7 or 8 men I didn't know. I was the only woman there. Everyone was fucked up. It is hard enough to predict another person's behavior when the other person is straight. Predicting behavior when one's mind is altered in countless ways is next to impossible. Sometimes I had to drive through 'projects' and 'the hood' to score. A few times I had men who I thought wanted to sell me dope actually wanting something very different. One time I ended up in an abandoned house getting high with two men I sometimes bought cocaine from in Jacksonville, Florida who thought I wanted more than their dope. I didn't. They didn't believe me. I ended up leaving my car parked in front of that house and running through the backyards of that neighborhood, lost, scared, wondering if they were chasing me. I thought I heard them chasing me, but I never saw them. It was dark. I found my way back to a main road and eventually made it home. A day or two later, with two friends, I felt safe enough to retrieve my car. I never saw those men again. The experience, though, kept my fear of being raped in the obsessive state.

I also feared being ambushed, and ultimately murdered. Every time I left my house, I took precautions. I put toys and other objects in front of closet doors so that I'd know if anyone waited in the closets of my home when I returned. I put little objects next to the window locks so I'd know if anyone opened a window to break into my home while I was gone. I always figured someone would. I put little slips of paper between the door and the door jamb so when I opened the door, it would flutter out. If it didn't, if it had already fallen out, that meant someone had entered before me, that meant someone was waiting inside to ambush and probably murder me.

One time I took all these precautions - I put toys in front of the closet doors, tiny objects on all the windows, a torn slip of paper between the door and the door jamb - and I went to a friend's apartment in another building to get high. I stayed there for a couple of hours and then returned to my own apartment building. I opened the door and the little torn slip of paper floated to the ground. Good. I quickly went to all the bedrooms and checked under the beds. No one there. Good. I checked all the windows and all the objects were still there. Sigh. Good. I went to the kitchen, feeling safe, feeling relieved to know that tonight was not the night I'd be ambushed and murdered. When I entered the kitchen, I stopped cold. The toy I had placed in front of the pantry door was not there. That could only mean one thing: Someone was in the pantry waiting to ambush and murder me. Oh shit. I panicked. I turned and ran through the living room and out the front door. I ran all the way back to my friend's apartment. I arrived out of breath, my heart pounding out of my chest. Scott answered the door.

"What's wrong, Maze?"

"Someone is in my house. Someone is trying to kill me."

I told Scott about the slips of paper wedged in the door jambs, about the tiny objects on the windows, about the toys strategically placed in front of all the interior doors of the apartment. Then I told him about the missing toy in front of the pantry door. I expected compassion, some empathy, shared fear and panic. Instead, Scott laughed. Amy told him, "Go back to her apartment with her and check it out, Scott." So we walked back to my apartment together. The front door was wide open.

"See? Someone is in there!" This is what I told Scott.

He said, "Did you close the door when you tore out of here to come back to my place?"

"I think I did. Surely I would have. I don't remember."

Scott laughed again. I told him it wasn't funny.

"I know it's not really funny, Maze. I just keep thinking about you putting toys and shit in front of all the doors and on all the windows. I never imagined you were so paranoid. You hide it well."

We checked out the entire house. Nobody lurked under the beds, in the closets, behind the shower curtain or even in the kitchen pantry. Scott stayed with me for a little while, told me I might want to lay off the speed and the cocaine when I was going to be home alone. I told him the drugs had nothing to do with it. It was a feeling I had, a gut-feeling, a knowing... I just knew that someday I'd be ambushed and murdered and I wanted to know when it was coming. Hell, I wanted to avoid it for as long as I could. Scott just shook his head and hugged me as he left.

I locked the door behind him.

Then I checked all the windows and made sure the little items were set for the night. I locked my bedroom door, put the knife under my pillow, the baseball bat next to the bed, and the cordless phone under the covers with me and settled in for a peaceful night's sleep.

Step Seven: Abstract & Poetic

STEP SEVEN
"We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings."
[Spiritual principle associated with this step: Humility]

When I reached this step, step seven, I felt blocked. Stumped. Dead in the water. When Bill Wilson, one of the founding members of AA and author of most of the big blue book of Alcoholics Anonymous, came up with this step, I’m pretty sure he was referring to “God” when he instructs us to ask “Him” to remove our shortcomings.

Me and my unbelieving self had a problem.

My concept of a higher power, at this point, was still, shall we say, vaguely-defined. Going back to step three, where I “turned my will and my life over to the care of god as I understood him,” helped. Ah yes, the indescribable Tao. Perhaps, even without a personified concept of god I could still take this step. Granted, it would be more abstract than the way others I talked to had taken it, but that felt okay.

The dilemma: How does one ask a non-personified concept for anything?

I didn’t have the answer. Someone suggested I pull out the Tao Te Ching again and see what I could find. It was the perfect suggestion and the beginning of a poetic love affair that continues still.

Instead of just reading other’s translations of the Tao Te Ching, I began writing my own poetic interpretation, and in doing so, I found I was somehow working step seven, somehow “asking god,” making a request of the universe, calling on the Tao.

Some snippets of my own interpretations of the Tao Te Ching that ultimately became my seventh step:

When I am still,
And empty—
That is when I hear.
When I run,
Or grip, relentless
To my fear,
I only hear an echo
Of the faintest echo…
And yet,
Without those vibrations
Upon my ear,
For what would I listen,
Or hope to ever hear?
___

For there’d be no light, if not for the darkness,
If not for the shadow of grief.
For there’d be no healing, if not for the pain,
If not for the wounds of grief.
For there’d be no music, if not for the silence,
If not for the stillness of grief.
For there’d be no joy, if not for the sadness,
If not for the despair of grief.

The negative creates the positive,
For without the good, there’d be no bad.
The right defines the wrong,
For without laws, there’d be no freedom.
The high relies on the low,
For with nowhere to start, there’d be nowhere to go.
___

If I give to you now
That which I need,
(That which you don’t)
What will I have to offer
When you do?
All I can give,
And all I hope for,
Is silence,
A breath of understanding.
I cannot
I will not
Compete
With the whisper within you.
I only wish to hear it,
To really, truly hear it.
And to let you know that I do.
If we come,
Naked, and
Without,
We can begin here,
Right here,
In ignorance.
No baggage.
No weapons.
No need.
It is better that I not lead,
Or be led by you.
___

Be the womb.
Be the water.
Be the giver of life.
When the current changes,
Do not swim.
When the tide is high,
Ride the waves.
When the rapids loom,
Do not paddle.
When the tide slips away,
Drift in the surf.
Follow the flow,
Be that water,
And flow where others
Cannot go.
___

This, by no means, explains the entirety of step seven. I had many shortcomings then. I have many shortcomings now, still. When I can live by my own interpretation of the Tao, when I can practice these things, this is my way of “asking 'Him' [it] to remove all of my shortcomings.” It is not a one-time prayer to some god (or God) somewhere out there to remove my tendencies to manipulate and control, to take away my demanding nature or unrealistic expectations. No, for me, it is living every day and every moment of my life doing my best to practice the spiritual principles that are ever-changing and ever-deepening.

If your soul is centered in the Source,
It gives freely,
Without demand or expectation,
Without control or manipulation,
And it will be a light to all those
Who search for light,
And all those who
See their own shadows.

The Big Lie

The Big Lie

I thought it made me stronger.
I thought it made me happier.
I thought it made me better.

I thought I found the answer.
I thought I found freedom.
I thought I found myself.

I thought I should stop.
I thought I would stop.
I thought I could stop.

It became my everything.
It became my reason.
It became my life.

It became my enemy.
It became my prison.
It became my grave.

__________
Photo-Art by Maze
"Shattered" c. 2003

Step Six: Authenticity

STEP SIX
"We became entirely ready to have god remove all these defects of character."
[Spiritual principle associated with this step: Willingness]

All these defects of character? All what defects of character?

The first time I worked step six it was about letting go of all the coping mechanisms I had always used, but no longer needed. These coping mechanisms got in the way of living life fully and authentically. Over time, they became my defects of character. There were many, but I’ll cover three here that severely limited my ability to truly be who I was meant to be, who I could have been, without these defects of character.

Character Defect #1: It may sound strange to say that suicidal ideation is a coping mechanism, but it was one of my big ones. When things felt as if they were spiraling out of control, thoughts of suicide were usually my first line of defense. Planning my death was comforting to me. In my mind, it was my escape route, the way out of anything and everything. Without it, my only choice was to face the things in my life that were too emotionally overwhelming to face.

I learned this coping mechanism when I was a teenager, I think. When I got caught doing something wrong - which I often did - I'd threaten suicide. Everyone would freak out. I'd be sent to see school counselors, youth ministers, and eventually psychologists. The focus became on my emotional turmoil, rather than my crime or misbehavior. After a while, as I grew older and became more and more entrenched in the culture and lifestyle of addiction, suicidal ideation was no longer simply to get out of trouble with my parents, the law and school officials, but it became a viable option to get out of my own emotional self imprisonment, mental anguish, and spiritual bankruptcy.

Character Defect #2: Another coping mechanism I used long after I needed it was a kind of disassociation. Disassociation is often used by people who have been sexually abused as children, especially when the abuse is chronic and on-going. I learned to ‘go away,’ as I remember calling it at age 11. After the first few incidents I discovered I could do something unexplainable with my mind – even though my body was in that dimly lit, dirty garage apartment of my abuser, in my mind I could go far, far away to lighter, cleaner places. I remember the first time I did it. I was staring at a rusty, dirty sink across the room, and the colors of the rust and grime reminded me of a sunset, for some strange reason. Suddenly I was on Treasure Island Beach, riding the waves on my red and blue raft after a hurricane. The waves were huge and they’d throw me off the raft and the currents would suck me under, but I’d always pop back up from the surf and there my mother would be, searching for me from the shoreline, making sure I re-emerged from the six foot waves. Later, once I mastered those waves, I went onto other places, places I’d been before and places I wished to someday visit.

Later, as a teenager, and then as an adult, I was rarely present for any sexual encounters, even though I was in control and making the choices about my own sexual activity at that point. For some reason, I continued to disassociate during sex. I used this coping mechanism for more than twenty years.

Character Defect #3: A negative self-image is a hard thing to shake. When I was a teenager, I took beautiful photographs. I loved to take photographs of everything I encountered. I rarely shared them with others. When someone happened to see my work, they’d tell me I should pursue a career in photography, they’d ask for prints of my work. I rarely complied. I believed they were ‘just saying that,’ for whatever reason. In college, I wrote for the college newspaper and was chosen to be the Editor-in-Chief my sophomore year. I was amazed that anyone thought my writing and editing skills were worthy. I won awards for writing and editing on the regional level, as well as the state level. I was always amazed and wondered how this could be. I graduated college, the first in my family to ever do so, but minimized that accomplishment and chalked it up to luck of the draw. I sabotaged many jobs during my life because I didn’t feel as if I deserved the prestige or the titles given to me. I stopped taking pictures and writing somewhere along the way. I never felt good enough, no matter what other people said about me, no matter how many times I changed careers (quite effortlessly, I might add), and no matter what my accomplishments were. Quite simply, I never believed in myself.

Suicidal ideation, disassociation, and my negative self-image were just three of my character defects I had to address head-on in step six. At the point I first worked this step, I was still having some trouble with the whole ‘god thing’ and wasn’t sure how to “become entirely ready to allow god to remove these defects of character,” so I sought help from others, from friends, a sponsor, a therapist. I discovered that “allowing god” for me meant opening myself up to others and asking for help. It meant allowing others to help me identify the self-defeating behaviors and beliefs I had been clinging to for so long, and then allowing them to help me discard these defects of character.

The result of working the sixth step?

Knowing I no longer needed a permanent escape route from life.

Knowing I could be fully present for my life and not disassociate at will.

Knowing I have talent and skills and they are worthy enough for others to gaze upon and appreciate.

The real result?

Authenticity.

It's Not That I Don't Care

Riding in the car the other day, my daughter and I passed by a trailer park - literally on the other side of the tracks in our town.

My daughter said, "Isn't that where Amy lives now?"

Me: "Yes, last I heard. She may have moved by now."

Indignant, my daughter replied, "You don't know? How can you not know? She was your sponsor at one time, mom. She was your friend! How can you just drop someone like that? That's what I hate about your meetings, about your recovery. You people just drop your friends just because they start drinking or using drugs again. I would never do that to my friends just because they did something I didn't agree with!"

I want to respond defensively. I do, actually. But it doesn't feel good. I tell her the truth, but it doesn't feel good. Nothing I say will make the stark reality feel good. The reality is that this is the way of recovery. Relapse is a part of life. It's sad. It happens. Everyone else moves on.

Amy was my sponsor for a couple of years. She had five years clean and sober when I met her. I had zero. I had been in treatment twice before, but relapsed both times. This time I came to a meeting without going through a treatment center. (I actually brought a friend to a meeting because my friend was about to lose custody of her children due to her drug use. I thought the Narcotics Anonymous meetings might help her, even though they didn't work for me. Funny, she left after a couple of weeks and here it is ten years later and I'm still here. Guess the third time was a charm for me. Another story for another day.)

Anyhow, I met Amy. When you have zero days clean and don't know how you're going to even get through the next hour without getting fucked up, meeting someone with five years clean is a big deal. You consider it a miracle. You are in awe. Over the following year or two, I heard Amy share some things about her life that I wanted for my own. I wanted what she had found. She inspired me. After my first sponsor moved away, I asked Amy if she would sponsor me. She said she would. For the next three years, we became very close. Not only was she my sponsor, she was my friend. And I, hers.

Shortly after Amy celebrated 10 years in recovery, she went through a nasty divorce and hooked up with this guy she met in a meeting. The guy inherited a couple million dollars and relapsed. She went with him. He came and went, but Amy never really came back into recovery. She'd come to a few meetings, try to sober up again, but never lasted more than a few days or a month, tops. In the past 4 or 5 years, she's called me off and on to let me know where she lives, sometimes to cry, sometimes to ask for help. I have taken her to meetings, and even to the hospital on more than one occasion. She always goes back to using. She just can't seem to quit dope. I call her every few months to check on her, when I know her phone number. I've talked with her parents out in Texas, and know they even got her to come back home to Texas for a while. I guess it was their hope that they could help her. She went, but she came back to Georgia, strung out again.

She called me a couple months ago wondering if I had a bedroom she could rent. I don't think she had a job. I know she didn't want to get clean. Her latest boyfriend had kicked her out and she just needed somewhere to stay. I told her I would take her to the hospital/rehab, and then we'd talk about her coming to live in my home. She said she'd call me back, but I haven't heard from her since. I hope I will hear from her again, and soon. I hope she will call and say she is ready to get some help. I hope, one day, she will be through, she will have had enough. Again.

Relapse is a reality of addiction. Most people have to go through relapse at least once. Many people never come back, and still others have a very difficult time ever again being able to string together any 'clean time' after relapsing. It is a sad fact.

I try to explain to my daughter that it is not that I no longer love Amy; it is not that I don't care. I do care, very much. And here I go, feeling defensive again, but...

I can't be around it. I can't live with someone, or even hang out with her, if she is using drugs. I may be able to handle it for a little while. I may be able to be strong for a time. Eventually, though... and I know this from experience... I will end up using right along with her. One day I will see that line of cocaine on the table and I will partake. One day I'll smell the burning dope in the house and it will trigger a craving in me that I can't fight. One day I will succumb. My brain has been permanently altered, this I believe. When I see my drug of choice my brain reacts differently to that exposure than someone else's brain, someone who has never been addicted to that drug, someone who can take it or leave it. I don't have that take-it-or-leave-it option any longer.

I know this.

And I must live my life accordingly.

Step Five: This Could Get Ugly

STEP FIVE
"We admitted to god, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs."
[Spiritual principle(s) associated with this step: Integrity, Honesty]
I sometimes prefer darkness over light.

The living room needs a good dusting - if I open the shades, this becomes obvious to me and anyone else walking into the living room. If I keep the shades closed, I don't really notice the dust particles, and chances are, no one else will notice, either.

In step five, I have to open the shades. I have to let in the light that will show every dust particle floating in the air, the collected dust on the furniture, and the dust bunnies hiding under the couch. I have to stand in the center of the living room and take it all in. It is not a pretty sight.

If that's not bad enough, I have to invite someone into the dusty, dirty living room without tidying up before they get there.

Why is it so hard to share who I am, who I really am, with another person? That's what step five is about, see. Before taking this step, I had shared a lot of different pieces of myself with a lot of different people. I had never shared all of me with one other person. As far back as I can remember, this is how I operated... you get to know this part of me, and he gets to know this other part of me, and she gets to know still another part of me. Taken all together, it is the whole of me, but I always felt too vulnerable and exposed to put the whole of me out there, all at once.

Why is it so hard to share the whole of me with another person? I believe the fear is rooted in rejection. When you know who I really am, when I am fully exposed, you will not like some parts of me that I previously hid away from you. When you see me in the light, without shadows, you will turn away from me. When you hear what I've done, the sins I've committed, you will condemn me. When you know how I think, when my soul is laid bare, you will hate me. When I allow you to know me, to truly know me, you will wish you had never met me.

I am so ugly. I have hidden so much. I am cloaked in shame. See these things, hear these words, this is the whole of me.

My pain was my excuse, but in this light there are no worthy excuses. As much as I experienced pain in my life, I also caused it. The harsh light shows me this. The harsh light shows you this.

My fear was my armor, but I have been stripped of my armor. So many of the fears I have held onto, so many of the fears that have guided my life could have long ago been discarded. I chose to hold onto them and I chose to allow them to hold me back from becoming who I could have become, who I was meant to become.

My shame was my prison, but the cell door has been unlocked for a long time; I kept the door closed and told myself I didn't have the key. It was more comfortable to remain in that prison of shame, playing the part of the victim, telling myself it was not safe to come out of my cell.

The exact natures of my wrongs: Pain, fear, shame. All of my anger, all of my sadness, all of my dishonesty, all of my guilt, it is all rooted in pain and fear and shame. Every crime I've ever committed, every hurt I've ever caused, every lie I've ever told, it is all rooted in pain and fear and shame.

Pain and fear and shame. These are the exact natures of all my wrongs. Under the dirt and the dust, in the light, for god to see, for me to see, for you to see, these have been the underlying, guiding forces of all my life. Pain and fear and shame.

Because you hear me, my pain is lessened.
Because you hold me, my fear dissolves.
Because you see me, my shame is erased.

Gospel Tabernacle

I came upon this barn in Carlton, Georgia while driving around with no particular destination. It was in the middle of a field, behind a mobile home. It looked so out of place. I found myself wishing it had been Saturday night or whenever it is that people fill the barn and sing gospel music. I would have liked to stand outside and listen to the voices carried out on the evening breeze.

Step Four: Just The Facts, M'am

Ends...some people will rob their mother for the ends; rats snitch on one another for the ends; sometimes kids get murdered for the ends.
--Everlast

STEP FOUR
“We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”
[Spiritual principle(s) associated with this step: Courage, Self-honesty]

Take out a pen and piece of paper. Make that, several pieces of paper. Might as well make it a spiral notebook, or two. Lots of writing to be done!

A ‘searching and fearless moral inventory’ sounds ominous. I know I avoided moving on to this step for quite some time. I was so afraid of what I would discover about myself. Perhaps that is why courage is one of the spiritual principles associated with step four. I had to get past the fear of what I would find out about myself and just put pen to paper and start… somewhere… anywhere… just start writing.

I have heard, many times, that the steps are in the order they are in for a reason. I know that this is true because I once tried to skip steps one, two and three and just do a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself. I guess I assumed that step four was the key to getting clean. I figured if I just did that, then I’d know myself better and therefore be able to change without being in a 12 step group or in any sort of formal recovery program. The inventory I took ended up being neither searching nor fearless. When I look back on that inventory now, I see a lot of justifications and rationalizations for my behavior.

“I stole the Loratabs from Kelly’s medicine cabinet, but they were expiring that month anyhow.”

“I borrowed money from my son’s savings account, but I always intended to pay it back.”

A true fourth step, a searching fourth step, a fearless fourth step, is an honest moral inventory.

The word inventory means just that. A stock-taking. A list. Inventory it, don’t explain it. Just write it out as it happened without justifying or rationalizing or even trying to understand. Understanding will come later. Understanding comes in the steps that follow. Step four is simply an inventory.

“I stole $2000 from Kim.” There is no reason to explain that at this point.

“I endangered my children’s lives by driving drunk when they were in the car.” That’s it, list it and move on.

“I often took my children with me when I picked up drugs in dangerous neighborhoods.” Avoid the desire to add, ‘but it was better than leaving them home alone.’

“I used rent and food money to buy drugs.” No need to explain how I still managed to feed my family.

“I lied to my husband about where I spent my time.” Just the facts, nothing more.

“I sometimes befriended people, or even slept with them, just for the drugs they could provide to me.” So what if I liked the person or found them attractive – that was not why I befriended them, or slept with them, initially.

“I called into work sick many, many times when I was not sick.” It doesn’t matter that I had a hangover or was coked up from Friday to Sunday and went without sleep the entire weekend.

"I took the left-over Morphine patches and the bottles of Dilaudid and Xanax from my mother's room before the coroner even took her body away." I don't even have a justification for this one.

Take an inventory. Just the facts.

The thing about years of active drug addiction is that it changes you. Inside, at your core, you are still the same person, but on the outside, what others see, is very different than what is at your core. Your insides don’t match your outsides.

Inside, you have values and standards and morals like anyone else. Outside, your behavior doesn’t reflect those values and standards and morals, at least not consistently. Values and morals usually dictate behavior. Not so in active addiction. The need, the hunger, the all-consuming craving is what dictates behavior.

For example, I know it is wrong to steal. That goes against my moral fiber. It is a direct contradiction to the values I was raised on and took to heart. Yet, I did steal. I stole from strangers, from establishments, from friends, from family. I stole merchandise and money and drugs. Did I feel guilty? Absolutely. Did that stop me? Rarely. The need to satisfy my craving almost always outweighed the need to live up to my own internal standards.

I am not going to go through my laundry list of crimes and misdeeds, of hurts and manipulations, of my moral degradation and spiritual demoralization. It is not necessary to do that here, now. I have done that. I have worked step four several times in these past ten years.

Every time I work step four it feels as if I go deeper, like another layer has come off and I discover more about
who I was,
who I became,
who I am now,
who I am becoming.

Rumblestrips Ahead!

Nine years ago I discovered rumblestrips. My life was changed forever. Seriously. Do you know what a rumblestrip is? I was driving around DC and came upon a sign that said, “Rumblestrips Ahead.” What the hell is a rumblestrip? Just as I opened my mouth to ask my passenger that question, I ran over those raised bumps in the road that vibrate your car and warn you that a stop sign is ahead. Oh, so that’s what a rumblestrip is. Makes sense.

From that moment on, I began to think about rumblestrips and I haven’t stopped since. You think I’m exaggerating, but I am not. I think about them all the time, and not only when I’m driving over them. They have become the metaphor of my life. I own the domain name rumblestrips.net, and I’d own the dot com version, too, if someone hadn’t beat me to it. The dot com site of rumblestrips is owned by a band of the same name in the UK. If and when I publish a book I’ve been thinking about for some time now, I will call it Rumblestrips.

There are two types of rumblestrips. The first type are constructed several yards before an intersection. These warn you about the upcoming intersection and subsequent stop sign or traffic signal. The second type are shoulder rumblestrips. They are constructed along the side of the highway, usually on the interstate, and they are narrow and run along the shoulder of the outside lane. If you start to drift off onto the shoulder of the highway, you feel the little vibration and hear a rumble. You can then correct your course.

As I go through my life, looking back on the past, as well as being aware of what’s going on in the here-and-now, it is easy to identify the rumblestrips. They are warnings that there is danger ahead, that I’m drifting off course, that there is a dangerous intersection ahead, basically that something is just not quite right or normal.

My rumblestrips come by way of other people’s comments, my conscience, information gathered, something I read, but most often from my own intuition.

The first identifiable rumblestrip in my life was when my parents took me out of public school after the 8th grade and enrolled me in a private, Christian school. Even though they didn’t know about my shenanigans with the boat, and other similar things I was getting into, they must have sensed something in me that told them they needed to intervene and change my environment. Even though I didn’t think they knew about my pot smoking and newly discovered love of alcohol, they must have known on some level. Thankfully, they chose to throw up a rumblestrip. I fought them and cried endless tears, to no avail… on the first day of 9th grade I found myself in a small, Christian school, away from my drug-using, trouble-making friends. I was the only one I knew in school who smoked cigarettes. Unlike school the previous year, when I wanted to smoke, I was out behind the school alone doing it, rather than standing in a circle with a dozen other rule-breakers.

The next rumblestrip that came along was making the volleyball team as a freshman. It was hard to get stoned everyday after school when I had volleyball practice and games. After a while, sports became more important to me than getting high, at least during high school.

Another rumblestrip during my teenage years was my involvement with a youth group at our church. This involvement didn’t stop me from doing a lot of harmful and stupid things, but it curbed me. Like a rumblestrip, it didn’t force me to stop, but it sure provided me a lot of warning about the dangers of what I was doing.

I won’t go through all the rumblestrips in my life; there are simply too many. Once I became aware of rumblestrips, though, my awareness level of both myself and the circumstances and events of my life became so much greater. And I believe that if I remain aware and open myself up to every day’s lessons, I am a better person, a happier person, and live a much fuller life.

Step Three: Take Me To The River

STEP THREE
"We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of god, as we understood him."
[Spiritual principle(s) associated with this step: Trust, Faith]

It was 1988. My boss called me into her office. She said she had thought long and hard about firing me, and that she probably should, but instead she was going to give me an ultimatum. After work, on that very day, she said, she and I would attend an AA or an NA meeting. If I didn’t agree, I was to clear out my office and she would accept my resignation before the end of the day.

I went to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting with her.

I sat in the back of the room. She stayed outside talking to some others who didn’t come into the meeting. She didn’t give me the option of staying outside. I looked around the room and saw posters with quotes everywhere:

“Just For Today.”

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

“God does for me what I cannot do for myself.”

“Step 3: Turn it over to God.”

What the hell is this place? Who are these people, a bunch of Jesus-freaks? I closed my mind and went off to the private place in my head I know so well. Everyone got in a circle at the end of the meeting and said a prayer. I bolted as soon as the people on either side of me let go of my hand.

My boss caught up with me half-way to the car. “So, what did you think?”

“A bunch of fucking Jesus-freaks. Have you ever actually been to one of these meetings?”

“No, but my brother goes to NA and it saved his life.”

I doubted that. “Well, it’s a lot of bullshit and I’m not going back. Fire me, if you want, but I’m not quitting and I’m not going back to listen to a bunch of religious fanatics talk about how they used to get fucked up and now they don’t because they found god. I got saved when I was nine and it obviously didn’t take.”

She fired me. I am sure I could have fought it, but I was snorting cocaine all day at work and I had come back from lunch on more than one occasion after downing five or six drinks. Some days I drank more and didn’t come back at all. She was right to fire me.

I ended up in my first rehab a few months later. My mind remained closed. They talked about god there, too. I asked them how the hell they could bill my medical insurance company for requiring me to attend religious meetings as part of my ‘treatment.’ I never got an answer.

Many times in the following years, I stumbled back into AA or NA meetings, either on my own, or as a requirement of whatever rehab center I happened to be in at the time. And every single time I got to step three, I balked. Usually I did more than that – usually I left and didn’t come back for a long time.

One time, in 1996, I got clean for a few months and didn’t run when I got to step three. I decided to revisit the god of my childhood. I really tried to believe in that concept of god. I prayed. I talked about god. I went to church some. I tried. But I didn’t believe in that god, and hadn’t for a very long time. I ended up using again.

When I got clean again in 1997, I heard something I somehow missed all those other times. I heard this: “We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to ….god… as we understood him.” Hmm, well, I don’t understand god at all. Every version of god I’ve ever read about or heard about doesn’t make any sense to me.

I got busy defining a new version of god, one that made sense to me, one that I could halfway understand and believe in. Through my research and seeking, I discovered I believed in reincarnation. My soul was also recognizing many truths in the eastern religions. Someone gave me a copy of the Tao Te Ching after I shared about my aversion to the whole ‘god-thing’ in a meeting one night. I read Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Tao Te Ching in its entirety that night. Then I went to the bookstore and bought several other translations.

My favorite translation remains Mitchell's:

Tao #16:

Empty your mind of all thoughts.
Let your heart be at peace.
Watch the turmoil of beings,
but contemplate their return.

Each separate being in the universe
returns to the common source.
Returning to the source is serenity.

If you don't realize the source,
you stumble in confusion and sorrow.
When you realize where you come from,
you naturally become tolerant,
disinterested, amused,
kindhearted as a grandmother,
dignified as a king.
Immersed in the wonder of the Tao,
you can deal with whatever life brings you,
and when death comes, you are ready.

Suddenly, I saw a new face of god, one I’d never seen before.

When I am at one with the source, when I at one with the Tao, it is like floating on a raft down the river, gently going with the current. When I go against the Tao, when I try to manipulate people and situations, when I attempt to control all that is around me, it is like trying to fight the current and go upstream, against the current. ‘Working’ step three, for me, means flowing with that current. Even when I come upon whitewater, even when the rapids batter my raft, if I allow the current to guide me, I will get where I need to go.

Flowing with that current, realizing where I come from, discovering my source, my concept of god, my very personal, very individual, very private spiritual beliefs, allows me to deal with whatever life brings me.

It is that simple. And it always was.

Step Two: It Ain't About God

STEP TWO
"We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."
[Spiritual principle behind this step: Hope]

Oh, god, it was happening again. My heart was beating so hard against my chest I thought it was going to hammer a hole through muscle, bone and skin. My arms and my legs were weak, so much so I had to sit down on the floor. My vision started to tunnel, everything black around the edges, the pinpoint of sight getting smaller and smaller. Last week I passed out when it went this far. I tried to hang on to conscious thought, but it was so hard. Somehow I stood up, walked a few steps, only to sit back down. I thought I should try to get to a phone; I should try to call somebody. But then my vision started to clear. My heartbeat stopped pounding the wall of my chest. I sat there on the floor for a few more minutes, then stood and went to the kitchen sink to splash my face and neck with cool water. It was over. This time. How long until the next time? I called the doctor's office to make an appointment. After hearing my symptoms, the nurse told me to come in right away and they'd work me in.

I described the symptoms to the doctor. After finding my heart beating normally and no other symptoms present, the doctor decided to hook me up to a heart monitor for 48 hours. I was to return in two days with a log of everything I did for those 48 hours.

The heart monitor and the logbook would provide him some answers.

And that might have worked, had he known the questions.

I didn't tell him about the half gram of cocaine I snorted thirty minutes prior to the latest episode. I didn't tell him that I sometimes passed out completely. I didn't tell him that this happened several times a week, sometimes more than once a day. What I really wanted was for the heart monitor and logbook to reveal that my cocaine use was not the cause of what was happening, but that it was something unrelated. Instead of logging, "hit of cocaine" in the logbook, I logged, "caffeine pill" or "espresso." If the cocaine was the problem, the doctor would tell me that these episodes only happened after the "caffeine pill" and "espresso" entries. Then I would know. He wouldn't know, but I would know.

I didn't pray a lot, never have used prayer much in my life, but I prayed a lot those 48 hours. I prayed that the cocaine wasn't the cause of whatever was happening to me. I prayed I had a faulty heart, or a stuck valve, something that heart surgery could fix.

Wait. Stop. Did you hear that? Did you hear what I just said? I was actually praying that I had a heart defect that required open heart surgery because, in my mind, that was more acceptable and more treatable than hearing the doctor say I had to lay off the "espresso" or it was going to kill me.

That's insanity.

And that is why, in step two, I had to find something, some power greater than me, greater than my addiction, that could actually restore me to some semblance of sanity. The addiction was too big to fight on my own. I wasn't the 'power greater.' Most people think this step means find God. I wasn't ready to deal with such a task after working step one and moving on to step two. I needed something right then, right there, right now. I didn't have time to find god. I needed hope and I needed it fast. I admitted I was powerless over my addiction and that left a huge hole right in the center of my soul. I had to fill it. I had to grab onto something that was bigger than my addiction in order to stay clean for another week, another day, another hour.

For me, I found that power greater than myself in the collective power of other addicts staying clean, and helping one another. I went to an NA or AA meeting everyday, every single day, for 6 months. "The therapeutic value of one addict helping another is without parallel." That is straight from the book of Narcotics Anonymous. I found it to be true.

I also found a power greater than myself and greater than my addiction in two weekly sessions with a therapist. I used this power for six months, then dialed down the power a bit to once-a-week sessions for another 18 months. I started feeling empowered.

I got a sponsor, someone to help me walk through the steps, someone to help me walk through the pain, someone to make me feel heard and understood. I also reached out to several others who were on the same path I had begun. I developed friendships with women who had been walking this same path for a year, three years, five years. Some of those friendships are still strong today, ten years later. My two closest friends are women I met in those first months of recovery. Those relationships became stronger than my addiction. Using again meant losing those friendships.
Once I discovered those powers greater than my addiction - the collective power of recovering addicts, therapy, a sponsor, and relationships with others in recovery - I was able to breathe a little, to loosen my panicked grip, to discover what needed to come next. I was able to take some time to allow the toxins in my body and my mind to clear out.

I was behaving differently.
I was thinking differently.
I was feeling differently.
I was being restored to sanity.

Step One: Never Enough

STEP ONE
"We admitted that we were powerless over our addiction and that our lives had become unmanageable."
[The spiritual principle(s) associated with this step: Honesty, Surrender, Acceptance]

I don't know whether or not I was destined to be a drug addict. I don't know if I was born with some gene that predisposed me to addiction. I suspect I was, but only because addiction tends to run in families. Some argue that the tendency for children of addicts to become addicts is greater because of the environment they grow up in, because the modeling of their parents. I don't buy that argument, though, because neither of my parents drank alcohol or used drugs. In fact, the first time I went into rehab that was part of my denial. How could I be an addict if it was hereditary since neither of my parents were addicts? And how could I be an addict if it was learned and environmental since neither of my parents were addicts? I didn't fit either way you looked at it, therefore I must not be an addict. Sounded good to me. I didn't want to be an addict. I wanted to get the hell out of that treatment center so I could get back to using my drugs.

While in treatment that first time, when I was 25 years old, I learned from my father that his mother was an alcoholic and died from her alcoholism. I also learned that his sister was a drug addict. She committed suicide when she was 28. I knew that part because her two children joined our family and came to live in our house when I was 12, after their mother committed suicide. I just didn't know that she was a drug addict. So, for me, it seems that heredity does play a role, rather than environment.

But that first time I went into rehab, I went because I was dying, not because I wanted to stop using drugs. I had dropped 65 pounds in less than six months due to my choice of drugs at the time. When they checked me into the hospital, they wrote on my chart, "a 25 year old malnourished female." I felt like I was dying. I looked like I was dying. And if the drugs weren't going to take me, Depression was knockin' at the door and he had a loaded gun.

Somehow, even after staying in that treatment center for 35 days, even after everything I learned, I still came out not believing I was an addict. I figured if I stayed away from the cocaine, I'd be okay. I could still smoke pot and drink, I was sure of this. So that is what I did. I lasted a little over a year before I picked up the cocaine again. But I told myself I was going to be much more careful this time, really monitor my use and not get carried away. (You can insert a laugh here, if you'd like.)

A few years later I was in rehab again. I stayed a month that time. When I got out, I still wasn't sure I was a real addict, but I tried to follow the suggestions - some of them, at least - and I stayed clean for 3 months.

One day I walked outside to the backyard and my husband was smoking a joint. I took it from his hand, hit it, and proceeded to get stoned. The next day, I did it again. I stopped going to meetings and started drinking again within a week or two. It wasn't long until I was getting high everyday, drinking everyday, and then finally using cocaine again everyday. That lasted a couple more years. I went into rehab again. I didn't last very long - 5 months before I was using again.
Finally, in September 1997, I knew I was an addict. I just knew it. The denial was gone. The hope that I could ever use drugs and have any control was gone. I don't know exactly why my denial lifted when it did, I just know it did. I suddenly knew what it meant to be "powerless over my addiction." The second part of step one - admitting my life was unmanageable - was easy; I had known that since I was in my early 20's.

Being powerless was a concept I couldn't wrap my brain around. I just didn't understand what it meant. Or maybe I was just in denial about it. Whatever the case, I have never doubted my powerlessness over my addiction since 1997. I have no doubt that if I drink alcohol or use a mind-altering drug today, I'll need more tomorrow.

I have no doubt.

I have no doubt.

That is what it means to know I'm powerless over my addiction. As long as I held onto the belief, the hope, the wish that I might be able to use just a little or use just once or use just on weekends or use one drug but not another, as long as I held onto that, I was not admitting or accepting my powerlessness. Quite simply, I didn't believe I was powerless or else I could not have continued to use. So for me, I 'worked' step one when I knew in the depths of my soul, when I knew all the way to the very core of me,

without a doubt,

that if I took another toke, another hit, another bump, another drink, another pill, it wouldn't be enough.

It would never be enough.