All4him Accountability Page

What are you doing now to get away and stay away?

For me, both parts of that process use similar tools, which are not very different from those used by many addicts of all sorts to recover and to maintain recovery:

- Attending 12-step meetings.  That's an active process between meetings, too.  It's highly useful and recommended to get a sponsor and work the steps.

- Talking to other addicts on the phone and via e-mail.

- Seeing a counselor in order to work on understanding and feeling feelings and letting go of the fears and resentments and mistaken beliefs that pull one back into addiction.

- Being honest and open about addiction and recovery with the central people in our lives.  For me, that means my wife and kids and mother and sisters, my priest, a few close friends.

- Prayer and meditation.

- Journaling.  For me, journaling is a very important piece of inner exploration.

- Reading about addiction.

- Being active in online communities like this one.

Other people do other things, but hose are some of the basics.

Addiction recovery isn't about becoming strong and resisting through willpower.  It's about giving up and surrendering and trusting and becoming open and accepting of self.  It's about becoming a whole new person, and learning a whole new way of life.

Unless I can explore the deep fears and character defects that push me into my addictive behavior, find new and healthy ways to meet my legitimate needs, and let go the things I need to let go of, then I may be able to hold out for a while, but in the end, the addiction wins every time.  For me, that process of complete transformation happens through working the steps, through, counseling, though sharing with others, and through spiritual surrender.

It's a continuing process.  The AA Big Book says we only ever have a daily reprieve based on maintaining a fit spiritual program, and this has been my experience.  I was sober in this addiction for a little over 2 years and then had a series of slips every few months for a while.  I hope I'm back on track again now, but I'm still not back up to the 2 year mark again.  Despite the ups and downs, though, my life is immeasurably better than it was 6 years ago before I started into recovery.  Before that, I'd spent 30 years trying to be strong and to repent on my own, and after that time I was only deeper in hell than I was when I began.  For me, prayer and repentance and willpower didn't produce freedom.  I needed and need to work with others, to be transparent to them, and to approach the problem not just as a moral one but as a psychological one as well.  Doing just that is offering me an incredible new life, a day at a time.

So that's my take on it.  Is there anything there that you're not currently doing and could add to your recovery program, or that you're doing but might do better?  Is there anything there you're uncomfortable doing and avoiding starting?  For me, that's always a sign of something I really better do.

Bottom line: It's a real addiction, and the tools I think we need are the same ones you'd recommend to a friend who was working to overcome an addiction to alcohol or cocaine or heroin.  For millions of people around the world, people just like you and me, those tools work.  It's the hardest thing we'll ever do, but it's also the most important and the most deeply blessed.

Just how it seems to me, of course.

Tim M.