Why I Hate Addiction or These are a Few of my Least Favorite Things

I can honestly say that there are very few things that I hate. I will give you a list and you tell me what is the #1 thing that you cannot stand:

1. Murder
2. Child Abuse
3. Child Molestation
4. Animal Cruelty
5. Drugs/Alcohol
6. Rape
7. Domestic Violence

The top of my extremely short list would sit drugs/alcohol as the reigning king. "Why not child abuse or child molestation at the top of your list, David?" The same reason that animal cruelty, murder, rape and domestic abuse are not at the top. Drugs and alcohol are the top correlations in all of the above instances. If you look at the majority of child abuse/molestation cases, rapes, murders, domestic violence and animal cruelty you are more than likely going to see drugs and alcohol are in the mix!

That said, they do not cause the situations to happen. They are more like throwing gasoline on a fire. The gasoline is not the cause of the fire, but it causes it to get much worse. When you add alcohol and drugs to an already volatile situation or unstable person, you are just making a bad situation 100 times more dangerous. You are just asking for trouble. All you have to do is look at the news. You will see the problems.

The reason why I am at this point today is I have had a rough past couple of months. I have had a friend that was on the Dr Phil show yesterday that is really struggling and on the verge of death. I had a friend overdose and die, an accountability partner who has decided that he can start drinking again, a friend I grew up with that is in intensive care and has been for several weeks after she relapsed and the guy she was with wrecked a car then left her for dead in a field. To add insult to injury, he left the accident and went back to her house where he cooked a batch of dope then robbed her.

In the news we have a man on mushrooms ripping out his friends heart and tongue. Locally we have a 47 year old male recently released from prison on drug charges linked to a 15 year old female who was found in a lake. We have a 17 year old found with his throat slashed by another teenage male because he believed he was a snitch and he wanted his little brother to see someone die. This is crazy stuff happening. Addiction is EVIL!!!!

Yet, it is so alluring. I have hurts and things that have been done to me that are horrific. I have done things myself that I can't forgive myself for. Because of this I have no self-esteem, self-confidence or hope. I feel that I am all alone, and the only thing that I can depend on is my new God, fill in your addiction here. It numbs me, gives me confidence, helps me forget and is always there for me. But then I come down or sober up, and the pain is still there so I have to use again.

In order to stop the cycle, we have to do something. We have to find something that works, to replace our addiction. We cannot overcome anything by admitting it is not there. In order to effect change, there are 5 things we must add and 2 things we must remove from our lives:

1. Higher Power - I need to find a power greater than myself to help me overcome what I cannot overcome on my own
2. Recovery Meetings - I need to know that I am not alone and hear others stories of recovery to help me realize that we do get better. Great place to find hope!
3. Step Work (Book of James) - We must have some kind of game plan to overcome our addictive behaviors and old lifestyle
4. Sponsor (Mentor) - We need someone who is living their life the way we want to live ours that can help us begin putting step 3 into action
5. Accountability Partners - Birds of a feather flock together. If I want to live my life better, I need to surround myself with people who are living their lives well.
6. Old Playgrounds - You can't stay clean if your standing in the mud. If you hang out in bars or where drugs are readily available, the question stops being "Will you relapse" and becomes "When will you relapse."
7. Old Playmates - If I continue to hang out with people who are living in addictions and engaging in criminal behaviors, I too will eventually go back to my old behaviors too.

Remember, your addiction is in the back of your head. It is lifting weights, running on a treadmill and on the computer doing research. It is getting stronger and smarter every day, looking for a way to take back over your life. YOUR ADDICTION NEVER TAKES A DAY OFF!! In order to remain in recovery, you need to do recovery oriented things every day. Go to a meeting, associate with positive people, talk to your sponsor, work the steps, read a daily devotional (the Bible, Just for Today). 

I HAVE YET TO MEET A PERSON THAT WAS DOING ALL 7 OF THE ABOVE THINGS THAT RELAPSED! AS NIKE SAYS, "JUST DO IT!" REMEMBER, YOU'RE WORTH IT!!!

Cross Addiction or I Didn't Cheat.........We Only Made Out

So as I talked to clients about cross addiction last week and some things occurred to me. Cross addiction is pretty sneaky, as is our addiction.......period. It is why we say addiction is cunning, baffling and strong. My addiction is in the back of my head: running on a treadmill, lifting weights and doing research on the computer trying to figure out how to get back back into the front of my head where it was before.

My addiction does not like to be an occasional desire I struggle with. My addiction was much happier when it was a compulsion and I always gave in. It liked to be an obsession that I constantly battled. Now that it is not in the forefront but on the back burner it constantly looks for ways to get me to crack the door. If I open the door just a smidgen, then my addiction can kick it off the hinges and invade my life again. It is not content to be a passing whimsy I have on rare occasions, it wants total control. It wants to be the only god that I worship.

There are many ways that my addiction hits me head on. I may walk by a car at Wal-Mart and see someone snorting a line. I may see someone shooting up in the car next to me at a red light, like one of my friends did last weekend. It may even use a movie where it shows me how much fun drugs are, or music that glorifies partying and drug dealing. Next it uses a television show that tries to depict how evil drugs are by showing how they have negatively impacted someones life. To get the point across, it shows them shooting up. FYI, seeing the register is the biggest trigger I know. Stop showing it!!

Those are all very in your face triggers. That is the strong side of our addiction. That is why my addiction is on the treadmill and lifts weights. But my addiction has another side. It is the cunning side, the one that sneaks up on me like a ninja then whacks me with one of his weapons. One of the main weapons in the addiction arsenal is cross addiction. So what is cross addiction?

Cross addiction is simply us finding a replacement for something we were once addicted to. Say we quit using drugs, bet we begin binge eating. Maybe we used to be an alcoholic and we have stopped drinking, but started smoking marijuana. Our addictions range from drugs to alcohol to food to sex to shopping to shoplifting to chaos and everything in between. When I quit doing drugs, I began drinking. If you fast forward to several years down the road, I would wake up with the shakes at 5 in the morning and have to drink to get the shakes to stop so I could go back to bed. But I could justify it.

You know, alcohol is legal so I am not doing anything wrong. In fact, I can control my drinking sometimes. I could never control my drugs. That was how it started. Alcohol lulled me to sleep. It snuck up on me, then clobbered me on the head. It allowed me to put myself in a very uncomfortable situation, then it took advantage of me.

Here I am in a relationship with sobriety. I was not in recovery yet, but I was sober. I cheated on my sobriety with alcohol, but I could justify it. Imagine you are in a relationship. You go out with another person, but you justify it to your partner. "Are you seriously jealous? All we did was held hands and talked. Okay, me might have kissed a couple of times. What's the big deal? All we did was make out. It's not like we had sex!"

That is what I did when I started drinking. I did not see it as a problem at first. It was harmless. We just sat on the couch and talked. But over time, the relationship deepened and I needed to take it further and further. It advanced from talking, to hugging, to kissing to sex. I need to remember that if I am truly in a relationship, cheating is cheating. It does not matter if it is a kiss or sex, one is as bad as the other. Same is true with sobriety.

A relapse is a relapse, whether it is your drug of choice or not. That is like justifying cheating by saying, "We might have slept together, but I don't even like her." So you risked losing your recovery for something you didn't even like? That is the least thought out reason I have ever heard of. Instead of finding ways to cheat, say no. IF YOU HAVE TO HAVE IT, YOU PROBABLY DON'T NEED IT. Cheating is cheating. I would not accept it from my wife, and I will not accept it for my recovery. Neither should you!

BLiR VLog 08/11 Should I Tell My Kids I Used Drugs/Drank

This time I talk about whether or not we should tell our kids we have used drugs and/or drank

Child Abuse? I don't hate you Grandpa, but you broke my heart!

I dropped my son off at daycare yesterday as I do every other Monday morning. As I walked away, he came running behind me."Daddy, kiss," he said. So I bent down and gave him a kiss. Then as I turned he said, "One more hug, dad." I bent down and gave him a hug, and then pretended that his squeeze was hurting me. "You are too strong, DJ," I said to him. He started giggling and ran into class laughing. Instantly my heart was on fire with the love I feel for him.

Then my eyes welled up with tears. Running through my head was one thought. How can anyone hurt an innocent being. How can anyone neglect a child who can fill their heart with such joy if they only paid attention to them. I have always been and continue to be completely mystified by both child abuse and neglect. My heart breaks at the thought of it. I used to be filled with hatred directed towards the abuser. I thought that I had good reason to be.

I was abused as a child. I was psychologically and physically abused for years. There was other abuse too, but that is for another time. I was terrified of my grandfather. He would beat me and then not let me go to school for a week so that I had time to heal up. Sometimes I would come to my senses in the bathroom downstairs (I slept upstairs) sobbing crunched into a corner. All that was flying through my head was that I had lost my grandfathers prize horse, and he was going to kill me when he caught me. It was so real, and I knew that I was dead. That is some pretty wicked stuff right there, if you ask me.

So, I have always had a burning hatred for those who abuse children. I feel that there is something spiritually, psychologically, emotionally and morally wrong with a person who can do that. There is also generally substance abuse or mental health associated with it. As well as I can remember, my grandfather had neither of those excuses. He was just evil. That is what I used to truly believe. As we grow, our perceptions change. Mine have.

Don't get me wrong, I am still filled with a righteous anger when I hear of cases of child abuse and neglect. The place I work at has had several clients whose children have died due to abuse. My heart weeps for the potential that the world was robbed of at the loss of those children. My heart also goes out to those who loved the children. I cannot imagine what the parents must go through when they lose their children and they are thinking right again.

I know that people are responsible for what they do, but there are many things that fuel the fire. Because of that, I have a righteous anger that is directed at things that contribute to the abuse and neglect of children. My anger is aimed at mental illnesses. It is aimed at the doctors and psychiatrists that have parents so doped up on opiates, benzodiazepines and muscle relaxers that they don't even know what month it is. Makes it kind of hard to feed your kids when you can't even force yourself to get out of bed. My anger is directed towards the people who manufacture and distribute drugs. Besides Satan, drugs are the only other thing I honestly hate. I think that there is nothing that makes Satan happier than methamphetamine.

Finally, my anger is aimed at the people who raise the parents who abuse their children. You see, I stopped hating my grandfather. I am not sure when it happened, but after I got saved I realized that I no longer hated him. Instead, I was filled with pity for him. Over time I got to a place where I forgave him for what he did to me. I am still saddened, because I wonder what must have happened to him when he was a child to make him that way. How did his parents treat him? What horrors did my grandfather go through in his life? I never asked, and I will never know what created the monster that I knew.