1. Having no known name, identity or known source
   “anon. authors“;
   - anonymous

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

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

I went straight to my 1/2 way house(my last) with nothing but the knowledge that I was done!

Finished with my old way of life, old friends and sick family.Old job with it’s degrading, immoral lifestyle.

Old places and people and things just have no place in my new world.

But I like most people have no clue as to who I am without using.

I like most conformed to whatever and whom ever I was partying with at the time.

I had many issues with staying away from these old people and even new ones that were not healthy for me to be around.

I had to take public transportation to and from my many court ordered programs.

The buses were hell because no matter where I was going I either saw someone I knew or there was someone trying to catch my eye.

I was in a Christian 1/2 way house so the Bible was a big part of our program which for me was not a problem because I had picked up a Bible and really started read it for the first time while in jail.

I started carrying a small one sent to me by “The Christian Bikers Association” called “Hope for the Highway” Very fitting for my travels and whenever I was on the bus/train or just waiting I kept my nose in it. Well it worked pretty well until one day I saw a “close” acquaintance from the streets and he was determined to talk me out of my appointments for the day and “Have some fun”.

Well when I refused repeatedly he became verbally abusive, telling me how I had not changed and never would. He knew of the life I used to lead and that I was just bullshitting myself and him by not just giving up and going to use with him. It was pretty bad.very..VERY loud and he finally got off the bus.

What was amazing was the next few passages I turned to…I was just blindly thumbing the pages because I was very flustered and people were staring by now.

This was the next verse…

Peter 4:3

“For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, arousing and detestable idolatry. 4They think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you.”

This was what had JUST happened to me ! I was freaking out and looking around…weird!

That dude had just done that very thing to me ! He had thought it strange that I did not “plunge” into my old habits and get off that bus…I too felt the shift inside me. I was shifting over to a new  “gear” in my recovery. There was no way I was getting off and I wanted..needed a way to express this openly because I am a very easily intimidated person. My self esteem was and still is not that great and when someone makes a comment I start second guessing myself. But I knew in my heart my recovery was something I needed to stand up for.

Then I read this……..

Ephesians 6:10-18 (New International Version)
The Armor of God

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.”

Now I have faith in my higher power that is very strong and these two verses had me thinking.
What could I do to deter these old people/places/things from interfering with my fight for recovery?
It started with just one tee shirt that said “keep it simple” and it grew..and grew and now I consider my “recovery wear” my Armor..

I wear it just about everyday….EVERYWHERE!

Something new started inside me also.

Every time my attire starts a conversation about my recovery or just recovery in general I grow stronger..my faith in myself is stronger…the work I do becomes easier..my desire to change becomes more resolute.

The “wrong” people look the other way instead of trying to catch my eye..

My reputation is changing. Recovery is changing my reputation….My “Recovery Armor” has become my power.

Most of these drinkers consider themselves “Social Drinkers” not binge drinkers, who don’t drink for weeks on in, but gorge themselves into a near alcohol drinking coma when social events take place – well in that respect they do fit the definition of a binge drinker or ‘binge drinking cougar’.

Reuters reported earlier this month that English rugby player, Matt Stevens confessed to having alcohol binges and abusing cocaine on a regular basis. Matt Stevens confessed to all of his substance abuse problems just before receiving a two-year ban from playing the sport after testing positive for cocaine use during a drug screening.

In an interview earlier this month, Matt Stevens stated that he would quit the Bath rugby club in order to take the time needed to put his life back together. “It was a vicious circle,” said Stevens. “It would always be at the end of a drinking binge – do coke, hate myself, vow never to do it again and then do so.”

Before the scandal, Matt Stevens played rugby over 30 different times for England. However, after playing in a Heineken Cup for the Bath rugby team in December, Stevens failed a random drug screening. Matt Stevens is now banned from all rugby-related activities until the year 2011. 

Matt Stevens has admitted that his addiction was fueled by deep self loathing and other personal issues. Stevens admitted to going on cocaine binges for three days in a row; sometimes right before games. “I can’t believe I would do that to myself,” said Stevens. “I am a confident, ambitious, social person. That I would be addicted to anything is completely incomprehensible to me right now.”

Armed with the findings of a new study, Taiwanese researchers suggest parents and educators pay more attention to children’s online habits because Internet-addicted teens seem more prone to aggression. However, Americans who study violence are not ready to make any conclusions about a possible link.

The study “does not demonstrate that one behavior caused the other,” said Dewey Cornell, a professor of education at the University of Virginia. Even so, he said, other research shows “that persons who play violent video games will be more prone to have aggressive thoughts, feelings and actions.”

Internet addiction itself remains a controversial topic more than a decade after it was first described. Some mental health specialists refuse to recognize its existence, although a number of rehabilitation centers treat people who say they suffer from it.

In the new study, researchers led by Chih-Hung Ko, M.D., from Kaohsiung Medical University, gave questionnaires to 9,405 adolescents and asked about their Internet activity and behaviors. The study appears online in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

The researchers deemed 25 percent of the male students and 13 percent of females to be Internet addicts based on a commonly used scale.

Thirteen percent of all female students and 32 percent of all males reported engaging in aggressive behavior — such as threatening or hurting others — within the last year, compared with 37 percent of those suffering from Internet addiction.

The researchers, who were not available for comment, wrote in the study that chatting online, playing video games and visiting sexually oriented Web sites could provide opportunities for teens to “observe, experience and try aggressive behaviors resulting in positive outcome, (such as) identification in a group, being a hero or winning in games.”

Brad Bushman, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, said the study does not allow conclusions about which came first — Internet addiction or aggression. “It could be that using the Internet causes people to behave more aggressively or it could be that aggressive people seek out the Internet,” he said. “Or some other third factor could cause both — people with poor social skills don’t have any friends, so they spend a lot of time on the Internet and can’t resolve conflicts in non-aggressive ways.”

A newly published website offers opiate addicts, and friends and family of opiate addicts, a free resource to help those suffering from the addiction. OpiateAddictionHelp.com offers its readers both non-biased information and links to a variety of websites to help them get the information they need about opiate addictions.

The administrators which reside in the Portland, Oregon area found that much of the information found online was both unclear and unhelpful, in addition, they wanted to provide a website that offers information of “what to expect” from an opiate addiction and possible avenues they can take to fight such an addiction.

“Much of what is out there doesn’t give insight on such things as like what to expect during periods of withdrawals, how long they last, and things you can do to survive them better,” says Jennifer, one of the Administrators of OpiateAddictionHelp.com “Many opiate addicts are too afraid to stop using due to how debilitating the withdrawal symptoms are. If they can confirm that they are only temporary and that relief isn’t far away, I feel it could help change their perspectives on choosing to quit and get help.”

Without a doubt, opiate addictions can be one of the hardest struggles to overcome, but with proper resources, many users who want to quit can find the help they need to do so. The withdrawals from opiates can be both mentally and physically overwhelming and that is what keeps most people hooked to the drugs. Without them, they hurt, they get very sick and become completely dysfunctional in today’s society.

OpiateAddictionHelp.com provides free information and resources to help with everything from helping with at home opiate withdrawal symptoms to finding government funded rehabilitation services and using employee assistance programs in dealing with opiate detox.

Opiate Addicts and freinds and family of opiate addicts are encouraged to visit the site at www.OpiateAddictionHelp.com to get the information, answers and help they need to live happier, healthier lives.