The Truth About Recovery: My Perspective

I have people tell me to sum up recovery for them, "In your opinion, what is recovery?" I find this extremely hard to do. I once heard someone say that recovery was like playing a country music song backwards, because you get back your house, your truck, your dog and your wife. I have gained so much in my recovery, that it is difficult to qualify or quantify what recovery means "for me."

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so instead of telling you what recovery means to me I will show you what it means to me:

Are You M.A.D.?

I went to a company conference a couple of weeks ago. I worked for a company called Alternative Opportunities, Inc. and we had just merged with another company called Preferred Family  Healthcare. Together, we cover 5 states and have almost 4,000 employees. The conference was so that people from both companies could have an opportunity to see what the other one did and network so that we could join forces and support each other better.

We also had plenary and break out sessions. The last plenary we had was by far the best, in my opinion. The guy was amazing; his father was a pastor and he was a former college football coach. To say that his session was motivational would be an understatement. When I walked out of his session I was ready to take on the world. The reason was because of a simple question he asked us, "Are you mad?"

I was at first unsure how to answer that question. I thought about it, and I want you to do the same thing. Ask yourself right now, am I mad? When I thought about it at first, I answered no. I am not mad at all. Then I thought about it a little more, and I did sense the anger. I could remember the way I felt several hours before his plenary after reading an article on Facebook about substance abuse.

The article itself didn't make me mad. The article was about the heroin epidemic our country is currently in. The article discussed the number of people in a small Missouri rural county that had overdosed in a one week period. The article was insightful, educational and well written. It was the comments that followed the article that got to me. They sickened and enraged me. Here are my 5 least favorite:

1. Who cares? Just another dead junkie.
2. We should give heroin away for free. Once all these junkies killed themselves of America would be a better place. 
3. Have you heard of that flakka? It is making people act crazy. Junkies should get a free Go Pro camera with each dose so that we can watch them overdose for our entertainment. 
4. This is Darwin Theory at its finest. Eventually all of these losers will remove their DNA from the gene pool. 
5. I hate people like this, living off other people and hurting everyone that cares about them. Junkies only care about themselves. Their families are better off without them. 

So as I thought about it, yeah I was mad. As I sat there and simmered he asked another question, "What are you doing about it?" If something makes you mad, what are you doing to change it? Are you just sitting at home, reading a paper or watching the news, being an armchair quarterback or are you doing something about it.

Then he pulled out the hammer. He asked us to put on the bracelets that were at each of our tables. He told us to look at our bracelets and asked if we noticed anything. I did; the mad was not written mad, it was written R U M.A.D. 

"Every day I wake up and ask myself am I mad. I hope that you would do the same thing. I challenge you to do it. I want to start a movement, with this simple question, "Are you M.A.D.? Are you Making A Difference?"

Bam! 

Just like that, my mind was blown. He was not talking about being angry, instead he was talking about doing something about it. I was mad about a lot of situations, especially when it comes to dealing with substance abuse, mental health issues, stigma and recovery. I am educating schools and communities. I am raising public awareness. I am making a difference, even though it never feels like I am doing enough. 

So today, and for the rest of your life I challenge you to ask yourself this question every day, "Am I M.A.D.?" Are you making a difference? If you are living your life to be better and help those around you become better you are doing something right. If you are not living your life that way, you are doing something wrong. 

People, I implore you to make a difference in someone's life!! If something angers you, use that anger as fuel to give you the passion and energy needed to make that situation different. Don't be afraid to put yourself out there and advocate for someone. Stick up for the disadvantaged, stand up to the bully when he attacks others. Don't talk about change, be the change! 

MAKE A DIFFERENCE! 

After all, if you don't do it who will? 

Why Stigma Exists

Stigma exists because we allow it to. I will get into who we is later. First, I would like to talk about the people who I thought would stigmatize me and how their reactions turned out to be. I had preconceived notions about various people in the community, organizations in the community, and the stigma they would treat me with.

I wanted to blame the media. They are really easy to put the blame on, because the media publishes the stories about the crazy stuff that is done by people. That said, they report the crazy stuff done by sober people and people who are under the influence of chemicals. They also publish positive things done by people in recovery. I know that to be a fact, because I have seen articles published in the paper and multiple news stories on television and radio about what my organization does.

I wanted to blame the court system. After all, they sent me to prison and they arrested me on multiple occasions. Surely, they would stigmatize me and hold my past against me. Instead, they refer people to me BECAUSE of my past. I counsel individuals through the court system because of my past and where I am today. Surely I can help someone get to where I am because I was able to get there myself.

I wanted to blame employers, because they would only see me for my past and due to my actions they would never hire me. I was unemployable and I knew this because I had heard so many other people in my situation complain. The truth is, I have never had a problem getting a job. For a while, I was working multiple jobs and they all knew that I was in recovery and that I was a convicted felon. They even let me handle money and gave me keys to their businesses.

I wanted to blame the police, because they would always find reasons to pull me over and then would treat me like a piece of garbage when I did. Instead, I found that they frequently get behind me and don’t pull me over. The times that I have been pulled over, they generally treat me as well as I treat them. Have I had bad experiences in the past? Yes, and I will probably have them in the future. I have also had bad experiences at restaurants, yet I don’t glare at one in disgust every time I drive by one. There are good and bad in all people and all organizations. That is just part of life.

I wanted to blame the judgmental people in the churches, because they never would forgive me and would always judge me based on my past drug use and criminal record. What I found was they did not. I have shared my testimony in many churches, talking about being abused as a child, my addiction, my criminal record and my recovery and they ask me to come back. Several churches have entrusted me with keys to their facilities.

I wanted to blame my family. Surely they would always see me as the unreliable person I was for 20 plus years. They knew me best and had to deal with me on occasion, and those occasions were never pleasant. Instead, I have found that my mother who would not trust me in her house unless she was there let me move in so that I could get back on my feet.  I was the first person not living in the same home as my sister she trusted to watch her daughter.

Instead, the more I have stepped out into the community talking openly about both my issues and my recover, the more I have been accepted. I wish I could say that about a lot of the recovery community at large. I am met with resistance from a lot of recovery organizations because of how vocal I am in the community. I am met with resistance when I try to do events that combine the recovery communities together under one event.

Stigma exists because the recovery community allows it to. We are largely non-vocal. Instead, we try our best to stay anonymous. I realize why we do this. I was once one of those people who never talked about my past. It was over and I did not want to talk about it. Yet that did not stop me from telling war stories and reliving good old days with people.

I felt safe speaking around people who had been were I had been and was fearful of talking to people about my past that had not lived it themselves. I created my own stigma, out of fear of being judged or looked down on by other people. I was consumed by rage and depression because of this. Of course, I would never admit the depression so it all came out in anger.

By judging other people because I thought they would judge me, I robbed many people of the experience I had gained from my past. I also never gave them an opportunity to prove me wrong. We have to reach a point in our lives where shame does not exist. A place where we like ourselves and realize that without us making the choices we made in our past we would not be the people we are today. The people we are today are strong, wise people who can deal hope to the hopeless and save lives!

Instead, we remain anonymous. We need to realize that anonymity protects the people we are in groups with, but that does not mean we have to stay anonymous ourselves. You can talk about your recovery as much as you want. You can fly your recovery flag EVERYWHERE you go. Be bold and proud. Remember to represent recovery well. That is our language, our dress, our attitudes…….in fact, everything about us reflects on other people in recovery.

The squeaky wheel gets the oil, which means those who are loudest get the most attention. We need to make sure that we in recovery have a voice. That we use that voice to talk about the positive things we do today, then back that up by giving back to the community under the guise of a person who is in recovery. That way we can begin to reduce the stigma people see us with because we stop seeing ourselves as stigmatized.

Does stigma still exist? I can answer that with a resounding yes! Part of the problem, maybe even a majority of the problem we face today is of our own making. We have to find a voice. We have to educate our communities, make them aware of all the things people in recovery are capable of and do community service to give back to the communities we live in. That is a lot to put on one plate, but it must all be done.

That is where I find myself today. Wondering how I can begin making the portions on that plate smaller. I know that it can be done. I just have to figure out how I can primarily focus on stigma reduction through community education, service and awareness events. Part-time I can make a dent, full-time I could make a hole. If you have any suggestions, let me know. I am wide open to anything that can help me continue to make an impact!

Why I'll Never Use Again

I spent a majority of my life transitioning from one phase to the next in my spiritual walk. I have run the gamut from Jehovah’s Witness to atheist and back to a follower of Christ over the course of my life. I now know I will spend the rest of my life growing spiritually and never truly reaching the apex of my spiritual walk. I am perfectly okay with that. It is all about progress, not perfection.

I grew up in a Christian home. My parents went to church three times a week, and I went with them. Then I was molested by someone from my church, watched my father as his alcoholism progressed and witnessed my mother and father screaming at each other on the way to church then get out with fake smiles on their faces once we got there acting like we were the perfect family. By the time my mother left my dad and sent us to live with her father, I was lost and confused. My grandfather was an atheist, and he was also the most evil and abusive person I have ever met. My family leeched my hope and trust in anything from me.

I knew that I wanted to be nothing like any of them, so I became agnostic. There might or might not be something there, I was unsure. This is basically the flip flop option of spirituality. I refuse to commit to one side or the other, instead I balance on the fence with a precipice on either side I am unwilling to jump in to. Over time, I did commit to one side. I leaped headfirst into the atheist side. I could belittle others for their beliefs in that fairy tale they called religion. I felt that this side made me smarter, and if nothing I did really mattered that I could continue to live the life I wanted to.  After all, everything was random.

As an addict, I lacked concern for anything other than my next high or drunk. Anything that hindered that was my enemy. As an atheist, i lacked accountability. Those two combined for a perfect storm of problems for other people. 

I could manufacture and sell methamphetamine without really caring about its' impact on other people. I could seriously hurt people over tiny amounts of money (or for no reason at all) and not worry about any spiritual repercussions. I could steal from anyone, sleep with whoever I wanted to and leave them immediately after with no concerns other than legal ramifications.

Life was easy and uncomplicated. Unless the police caught me, I would never be held responsible for the things that I did. Even if they caught me, I would still never have to answer for EVERYTHING that I had done to people either intentionally or as collateral damage. My life was all about me.

I was a narcissistic hedonist. As long as I felt pleasure, it had to be right. After all, if this life was all there is, why should I not enjoy it? If it hurt someone else, that was not my fault. The law of the jungle applies, and only the strong survive. If you were weaker than me or had some kind of issue or instability, I could care less about you.

EASY PEASY LEMON SQUEEZY! Life was too short not to live it up. I grabbed onto the James Dean mantra, live life fast and leave a good looking corpse. Carpe Diem, seize the day. After all, I could be dead tomorrow. As my addiction progressed, that changed. In my depression, I began to wish I could die. Hopelessness grew. I attempted suicide, and would have been successful if my sister and had not found me unconscious in a pool of blood. I would use to the point of overdose. I would drink and drive. I have played Russian Roulette multiple times; just me, a revolver and a single bullet. I had promised my sister I would not commit suicide and I justified Russian Roulette because it was chance.

Then I reached a point of no return, a true rock bottom that I have talked about in several other blogs. After trying jail, house arrest, probation, prison, parole, inpatient rehab, outpatient rehab, psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, 12 step programs, sponsors, medication and abstinence I did not know what else to do. When I reached the bottom of my barrel, I tried something I had long before given up on, God. I prayed, and struck a deal with God that I immediately tried to renege on the next day. But I couldn’t and I didn’t. It stuck.

I know that not everyone has the same results that I did. I prayed one day and made a deal with God. He upheld his end and I have tried to uphold mine. I have not drank, used drugs, smoked cigarettes, had premarital sex or gotten into a fight outside of a ring since that prayer. I don’t know what tomorrow holds, but I know that I don’t have to use today.

Over time I have removed using tomorrow from the table as well. I now that I have another relapse in me. We all do. I also know that I am unsure if, in fact quite certain that I don’t, have another recovery left in the tank. I am pretty positive that the next time I use will kill me. The only relapse I have had was for 7 years and I overdosed 3 times. I have died more times than I can count on one hand and I am pretty sure I am not a cat, so I could quite possibly be out of second (or 7th) chances. 

Today I have too much to live for. I have a wife, 2 beautiful children and an amazing life. Plus, I know the damage my addiction caused and I take responsibility for that. Because of me and my drugs, lives were lost. I don’t want to ever be a part of that process again. I am here to deal hope, not steal it. I am here to save lives, not take them. I have gone from dealing dope to dealing hope and I will never go back to the way I used to be because I love the person I have become!

I see the damage that I caused in the lives of others. I was like a tornado and I left a trail of chaos and carnage in my wake.  I see the anger that I began to possess and spew while I was an atheist. I have found that neither of those choices are good for me. They are both colors that I should leave out of my wardrobe because they are unflattering. I am not saying that all addicts and atheists are the same way, but I was. I cannot be a hope dealer while I am bitter, angry and hopeless. I cannot help others when I am not even able to help myself. I had to change. I found the 5 Pillars of Recovery worked for me, as did following the platinum rule.

The 5 Pillars of Recovery

1.       Higher Power – I found Jesus. Okay, not really. It was not that Jesus was lost, I was. I gave God a chance. I turned my will and my life over to God and things have just been better. I have had experiences in my life that have convinced me that God is real! I would say my sobriety and lifestyle are living proof that God exists!!

2.       Game Plan – I use both the Bible and the 12 steps to carve out a better life for myself.

3.       Meetings – I won’t lie, I attend a lot of them on occasion. Every week I attend my Celebrate Recovery home group and attend a small group. I am also known to go to AA and NA meetings as well. Find what works best for you and then go, consistently and regularly.

4.       Sponsor/Mentor - If you want to be able to apply the 12 steps and/or the Bible to your lives and achieve the best outcome, find someone you would like to be at the level of in 5 years. Ask them to teach you how they got there, and then apply what you learn.

5.       Accountability Partners – Meet with someone consistently who you give permission to call you out on things. They can help support you and you can help support them.

Platinum rule – Treat others the way you would want them to treat the person you care about the most. That means you treat people like you would want them to treat your mom, dad, son, daughter, brother, sister, husband, wife, best friend, etc. If you would not want someone to do something to someone you love and care about, than don’t do it to someone else.

Add the 5 Pillars and the platinum rule to your life, and don’t stop using them. This is not a temporary change, this is a life long lifestyle change! The reason I don’t go back to using drug/alcohol/sex/cigarettes/violence, etc is that I have made my recovery a priority. I do recovery oriented things on a daily basis, multiple times each day. You do not get good at anything by not doing it. Practice makes you good, and once you get good at something only practice keeps you doing it well. I will never settle for good. I want great, so I practice the 5 Pillars and apply the platinum rule to all that I do. Finally, I have found one more additive that has made my recovery strong.

Community service is the missing link in many a program. It is not absolutely necessary for recovery, but it will make your recovery that much stronger and enjoyable. It is the icing on the cake. Community service says, “I used to destroy resources, now I am one!” This leads to more self-confidence, self-respect and self-worth. It makes the foundation of your recovery that much stronger!

Finally, spread the message of hope and strength found in recovery with anyone and everyone you come into contact with! I call myself a hope dealer, and you can be one too. Recovery is amazing, and so are you. Recovery is not only a possibility, it is a guarantee if you apply the 5 Pillars and work them. Let people know it! Together we will transform lives by sharing recovery and chip away at the stigma surrounding addiction and recovery until it is gone!

Celebrate Recovery - Why I Believe CR is for Everyone!

There are multiple arguments I have heard against Celebrate Recovery. I am going to address a couple of the more common ones. In doing this I hope you will see Celebrate Recovery is for everyone. After all, we all fall short of living a perfect life and have all experienced hurts, habits and hang-ups that keep us from living life to the fullest. Celebrate Recovery is a program that allows you to live an abundant life!

Here are the 5 most common reasons I have heard for not attending Celebrate Recovery:

1.       I don’t need Celebrate Recovery because I am not an addict or alcoholic.

2.       I don’t believe in God, and Celebrate Recovery believes in that mythical guy in the sky.

3.       I don’t need a 12 step program to help me. The 12 steps are for junkies and winos.

4.       I am not going to tell a bunch of people my problems.

5.       I don’t need a sponsor to help me live my life.

Here are my responses to the arguments listed above:

1.       So you are not addicted to alcohol or drugs. In fact, you may never have seen drugs or touched a drop of alcohol your entire life. That does not mean recovery isn’t for you. There are many things in this life that we struggle to recover from. That is why Celebrate Recovery addresses more than just addiction. It addresses hurts habits and hang-ups.

HURTS are those feelings elicited from experiencing hurtful situations and other people’s negative behaviors. HABITS are the chronic behaviors and addictions you use to cope with stressors in life. HANG-UPS are negative mental attitudes that keep us from progressing further in life. Everyone struggles with at least one, if not many of these issues.  

2.       Yes, Celebrate Recovery is a Christ-centered program. However, you don’t have to be a Christian to go there. When I first came to Celebrate Recovery, I was an atheist who leaned towards agnosticism. I came because I was depressed and hopeless and the meetings that I had been going to were not working for me. The meetings I went to were overflowing with sobriety but deficient in recovery.  

I needed something different. I needed to be around positive people who did not all refer to themselves as addicts and alcoholics. I found that in Celebrate Recovery. I also found there was a kinship between addicts, codependents, workaholics and people with eating disorders. There was a similarity between my anger, someone else’s depression and someone’s materialism. I had friends that were not addicts and alcoholics but who still struggled with life. That was healing in a way I had never known before. I gained hope and stopped judging myself.

3.       Why don’t you need the 12 steps? Is there a guide you follow to help you live a more satisfying, less chaotic life? If not, there should be and that is what the 12 steps are. They are a game plan for success in life. Who does not need to live a better life? I have yet to meet a perfect person. I know great people who live amazing lives, but they are ALL WORKS IN PROGRESS .  The 12 steps are a guide to making the progress we all need in order to live richer, more fulfilling lives.

4.       I understand why there may be things you don’t want to share with other people. I get that! I was abused as a child both physically and sexually. People knew that I had been abused physically. I was ashamed of being sexually abused, though. I knew I would be judged and criticized if anyone knew, so I kept that secret for over 30 years. I never told anyone. I was speaking at a church when I shared it for the first time. It wasn’t planned, it just happened.

After the sermon, I had someone tell me he had been molested as well and had never told anyone until now. Since I began sharing that part of my life, half a dozen men have thanked me for sharing and told me I was the first person they had ever shared that part of their life with. So my sharing helped others. It also helped me. The burden I once struggled to carry alone has been shared with many others. It no longer feels as heavy and shameful as it once did. I have been met with nothing but love and encouragement since I began sharing that part of my life. In fact, the shame and guilt I carried for over 30 years has vanished!  

5.       The word sponsor here really turns some people off. Instead of sponsor, let’s call this person a mentor. A mentor is an adviser who is both experienced and trusted. Bill Gates, the world’s richest person according to the Forbes 400 in 2013, has a mentor. Bill Gate regularly goes to Warren Buffet for advice. Socrates mentored Plato, Plato mentored Aristotle and Aristotle mentored Alexander the Great. Even in the Bible, we see that Barnabas mentored Paul who in turn mentored Timothy.

If Bill Gates, Aristotle and Paul felt the need for mentors, maybe you should as well. After all, mentors/sponsors are vitally important to making positive changes in our lives. They have a history of making the kind of choices we strive to make in order to have the type of life we desire to live. They have been where we are and have a found a better life for themselves and they share that recipe for success with us!

When I came to Celebrate Recovery I was no longer a proud and angry agnostic who knew it all. I was shattered and hopeless. Life had finally broken me fundamentally and I saw no way out. I had tried everything: Rational Recovery, various anonymous recovery groups, counseling, prescription medication, residential and outpatient treatment, prison, jail, house arrest, probation, parole and finally suicide. Nothing has ever worked for longer than 3 months.

What I found in Celebrate Recovery worked. I have been free from my addictions for over 5 years now. I want to share the hope and happiness I have found with others. That is why I speak in communities and churches. This is the reason I write and post things through my blog. I want to share the strength, experience and hope I found when I experienced Christ’s love and grace with everyone.  Celebrate Recovery works!

If you have any doubts or questions about the efficacy of Celebrate Recovery please share them with me. Send me messages on Facebook or post them in the comments on my blog. That way I can answer them and allay your fears, anxieties and doubts so you give Celebrate Recovery a try. I want you to attend meetings, join a step study group and give it a chance. The only things you have to lose are the hurts habits and hang-ups you struggle with. It worked for me and I truly believe it will work for you!

What Do You Want to be When You Grow Up?

I was in a group the other day and that question was asked, “What did you want to be when you were a kid and what is stopping you from doing it now?” What we were talking about was the way our various traumas and addictions had impacted us in the past, but at the same time acknowledging that we could still do anything we set our minds to.

I was not the first person to go, and I listened to various answers. One had wanted to be a fire fighter. There was the kid who wanted to be a bull rider, until he had gotten thrown a couple of times and he decided it was not for him. The opiate addict that had wanted to be a doctor, but both his drug of choice and the felony he had for fraudulent attempt to obtain a narcotic held him back.

Then it came to me. I said that I wanted to be happy and normal. When I was asked what that meant, I explained a little of my past. I was molested starting at 4 for a couple of years by a baby sitter. My parents were constantly screaming at each other from the earliest I can remember until they split up my first week of 5^th grade. From there I went to live with my grandparents, and my grandfather was an abusive man who would beat me and keep me home for the week “to help out on the farm” so the bruising and cuts could heal up. I thought it was because he had found out how “disgusting” I was.

So, all I wanted was to be happy, safe and normal. I had obviously not been safe due to the physical, sexual and psychological abuse I underwent. I was not happy. Who could be happy with all the aforementioned going on? I had lost my faith, as I could not imagine a God of love allowing me to suffer as I did and I became an Agnostic. Finally, and the part that probably hurt the worse, was knowing I was not like everyone else. I was abnormal at best and felt like a freak on my worst days.

I would hear other kids talk about their moms and dads and what they had done together. My parents were not together. In fact, I was being raised by grandparents. Because I had been molested I felt disgusting, as I had once heard my mother talk about grown ups touching children and she had said they were disgusting and sick. I thought that she meant me. Finally, I knew that the other kids were not getting beat like I was because they were always at school.

The kids I went to school with almost always had smiles on their faces. Somehow I knew that there smiles were real. Mine was not. I was dead on the inside but I build walls to keep the pain inside and not let it show to everyone else. I was crying on the inside, and it came out in the form of anger and violence as early as the 5^th grade.

In the 5^th grade I was already seeing both a school counselor and a counselor outside of school for my behavioral issues. I never once spoke to them about the abuses, because I did not want them to judge me for them the way I felt everyone else did and I feared my grandpa and what he would do to my sister if I told.

Instead, I kept it all inside. That is where the outbursts came from. It is kind of like a pressure cooker, if that steam is not released somehow you create a bomb that will explode when you least expect it. Not only that, but I felt I could never let people know who I really was. I looked normal but did not feel normal. I felt like an unloved outcast, because that is how I was treated.

It is difficult to function well when the people that are supposed to love and protect you are the ones that do you the most harm. Instead, you learn not to trust, not to love and how to mask your feelings. You learn to adapt and become a chameleon so that you appear to fit in. The truth is, doing that causes you to lose your identity over time and you forget who you are.

Then we ended the group talking about where we were today. Today, I am very grateful. I have accomplished my goals. I am happy and safe, though far from normal and that is okay. I have found that I was built from the ground up by God to do what I do today. Today, I get to share my strength, experience and wisdom with people by sharing the hope found in both grace and recovery.

My Favorite Recovery Quotes and Meaning to Me

1.       Drugs gave me wings then they took my sky away At first drugs are amazing and gave me this rush of excitement and clarity, they made me more social and I felt like I fit in. Over time, I began to distrust everyone and I constantly chased the greatest high. Eventually, I got to the point I used just to feel less bad, because I always felt horrible and I was constantly paranoid of everyone and everything.

2.       It is called alcohol-ism not alcohol-wasm This is not a disease that will go away. I am an addict and an alcoholic for the rest of my life. As Verbal Kent says in the movie The Usual Suspects, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” The same is true of my addiction.

3.       I was the black sheep of my family until I came to NA and found the rest of my flock I never felt like I fit in to my family, I was an embarrassment. I was the one who was in and out of jail and went to prison. I was the one with all of the mental health problems. I was the one with the addiction issues. I was the one who could never be counted on. When I started going to recovery meetings I found others who had been the black sheep in their family, and they had gotten better.

4.       Give us 90 meetings in 90 days and if at the end of that you are not fully satisfied we will gladly refund your misery It is not that 90 days is a magic number, nor is 90 meetings the magical amount. Instead, going to at least one meeting every day for three months give us structure and consistency in our life and allows for us to meet a lot of people in recovery and begin to make friends with positive, sober people

5.       Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results Also defined as doing the same thing over and over again, knowing the outcome yet doing it anyway. They both mean the same thing, that as addicts we will tell ourselves lies to continue our addiction, such as I can drink just one beer or I won’t get arrested this time if I use.

6.       I may not always know God’s will but I will always know what God’s will is not I do not know for a fact what the plans for my life are, what my successes will be or how I will accomplish them. I do, how ever, know the quickest ways to derail my future and make sure that I don’t succeed in life. I may not know for a fact what God has called me to do but I can reason out with pretty good certainty what He does not want me doing.

7.       If you always do what you always did you will always get what you always got also said as, “If you want to change who you are change what you do.”  If I continue to make the same choices, go to the same places and hang out with the same people I will always have the same outcome. Basically, if I am unhappy with the outcome in my life I need to change all of the inputs.

8.       I used to be a hopeless dope fiend now I am a dopeless hope fiend I changed this one to “I went from dealing dope to dealing hope. There was a time that I had no hope and my entire life was focused on getting and staying high. Today, I no longer do drugs and my entire life is focused on sharing the hope of a better life in recovery with everyone I come into contact with.

9.       People who judge don’t matter and people who matter don’t judge This is a way for me to see that if people are not able to see me for who I am today and not who I used to be in my addiction, I don’t need them in my life. This does not mean that what other people think is unimportant. If I offend others and they have good reason to feel that offense it is on me to adjust my behavior and/or attitude. I need to realize that other people’s feelings are valid, otherwise I will fall back into my old addictive narcissism and the general lack of respect for everyone but me I had in my old criminal lifestyle.

10.   Holding a resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die When I have a resentment against anyone, it is never them that it hurts.  They may have forgotten about it, or have forgiven me or simply no longer care. The only person it really impacts is me. I cannot make a better past for myself, but I can make a less stressful present and future by learning to let go of things instead of holding on to them. Keeping that resentment alive creates a chance for relapse in my future.

11.   The world record is 24 hoursSome people get caught up in the amount of time that someone else has and they put them or a pedestal, or even worse they get overconfident because of the amount of clean time that they have. Both of these can and will lead to relapse. The truth is, I cannot stay sober on the work I did yesterday, so I need to focus on the things I can do today for if I don’t I will not stay sober.

12.   Don’t quit before the miracle happens We forget that we did not get addicted overnight, so we will not get into recovery that way. Time takes time, and we need to be patient because if we give up we will never attain recovery. Sometimes we forget that, because we are addicts and we want what we want and we want it now. Life doesn’t happen that way very often, and neither does recovery but it will as long as we don’t give up and keep doing the next right thing. 

13.   I can’t, God can so let Him This is an eloquent way to put the first 3 steps. We found in our addiction that we were powerless and could not control everything in our lives so it is time to turn it over to someone who can. I have also heard the 1^st 3 steps translated as, “There is a power that wants to kill me and a power that wants me to live. Which do I want to do? (if you want to die you can stop here, other wise keep working the steps)

14.   I looked to a drug for courage and it made me a coward We may take a drug or drink to give us courage to deal with something that we feel we could not deal with on our own. Eventually we discover that if we stay messed  up we can stay numb and emotionally unavailable so we let drugs take our life over. In time, we use them to avoid anything and everything, which is a sign of cowardice and fear.

15.   You are either working on recovery or working on a relapse Another way to say this is, “If you are not working on the solution you are working on the problem” as well as, “You are either part of the problem or part of the solution.” There is no gray area in recovery, you are either putting it first in your life so that you can stay ahead of your addiction or you are slacking and eventually your addiction will become stronger than your desire to stay sober.

16.   My mind is a scary place to be all by myself This is also said as, “Your best thinking got you here.” It means that we struggle as addicts with a condition that Mark Lundholm calls, “First thought wrong” and I say is more like first five thoughts wrong. I need to surround myself with positive sober people and be willing to listen to their feedback and apply it to my life because my thinking patterns are faulty when I first get into sobriety.

17.   I wouldn’t trade my worst day sober for my best day high also shared as, “I may not be where I want to be but thank God I’m not where I was.” The truth of this one is that over time we no longer use to feel good, instead we use to feel less bad. This is because of a severe depletion of various neurotransmitters in our brain and using being the only way to obtain them. Add to that the hopelessness of addiction and we find ourselves getting stuck in a rut. The reality of my addiction was that no matter how great today was I would still be running from my feelings, trying to escape life and being overly paranoid tomorrow. In my recovery I know that no matter how bad things are going today they will be better in the future.

18.   Being humble doesn’t mean we think less of ourselves, it means we think of ourselves less This simply means that when I am humble I do not think that I am less than anyone or everyone else. Being humble just means that I have learned to put the needs of others before the wants I have.  This  has also been said as pride is who is right while humility is what is right.

19.   Give all your problems to God. He’ll be up all night anyway We tend to hold onto things that we can do nothing about, beating ourselves up over our past and stressing ourselves out over our future when what we really need to do is focus on today because that is where change happens. To give us more energy physically, emotionally and psychologically we need to learn to let things go and there is no one better to turn those things over to than God. After all, He knows all about it anyway.

20.   The good news is your feelings come back. The bad news is your feelings come back When we get clean and sober our feelings start to come back, which is amazing. I can feel genuine happiness, love, compassion and joy. Those feelings are amazing. But if I can feel again, that also means that I now have to deal with grief, loss, depression and heart ache. On one hand, yeah!!!! On the other hand………….Boo!

21.   I’m allergic to drugs and alcohol. Every time I use I break out in handcuffs and felony chargesPretty self-explanatory, if I get into trouble when I use that sets a pattern that I should not continue if I no longer want to get into trouble. Much like an allergy, if I have a bad reaction to eating something I generally avoid it so I should do the same with drugs and alcohol because I have already experienced the outcome of using them.

22.   People may not always believe what I say but they will always believe what I do Simply stated, actions speak louder than words. To the people who matter the most to us, our word has probably lost all meaning. We have burned bridges by continuously lying, stealing, cheating and manipulating people. They are no longer going to believe what we have to say, so instead we have to show them that we are telling the truth through our actions and choices over time.

23.   I stopped counting the days and started making the days countIn the end, who cares how much clean time you have? I have seen people with 6 months making a bigger impact on the recovery community than people with 20 years. It is not about who has the most, but instead what you do with it. I would rather focus on what I can do to make myself and the people around me stronger and wiser than get caught up in the amount of clean time I have. Clean time will not keep you clean.

24.   It is not what I know that keeps me sober, it is what I do that keeps me sober We hear people spout the Big Book, quoting it by page and then reeling off one of the steps telling someone else what to do and we begin to think that person has it together. That can lead us to stumble. I have heard a drunk at a bar quoting the Big Book to the person drinking next to him. Knowing and doing are two completely different things. Never forget that. See #22

25.   What happened in the past is over. You can’t unscramble scrambled eggs This is also quoted as once you are a pickle, you can never be a cucumber again. They both mean the same thing, you cannot change the past. In fact, getting stuck on the past often leads to relapse and it always takes our focus off of today. The truth is, I thank God every day for prison, the physical and sexual abuse I experienced as a youth as well as my addiction. They all made the person I am today, and that person is a Hope Dealer. If not for all of the things that I have encountered, I would not have the strength and wisdom that I do today. Make amends, give the rest to God and move on. Never forget: You are exactly where you need to be!

Better Life in Recovery and Spiritual Spackle Saturday

This blog is to do two things. It is to take a look at where Better Life in Recovery is currently and where it is headed in the future. We will also look at Spiritual Spackle and the direction it is headed in. I need to be consistent in my life and so far that consistency has been missing the past month. Okay, maybe it has been missing this year.

Better Life in Recovery had a great event. I will have a promotional clip of it in April to share. We are looking at having another event late summer in Springfield (location TBD) and during the Fall in Branson (location TBD). My main focus for April is to write the bylaws and file for non-profit status to open us up to more funding opportunities. I will have a blog next month that will truly address what we have, what we are working on and what we need in April.

Now on to the Spiritual Spackle blog itself. I guess  that I do not have the time to write the amount of blogs that I once felt I would be able to. As my life gets busier and busier, some things take a hit. I have a very busy life and my blog has suffered. I was wanting to write 2-3 a week and that is just not possible with the other demands in my life. Because of that, I am going to be writing one blog weekly and several specific blogs once a month. That is what I know I can do.

Every Saturday I will have a blog that will look at either recovery, faith or both. Hence the moniker Spiritual Spackle Saturday, since it will be weekly on Saturdays. There will be a monthly apologetics blog that will be written for The Poached Egg (www.thepoachedegg.net ). There will also be a monthly blog that will look at my progress, or lack of progress at getting into a shape that is not round and attaining a BMI that does not tell me I am morbidly obese.

Those monthly blogs will come out the first week of every month. The apologetics blog on the first Monday of the month and the weight loss blog will be on the first Wednesday of the month, starting in April. There will be other blogs that will be posted if time presents itself and if there are buring, pressing desires to write them.

My focus is on becoming more of a spiritual leader for my family, writing the bylaws so we can file for 501(c)3, advancing Better Life in Recovery, Inc., having more BLiR events and completing the book entitled, Spiritual Spackle. My desire is to have the book completed and either be with a publisher or have a Kickstarter project started to help me get it published by the end of the year.

I look forward to having my first Spritual Spackle Saturday blog to you this Saturday (03/30) and the apologetics blog next Monday (04/01) and the next Weight Loss Wednesday blog on (04/03). Thank you for your continued follows and reading. I am still averaging 2000 hits a month, give or take a couple of hundred. I hope that having a consistent weekly, well written blog will allow me to continue giving you the reader adequate material to build hope, faith and recovery upon.

So, as always, feel free to follow this site, like it on Facebook and share it with anyone you like. I look forward to hearing any feedback you might have about the changes that are happening. Also, my goal is to be a dealer of hope so if you have any questions about faith, recovery, addiction, depression, struggles, etc please ask them and I will address them in upcoming blogs.

Fighting the Battle

I have had a busy week this week. The 4 year anniversary of my dad's suicide was on Sunday. I was the pallbearer at my aunts funeral on Tuesday. I had hurt my back on Friday, and somehow had made it worse on Tuesday. When I woke up Wednesday it hurt to sit up and hurt to walk. Ended up spending several hours at Urgent Care before I got to even see a doctor. I guess that makes urgent a misnomer. Turns out that I have a slipped/bulging disc in my lower back. Now we get to wait and see if it slips back in on its own. That is the reason that I have not written anything this week. I have been in pain.

I did give my testimony in Chapel at Global University and I hope to have that up in the next day or two so that it can be viewed. My wife said that she has had several people ask her about my coming to speak at their churches, small groups and to a youth group. I am extremely excited about having those opportunities to reach others and share what the Holy Spirit has done in my life, changing me from a dope dealer to a hope dealer!

My book, Spiritual Spackle, is over half written and has begun the editing process. I am hoping that through the editing it will help me become better equipped to complete the book! It is taking me longer to complete than I had originally thought but it is coming together. In closing I just want to say thanks for reading. I have now been read almost 8,000 times in 60 countries!