Recovery in the Time of Virus--Online Meetings

Folks--in my community meetings are canceling and closing in light of the virus and to respect the suggestion for "social distancing". Smart thing to do, but where's a meeting?

It's time to try some new technologies--and some old ones.

Take a look at the link below to see some options for online meetings, phone meetings, conference calla and  Zoom (video) meetings too.

And, it's important to remember right now: newcomers will be having a much harder time and we all know that our substances and behaviors are more tempting.

Use these methods for your own recovery and maybe reach out to one or more new-ish people as well each day.

Remember how it worked when you were new? You called your sponsor every day--or you left voicemail messages just to check in. You said things and trusted you were heard. Your sponsor called back as needed.

Make those same deals now with friends in recovery. Make your voicemail available to others.

And, pull that big blue book off your shelf. What a great time to commit to reading The Big Book cover to cover again. I guarantee you'll see things there you never saw before.

Double the effect by making that commitment with a sober friend and keep checking in, "What page are you on?"

Here's the link below:
http://aa-intergroup.org/directory.php?goal=0_4d61d72b2e-1d9f0849bd-49728727&mc_cid=1d9f0849bd&mc_eid=433e44dfa4

And please, add your suggestions in the comments suggestion.

Quit Like a Woman, by Holly Whitaker

So, Holly Whitaker’s book about alcohol and how to quit is on the market. There has been a lot of press and a lot of talking. The talking has tripped into AA meetings, and without naming names it’s been discussed. I’ve been asked, “Have you seen that book by that woman?” Yep. And I knew just who they meant. 

I have the book right here, and it’s great.

I know, I know…she says some things about AA, and she says AA didn’t work for her, and some people in AA have taken that personally. I know.

But here’s the thing: It’s OK to not like AA. 

Whitaker’s book, “Quit Like a Woman—The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol” is about—get this—Not Drinking. 

I think that is very OK. She tells her story, and she did a ton of research, and she comes down on the side of not drinking. Huh. 

And she talks about why she/we are better off without excesses of alcohol and mind-altering substances. She talks about her jobs, and relationships, and her relationship with herself all being trashed by her drinking. 

So, if you are sober or love someone who is, you just got to be going, “Go, Girl—tell them.”

Whitaker quotes a lot of Alcoholics Anonymous literature including the Big Book in her book. And I loved seeing all those very familiar words and phrases right there in her pages. 

Again, “Go girl.”

Here’s what I really think: If you are in this “Out of the Woods” club…and that means you have ten or more years of sobriety, you can only say, “Thank God there is another book to help some women stop drinking.” And, “Thank goodness, this Holly Whitaker, is offering an alternative to AA.” Because really, this book is an “outside issue” but don’t we all want lots of people to understand that alcohol abuse and misuse hurts lives and families? And we all know that AA isn’t for everyone. As “old-timers” we are OK with that.

If you’ve been around awhile it means that AA mostly does work for you, and you have plenty of friends for whom it just did not click. So, don’t we all want someone to find their way to their recovery—whatever they call it?

I know, I know....You may be mad because “She said she didn’t like AA”  Most newcomers don’t like AA. Remember when you were new, and you said things like, “It’s a cult” and “they pray” and “It’s about God and I don’t do God.” 

So, cut her a break. 

The most important part of this very important book is in the subtitle: “The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol.”

I think we can all agree she’s got that right, and she makes an excellent and eloquent case for that “radical choice” and that culture and that obsession. 

So, read this book. You’ll learn a lot, and you’ll appreciate that she is reaching and educating people that those of us who love AA are probably not able to do.

You go, Holly Whitaker. You wrote an important book.

Treat Addiction Like Cancer by Laura Hilgers

I want  to share with you a great opinion piece from yesterday's New York Times. Laura Hilgers, makes the case that we should be treating addiction like other serious, chronic, possibly fatal illnesses.

Hilgers shares that she was a caregiver for one family member with cancer at the same time she was the caregiver for another loved one with addiction.


But that the way each serious illness is
treated, and the way each caregiver role is experienced, is very different.

Here's a fact that jumped out at me: "Addiction, like cancer, is a complex disease that requires a multi-pronged approach. It also affects 1.5 times as many people as those with all cancers combined..."

Sometimes those of us with long-term recovery forget that part of our work, and our path, is to live the gratitude for our own recovery by reaching out--and reaching back--to advocate for others who need or who are seeking recovery. We need to relate rather than compare. Alcohol, drugs, opioids--all of it is addiction, and we know about that. Which also means that we can be voices for education and advocacy.

Please read Hilgers op-ed. I've attached the link below. Please share this with folks you know--folks in recovery, in healthcare and your public servants.

Here's the link: https://nyti.ms/2GyF7Fr

Bring All of Your Addictions

You have heard the jokes. Shopping addiction, chocolate addiction, TV addiction, shoes too. And they are jokes. But they are not. Twelve-step recovery has given the rest of the world and popular culture the idea of addiction and recovery, “ Hi, I’m Max and I’m a Shoe Addict.” 

But stay in AA long enough and you learn that there is truth in every joke. 

I’m re-reading “When Society Becomes an Addict” by Anne Wilson Schaef. Her ideas and concepts permeate our self-help vocabulary. One of her bold moves in this 1987 book was to describe Substance addictions and Process addictions. Substance—something taken into the body that is mood changing and almost always leads to physical addiction. Process--behaviors or interactions that can be used to change our mood.

We know this. Bill Wilson knew it too.  In early recovery many of us read that little pamphlet from Hazelden called, “Transferring Addictions.” I remember being so mad when a sponsor gave me that one but it hit home.

Here are some of the things Schaef lists as substance addictions: alcohol, drugs, nicotine

and caffeine, sugar, sometimes salt, (Betcha can’t eat just one.) and all food –which can be a substance and/or process addiction. And her list of process addictions includes eating, dieting, exercise, television, gambling, sex, work, religion, worry and spending or saving money. We can add Facebook, LinkedIn, IPhone, Words with Friends, Angry Birds and on and on and on….

Here’s the tricky part, and why I continue to need ongoing discernment with other people in recovery: the process addictions are often things that have very good qualities. Think about exercise. We get in shape, we get a good habit of running or going to the gym, but what happens when we miss a day or can’t work out for an hour? Are we furious? In a bad mood? Change our behavior with others to get that workout back? Are we afraid? I’ve been there with exercise. 

Shopping? Who doesn’t want to look nice or wear clothes that are becoming? But do we obsess? Spend money we don’t have? Wander the mall in a trance? I’ve done all that.

Ditto with food and work and worry. Does the behavior help me to not feel feelings I’d rather not feel? Feelings that, if I felt them all the way through, would help me to grow? Keeping very busy is my favorite and longest lasting addiction. My friend Brigid likes to remind me, “Feelings can’t hit a moving target.”

Here is something that helps me with this discernment: Marion Woodman, Jungian analyst and teacher said:

 “The natural gradient in us is toward growth. Whatever we use repeatedly and compulsively to stop that growth is our particular addiction.”

***

Much more on transferring addiction in my book, "Out of the Woods", published by Central Recovery Press.

Addiction Can Save Your Life

I have finally come to understand that truth. Our addictions, the things we used to cope and manage and not feel were—at one time—life saving. My first therapist used to tell me this over and over and I thought she was nuts, but now with better eyes and better understanding I know it’s true. If I had not had the cushions of food, drink and drugs I could never have withstood the realities of my early home life and I would certainly have died or gone crazy.

But now, in later recovery, I am coming to understand another layer of this phenomenon. That is, that our addictions are not “bad”; they are actually the shadow side of something else we are seeking. Jung said something like this to Bill Wilson and before that to Roland Hazard, when he told them that alcoholics substitute spirits for spiritus—alcohol for the holy. The intention isn’t wrong, but maybe the route is.

So I think this is a task of ongoing recovery and later recovery: after we spend some time switching from booze, to food to work to relationships to expensive hobbies to shoes and then maybe some prescription meds and back to food again we have to get quiet and ask what’s underneath.

No huge surprise. We’ve had glimmers along the way. We want love and friendship and companionship. We want to be deeply and truly known. We want to give and receive love. We want intimacy and always, I think always, we want creativity.

It would seem that should be so easy. A workshop or two, some to-do lists, maybe counseling and some church? But no. I think—and I remember learning this 30 years ago in OA: real healing begins with crying, the kind where snot runs down your face. Deep release. Deep admittance. Deep longing.

Our addictions are accompanying us. They are the coded version of our best selves. They are our guides. And somedy we’ll look back and realize they were our friends.

The Olympics of Survival

Last week, following the Penn State stories in the news I was saddened and frustrated that so little was said about the boys and men who were victims. Yes, there were the platitudes and the requisite, "Keep them in our prayers", but I know that it takes a lot more than prayer to recover from childhood abuse. I've been there. My 12 step recovery is a key to my growth and recovery but it also took a lot of outside help.

The "healing a wound" metaphor kind of falls down when we are talking about sexual abuse recovery. It's not at all like a cut or break that has to mesh and mend to seal over and heal. It's not a top down healing.  Recovery from sexual abuse is much more like the recovery of a burn victim where the skin has to be re-scrapped regularly, continually  removing the layers as the healing occurs, layer after layer after layer, painfully scrapped away so the deadness does not impede the very deep layers that have to heal first.

Out of my concern for those young boys who were trapped at Penn State and who wanted to be athletes I wrote the piece linked below for the Albany Times Union. Plese take a look and please share with others whose recovery may include childhood abuse.

Thanks. Diane

http://www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/Cameron-Surviving-abuse-takes-fortitude-3739226.php