Four years clean!!! How did I do it

I have spent so much of the last four years answering the question “How have you stayed clean? “ I continue to ponder, and refine my response as I learn more and more about my own recovery. So I thought I would lend my understanding for those of you willing. This is a process. There is no way for me to give to you what I have gained over the last four years, however I can share and hope to inspire, in other words, I can lead you to the water…… It is however up to you to drink. Recovery has to work like that because we are all beautiful snowflakes, no one process is going to work for everyone. The outline however remains the same, and I find myself saying this over and over to addicts all over. “Please go easy on yourself, this takes time, energy, and guts to make this happen.” Who cares, nothing in life is free! So with that first little bit in mind, figure out where you are on the journey and lets review some self-starters and other ideas to add to your arsenal of coping skills. Chances are you will find the glove that fits, and when you do….. Nothing can stop you!! Grab on to that, because as a recovering addict/alcoholic you do have a chance to learn things about yourself that without your addiction may have never been discovered. I have said and will say over and over that recovery is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

• Answer the question….. Why?

This is always a tough one for me to bring up in early recovering addicts but I do it anyway. As a top notch heroin junkie for years I know that asking me anything back then would have been a canned, bullshit response filled with my narcissism and peppered with the lies I told myself to survive.  However I am acutely aware of the reality that this answer came very early in recovery and might have been easier for me than it is for others.  My “why” was centered on restoring hope to my children and providing a chance for them to succeed in this crazy world. I did not need a therapist to tell me, my addiction put all of my kids in a really shitty dangerous place (my therapist did still tell me) I just didn’t need them too.  This great purpose in early recovery grew into the purpose I fulfill now with addicts. How could I have gained so much in recovery and not want to share it with everyone who would listen. Okay that is getting ahead of myself but the answer to the question why, was really to be a father again, to be connected again to my kids, everything trickled down from that core principle. So if you are not a Mother or a Father, you are something else and that is fine. Addicts, humans, family, friends, the world, and I could go on and on. You need to be connected, you need a purpose, and you need to know why that matters!

• You Matter!

Your voice needs to be heard. You may not believe that now, but there is beauty in that. This can be your moment of self-discovery. Your worth is based on your perception…. THAT IS REALITY! What anyone else thinks may have mattered for every minute of your life up until now, but focus up!  You got yourself into this mess and you are fully capable of getting yourself out. Find the place that scares you and start digging in. You don’t have to be fake not even a little, as a matter of fact the closer you get to the core of who you are and what you believe the more vulnerable and life altering your recovery will be.

• You can cry if you want to.

This is one of the toughest most significant changes in my life. During my drug use I spent very little time connected to the real me. Early in my recovery I found a friend, he was a tough looking skater type (these were my pre conceived and incorrect judgements, that’s a topic for a whole different handout.) He was a skater and he was a tough guy, but I remember the first time things got super deep in group, I looked up and he was crying, I lost it, I have been an unapologetic crier ever since that moment. I had been taught all my life that “real” men did not cry. This meant years of repressed emotions were about to come pouring out of me, and they did. Now I was like that for several months before I kind of re-centered myself and was able to communicate without fear that these emotional “fits” would get in my way. When I do get emotional I just try to slow down, I do not apologize and I do not regret letting people see this very real and human side of me, it has cultivated so many deep and meaningful connections. I encourage you to feel what you feel. This might be the single most significant thing in your life right now. The reason I say that is simple, there is no way to fully step into recovery without first knowing who you are and what makes you tick. Why are you sad? What makes you happy? Why are you angry? What motivates you? To answer these vital questions you are going to need to be emotionally connected to who you truly are. The authentic self.

• Be accountable.

This one is going to be super important and probably pretty uncomfortable especially early on in recovery, but really all the time. We have to be true to what we are doing, who we are, and what we say. This is going to be pretty foreign territory for most good drug addicts, since to really be good at this we had to become Unaccountable for just about everything, we had to make everything someone else’s fault.  Now we not only need to look internally for the cues that we are not thinking in our most honest way, we also need to be accountable for all these “recovery” related rules. This is a huge learning curve and it blows a ton of recovering addicts right back to the streets. We have to follow the rules. Whatever the rules are, you should know some are created for the sole purpose of teaching you this principle of living. Others are for your safety, either way what does it matter. You signed up now follow the rules. Life works the exact same way. I cannot tell you what a hard and shitty realization it was for me. Here is the ultimate reality, not following rules may in your mind go undiscovered, for me not following rules and allowing Shane to escape accountability while I was in rehab nearly killed him, and most definitely set his recovery back. Because I was not accountable and held to some bullshit “code” he nearly died and I would have shared in the responsibility in that.  I am thankful for how it worked out, but bottom line is the best way to the best possible recovery is through the most honest and accountable process you can find. It will never be perfect, it should always be your best effort.

• Be Brave.

No one could ever take this one from me. I learned early and often that it would take courage to recover. I still work on this constantly, that the beauty of the process, it will always be evolving and get better and harder. Courage is defined in my mind, as moving forward even though it is uncertain and hard.  For a control freak like me that statement alone is enough to create a mild panic attack. I have throughout my recovery and in my personal life, intentionally created situations with uncertain outcomes. When I take a Sunday drive, I have no idea where I might end up. What I try to pay attention too is the payoff at the end. I have countless personal stories about courage. I can say and have said many times that one of the things I picked up in my recovery came from a close personal friend. She taught me that 5 seconds of courage could change your entire life. I have on numerous occasions used her tiny little voice in my head to move towards doing amazing things, I said yes to my first public speaking assignment because of courage, I have said yes to so many things that I ran in fear of before. This is the one promise I can make, you will live a more connected and more fulfilling life when you rely on courage rather than make choices based in fear. Remember fear is typically based in an “old” script. Chances are as a recovering addict you are not who or what you think you are. You are powerful and capable of far more than you can imagine. The only way to prove that is to take 5 seconds of courage and jump in with both feet. So easy to say and so hard to do. Practice, practice, practice.

• Work for balance.

Finding your way to balance in life is such a monumental challenge at times. I want you to look at areas where your life is out of balance. This right now may be super obvious and a lack of balance is somewhat normal while you try to find your bearings in recovery, this might mean that your job, family life, love life, and social behavior are all shifted for a time. You cannot just declare that you want balance, as a matter of fact you can run on three wheels for a lot longer than you think. My point in telling you that is to remind you that just knowing your life is out of balance will not change a damn thing. You need to make the effort to move to a more centered place in your life. Best example for me to put some perspective on this will over simplify but will help you see what I mean. Let’s say I have set a goal to lose weight….. I know I need to eat right and exercise. This seem like simple program, now let’s add in the idea that I work full time, I have a girlfriend, I have 4 kids, and I am hooked on three different shows on Netflix. Now this may not be far from my actual reality, but as long as I have a purpose and I am goal oriented it is easy to see that my priorities will have to shift to maintain balance. It does not say all or any one thing needs to be cut out, but things will have to change. The reason I bring it up at all, because my default is to try and maintain all of these things at the current level I either need more hours in a 24 hour day or all of them will suffer. Looking for and understanding balance is so critical to living in the gray area and not pushing yourself into black and white disastrous thinking patterns.

• Be motivated.

I wish just saying this could be all it takes. I find being motivated so easy when things are going my way…. Funny right that I do great staying engaged when things are easy. The key to recovery and the key to a rock solid foundation to live on, is finding ways to stay motivated when life is throwing all it has straight at your face. You must know something about motivation or you would still be out on the street using and abusing.  Something burns inside of you, something that whispers to you that you are more than what you have come to accept, you are bigger and more powerful than the storm. In order to tame your demons you will need to be motivated. For me this comes from the clearly defined goals that govern my life. It is easy for me even on the toughest of days to do a few small things that move me toward my goals in my purpose. This provides a thought pattern that reminds me I am a powerful and unstoppable force. This allows me to recognize that only I can get in my way. With these little “pump up” sessions I am typically able to push my way through walls and climb over obstacles. All of this super tough talk is great and it gets me though a lot of struggle, but when the physical forces of sickness, trauma, tragedy, that are all very real close in around you. Do not use “motivation, or the lack of” to create a world of failure and negative self-talk. Look at the scope of all you are doing and above all be compassionate with yourself and those that you love and love you.

• Finally Be Positive.

This leads me to the single most important tenant of recovery and my life. Positive is not some bullshit idea that I came up with. It takes a mountain of work and strong mental ability to live in a world of positive, when everything that comes your way sometimes feels shrouded in darkness. I can tell you it is also not some cockeyed bullshit rose colored glass approach I have to reality. I know shit gets real, and I know shit gets real bad. What I refuse to acknowledge is that means I have to change my lens. My lens gets dirty, sometimes downright cracked and covered with shit! I hear and see things that feel like my heart could break and everything I am trying to maintain could just leak out. In those moments I turn to my peers, those who I love and that love me.  Finally is the super vital practice of understanding your brain and working towards rewiring it. Have you ever wondered why on a relatively good day, one bad thing can happen and that is all you think about, or how about when a relationship is going well and fine, but you can only focus on one little fight, or a time your feelings got hurt. This is because we default to the negative, this is the protective bias of the human brain.  Negative sticks like Velcro and positive seems to slip off like a nonstick frying pan. So the remedy to this, the “practice” for you to improve, is to become oriented to the positive experiences in your life. This can be self-created or the moments in everyday that you enjoy, the key is to take in those moments, experience them and make strong mental note of them, for me this all started in the sauna at the gym. I started meditating there, soon it became a place of refuge for me in almost every day and because I enjoyed it, and because I had experienced it in such a positive way, my default to any tough day was to get to the sauna, now I have learned and practiced this in several areas of my life, but I find great positive moments, fishing, walking, working out, the sauna etc. These are just thought starters, everybody does something they enjoy….. Are you truly enjoying it?

For me all of these things needs to be part of your process, they will help you reconnect to yourself, which will provide the means to connect to others, which by the way is the core key component of every single recovery program out there. You need to reconnect. Life is an extraordinary, challenging adventure. You have to be engaged in the process of living it or you will miss it.