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 each Monday at 12 pm PST on our Facebook page to listen to the experience, strength and hope shared by Reisto, Connor, Corey and myself.
We will live stream a reading 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. Please join us, engage as an audience member, post questions and or leave feedback for us at 12 pm PST. We thank you and hope we can inspire your recovery journey!
Narcotics Anonymous
January 16th, 2017: Make That Call!
“We feared that if we ever revealed ourselves as we were, we would surely be rejected…. [But] our fellow members do understand us.” Basic Text, p. 31
We need our fellow NA members-their experience, their friendship, their laughter, their guidance, and much, much more. Yet many of us hesitate to call our sponsor or visit our NA friends. We don’t want to impose on them. We think about phoning someone, but we don’t feel worthy of their time. We fear that if they ever got to know us-really know us-they’d surely reject us.
We forget that our fellow NA members are just like us. There’s nothing we’ve done, no place we’ve been, no feeling we’ve felt that other recovering addicts won’t be able to identify with. The more we let others get to know us, the more we’ll hear, “You’re in the right place. You’re among friends. You belong. Welcome!”
We also forget that, just as we need others, they need us. We’re not the only ones who want to feel like we belong, who want to experience the warmth of friendship, who want someone to share with. If we isolate ourselves from our fellow members, we deprive them of something they need, something only we can give them: our time, our company, our true selves.
In Narcotics Anonymous, recovering addicts care for one another. What waits at the other end of the telephone is not rejection, but the love, warmth, and identification of the NA Fellowship. Make that call!
Just for today: In NA, I am among friends. I will reach out to others, giving and receiving in fellowship.
Just for Today: http://www.justfortodaymeditations.com/daily-recovery-readings-january-16/
Keep Coming Back!
In early recovery, you can feel unworthy of others time. You feel calling them will be a burden in their life or if they agree to hang out with you it is a waste of their time and they are just doing you a favor. This is thinking that needs to be put to a stop as soon as possible. In the 12-step fellowship we work together to better each others life. We need each other to stay clean and sober. We need someone to share our thoughts with and to reassure us that staying in recovery is worth it. We need to be surrounded by people who understand where we have been and know where we don’t want to go back too.
“It is a community that is there for you,” Connor said.
In the 12-step fellowship we are here for each other and wan to help. So, don’t feel like you are a burden. You are helping us just as much as we are helping you. It is our job as recovering buddies to help each other through the rough times. Even if someone is calling you and you feel like there are better things you could be doing- pick up the phone. Someone picked up the phone for you.
Pick up the Phone
“I owe it to those people who answered my phone calls in the middle of the night when I was losing my mind to answer the phone,” Corey said.
Just as Corey said, we owe it to others. Take it from someone who has experience. I was the person who didn’t write back to a message and the person reaching out died a few days later. You don’t want to live with that guilt and shame of knowing maybe one thing you would have said could have saved their life.
“It is extremely selfish of me to not like leave my hang out when someone is reaching out,” Corey said.
Not only can you have a bad experience, like death, it is just selfish of you not to reach back. If someone is calling you for help, there is no reason you shouldn’t answer. They chose you over everyone- don’t let them down.
“The only reason why I stuck around is because people went so out of their way to help me,” Connor said.
When you answer the phone, it will show them that people really care and it might be why they still go to meetings and work with another addict or alcoholic- it could save their life from the depths of addiction.
It is simply, if we want to stay clean and sober, we must help others. It is what the 12-step suggest us to do. Not only is it suggested- you feel great after too.
NA and AA
The NA: Just for Today focuses on friendship in the fellowship while the AA: Daily reflections puts attention on hitting bottom. While each reading is somewhat unalike, 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
January 16th, 2017: Hitting Bottom
Why all this insistence that every A.A. must hit bottom first? The answer is that few people will sincerely try to practice the A.A. program unless they have hit bottom. For practicing A.A.’s remaining eleven Steps means the adoption of attitudes and actions that almost no alcoholic who is still drinking can dream of taking.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 24
Hitting bottom opened my mind and I became willing to try something different. What I tried was A.A. My new life in the Fellowship was a little like learning how to ride a bike for the first time: A.A. became my training wheels and my supporting hand. It’s not that I wanted the help so much at the time; I simply did not want to hurt like that again. My desire to avoid hitting bottom again was more powerful than my desire to drink. In the beginning that was what kept me sober. But after a while I found myself working the Steps to the best of my ability. I soon realized that my attitudes and actions were changing – if ever so slightly. One Day at a Time, I became comfortable with myself, and others, and my hurting started to heal. Thank God for the training wheels and supporting hand that I choose to call Alcoholics Anonymous.
Daily Reflections: http://www.justfortodaymeditations.com/daily-recovery-readings-january-16/
Hitting Bottom
Hitting bottom happens to everyone. For me, I hit my external bottom long before I hit my internal bottom. What I mean by that is I was living a terrible life homeless, hungry and alone for a long time before I decided to clean up my act. I still felt okay on the inside. I didn’t mind the way I was living because I had drugs and that is all that mattered at the time.
“I just didn’t want to feel like that anymore,” I said.
It wasn’t until I was in jail and sobered up a little I realized how bad my life got. I was finally deep down ready for change. I did what I knew was best and started reading the 12-step book. I then knew I needed to do whatever it took to stay clean and sober.
“I defiantly have another relapse in me … I don’t know if I have another recovery in me,” Corey said.
Although I am now clean and sober, it doesn’t mean I am cured. I still have to work the steps, go to meetings, and do what my sponsor suggest of me. However, I can always relapse if I want to but that is risking me never coming back.
I am happy where I am and wouldn’t give my sobriety up for the world. I am a new person and you can be too. Go to meetings, get a sponsor and pray. Do what I did and believe you can. If you have more information on 12-step meetings or recovery give us a call. We will be happy to help you.
