Hello everyone! My name is Bianka. I would like to give you another warm welcome to Detox to Rehab’s Recovery Reflections. Please join us and listen to the experience, strength and hope shared by Corey, Madison, Brandon, and myself.
We will pre-record readings from Narcotics Anonymous: Just for Today and Alcoholics Anonymous: Daily Reflections. We express how this reading has helped our recovery or how it has impacted us. We thank you and hope we can inspire your recovery journey!
Narcotics Anonymous
February 20, 2017: Powerlessness, Personal Responsibility
“Through our inability to accept personal responsibilities, we were actually creating our own problems.” Basic Text, p. 13
When we refuse to take responsibility for our lives, we give away all our personal power. We need to remember that we are powerless over our addiction, not our personal behavior.
Many of us have misused the concept of powerlessness to avoid making decisions or to hold onto things we had outgrown. We have claimed powerlessness over our own actions. We have blamed others for our circumstances rather than taking positive action to change those circumstances. If we continue to avoid responsibility by claiming that we are “powerless;” we set ourselves up for the same despair and misery, we experienced in our active addiction. The potential for spending our recovery years feeling like victims is very real.
Instead of living our lives by default, we can learn how to make responsible choices and take risks. We may make mistakes, but we can learn from these mistakes. A heightened awareness of ourselves and an increased willingness to accept personal responsibility gives us the freedom to change, to make choices, and to grow.
Just for today: My feelings, actions, and choices are mine. I will accept responsibility for them.
Just for Today: http://www.justfortodaymeditations.com/daily-recovery-readings-february-20/
Behaviors and Actions
“I need to take direct responsibility for all that I do,” Brandon said.
In recovery, we are powerless over drugs and alcohol, but not over the way we act. We have a choice today because we are clean and sober: we can either use the 12-steps and better the way we act, think, and feel or go on living a miserable life. We are responsible for what we do and how we behave.
“I wasn’t happy in my addiction but I did things for that drug that I wouldn’t wish on anyone,” I said.
In active addiction, things were different. I was powerless over a drug that made me into someone I am not. My actions and behaviors were different than how I act today because I didn’t have the 12-steps and spiritual principles to live by.
“I had a choice in the matter,” Madison said.
Once I sobered up and realized what a mess I have had made of my life I was willing to do anything to change.
“I have a choice today and I chose to live,” I said.
I was so willing, I did what was suggested of me in a program of recovery program and became a new person. I have the choice to be who I want to be today because drugs and alcohol no longer control my life.
NA and AA
The NA: Just for Today focuses on taking responsibility for your own actions while AA: Daily reflections puts attention on laughter and not taking yourself to seriously. While each reading is different, they share the same importance. They give me confidence and guide me in the right direction. Also, it reminds me of how lucky I am to be living a life of recovery.
Alcoholics Anonymous
February 20, 2017: THE GIFT OF LAUGHTER
At this juncture, his A.A. sponsor usually laughs.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 26
Before my recovery from alcoholism began, laughter was one of the most painful sounds I knew. I never laughed and I felt that anyone else’s laughter was directed at me! My self-pity and anger denied me the simplest of pleasures or lightness of heart. By the end of my drinking not even alcohol could provoke a drunken giggle in me. When my A.A. sponsor began to laugh, and point out my self-pity and ego-feeding deceptions, I was annoyed and hurt, but it taught me to lighten up and focus on my recovery. I soon learned to laugh at myself and eventually I taught those I sponsor to laugh also. Every day I ask God to help me stop taking myself too seriously.
Daily Reflections: http://www.justfortodaymeditations.com/daily-recovery-readings-february-20/
I Was Not Happy
“I was incapable of putting a smile on my face,” I said.
I suffer from chronic depression along with the disease of addiction. I was using drugs and alcohol as an escape from reality hoping it would make me smile and it did in the beginning. After time, the depression just got worse. It caused me pain so deep I no longer knew what it was like to smile or to be genuinely happy.
“There was nothing to laugh or smile about,” Madison said.
When you are trapped in a miserable life addicted to drugs and alcohol you have no reason to smile anymore. You have lost everything and have set yourself up for the worst. However, things get better when you decide to get clean and sober.
I still suffer with depression today, but I am sober and things are getting better day by day. I go to a doctor and manage my depression and feel better than I have ever felt. If you or a loved one are struggling with a co-occurring disorder give us a call. We can help you get the treatment you need: (866) 578-7471
