Recovering Misfits March 5, 2010
Posted by inrecovery in : Recovery, Uncategorized , add a comment
In life, like it or not there are stereotypes.
People are judged by who they are,where they were born,who they hang out with,what school they went to. If they ride motorcycles have tattoos,are pierced,their hair and the all to frequent color of the skin.
Even when we were out there using our substance of choice we were discriminating against each other.
Pill poppers vs. I.V drug users
Potheads vs. Crackheads
Beer drinkers vs. Liquor drinkers
Coke heads vs. Garbage Heads
The list is endless.
When we were using we tended to surround ourselves with people like us just like in “normal” life.
Then there is the age old dispute between AA & NA…
You have hardcore ideals on all sides.
But in today’s recovery society we have become a real mixed “bag o’ nut’s” so to speak.
With ever more frequency I am going to meetings where most if not all the people there are cross addicted and or dual diagnosis. The faces of recovery are changing, becoming more and more diverse.
Younger and younger are the members of our “society”. The issues are the same yet different from the old day’s….How do we encompass the changes in our world but yet remain the same and still practice tolerance ??
I hear and learn something from each and every meeting I attend because that is what I am there for.
I do my very best to just listen and not share too much because in my history there was never just one substance involved, so if I do share I have to edit or sensor what it is I identify with.
I do this out of respect even though it is frustrating because I know there are other people in the room that would understand where I am coming from.
It even seems the actual speakers at these meetings are struggling to keep one fellowship apart from the other !
Crazy !
The Meeting house I attend has 40 meetings a week each with it’s own “edicts”
Most of us felt like “misfits” before we even started using and using is what made us feel like we fit in. Now we struggle to find meetings where all our issues fit in.
But we don’t need new “programs” Perhaps just new “understanding”
Adjective: anon.
The parameters for our individual Fellowships can make being a Recovering Misfit confusing.
I find that I can find someone at any meeting to identify with if I just listen and reach out my hand.
I practice tolerance, Love and understanding.
I practice Fellowship
Today I am Just Simply-Sandra
Toxic Relationships March 5, 2010
Posted by inrecovery in : In the Rooms, Recovery, Uncategorized , add a comment
They tell us in the beginning “Do not get into a relationship for the first year”
I was told…Get a plant..keep it alive one yr then maybe you might be ready….
The desire to have someone in our lives can override the desire to recover.
We long to have someone to lean on, that will take away the pain and co-sign our crap.
Not a good idea, in fact I have seen first hand just how deadly this desire can be.
We tend to think that it was our drinking and drugging that caused our relationships to fail in the past and now that we are practicing a program and abstaining from those behaviors that somehow we will magically have healthy relationships…NOT !
There is so much more work we have to do inside our minds and hearts and our bodies for them to heal. So many of us never even had a person in our lives that a healthy relationship we could have learned from.
Two “sickies” don’t make a well..neither do one person with some time and a “newbie” either.
Sometimes…but rarely they do make it but in my opinion what recovery They achieve takes longer and is much harder.
I feel as if I would have cheated myself out of the experience of being “just me”.
Of finding out who I am without outside influence.
Time to enjoy the person I have become and life I am building by standing on my own two feet is priceless to me today.
In my past I always made myself into who I thought someone else wanted me to be in order to trap them. I lied,cheated and manipulated my way into countless lives and then proceeded to destroy them or to be destroyed myself by them. I set myself up for failure each and every time, why would I want to do that now ?
Why would I rob myself of this precious time to get to know me ?
One of the best decisions I have made in recovery is to also abstain from the gratuitous sex and shallow behaviors.
I have had sex only once in my 3 1/2 yrs and it left me feeling hollow and
“less than”
It did not make me feel loved or wanted..needed…and that actually freed me to become me.
That encounter..that bad feeling gave me the power to move forward on my own.
It gave me the desire to know myself and any future partners I may have better.
Today I can see what or whom is before me.
I can take the time to identify the predator’s that will try to rob me of “self” That just want to take a piece of me and not the whole package.
And my children are seeing this change in me also and I hope UN-learning the examples I had shown them in the past. I was a bad roll model and I have given myself and them the opportunity to see that it does not always take two halves to make a whole just one whole to make myself happy and perhaps one day…someday I will be ready to give what I have found in me to another human being.
I am still single but I am never alone if I can enjoy my own company
Simply_Sandra
Treatment Behind Bars. March 5, 2010
Posted by inrecovery in : Recovery Centers , add a commentTreatment Behind Bars.
For many of us our drinking and drugging began when we were young and then progressed to being grown up and moving into the bars.
Mine was not much different except my professional bar career ended up with receiving my treatment behind bars…
In my final stages as I was heading towards my bottom I began going to jail. In my 25+ yrs of using I managed to not get into any real trouble with the law until the last 3 when I once again hit the streets in search of death and destruction.
It took six trips in three years to get me into recovery.
It took Drug Court to save my life.
In the end I was dirty and living on the streets,under a bridge in fact, doing every immoral and degrading thing I could to kill myself or have someone do it for me.
Two out of 6 trips were In-Custody Treatment programs. My Judge first put me in for 30 day’s and when I got out It was off to the races. It was not enough, I was not ready to live, I still just wanted to die. I had lost everything and everyone I had ever tried to love.
I was sick.
My Judge being the wise woman she is gave me the next level when I was picked up again.
(each time I was caught I caught a new possession charge)
I look back now and I am lucky she did not kick me out of drug court. I actually ended up on Drug Court Probation because I had broken all the rules of the traditional program.
She loved me when I could not love myself.
The next level was the 90 day program.
They had councilors that worked with us daily and they worked us hard.
It was the first time in my life I went that long with no substances or outside influences.
The drug dreams were really bad at first, I would wake up sweating and shaking. Nightmares ruled my nights and tears ruled my day’s.
After the first 30 days this subsided a bit and my mind began to clear.
I started to actually hear what was being said to me and to understand the reading I was doing.
The speakers that came in made sense. The stories they told were much like mine.
Things were coming together in my brain and my brain was telling me I was tired.
Sick and tired of being sick and tired.
I never had spent that much time with myself or on myself and it was so new to me.
I got a letter one day from my mother…I did not even know she was looking for me.
I cried more. She has then 27 yrs in AA and now for the first time in my life we had something to share. I wanted what she had and this time it was not money or a place to stay.
This time I wanted her serenity, her peace of mind.
For the first time I was not just passing time until I died.
This time I wanted to live.
And now today this is what I do…I live…Each day..One day at a time.
Today I give back to the community I took so much from.
Today I take care of my children and their issues from our wreckage of a past.
Today I take care of myself.
Today I thank my Treatment behind bars for saving my life.
Simply_Sandra
