Questions About Longterm Recovery and Answers from Paul Hokemeyer

Recently I had the opportunity to get some clinical perspective from a leading addictions expert--Dr. Paul Hokemeyer, Senior Clinical Advisor at Ocean Drive-part of Caron Treatment Centers.

It was helpful to ask about things that I have been thinking about in regard to long-term recovery. Here are some of my questions for Dr. Hokemeyer and his responses. I’m very grateful for his perspective

1. Does the risk of relapse decrease with length of sobriety/recovery?

It depends on how diligently the person is working a program of recovery. In my experience, I’ve found the most effective treatment intervention for addiction is regular attendance at 12 Step meetings, and yet this is the very thing that people let slide after they enjoy a period of continuous sobriety. It’s also important for people in recovery to constantly focus on improving their physical, emotional and spiritual life.

2. Does the look and shape of recovery change after ten years? Or 20 or more?

Yes. Perhaps the most significant change comes in what I call “the pinball effect” --the feeling of being overwhelmed by the options of life. One of the gifts of aging in recovery is the ability to ignore the noise and distractions of life. In long-term sobriety, people are able to focus on the qualitative aspects of their lives, like relationships, meaningful work and peace of mind, and let go of the neurotic pursuit for quantitative fulfillment such as power, property and prestige.

3. Why do we tend to see more people of 19 years and younger in 12 Step meetings? There are many people that have 20 or more years, but where are they seeking recovery support? Are they more at risk or recovering in different ways?

In my nearly 20 years experience in the field of recovery, I’ve found that by far the most successful recovery intervention is full participation and attendance in 12 Step meetings. I think that what happens to people in the 20-plus years is that they get caught up in the drama and anxiety that comes from this “launching” phase of their lives. They put romances, finances and status in front of their recovery.  

4. As we accrue more years in recovery, should we address additional addictions, like food, work, TV, etc.? 

Absolutely. I adhere to the concept of the Addiction Syndrome that was articulated by Dr. Howard J. Shaffer at Harvard University. This concept maintains that at the core of addiction is a personality that is pulled toward self-destructive behaviors. If you’re an alcoholic and you put down a drink, you will gravitate towards another self-destructive behavior, such as compulsive sex or distorted eating. It’s a concept that’s been empirically proven, and one that I see in my practice. Caron has recently launched a new program to address the addictions that coexist. This process itself is called Addiction Interaction Disorder.

This is why we refer to recovery as a practice that must be tended to every day for life. The good news is that this practice enables people to grow in a dynamic and rewarding ways.

More on Not Taking Anything Personally

I’m happy to report that my efforts with Step Six and Step Seven have provided relief. Now the hope that I will remember this next time. But that’s the progress of recovery, isn’t it? We don’t always remember but we get there a tiny bit faster each time.

This week I’ve been making note of other things that are helping me with the “Don’t take anything personally” plan. At the top of the list is a hard one: Let go of being right. Yes, you are laughing. Just wait till it’s your turn.

But our insistence on being right is at the center of taking things personally. We want to be right. Our primitive brain would have us believe that our life depends on it. A new book—just in time—is helping me to loosen this belief. I have started reading Kathryn Schulz book, “Being Wrong” which is about our belief in rightness, why we insist and what happens when we face situations in which we are wrong. She details why being wrong is so painful and how we get trapped and stuck in our rightness. The chapter called “Heartbreak” which is about the ways we are wrong in love is worth the read: “Of all the things we like to be right about, none is so important to us as being right about other people.”

A couple of other things came to me this week as adjuncts to my “not personal” practice. One is this oldie but goodie from early recovery: “If it doesn’t have your name on it don’t pick it up.” I can practice not picking up other people’s business, their opinions (including their opinions about me) and not picking up fear, jealousy, comparison etc.

And then, recognizing that our Third Step is important, I heard and love this quote from theologian Richard Rohr: “We cannot say Thy Kingdom Come unless we are willing to say My Kingdom Go.”

And What to Do When You Do Take Things Personally

Well, that good intention of mine from earlier in the week: “Don’t take things personally” seems to have gone out as an invitation to my character defects to come to a party.

Within hours of my new experiment I was taking lots of things personally and worse, I was noticing it and feeling unable to wrassle the defects down. Not fun!  I found myself particularly challenged by an old habit of thinking that I thought I had dealt with ages ago: “What About Me?” And “I’m important too.” Not attractive and miserably uncomfortable.

But here is the value of long-term recovery: it becomes so hard to entertain those thoughts and feelings for very long. Not that they shimmer once and disappear but it’s hard to pretend that issues belong to other people and are not mine.

In the same way that AA can ruin your drinking, AA can also ruin the pleasure of being right and the dark joy of holding onto a resentment. Even while my hand is on my hip and I am certain of my superior self a tiny voice is whispering,  “What is your part in this?”

My “personalization” had attached itself to two people and I knew that I needed my recovery toolbox and some outside help. So here’s is what I did…and what I am still doing:

First: I began to pray for help. The first prayers sounded like this: “Oh God what is this crap in my head? Help me. Yuck. I hate this. Remove this. Come on, come on, come on…get this out of me. Hurry up.”

Second: I knew I had to tell on myself so I emailed my sponsor and a close friend. I told them my mean thoughts and the nasty burning feeling I was having about people. I admitted that I was actually wishing someone ill and that while I knew it was my yuck, I was mad.  I was also sad and scared to find myself in this yuck.

Then: I changed my prayer to something like, “Please help me. I think this is old family stuff and its getting attached to someone who triggers old jealousy and fear. I know this is mine but I can’t see my way out. Give me courage to do what I need to do to get clarity. I want to be free. Help.”

Fourth: The written word. I got on the train to go to New York City. The rhythm of the train and the beautiful river views from Albany to Manhattan helped me and I kept praying. I had my Kindle with me and I opened it looking for some kind of help and there I found the book, “Drop the Rock.” Perfect. It told me that this was all about Steps Six and Seven. Bingo. I know that, so I began to pray the Seventh Step prayer. That helped too.

Throughout the day in New York my mantra was, “I turn my will and my life over to you.” It wasn’t perfect. My yuck kept breaking through to remind me about “her” and “him”. But I used 6 and 7 and my mantra prayer. By the time I was back on the train to come home the grip was lessening.

Then: The next day I went out to walk and took my IPod Shuffle along. The Shuffle is a God tool. I’ve got a mix of music, talks, and recovery stuff on the Shuffle and as you know—it shuffles—so it’s unpredictable. And what popped right up as I began to walk and listen? A Joe and Charlie talk on Steps 6 and 7. Uh huh. Again 6 and 7. By now I’m laughing.

But I listened and here’s what they had to say about Six and Seven: God will remove what God can remove and God will do what I can’t do. But God doesn’t do what I can. Yeah. And what I can do in steps 6 and 7 is “Do the opposite”. Brilliant but shocking.

“Do the opposite.” God will remove the defect if and when we start doing the opposite of the defect we want removed. Want lying removed? Start telling the truth. I wanted jealousy and scarcity removed so I had to start sharing and praising and being really emotionally generous. Ha! Not easy but I was motivated by wanting relief so I began. And because I like to measure everything I began to count my new behaviors. I made a game of it. How many times each day can I do the very opposite of the thing I am struggling with? (Of course, you see that making it into a game lightened the weight and gave me some power back—in a good way.)

So here I am days later. No, not fixed. But hyper-aware of my part and of a simple set of actions that I can take to shift a defect of character while God does his thing with it. And yes, I am still praying “hurry up, hurry up” cause I hate discomfort just like you. But I can see my part and I have some steps to take and the light is there at the end of this tunnel. And that, I am taking very personally.

Happy Mother's Day Dad!

Yes—Mother’s Day. It brings up all kinds of feelings for people in recovery. We begin with our own mother—she was either a saint or the cause of our troubles. Then as we progress in recovery the story changes: the saint wasn’t so perfect and the bad mother turned out to be human.

We may also struggle on this holiday with being a mother. We think we did it well and are not appreciated or we know we screwed up and we ache with guilt or shame. Or, for some of us, we didn’t get to be a mother and that’s an issue too.

But for all the struggles that we may have I can tell you—even without knowing you—that no matter where you fall on the Mother’s Day angst spectrum you have it easier than Jennifer Finney Boylan. Boylan was a father for six years and a mother for ten years and in-between she was, well—in-between genders.

Yes. When Jenny Boylan was a young Dad she came out as transgender and she transitioned from a man to a woman and from a father to a mother. And her family transitioned with her.

I know. You want the rest of this story right now, right? I did too. And so I read Boylan’s new book, “Stuck in the Middle With You.” (Isn’t that a fabulous title for this story?)

The book has just been published and it’s wonderful. The subtitle is, “A memoir of parenting in three genders”. Jenny Boylan’s story is of course interesting—how could it not be. But she does something else that makes this a keeper: she interviews some great people—like Ann Beatty, Richard Russo, Susan Minot—about what being a father/mother is all about.

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day. Go to your local independent bookstore and buy this for your mother, your friend who is a mother and for your self.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Don't Take Anything Personally

I know, you have heard that so many times. And worse, we have probably all said it to someone else. It’s too easy to offer that advice to another woman when it’s her “personal” and not ours.

But there is something to this. And I’m feeling inspired to give it another try.

A few weeks ago I met with a woman and we were talking about The Course in Miracles—which was my entry point into recovery and changing my life. The woman reached into her bag and held up a book and said, “I’m re-reading this old book too.” And it was a copy of “The Four Agreements” by Toltec healer and physician, Don Miguel Ruiz.

You have seen this book. Maybe you read it when it came out in 1997. It was passed around recovery rooms then. It is wisdom. The fur agreements are:

Be Impeccable with Your Word.

Don’t Take Anything Personally.

Don’t Make Assumptions.

Always Do Your Best.

Great advice right? But what I have come to see is that I even took that great advice and used it against myself. Be impeccable with your word because an internal message of, “Oh, you liar, you can’t do this, why did you say that…” and on and on. And “Always do your best” became, in my head, “Do more, do better, an impossible rant of perfectionism.

Are you surprised to hear that’s not what Ruiz was talking about?

I was making even those good ideas into personal failings. Old habit.

What has really synched this for me—today—is simultaneously reading a newer book called, “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying”.  by Bronnie Ware. Death is a great wisdom teacher too. I date myself, but Carlos Castaneda tried to teach us that ages ago. He said, “Keep Death on your left shoulder all day.” If you do that you pretty much fall into the four agreements that Ruiz talks about.

Here are the top five regrets:

One: I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself.

Two: I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

Three: I wish I had the courage to express my feelings.

Four: I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

Five: I wish I had let myself be happier.

All of those regrets are about courage and self-agency. Note: it doesn’t say, “I wish I was happier” rather, “I wish I had let myself…”

So I’m going to try something. Want to join me? I’m putting a note in my planner and one on my mirror:    Don’t Take Anything Personally.

I’ll keep you posted on what comes (up) next.