I am an addict, and recovery is my out from the chaos. Abstinence and an elevated level of serenity are truly achieved by looking at recovery as a lifestyle. As a sustainable solution to addiction, our journeys are hopefully spent applying recovery to all situations and undertakings in our early stages of development. The one day at a time concept is crucial. Sooner or later, with regressively-hard work, this application of new behaviors becomes who I am, and feels progressively natural. I learn and strive not to react, but to respond. Recovery is apparent in how I handle everything. The good, the bad, and the situations that used to baffle me become a transparent example of living NA principles. Where I lied, I am now honest. Where I procrastinated, I am now motivated. My thoughts are seasoned with a grain of humility traversing the freeway of our souls. We are human. A humble attitude carries a certain evolution, and I never look at my progress with an attitude of arrival. I always consider myself travelling. Progress not perfection.
Today I start my new job. I have been hired as support staff at a popular treatment center in Vancouver. This concept of working forty hours a week is crazy. My main issue with this is, I don’t like acting under any sort of authority. I’m not afraid of hard work, but ideally I am entirely self-directed where I choose my own hours and march to the beat of my own drum, which I have been doing since November. No more nap from two to four like the “siesta” tradition that blew my mind when I was living in Mexico.
My partner is dropping me off on her way. This fact alone perplexes the outlook on my journey, to say the least. My father used to drop me off at the front door here as a client on my first day clean, fresh out of the Downtown Eastside. Before entering, I would cross the street and whip out the foil, inebriation always being my modus operandi. Today I cross the street and enter on salaried payroll ready to take orders. I’m dressed conservatively for the part. A plain V-neck t-shirt, black pants, and the ’91 Nike Air Max Persian Violet sneakers my dad used to wear.. in 1991 when they were original. I managed to find a throwback release of this sneaker earlier this year. My point is, I am wearing nothing to instill skewed and materialistic versions of a healthy path to full recovery.
Upon arrival at the treatment center, everything looks and feels familiar. It carries a certain addict-oriented vibe I am accustomed to. There are new clients sitting on the bench in the waiting room, apprehensively pondering the irony of feeling their lives are over upon intake. The majority of residents are carry an average cleantime of fifteen to thirty days. This period of abstinence is crucial in any addicts developmental timeline. If we are to be successful, we need to be suggestion sponges. We absorb any and all information we learn in order to test it out and apply it should it work for us.
In my case, where I am working my eighteenth attempt at getting clean, one would think that any work done in the past is transferable. Yes, there are teachings and tools that I carry over from previous attempts, but progress in recovery is not linear. Living these spiritual principles and using the tools requires practice, and this is only facilitated by sustained abstinence. Often I have lost old connections, maybe having maintained one here and there, but it is never like it was. On the other hand, active addiction is very much a linear process. For example, when I experience relapse, even after four years of abstinence, when I first use drugs I pick up where I left off in the flow of chaos. I don’t start off again by waiting outside the liquor store for a boot.. I’m down on the block getting low right away. My point is, resuming the flow of anything innate comes naturally. When I suffer from addiction the bad wiring in my brain is always lying under the surface of my hard work, ready to resume it’s insanely-monstrous intentions once again. This is all based on an exceptional level fear engrained deep within myself. This is what the real world fails to realize and accept about addiction. The drive to destroy our lives doesn’t lie in the notion that we just want to party. We are full of fear, and terrified of people, places, and things. Our sole outlet is desperately seeking to numb our brains through substance abuse. A spiritual solution based on self-described faith is generally the solution, should you be a true addict or alcoholic.
What a perplexing disease. It is extremely difficult to manage, as every case of addiction is different. People come from various places and walks of our insanely-confusing lives. We were all raised differently. We are all victims of different types of trauma, and we all experience different catalysts and cultures of unmanageability long before consistent symptoms develop. Everyone has a different story to tell, and as a result we require a solution and treatment based on our personality and life experience. This is why there is no pill that cures addiction. This magic pill would have to contain unique receptor-engulfing qualities based on the chemical makeup of each special version of addict, the variance would extend to each suffering individual. Medication is not a sustainable solution as a whole to combat addiction.
Naturally, we do in fact have conditions which require different types of medication. The thing most people don’t realize is medication is strictly there to level the playing field of life. If I need help with anxiety, I take a pill to level myself out. If I am bi-polar, I take medication to level myself out. As a human being, this chemical balance only brings me to an even point in my mental make up so I am capable of doing the inner work needed to live serenely. In addicts, living a serene life requires more attention in this field. We need to experience an acute personality transformation to overcome negative thoughts and feelings which drive addictive behaviors in the first place. Humans operate effectively with a solid amount of sleep, a balanced diet, exercise, and a consistent mental health regime. The medication to bring us up to a satisfactory benchmark in order to be capable of doing the work needed.
As humans in general, sleep is one of those things that often fails to register in our brains as a dominating factor in methods of maintaining our serenity. Without sleep and rest, I am personally doomed. When overtired, acting out becomes a standard practice. Basic tasks can
seem overwhelming and volatile behavior patterns dominate my routine. Insufficient sleep affects our brain function as a whole, this can include reduced emotional and attentional regulation, diminished rates at which we process information, and renders our ability to manifest insight. It also drastically affects our ability to absorb and consolidate memory. In more acute cases of long term sleep deprivation, buildup of toxic waste products during the day are not flushed out and over time developing Alzheimer’s disease is possible. Co-morbidly, anxiety and depression are highly intensified during periods of less sleep; these two awful conditions are very common in addicts. Our ability to live on day at a time, which is a universal anti-addiction concept, is severely impaired. In an anxious mindset, I am only living in the future. In a depressive mindset, I am living and acting based in the past. I need to be mindful of necessary sleep hygiene in order to avoid this paralyzing toxic dynamic.
Sleep hygiene is an adapted routine not unlike body hygiene. I bathe and apply deodorant in order to maintain a level of personal cleanliness and self-esteem. I apply principles of healthy sleep habits in order to maintain my serenity to co-exist in society and live life on life’s terms without acting like a maniac. Optimization through practice, just like adopting a routine of spiritual principles to fuel mental health, is the key. A consistent schedule is necessary. The time I decide to go to bed has to be the same every night. My pre-slumber routine, includes putting down any form of nicotine, caffeine, and sugar thirty minutes prior to lights out. I am notorious for sucking on the vape laying in bed; my partner has resorted to hiding them and hour before bed. Proficient sleepers set a time for a “digital sunset” where any form of visual media that exhibit intense light, such as a smartphone or television, are turned off (my general rule of thumb is an hour before lights out). This makes a huge difference in reducing stimulation levels which prolong the process of laying to rest for the evening. Reading for example, is a congruent healthy pre-sleep activity that keeps me from ruminating on life while lightly focusing on another topic and allows me to doze off gradually.
My final strategy regarding good sleep habits is setting a fixed wake-up time. This starts my day off right, and provides a consistent routine. I wake up at 4:50am every morning. I shower, do myself up, take my meds, drink my glass of water, and then by 5:45am I am eating the delicious breakfast burrito my partner whips up fresh every morning. By 6:00am I am seated at Starbucks rambling incessantly to her, and frolicking away on my keyboard as I am doing right now. If I were to wake up later I’d not only be missing out on my starting commitments for the day, but would be caught up in a massive ADHD induced flail, rushing around like a maniac. Waking up at the same time every morning weekday or weekend provides a rhythm of consistency. Consistency is one of my favorite spiritual tenets. It is not only attractive and promotes self-esteem, it builds structure. It is one of the spiritual principles I include in my “big five,” which consist of my five go-to healthy concepts. Honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness are three of them, as originally promoted in Narcotics Anonymous. Consistency and loyalty are my other two paramount pieces of my spiritual puzzle. This is me. A walking puzzle factory where I am the only person on earth, paired with the help of a higher power, capable of putting the pieces together successfully.
I will be fourteen months clean in a couple days. Taking any amount of cleantime in my opinion serves the sole purpose of setting a spiritual example for my peers. As a newcomer when I witness other members get up and acknowledge their abstinence based accomplishments, it is a pivotal moment. I feel crucial motivation to do top quality inner work on myself and my mind becomes saturated with hope. When it is I taking cleantime, I need to focus the experience on newcomers, always remembering that I am working step 12 and setting an example. Alternatively, sure it feels great to remember how far you have come, but I can’t let that focus ride too far. The potential problem of focusing on myself here lies in the selfish defect addicts possess. It’s a real tire pumper walking around with my chest pushed out when you have a few years clean. At times I even see random people in my community taking two cakes (a cake is an acknowledgement of your latest year of abstinence) at different meetings in the same fellowship. The reality is that as addicts we are only as good as our last twenty-four hours clean while implementing spiritual principles in our lives. If you are twenty years clean and act out of arrogance or are exhibiting predatory behavior, it’s difficult to honor your time. The rooms are full of people with ulterior motives. Everyone in my recovery world and beyond that has in the past twenty-four hours stayed clean and exhibited a gallant effort at practicing spiritual principles becomes a role model to me. It’s about inspiration. When my mind is focused in the present, inspiration is everywhere. I seek to be inspired daily in order to experience a level of hope that keeps me moving forward with healthy intention. Peer support in terms of co-inspiration is crucial. Every form of it in recovery is a partnership. I sponsor men in the rooms, and a misconception exists that this relationship is a one way street. The sponsee looks up to the sponsor as a role model, confidant, and top advisor pertaining to step work and life. In my world, I am constantly sponsoring and working with men, whom have various amounts of less clean time than me. The reality is on many days I am very off my game, selfish, restless, irritable and discontent, where my sponsee or peer has been working his program diligently in the past twenty-four hours. I am always approaching them with my trials and tribulations, listening closely to their experience. This is what growth is. It’s not the learned knowledge that moves us forward, its about experiencing life one event at a time in order to adapt and progress.
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