BALANCING BALANCE

Bruce C. once told me, "NA is not my life. NA gave me back my life." That was right after I had recited about half my inventory of meetings, events, services, and things in the program I was doing and scheduled to do.

The point was in becoming a human being and the message was balance. An old sponsor of mine put it another way: "God didn't put you on this planet to sit in in endless meetings and chant steps and slogans like a robot. The program is medicine for the disease of addiction. It is not a life. Out there somewhere you have a life. Go and find it — but don't forget to take your medicine."

BALANCE ITEMS TO KEEP IN MIND:

Of those who relapse and do stay alive long enough to crawl back into the program, they usually start off by saying, "Well, I stopped going to meetings."

The only way to determine accurately how little of the program and meetings you need to stay clean is to do too little and relapse.

The Twelve Steps are designed to move your mental programming from addict to human mode. If you are still living life with the same attitudes, outlook, relationships, and success you did as an addict, but without the anesthetic, Sponsor + Steps = Balance

Motto of the Moscow Circus School: "Balance is better if the head is full."

ONE MORE GOOD MORNING

Hello all and welcome to another twenty-four hours. Here the sun is shining, the temperature is cool, went to a meeting last night, I exercised this morning, feeling good and I am clean. If I don't pick up a drink or a drug for the next twenty-four hours, I'll have another day clean. So, I am already a miracle and Step Three seems to be working. Absolutely no reason for me to have a crappy day.

A lot of bad stuff going on in the world, though. War, terrorism, hunger, murder, violence, and somewhere on a schoolyard a little kid is talking another little kid into "trying some of this shit."

My disease wants to take on all of this because the more miserable and frustrated I am, the more likely it is that I will use. Not taking the bait, though. At least, not today. There are a great many things I cannot do anything to change. That's the stuff my program tells me I need to accept, acknowledging that acceptance is not approval. Acceptance is recognizing the facts of reality.

One of those facts is that mystery and adventure books don't write themselves and it's time for me to get to work.

Have a great day and remember this sign that appeared on the lawn of a funeral home:

DRIVE CAREFULLY - WE CAN WAIT

 

WHAT ABOUT REHAB?

Group therapy in rehab and the counselor asked the small group, "When you're in your casket and family, friends, and associates come to the viewing, what would you like them to say about you?"

 

Artie H. said, "I would like them to say I was a wonderful husband, a fine spiritual leader, a great family man, and he died sober."

 

Eugene V. answered, "I would like them to say I was a wonderful teacher, a servant of God who made a huge difference in people's lives, and he died clean."

Al M. said, "I'd like them to say, 'Look, he's moving!'" 

REHAB

So what about rehab? What good is it? Various gnarly old-timers who got clean strictly through AA or NA sometimes recite their agonies, scars, and rewards of getting clean strictly through a Twelve Step program.

There's nothing wrong with that. Millions have gotten clean, sober, and free of other OCD afflictions exactly that way. It becomes just a bit destructive to a rehab grad, though, when the program-only dude comes at the grad like a Navy Seal dropping on a Cub Scout, comparing initiation rituals, as though getting clean on a rehabilitation unit is some kind of vacation.

In a fictionalized form, I recounted some of my experiences in Saint Mary's Rehabilitation Center (now Fairview) in my novel Saint Mary Blue.  It wasn't a vacation resort or health spa. It was withdrawal, trying to find a few threads of hope and reality to hang onto, and learning just how big and powerful is the thing we were up against. Based on Twelve Step recovery, it was learning that addiction is a disease, but it's not a disease of stupid people, rock stars, writers, or athletes.

There are commercials on TV bragging about a rehab that spurns the "disease concept," and Twelve Step programs. Fortunately for me I was directed onto another path.

Rehab was thirty days away from the chemicals, the places I used, and the persons with whom I used.

Rehab put me together with men and women of all kinds, ages, and occupations who had the same thing in common: Getting and staying clean.

Rehab introduced me to the Twelve Steps and actually had me do work in completing the first five steps.

Rehab (the one I went to) had a two year follow up program where the patient returns after three months, six months, a year, and after the second year. Reviewing programs, feedback from your return patient group members, and sitting in your old patient group with the new fish to (1) share your experience, strength, and hope; and (2) see how far you've come.

If I hadn't gone through rehab, I don't think I would have been alive today. If you're in the water swimming with all the sharks, rehab is a safe place to acquire a sound introduction to Twelve Step recovery. But, if the sharks are telling you that it's really not that bad, go straight to rehab. Do not pass "Go." Do not collect two hundred dollars. That comes later.

A PORTABLE RECOVERY

I get attached to places, people, objects, and even situations. Natural, I suppose, to cherish what surrounds a person at a particularly joyful, serene, or spiritual moment. The danger comes when those persons, objects, places and situations are requirements to maintain recovery.

A meeting I went to all the time, the first meeting I hit after getting out of rehab, was a sentimental favorite of mine. I liked the people, the discussion sustained me many times, and every so often I got to be a real help to someone else. I couldn't imagine a future without that meeting peopled by those friends the meetings conducted the way they had been conducted throughout eternity. In other words, I linked it with my recovery.

The only constant in the universe is change. People change, policies change, meetings change, goals change, places change. In the case of my beloved meeting, it changed. It was an AA meeting, and like the AA meetings in Minneapolis where I first got clean, if it affected your sobriety, it was meeting material for discussion. I was away on business for a couple of weeks, and when I returned to celebrate an anniversary, it was made clear that there was to be no talk of drugs in the meeting, except for the drug alcohol which was not to be referred to as a drug. In addition, addicts who attended that meeting could not identify themselves as addicts, even to saying, "I'm Barry and I'm an alcoholic addict."

The change had happened. The meeting I had cherished was no more. Many of the men and women were the same, but either they had changed or had been cowed into silence by the majority. I actually felt threatened. So, I resisted the change.

If things are going too well for you, try and change someone else. If you really need to destroy your serenity, try and change a whole room full of people. The change happened because most of those attending the business meeting wanted the change. Rights and wrongs, the perceived threat to my recovery, angry argument, amounted to nothing. The meeting that I thought my recovery depended on had been replaced by a meeting that could tolerate me, but not my story of recovery.

Okay, I got over it without using. There were other meetings, and in our area we started up the Dragon Slayers Group of NA, which is now the longest continuous NA meeting in the state of Maine. Many years later my sponsor died and I once again discovered something without which recovery seemed almost impossible. Time, a lot of grieving, and eventually a new sponsor. My recovery got over it. My recovery needs meetings; It is not dependent on any particular meeting. It needs people; It's not dependent on any particular person or group of individuals. My recovery is portable if I choose to make it so.

So, today I'm at the Miracle, an annual NA convention I have attended every year since it began in 1983. Over the decades at the Miracle, I found my HP, the NA program and fellowship, many friends, some good service work, and answers to many of my painful issues. The Miracle is a very important part of my recovery, and this year the convention committee made changes.

Big changes.

*Sigh*

After pissing and complaining about it, I went for a walk and discussed the issue with the insides of my own head, until it was beginning to exhaust me. Asked HP about it, and the advice was to keep my recovery portable: attach my continued recovery and serenity to nothing, including my HP. Use what works, let go of the rest, remembering that if nothing ever changed I'd never have gotten clean.

REACHING FOR HELP

All kind of hotlines and helplines out there: such as for those contemplating suicide and for those victimized by brutal violent crimes. 911 (in the US) is an emergency hotline, tech support for your computer is another kind of emergency hotline. Then there is the whole world of addiction and codependency. Narcotics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous, and Twelve Step programs addressing everything from compulsive overeating, gambling, smoking, sex addiction, and so on have hotlines.

If you have a problem you cannot deal with on your own, you call someone with more experience who may be able to help. It's not rocket science.

When an addict calls a hotline it may be the very first time he or she ever reaches out for help.  It may also be the last time the addict reaches out help. Hotline members are aware of the importance of the calls they receive. They are recovering addicts with good recovery who know what's at risk and have been there and know the path out of the nightmare. They have a world of experience to share and reams of helpful information regarding meetings, resources, what to do, who to ask, and how to get through that next moment, that next hour.

I help work a hotline. I have 33 years clean. I was hopelessly addicted to alcohol and prescription drugs and could see no way out of my downward spiral to wherever; I was already in Hell. Then I got help, I learned addiction is a disease, I learned the disease is fatal if left untreated, I learned it can be arrested and an addict can rebuild his or her life becoming "happy, joyous, and free." In other words, becoming a whole human being. That's what I have on my end of the phone line when an addict calls for help.

I got a hotline call last evening, a heroin addict who was up against it and "someone told me to call this number." He cut off the call before I could do more than give him the website address for the Maine Area of Narcotics Anonymous. Maybe he'll go there and live. Maybe not. His choice.

There's a lot of help out there.

Getting clean is a sure thing if you follow the instructions.

How bad does it have to get?

NEVER GIVE UP! NEVER SURRENDER!

I heard it again at a meeting. "You'll never win your fight with addiction until you surrender." A dozen different ways, this sentiment is stock advice at Twelve Step programs meaning: Doing it yourself your own way hasn't worked, isn't working, and won't work in the future. Turning the treatment of your disease over to the program is the "surrender" referred to in slogans and advice.


When addicts seeking recovery first hear this, it doesn't sound right. If I'm in a fight with a disease, the answer is to surrender? Surrender to what?It doesn't sound right because, in my opinion, it isn't right. I remember quite clearly my first surrender to the disease of addiction. I was looking in my bathroom mirror getting ready to, once again, take those damned pills. I looked deeply into the reflection of my own eyes, realizing that I was addicted to those pills just as I was addicted to alcohol."I guess this is just one more thing I'll have to put up with," I said. White flag up, I surrendered unconditionally, no more looking for answers, no more fight left in me. That, brothers and sisters, is surrender.


So how, then, did I get and stay clean? Okay, what my little army had to throw into my battle against addiction was woefully inadequate. What I needed were allies; strong, reliable allies with excellent fighting credentials and winning records. A rehabilitation center was my introduction to the allies I needed in my war against addiction. First I needed soldiers and a plan (12 Steps, meetings, other recovering addicts, and not picking up). Second, I needed a pathfinder to show me where the sound footing was and to steer me away from the quicksand, blind canyons, and thin ice. I would learn to call this ally a "sponsor." Third, I needed heavy artillery and a medical unit: Some sort of power that can shield me when I'm under attack, heal me when I'm wounded, and that can locate the me that wants to be a human being instead of a slave. I would learn to call that ally my Higher Power.


Don't surrender; Make alliances that can keep you clean and contain your enemy.

MAY YOU BE SAFE FROM DRAGONS

The Dragon Slayers group of Narcotics Anonymous in Farmington, Maine is the oldest continuous NA meeting in the state. Its first meeting was held in a college girl's apartment September 7th, 1982. For the past twenty years or so it has met Tuesday nights at the Henderson Memorial Baptist Church. The group got its name due to several members referring to the disease of addiction and/or the desire to use drugs as "The Dragon."


One time after a meeting, an old-timer saying his goodbyes said to a newcomer, "May you be safe from dragons."


The newcomer, unfamiliar with the Dragon Slayers' frame of reference, said "Some big wish; Dragons don't exist."


The old-timer smiled and said, "There you go; The wish worked."


Our dragons, addiction & cravings, exist. The cravings usually fade away with time clean---off all mood altering substances. Addiction never goes away. Feed the dragon only a little of what it demands, and the next thing you know, not only has the dragon eaten your lunch, it's eaten you, and everything and everyone you hold dear.


When certain thoughts cross your mind, like, "If I skip one or two meetings, I won't use," or, "The real problem was alcohol, if I just smoke dope and stay away from the booze," or "It really wasn't all that bad," remember to sniff the air for dragon smoke because Green and Mean is right behind you.