Good Enough Ain't Good Enough Anymore

In my addiction, I usually did the wrong thing. On occasion, I would do the right thing. Sometimes it was because I still had some principals, other times it was so that I could bring it up later to explain why I was not as bad as other people. Quite a lot of the time, it was by blind luck. Even a broken watch is right twice a day (unless it’s digital, in which case it is never right because you can’t see it or if it displays military time in which case it would be right once a day). Needless to say, the life that I was living in my addiction was good enough. What I was doing I felt was good enough to keep doing until it wasn’t, which took about 17 years. Then another 7.

I decided to get sober. Not really for me, but because I got caught by my probation officer and she sent me to rehab instead of back to prison. I was not doing it for me, I did it to stay out of prison which I had not enjoyed enough to want to go back on a 10 year backup. Also, I did it to show other people that I was not who they thought I was. I thought my reasoning was good enough, but my sobriety only lasted a couple of months before I relapsed.

When I tried to get sober a year later, I never really pushed myself. Instead, I would just do enough to get by. At faking it, I was awesome. I overachieved at the goals others set for me but never really had any goals for myself. Even when I did the 90 meetings in 90 days that was more like 150 meetings in 90 days, I never really listened while I was there. I was too busy telling people all that I knew about sobriety, which at 2 months sober could have fit inside of a thimble. I would also join in on the war stories, which a lot of other people there liked to listen to. But I thought that what I was doing was good enough, until it no longer helped.

I had a counselor who told me not to do drugs and that alcohol was a drug, so I followed in his footsteps and was sober. I actually looked up to him and respected him. Then one day he came into the restaurant I worked at and sat at the bar. While he was at the bar he had several alcoholic drinks. He obviously thought that no one could see him, or that he didn’t have a drinking problem. I am not sure which it was because I never saw him again. For him, what he was doing was good enough. I went out that night and got drunk. If he could do it so could I. Was he the reason I drank? No, but he was the reason I used. It was good enough.

Then I quit drugs which were illegal and became an alcoholic because alcohol was legal. I could rationalize my drinking all day long. Even though I would black out most every night I still worked and went to college. I even graduated honors. I was an alcoholic that drank and drove multiple times EVERY NIGHT. I would wake up with no idea how I got home. I would wake up with shakes and drink to make them go away. Was I happy? No, I was miserable but I was good enough.

Then I decided I wanted more. I wanted more for my life, my son’s life, my relationships, my employment, my day to day life. I was no longer happy with what I had. It was not enough. Good was not enough. I wanted to attain greatness. I went full bore in everything that I did. I decided to never settle for anything less than amazing for myself, my faith, my recovery, my wife and my children. Good was simply not good enough anymore. I wanted great!

I found that if I wanted to change, there were things I had to realize if I wanted to live a better life:

1.       Complacency kills I wanted to be great, and in order to do that I had to never ever settle. If I meet my goals, I create new ones. I was not born to do good things; I was born to achieve greatness!

2.       Keep moving If you are not moving forward, you are moving backward. Life is a journey not a destination.

3.       Educate Yourself Learn, learn and then learn some more. Read, have discourse with intelligent and/or wise people. To die ignorant is the greatest sin we can commit against ourselves.

4.       Ask Questions That is the only way you can find out some things, so don’t be afraid to ask. The only stupid question is the one that isn’t asked.

5.       Be Altruistic It really is better to give than to receive. Do for others, then do some more. There is nothing that makes me feel better than knowing I am necessary.

6.       Speak Loud When it comes to your testimony, shout it from the rooftops. After all, you are the expert at your life and there is a lot of hope and strength that people can get from it.

7.       Shame Sucks Never be ashamed of who you are and what you have done. After all, they made you the person you are today and that person is awesome!

8.       Be Proud of Your SuccessesDefeats build us and our victories define us. Take pride in what you have accomplished. Toot your own horn, because other people might not. People need to hear about both your wins and your losses to know who you are and what you are about. Take pride in the positive things you do.

9.       Be Grateful Learning the difference between wants and needs was vital to my finding happiness and a better life. There are things that I want and things that I need. If I focus on my wants I lose my ability to focus on that which is important. Start your day with a gratitude list and focus on what you have instead of what you don’t. It makes my mornings start off well, which bleeds into the rest of my days.

10.   Never Surrender I was beaten so many times before I even tried because I listened to the voice that told me I could not do it. I stopped listening to that voice and accepted I had no limitations as long as I was not dead. That is when the game is over. If you are still breathing, than victory can still be yours!

11.   Get the 5 Pillars The 5 Pillars are: A team to play for (Jesus), a coach (sponsor/mentor), teammates (accountability partners), a game plan (The Bible [for Cliff Notes use the book of James]/12 Steps) and practice (small groups, church, support meetings).

12.   Put God First My life is no longer about me. I put God first and every thing else comes second. If I put God first it makes all other areas of my life better. I become a better husband, father, friend, employee, etc. It all starts with God and trickles down from there. After all, I was an addict for decades and tried every way you can imagine to quit using and failed. An atheist said a fox hole prayer 5 years ago and I have not used since. And I am WAAAYYYYYY happier!

Lack of Accountability Kills!

It seems that having no accountability is the “in” thing today. I can understand that, because fads and styles always come back into fashion. Lack of accountability has been around forever. It is actually recorded in Genesis; the very first book of the Bible.  In Chapter 3 verse 12 Adam blamed both the woman and God for the choice he made. In verse 13 the woman blamed the serpent for her choices. They were both told not to eat fruit from a certain tree, and they both failed to comply………..but it wasn’t their fault. It was because of someone else.

You blame your problems on everyone else, because that causes you very little pain. That is the cool thing about having no accountability. Things can never be your fault and you don’t have to feel terrible about the outcome because it was due to some outside factor, anyway!

“If traffic wouldn’t have been so bad, I would not have been late to work.”

“If she wouldn’t have said that, I wouldn’t have hit her!”

“If she wouldn’t have gotten high, I never would have relapsed.”

Does this sound familiar? Well, if he/she/it wouldn’t have (fill in the blank), then I wouldn’t have (fill in the blank). You pretend that you are not responsible for your own actions.  This kind of thinking actually implies that someone else controls what you: say, do, think, feel, etc. This is how negative behaviors are formed.

If it is someone else’s fault, you have nothing to change. There is nothing wrong with you; it is instead the fault of other people, places and things. This mentality traps you in a prison.  This lack of accountability eventually meets up with victimization. It is not only someone else’s fault, but someone is out to get me and that is why all of this is happening to begin with.

“Everyone is out to get me,” and “they are all persecuting me,” become our favorite responses. Another popular one is blaming it on your childhood, “It is just the way I was raised, what do you expect me to do,” as if that forgave everything. Once again, it is not my fault. “This happened because of something outside of me that I cannot control.”

Now we welcome our enemy rationalization, whereby you look at what you do and justify it by saying things like, “Everyone else is doing it,” to which you might add “they just don’t get caught.” There is my personal favorite, “well at least I am not doing (Fill in the blank).” Here a meth user says, “at least I’m not using heroin” in order to justify his drug use and how he feels it could be worse, so he must not be that bad.

Next comes in justification. You can feel better about anything that you do by justifying it. A thief might say, “I only steal from rich people that can afford it” and a drug dealer might say, “It is the law of supply and demand, they are going to use it anyway. At least I know that my drugs are not cut with stuff that could kill them.”  

Out of these come our attitudes, habits and beliefs. As you walk on your journey through life, this is how support the jacked up choices you make. After all, they were not really choices to begin with. You have now learned ways to manipulate the situations and people you come into contact with, using them as a way to avoid any feeling of responsibility. My hope is that you are no longer at this place in your life, and if you are still here that you do not want to be. I hope that you want real change in your life.

If this is to change, there are things you must do in order to change. The first is to avoid old friends and places that are conducive to you once again returning to the person you once were and no longer want to be. It is much easier not to do meth when I am not at the meth dealer’s house and a lot easier to not eat cheesecake when I do not go to the Cheesecake Factory.

Next you begin to utilize the 5 Pillars of Recovery. You must develop a relationship with a Higher Power, and I have found that God is the most effective one. Then you begin to attend meetings or small groups and actually get invested in them. The next pillar is gaining accountability partners, which are people that you give permission to call you out and help you continue moving in the right direction. Another pillar is having a set of actions to guide your life. I have found the 12 steps and the book of James from the New Testament to be very effective. Lastly, obtain a mentor/sponsor that can help you begin applying the 12 steps/James to your life.

From there you only have a couple more needs. You must learn the strength of prayer and meditation. You need also learn that community service is not something that a judge or probation officer has you do. It is something you do in order to make the community around you better, because it is the right thing to do. Finally, begin sharing the hope and strength you have found with others, both those with similar struggles as well as everybody else.

Never forget, everybody needs to hear what you have to say. Everyone needs to buy what you are selling, and you are selling hope. Without it, life is seldom worth living. The only way to come to terms with your past and understand why things happened as they did is to have the opportunity to use your experiences to impact the lives of others positively. And that is the best job I have ever found.

Not Afraid to Die

I was never afraid of death. In my addiction I died multiple times and was brought back to life. I had my stomach pumped, slashed my wrists, flew a car 97 feet clipping trees 32 feet in the air and had a couple of overdoses. I continued to use drugs and drive under the influence, so needless to say I wasn't afraid of death. I kept doing the things that had caused me to die previously. I was not afraid and took pride in it.

I was hopeless. The best I could hope for in a day was to get high multiple times, make money and that was about it. In my addiction I would sleep once a week, and I did this for years. I always made sure I had drugs to take as soon as I woke up, because that was where I  placed my hope. My higher power was drugs and money and everything that came with that. When I was an alcoholic I  knew that if I slept through the night without having the shakes wake me up, not urinating in the bed overnight and didn't have a hangover  that was the best I could hope for. That was the best my life was going to get. Not much hope there.

I was ashamed. I had already lost most of my values and morals. I put up so many walls that I was like the heart of the onion; completely covered so no one could know who I really was. I lied to everyone about my past so much that I began to believe the lies myself. It became my persona, the gang banger who moved to southwest Missouri. I was so ashamed of who I was I would lie to people when telling them the truth would not even matter.

I felt all alone. I could be in a house with 10 other people or a bar with 100's and would feel alone. I would spend hours shuffling cards or playing video games, making no contact with the outside world. I would have sex with people for the conquest. I would not know their name and  half the time they did not know mine because I wanted no one to truly get close to me. That way I could stay alone.

I hated myself. I would let no one get too close to me. I dated a lot of people. We used each other. I used them for the conquest, arm candy or to try to fix them up as a project. They used me for money, protection or drugs. If a girl I was dating told me she loved me I would break up with her if I thought she was telling the truth. "If you are sick enough to love someone like me, I can't be with you," I would say.

I felt numb. I think that is why I took the drugs to begin with. Maybe not in the very beginning, but in the end. The first time I smoked marijuana I did it to fit in, and I did. I soon learned that drugs numbed my pain, helped me forget about the abuse I  had suffered through as a kid. The hurt I felt from not fitting in disappeared. I learned that no one could hurt me if I was high, so I stayed that way all the time.

I felt dead. I no longer felt alive without putting chemicals in my body. In fact, the only time I felt alive was when I was sticking a needle into my arm or putting myself in a situation where I might die. I would feel alive when my car got searched and they didn't find the drugs. I would feel alive when I got into a fight or was running from the police. I felt dead and empty unless I was doing things that released massive amounts of adrenaline and/or dopamine.

I was evil. I consider meth a drug straight from the Devil. In my addiction, I was a soldier for Satan. I did his bidding and I brought more people into  his fold. I helped manufacture a drug that enabled society to continue its rapid decay. I dealt a drug that is associated with murder, rape, burglary and assault. I would take food stamps for 40 cents on the dollar from friends and 25 cents on the dollar from everybody else then throw the food stamps away because I felt they were beneath me and its not like I ate anyway. I took money out of kids mouths that needed it. I hurt friends physically over $25 to make an example of  them.

I wanted to die. I had no hope of getting of drugs, changing my lifestyle or not going back to prison other than death. Death would have been a reprieve at the time. Supporting an addiction to drugs, power and money is a very stressful job. Once a month, I would put one round in a .38, spin the cylinder and pull the trigger. I did that for the last year of my addiction.

But here is the truth...................................

I was scared to death. I was afraid that if I let someone in my life they would  hurt me. I had been hurt by people that were supposed to nurture and love me because they were related to me. I had been devastated by people claiming to be my friends and if I kept my walls up they could never hurt me again. Would I have really been so paranoid I played curtain patrol and had motion detectors and recording devices set everywhere if I wasn't scared?

I was afraid to live. I was afraid of truly trying because if I didn't try I couldn't fail. No one would expect much from me. I had tried and failed enough times in the beginning of my drug use that I was afraid to try again. I dropped out of high school and had never had a long term relationship. I broke off any relationships I had with people who truly cared about me so that I could simply exist. If I never tried anything, I could never fail again. If I kept people in my life who expected nothing of me I could do nothing.

I wanted to not hurt anymore. To accomplish that I tried drugs, alcohol, sex and power. I was still scared, angry and hurt. I tried suicide. I wasn't very good at it. I tried jail, house arrest and prison without any success. I was using half an hour after I got out of prison. I tried rehab, counseling and prescribed medication. The result was temporary at best and I would relapse within weeks at most. I could not escape who I was and what I had done.

What was the reason..............................

All of the trauma I had been through (whether it had been done to me or I had done it myself) had created a hole in me that I kept trying to fill with sex, money, power and drugs. Unfortunately, there was only one thing that could fill it. It was a hope sized hole that nothing man made could touch. There was not enough money, sex, drugs or counseling to fill it. And trust me, I tried. I still felt empty and broken, unworthy and worthless.

What is the answer.........................

Spiritual Spackle is based solely on one concept. Life creates holes in our souls, and the things we have available to us in this physical world only cover the holes. Notice I didn't say they fill the holes. They only cover them. The holes are still there. The Holy Spirit is like spackle for our soul. It is what is meant to fill the holes in and restore our hope. You can read more about the Spiritual Spackle Theory here http://spiritualspackle.blogspot.com/2011/08/spackle-theory.html

God is the bringer of true hope and purpose. In order to accept Him into our lives and live differently we have to:

1. Accept -  Admit that you have sinned.
2. Repent - Not just feel sorry for what you have done, but be ready to live your life differently.
3. Belief - Believe that Jesus is the son of God and that He died to forgive your sins
4. Action - Live your life differently. My life revolved around drugs from waking to sleep. Now it revolves around God and living a life I hope He finds pleasing
5. Prepare - (for Success) Use the 5 Pillars http://spiritualspackle.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-5-pillars.html or try the Locker Room approach http://spiritualspackle.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-locker-room.html

If anyone has any questions or requests, please let me know. Remember, the journey has just begun!

I'm Hacked Off

I was hacked off this week. Once again a friend relapsed, and it made me angry at first. I tried to figure out how anyone who has clean time could possibly relapse. Once you have several years and are seeing that life can be amazing without drugs/alcohol, what could possibly possess you to use again?

Then I remember the cunning, baffling and strong aspects of addiction and I calm down a little. While I calm down, I remember my relapses in the past. There were relapses with old friends I thought had quit using, new prescriptions after accidents and oral surgery, new friends I thought didn't use that did, hanging out in bars and having friends that used and feeling that I would be strong enough to always say no. I learned otherwise. But I always got back up!

Now, in the wake of my friends relapse I reflect on the things that have kept me clean and sober. I want to remind you right now that your addiction is in the back of your head: running on a treadmill, lifting weights and doing research on the computer! It is getting stronger and smarter each and every day, trying to figure out the best way to take your life over. This is to be avoided at all costs!!

If our addiction is getting stronger and smarter, we obviously need to keep our recovery even stronger than our addiction. The question is, how do we strengthen our recovery? I have to stick with the 5 Pillars of Recovery:

1. GET A HIGHER POWER (God, NA/AA Group, etc.) This is the foundation of your recovery! Your Higher Power needs to be something that can give you validation, love, compassion and acceptance. Door knobs need not apply.
2. GO TO MEETINGS (NA, AA, Celebrate Recovery, Living Free, small groups, etc.) Great place to meet like minded people, realize we are not the only ones who struggle and get some hope restored. Without hope, recovery is impossible.
3. GET A SPONSOR (Mentor) This is someone who is living their lives the way you would like to be living yours 5 years down the road and is willing to take the time to help you get there
4. STEP WORK (12 Steps) This is a set of things that we need to do in order to work through our addiction. The truth is, most of us are not working the steps for drugs/alcohol/food/pornography/etc. We have deep rooted problems that must be taken care of first and when we do that our addictions will begin to sort themselves out. Think of going to a doctor missing a finger and all he did was clean up the blood and then said you were better. Are you better? Of course not! He has not taken care of the problem, only a symptom of the problem. Our addictions are the same way, just a symptom of the real problems. We need to take care of the deeper issues and the 12 steps are the way to do it!
5. GET ACCOUNTABILITY PARTNERS (Friends that are positive and sober) These are people you can set up in your life who will help you stay on task. They will call you when you miss a meeting or don't show up at work just to tell you that you're missed and ask if everything is okay. They may even show up unannounced, drag you off of your pity-pot and take you out for coffee. 

If I have these 5 things in my life I need to also make sure that I pray and meditate every day. Working steps, going to meetings and working with a sponsor will cause issues to come to mind. We need to address these, and prayer and meditation is a great way to do that. If you don't have time, you need to make time. Some nights I don't get off of work until 9 PM, but I am still up at 4 AM the next morning to lift weights for 30 minutes then walk. Why do I do this?

I have found that taking a 30 minute walk most mornings allows me to focus on praying and meditating. I focus on the things that I am grateful for. Then I pray for: strength/courage/wisdom to accomplish what I need to that day, to make me a better husband/father, then help for my friends, family and others who are struggling. In addition I always pray for two things: To make me like Jesus and to use me this day as His hands and feet. This always gets my day off to a great start!