Recovery Reflections: April 12, 2017
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 about addiction shared by Corey, Brandon, and Madison.
We will pre-record readings from 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!
Alcoholics Anonymous
April 12, 2017: Giving up Insanity
“. . . where alcohol has been involved, we have been strangely insane.”
–Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 38
Alcoholism required me to drink, whether I wanted to or not. Insanity dominated my life and was the essence of my disease. It robbed me of the freedom of choice over drinking and, therefore, robbed me of all other choices. When I drank, I was unable to make effective choices in any part of my life and life became unmanageable. I ask God to help me understand and accept the full meaning of the disease of alcoholism.
Insanity due to Addiction Dominates Life
“Insanity is doing the same thing and knowing you are going to get the exact same result and doing it anyway,” Brandon said.
When I first tried to get clean and sober, I was taught there is a way out of the hell-hole of active addiction that I was living in. At the time, I was so tired of using, but wasn’t ready to stop. I wanted a break from the chaos but was unwilling to do the work the 12-step program teaches us to make it stop for good.
After about two weeks of living in a treatment facility I was ready to go back to my old ways. I stated to feel uncomfortable in my emotions and wasn’t ready to feel the pain I had been masking with drugs and alcohol for all these years.
“I wanted to be okay and the only way I knew how to feel okay was take a drink,” Brandon said.
Just like Brandon, in that moment, I wanted to feel okay and the only way I knew how to feel okay was by masking my emotions with drugs and alcohol. I wasn’t thinking of the consequences of getting high or why I stopped using in the first place; I was not thinking of where I was going to live or if I was to leave treatment how I was going to eat. The only thing that was on my mind was getting loaded, so, that is what I did, and I knew how to do well.
After a few weeks of being homeless, hungry and alone I realized what I had done and asked myself why and how this happened. I was so confused; all I wanted to do was not feel the emotions that have haunted me my whole life and that came with the things that made me wanted to stop using in the first place: being without a home, food, family, friends, happiness, water and safety.
“I hated myself more, more and more. It pushed me to use more,” Madison said.
I was so angry with myself that I let my addiction get to me. I felt like a worthless junkie, I hated myself, which caused me to keep using because that is what I thought I was worth. I did not love myself and I was not willing to do anything to fix it even though I knew there was a way out. After a few years from that moment I ended up getting arrested and thought my life was over. In all reality, life had just begun.
In jail, I introduced myself to the 12-step program once again and was ready to be a productive member of society again. I got released from jail and kept on doing what was suggested of me. I was becoming a person again and could realize and understand right from wrong.
Working the 12-Steps to Maintain Addiction
“As time went on I was able to recognize when I was about to do something insane,” Corey said.
Just because I was working a 12-step program and abstinent from all mind-altering substances didn’t mean I was a perfect person. I still had and have addict tendencies. The difference is that now I can realize these things before I act upon them.
“I started to understand insanity had dominated my life,” Madison said.
No matter how long I work an active 12-step program I still have those insane thoughts. I don’t have to act upon them though, because I work the program. I can now live my life like a normal person. I am no longer homeless, alone, hungry and afraid. I am happy and love the life I live, and it is all thanks to what the program has given me.
