Category: Alumni

As we move closer to the Holidays I would say it’s generally for me a time of sharing good things (especially food).  I will be the first to admit that I used to “roll my eyes” at the idea of writing a gratitude list.  This was mostly out of fear that when I wrote out the list that my life still wouldn’t look all that great.  However today I know that I can look forward to what is yet to happen as well.  I’ve been through a lot of ups and downs in recovery and today I can say that I am grateful for the lessons that I have learned and all the times where I have been able to change my thought and look at the good.  That good begins with what I am experiencing “right now.”  Which means that I get to be present and allow my awareness to be on something else other than the problem.

While I was a resident at the Watershed on Thanksgiving of 2010 I remember that I felt alone as this was the first time I was physically away from any family for a major holiday.  I’ve had social anxiety for a number of years and even though I had spent the last 30 days with a bunch of other drug addicts and alcoholics I still didn’t think I knew how to act on a holiday so my plan was to isolate.  However this plan got blown up when an employee (who shall remain nameless) locked me out of my apartment and told me that I needed to socialize with the other residents. What came to mind that day was something my dad taught me and that was to just go up and ask people “How are you doing?”  Don’t we all just LOVE to talk about ourselves!!  So my gratitude begins with me taking action to do what I can to help someone else even if its just the simple act of listening.  I’ve been given a new affirmation to repeat: “I am available to more good that I can possibly imagine!” 

by Jason J.

Learning to let go of control is not any easy matter. It’s not as though anyone wants to turn it over because control gives a person a sense of power and safety. Who would ever want to abandon such comfort? The honest truth is that holding onto this coping mechanism of controlling behaviors is only going to keep you sick and learning to let go of this will enacts a new freedom that makes so much more possible than you would have ever thought.

Learning to Let Go of Control for Freedom and Peace

When you can begin to pause and be in the moment, you will notice how freeing it feels to have taken a step away from any controlling tendencies. Learning to let go of control will allow you to be relaxed and able to participate in your own life. You probably spent far too much time concerned with controlling areas of your life which ultimately you had no control over anyway. When you let go of trying to control other people, their actions, and even your surroundings, you will find yourself practicing acceptance. With this, you may experience a sense of peace because you are acknowledging that you cannot conform specifics to your accommodations and it is what it is – nothing more, nothing less. Practicing acceptance will help with the process of learning to let go of control.

When things change, you may find that you do not instantaneously become happy.

People don’t find it hard to relate to having the far too prevalent thoughts that expressing how a multitude of changes can by some miracle constructs a newfound happiness in their life. Logically, this makes no sense because ultimately materialistic “things” can only make a person “happy” for so long before it wears off and no longer keeps them happy with everlasting joy. That is truly what each person strives for – joy. However, these thoughts can be so convincing that they deceive the believer who begins to internalize them to such great extent. These thoughts can cycle in their mind as they instruct them that if they change certain attributes then they will all of a sudden be happier. For example, people commonly believe that if they get a new job or move to a new location, they will be happier when the reality is that these changes do not really impact the person’s happiness at all. The old saying, “wherever you go, there you will always be” works perfectly for this. No matter what changes you do externally and physically, if nothing is resolved internally and implemented, then you won’t be living with any kind of true happiness or more importantly, peace.

When you are able to stop latching on to different ways of controlling behaviors, you will find that life becomes less strenuous and provoking. Ridding the tendency to control areas of life pertaining to relationships, food, money, work, or your own home just to name a few may seem difficult, but that is why it is important to remember that it is not an event but rather a process. Learning to let go of control requires practice and by pausing at every situation instead of immediately jumping toward ritualistic, old behaviors, you can view it accordingly and see if are overly dominating.

Looking for more? Click here: Letting Go To Completely Transform Yourself

 

 

I don’t know about you, but this word, prior to recovery, never held a positive connotation for me! I mean think about it – If an individual or a group says, “I, (we) surrender!”, did that mean they won or lost? In the old movies when folks were in a battle and the white flag went up, what did it mean? It meant “I surrender” AND it meant “you win…I loose”. Well… this is not something I ever wanted to do! 

So coming in to recovery, what’s the first thing I start hearing? You got it…surrender! Well, “I” did not like that at all! To me it didn’t just mean that “I lost”. It was like saying “I’m a looser”. Those are two very different things. So what does surrender mean anyway? 

Well, the word surrender has several definitions: 

(a) A verbal act of admitting defeat.

(b)To relinquish possession or control over.

(c) To relinquish to the power of another.

(d) To give up or agree to forgo to the power or possession of another. 

I found those definitions interesting. Upon gaining a grasp of the meaning of this word better, I was also able to understand that “surrender” was really nothing new in my life. 

As a child I surrendered to the authority of my parents and once in school I surrendered to the authority of the institution and teachers over me. As a member of society I surrendered to the “laws of the land” and during work, to my employers. In my addiction I surrendered to the bottle, the dope dealer and my disease. In early sobriety I surrendered to the treatment facility and in recovery I surrendered to God.

So, while it is true that there are plenty of negative aspects to this word “surrender”, there are many more simply realistic and positive aspects to it. I mean in my recovery, every time I’ve laid it all down and surrendered a situation, (my self and my will to God), there has come peace, stability and joy. 

So just what are some ways I “surrender” in recovery? Well, when I “obtain and use a sponsor, join and become active in a home group, work the steps under the direction of my sponsor, utilize my Big Book to identify my problems and seek out solutions and not only ask but strive to rely upon God to do for me what “I” can’t — these are all “actions of surrender”. Surrender is NOT a feeling, it is an ACTION. I surrender “my direction” to instead, “seek outside of myself & follow the direction of another.” 

In the AA Big Book, “The Doctor’s Opinion”, (XXX – last paragraph), it enables us to see surrender through the action of “willingness”. Through my willingness to read this book through, though perhaps I came to “scoff”, I would remain to pray. (I surrendered my will through the action and the result was humility and growth.) In Step 1 “We admitted we were powerless and our lives had become unmanageable” – We give a demonstration of surrender by our “admissions”. 

“Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly” – For many of us this action of surrender occurs through the steps. Each of the steps brings about more and more surrender through our actions. And the end result? Spiritual growth and continued sobriety.

by Rebecca B.

Am I still, or was I ever, willing to change, progress, and recover from anything?

Webster’s dictionary defines willing as: inclined or favorably disposed in mind, ready; prompt to act or respond; done, borne, or accepted by choice or without reluctance; of or relating to the will or power of choosing, volitional, voluntary.

Hmmm… Well, I don’t know about you, but I do not usually choose to change unless there is some kind of uncomfortability. But more often than not, a certain amount of pain! Why is this? You would think by now I would have learned that every time I become willing, life seems to become more enjoyable, and things just fall into place. I am still my own worst enemy; my pride and ego continually get into the way of my growth, manifesting itself in my stubbornness.

Life changes require ongoing willingness, regular re-commitment to the new way of life, and consistent action, for as long as you want to grow. I don’t know about you, but I was taught very early on that I’m either working toward a drink or drug, OR away from a drink or drug. So I, my friends, do not ever want to stop growing.

Everyone knows people who have stopped smoking and started again later, lost weight and gained it back…dozens of times. Every bar serves people who have stopped drinking, for a day, a week, a month or even years and started again. In each case, the person had the willingness and took the action, then became unwilling and stopped taking the action necessary to sustain the change. Why? Change is tough; commitment is tough; immediate gratification is, well, immediate. Willingness to change often means not having all wants immediately gratified. But we must remember and be grateful, for all of our needs will be met as long as we stay in the midst of God’s grace.

So take a minute and ask yourself, “Am I still willing to be willing today?”

From the earliest memory I can recall to now, many life experiences have carried an impacting message for me. I notice some major things I’ve learned when I particularly look back to when I was active in my addiction to drugs.

10 Things Addiction Taught Me

I Didn’t Know What A Friendship Was

Even when I was spending a majority of my time with someone that I believed I was inseparable from, I realized not too long after that my trust was foolishly misplaced.  When I was with some “friends,” my own money went mysteriously missing while they conveniently had the same exact amount in their hands due to “washing the front window of a man’s car.”  Right.  After seeing what they were doing to me, I began to do the same to others. I trick other people into thinking they “accidentally dropped” their drugs and then would help them look for it. In recovery, I now believe it’s just the consequences of living in active addiction. It was never happening to me, it was happening because I was engaging. Once I stopped hanging out with shady people and started living honestly, I no longer suffered these consequences. 

I Was Not A Doctor

When I was actively abusing drugs, I thought I had all the right solutions to fix any feeling I simply just didn’t want to feel.  If I was depressed, anxious, or sick, I thought I knew the “proper” drug or concoction to medicate myself with. I thought I knew better than doctors who went to medical school for years did. I did not know that self-medicating was not only not working, but could kill me. Playing doctor helped turn me into an addict with no cure that could be found on the streets. 

The World Did Not Owe Me

The mindset I had when I was using drugs regularly was completely off.  It was as if I figured that since I was already on drugs and breaking the law, participating in other illegal activity didn’t matter.  My thoughts were wrong but sound similar to ideas that suggested if I was hungry, it was okay to take food from the grocery store because, hey, it’s like a public pantry.  If I needed money, did it really matter who I got it from?  Or how?  I heard of others who felt desperate enough to go through peoples’ mailboxes and take any cash or checks in birthday or celebration cards.  The good news is that people who did these kinds of things can apply the idea behind it to their recovery.  I used the concept of “the world being my oyster” to motivate myself toward positive change.  I realized that the world did not owe me and I could achieve anything I wanted – that supported my life in recovery – as long as I was dedicated to working hard and honestly for it. (Work, work, work!)

Substitutions Were Not Solutions

I think there were a few times when I kicked a specific drug habit – only because I was abusing another or picked up a different process addiction in its place.  It didn’t take too long for me to realize that this didn’t exactly correct the issue of addiction or solve my thinking problem. Addiction is best treated with complete abstinence. 

Fear Did Not Stop Me

It’s a crazy phenomenon that an addiction could keep me doing something that proved to be fatal for someone I knew, even cared for.  The strange thing about it is that it just didn’t make me want to stop.  There was a time when I didn’t want to live anymore, and when I heard that a drug overdose caused one of my best friends’ boyfriend’s death, I had to get my hands on it because that is the insanity of this disease.  After entering recovery, I could finally see how sick my thinking was. 

I Was Missing Life

In the beginning of my addiction, I hadn’t come to terms with this right off the bat.  But after a while of continuous use and spending a majority – if not all – of my time abusing my drug of choice, I began to see how I missed out on relationships, events, experiences, and my youth. My entire life was being one giant blur and I was missing all of it. 

Drugs Took Control 

I remember describing this to someone who knew what I was doing.  When everything I thought and did involved drugs, I knew I wasn’t me.  I lost myself and did things that my loved ones would never fathom me doing.  I definitely saw it as having my soul stripped right from me. I was completely powerless over drugs and my life was unmanageable.

Being A Victim Hurt Me Most

It might have taken me a while, but I finally caught onto the truth that self-pity only made me more depressed.  Thoughts like, “Why is this happening to me?” ultimately just multiplied my misery.  Who wants sadness upon sadness?  On top of this, I realized that when I was too focused on my own problems, I was not being of service to others or living out my life’s intended purpose. Self-pity could not keep me clean and sober. 

I Was Selfish

There was a time when I did want to be a better person.  Although I couldn’t stop using, I did behave better.  Because of this, I thought I wasn’t selfish or self-seeking.  Let’s just say that after making a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself, this couldn’t have been further from the truth. I see today that being selfish is simply not thinking of my self so much and thinking of others more. 

I Felt Invisible 

One of the worst things that could happen to you is when you begin to live your life as though you are already dead.  It wasn’t fair to the people around me, especially when I was physically there but not emotionally, mentally, or spiritually present in each moment. In recovery I feel apart of this world and those in it.

Recovery Is Real

Many people who are in active addiction feel that recovery cannot work for them. They could not be further from the truth. Anyone who is willing to be open-minded, honest, and willing to work towards their recovery can heal from drug addiction and alcoholism. If you have want to see what real recovery is, call The Watershed today at 1-877-975-4837, we can help you get there. 

 Written By: Watershed Laura

In the chapter on the 11th Step in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions , Bill W. writes: “There is a direct linkage among self-examination, meditation, and prayer. Taken separately, these practices can bring much relief and benefit. But when they are logically related and interwoven, the result is an unshakable foundation for life.”

Jointly with the 10th Step, which focuses on self-assessment and allows us to spot check our behaviors throughout the day, the 11th Step shows us the way to begin and maintain that “unshakable foundation for life.” Through practicing these spiritual disciplines, we can discover that prayer and meditation are not just helpful, but crucial practices if we are to be grounded on a solid spiritual foundation. The collective experience of AA for generations, demonstrates that if we are to keep growing spiritually by building on a solid foundation, we will be free from the bondage of self-seeking anger, fear, isolation, and despair that once ruled us and fueled our addictions. On the other hand, if we don’t continually grow spiritually through the constant practice of prayer and meditation, then we will certainly regress back into our fearful, self-seeking state of mind.

The 11th Step says that we must build a relationship with God through prayer and meditation; this is vitally important for the spiritual growth necessary to meet life’s challenges successfully. Belief alone will not build that relationship. Practice is mandatory if we would transform our hopeful belief into faith based on facts. We don’t have to be religious to be thankful for the research shown that people who practice such spiritual disciplines tend to be happier and healthier than those who don’t. Yet some of us object so strongly to certain ideas about God or religious beliefs, that we resist opening our minds to broader conceptions of God and spiritual practices. If we let others’ religious ideas or conceptions of God hold us captive to their beliefs, thus preventing us from practicing the 11th Step, then we might not only sabotage our own recovery, but also miss discovering our own true nature as spiritual beings.

Meditation has long been practiced and encouraged in most cultures as a primary means of stilling the mind and expanding one’s spirituality. The benefits are hard to imagine for most addicts, especially when their sense of self is limited to just that, themselves. We are not human beings who are striving to have a spiritual experience; instead we are spiritual beings who are having a human experience. Aside from the rare “white lightening” experiences, meditation is the only means of getting to know the truth about ourselves and tap into God’s presence in the very core of our beings. It’s this knowledge, grounded in direct experience, that essentially changes our outlook on the world and our place in it. This enables us to shed old behaviors and attitudes, and empowers us to become the men and women God created us to be.

The principles of the 12 steps can be very difficult or very simple to understand. This is an effort to simplify the meaning of the principles of the 12 steps for those who may be having difficulty. These are the principles that are incorporated into our daily lives as we “walk the walk”. Employing each of these behaviors will help to rebuild a life of increased self esteem and self confidence. So, in my never ending quest to keep it simple, here are the action principles behind the twelve steps:

1. Honesty – The operative principle behind step 1 is honesty. If you cannot get honest about the scope of your problem, and honest about a sincere effort to resolve it, you will not succeed. How about a definition of honesty as the absence of the intention to deceive? Who do we try to fool? Ourselves.

2. Hope – In order to engage in a course of addiction recovery, we must have hope of success. If there is no hope, why try? Perhaps we have failed on our own; how about enlisting some help? A way to instill hope is to realize recovery is not a question of ability – after all, there are millions in recovery – but rather persistence and application.

3. Faith – This stage of action is to begin to employ the recovery skills being learned. You can seek out help, but it is also necessary to utilize it. Our job is to become willing to do the right thing. A simple way to view the “next right thing” is don’t engage in your behavior. Have faith it will work.

4. Courage – This step is really about courage to honestly (see step 1) look at ourselves. Take a look at how our behavior has become warped to justify our continued behavior. We are here to take an honest assessment of ourselves.

5. Integrity – If we have truly done a thorough job of introspection and evaluation of our assets and shortcomings, do we have the integrity to own up to it? It can be very difficult to be open and honest about our past behaviors. We accept the need for a dose of humility.

6. Willingness – Now that we have accomplished an inventory of the good and not so good aspects of our character and behavior, are we willing to change them? All of them? The important part in this 12 step principle is the willingness to let go of old behaviors.

7. Humility – Here we move further into action. In step 6, we became willing to let go of our old behaviors. Now we ask for help in actually letting go. Can we learn to forgive ourselves?

8. Discipline and Action – We are continuing to remove the barriers that can block forward sober growth. We are getting ready to sweep our side of the street clean. Make a list of all those people we have harmed – through both actions and not being present to live up to obligations.

9. Forgiveness – Asking for the forgiveness of those we have intentionally or unintentionally injured is the order of the day. A key point here is to try to correct those injuries through action, not just words. It is highly recommended that guidance and help is utilized here. Asking forgiveness is not a gift to the other person, but rather an act of kindness to you.

10. Acceptance – To be human is to make mistakes. Hopefully our journey has led us to the point where we can readily admit mistakes and accept ourselves for being imperfect. We must also learn not to judge others but accept them for who they are, not our vision of who they should be.

11. Knowledge and Awareness – Here we search and become aware of following our path; being aware of our purpose in life and actively pursuing it. I view this principle as just being aware; not being caught up in the rush of life; making a conscious effort to do the right thing and to be at peace.

12. Service and Gratitude – Having brought about a personality change sufficient to remain in recovery; we are empowered to demonstrate the new principles by which we live our daily life through example. We seek out and are available to help others in need.

Freedom! What a precious word. It is something that has taken my whole lifetime to even begin to understand. These are lessons that I have obtained from many sources, and from that still, small voice within. I found it best defined in the song Me and Bobby McGee, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

There is only one path to true Freedom, Freedom from Self, Peace with Self, with fellows and with your own GOD. That path is through the elimination of EGO and the acquisition of True Humility before the Spirit of the Universe. God as each may understand him. We use many different names for our Creator, all being the same, all a call to our innermost selves to “Seek First the Kingdom of God Within.”

Before I began to search for my path, in my worldly drunken view, I was severely limited in what I could do. By ourselves, we can do little or nothing except drown out the bleakness and frustration of life. A man without power, as I was, is nothing. With Power, however, anything is possible. That Power is, of course, Spiritual Power….man needs power, lots of it, to survive. This means getting in touch with the source of power…..so that every act becomes a spiritual act, every day a spiritual day. It is thus that we come to live a COMPLETELY SPIRITUAL LIFE, HAPPY, JOYOUS, and FREE.