Friday, June 22, 2012

It's Hard to Stay Clean When You're Standing in the Mud

So now you have decided to get clean. You realize it is not going to be easy, but you are going to go to a residential rehabilition center for 20 days to start your sobriety off right. Then when you complete residential you are going to go to Narcotics Anonymous (or Alcoholics Anonymous, Celebrate Recovery, Living Free, Reformers Unanimous, etc.). You are going to work the 12 steps with a sponsor that you will find, or maybe already have.

"I am going to have a sponsor, a mentor, accountability partners, go to recovery meetings, church and work the 12 steps," you tell yourself and anybody that will listen. "This time, it is going to be different. This time, I am going to stay clean and sober when I get out of rehab!"

As a substance abuse counselor, I can't tell you how many times I hear this said by people who completely mean it. They are done with drugs and alcohol for a myriad of reasons. They might have had their children removed by Children's Division,  or they have been arrested. Sometimes they are in drug court, or they have come to the realization that the next time they relapse will be the one that kills them. Maybe they just want their old life back.

Having these reasons listed in the last paragraph coupled with the supports in the paragraph second paragraph would seem to be enough to accomplish long-term sobriety. Nope!! For some reason, many people fail after leaving residential and they almost all tend to have the same thing in common. In fact, I know that a lot of my clients will relapse before they even leave residential treatment. I even let them know. A lot of times the other clients even let them know what they need to change, but yet they still do it.

So what is it? What is this thing that time and time again causes people to relapse, even after they are warned multiple times about it? I call it mud. And it is hard to stay clean when you are standing in the mud! So what is it that I call mud? Some would call it love, other's familiarity. Basically, it is the relationships that we have in our lives. It could be your best friend since kindergarten. It could be the person you have been dating for several years. It could be your spouse, your sibling or even a parent. It could be their house or the bar.

It could be anyone or any place, but they all have one thing in common. They are bad for your recovery because they are still engaged in substance abuse, alcoholism or criminal activities or they are happening there. You have got to get rid of these people. Family, you can love them from a distance. Friends and significant others, you just have to let them go.

There is a reason for this. Your addiction is in the back of your head: lifting weights, running on a treadmill and doing research on a computer. It is getting stronger and smarter, just looking for a way to get back into the front of your head. It will use any means necessary to get you to relapse, especially our old playmates. If you are around it, you will do it. The question no longer becomes whether or not you will relapse, but instead WHEN WILL YOU RELAPSE? It is inevitable.

The Bible says bad association spoils useful habits. I think of a song by Rascal Flatts called "Moving On." In the song they say, "I've lived in this place and I know all the faces. Each one is different but they're always the same. They mean me no harm but it's time that I face it, they'll never allow me to change. But I never dreamed home would end up where I don't belong, I'm moving on!" If you want your life to change, you have to change it. You have to move on, staying rooted to people and places spells doom!

If you continue to live in addiction and chaos you will get caught up eventually, guaranteed. Like the program says, if you sit around a barber shop eventually you're going to get a hair cut. I say, if you sit around the mud long enough, eventually your going to get dirty! The reason is that your addiction is strong and it just gets stronger. It never takes a day off! Drugs and alcohol are everywhere, and if you stay around people who are still using or go to places where people use, eventually you will too.

If you want your life to change, you have to change everything about it. You cannot hold on to any one part of your life, or the Devil will use that to find a way back into your life. So how do we combat our addiction? There are a few steps that we have to take. If we take them, I have never seen anyone that was doing all of these fail:

  1. Put God first in everything that you do! This means we pray, read the Bible and meditate daily!
  2. Attend recovery meetings consistently (NA, AA, Celebrate Recovery, Living Free, etc.)
  3. Get a sponsor or mentor
  4. Work the 12 steps with that sponsor/mentor 
  5. Apply the 12 steps to our lives (Knowing and doing are 2 completely different things!)
  6. Get accountability partners 
  7. Get rid of your old playmates 
  8. Stay away from your old playgrounds
  9. Find positive playmates and new playgrounds to frequent (We need to fill our lives with positive people and things, or the negative people and activities will find their way back into our lives)

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