Excerpt from "The Forgotten five Steps"

 

Faith does not avoid responsibility. It challenges us to a higher ideal, a higher belief, a higher dream.

 It is our potential for something more.

Addiction Recovery

We are all born with the same potential to be and become whoever we choose to be. God did not forget to instill in us every capability necessary to handle life challenges. Before we were born, God did not go down the line instilling the tools of life and hope in some and neglecting it in others. No, God did not forget you.

When you use alcohol or drugs you often feel you are lacking in some area where others excel. You have poor self esteem, poor communication, socialization, or poor coping skills to deal with stress in life. Alcohol or drugs become a substitute for these qualities you desire. Your "liquid courage" or "powder of power" deceives you into thinking you are smarter, stronger and more confident. Over time you begin to feel that without them you would be incapable of performing normal daily activities. But God did not forget. Your abilities to handle life stress and emotions are still there, just forgotten. Your job is to remember.

So where does God go when it comes to addiction recovery? Drugs and alcohol have a way of masking what you believe your true potential to be. Over time as you struggle with drugs or alcohol you become less sure of yourself. You become limited behind the haze of drug and alcohol use. Isolated from who you know you should be and who you are now. The world moves farther from your reach and fear sets in. Your potential becomes hidden and more about the limits you place upon yourself with drug and alcohol use, than the unlimited belief and hope for something more. You start to lose faith, God.

If faith is the trust of something more, then fear becomes the mistrust of your abilities for more. God could be said to be the ultimate faith and drugs and alcohol the ultimate fear.

Those struggling with an addiction may say, "I don't believe in God". Or, "What does God have to do with drugs and alcohol? Or, "Just keep God out of it". This "lack of God" can be understood. After years of poor choices, hurt and loss from an addiction it would make sense for you to close off from your beliefs of God. Your dreams and goals seem farther and farther away the more you use. Your fortress of mistakes towards yourself and your friends and family close you in from life, isolating you and hope drifts away. What kind of God would allow so much pain and hurt anyways?

But there is a problem with this. Why? Because doesn't God represent hope? But to hope means to realize the mess you made. Hope means to feel the hurt and own the responsibility to change. Who wants to do this? Often it is just easier to simply blame God, be angry and continue to justify your alcohol or drug use.

To remain angry and not have hope relieves you from the pressures to change or stop using.

The funny thing about anger though, is that when you take the source of it away (anger at God) you are left only with yourself to blame for your drinking or drugging.

Looked at from another angle lack of faith or God for the "addict" could be considered a selfish act. That only you matter. You only have to worry about yourself. No responsibilities, expectations or standards to live up to from others, or God. What are you afraid you might see or have to do if you believe again?

So why have faith? Why trust in God when your drinking and drug use has pulled you into the depths of despair? Because it helps you remember your potential. It helps you realize that you can be and are more than this moment of drug or alcohol use.

Addiction is a selfish pull away from God that says "I know the answer and I don't trust that there is a better way". Faith is an acknowledgement of fault and a trust in capabilities for something more.

Silence from God does not have to mean denial but possibly a need for you to ask a new question.
You may be one who used to be more spiritual or pray more, but feel that God would never forgive you now. The pain and hurt you have caused others by your drinking or drugging, you believe, could never be overlooked or forgiven.

You may feel that you have asked God for help in the past but did not get an immediate response back. After a night of drinking or drugging you may have cried out to God for help and received nothing, no answer - silence. You started to blame God for this silence and his lack of help and assistance in your needs. You became angry and started to pull away. It became easier to blame God than (as we discussed earlier) for you to own your choices and consequences. To not blame God would require the blame and responsibility for your addiction to be on you. So rather than feeling as if your prayers go unanswered, perhaps the silent response from God is an indication that you need to ask a new question.

Forgiveness also requires not confusing God's judgment with your own. Once you ask God to forgive you for the pain and hurt you caused by drinking and drugging, God does. Once forgiven, God does not remember your past mistakes or sins. They are gone, forgotten. You have a clean slate. But what happens all too often is you take them back, pull back your mistakes and failures to yourself and distrust that God truly forgave you. Why? Because, possibly, it is not God who has to do the forgiving, but yourself. Remember, once forgiven you are clean to start fresh and new. Once forgiven you now face the responsibility to change. You have to face yourself. You have to face the choice to use alcohol or drugs with no excuses. No more blaming God.

All too often your self worth may become dependent upon weather you live up to the expectations of others in "addiction recovery". You may feel if you are perfect and follow the program exactly you will obtain the peace and forgiveness you seek. Don't confuse your actions or the actions of others with God's desire or will to love or help you. You may feel that if you relapse you have failed or are unworthy of God's help. Or you may only feel valued if you "follow the program", remain sober, attend meetings, or call yourself an alcoholic or drug addict as you have been told to do by the professionals.

We are all different. We are all human and will make mistakes. Sometimes it is better to follow that voice that resonates deep within you than blindly follow someone else's rules for "addiction recovery". It is only you who will have to account for your life in the end. In the quiet of the night, alone, you will know the truth of who you are. You can follow the world by day, but you are the one who has to be proud when you lay your head down on your pillow at night.

God created a wonderful gauge for you to tell if you are on track or not. It is called emotions. Sometimes we have to get disturbed to move.

Emotions tell us there is a gap between where we are and where we know we need to be. Emotions are the nerves to the soul.

This is when those negative feelings will warn and try to motivate you to move forward. Often, when you are drinking or drugging, instead of looking at these emotions as a warning sign you may run from them. You run because emotions scare you as they remind you of what you know deep down you should do. You may feel, it is easier to avoid, then to admit what you have done and face the pain.

When drugs and alcohol leave your body and life, you may experience vulnerability inside. You will be stripped to the soul and asked "who do you want to be now?" You have for so long denied your true self. You have relied on drugs and alcohol to get you through life. Now that your addiction has left and you have quit drinking or using drugs, you are defenseless. You do not know who you are. You will be looking for any shred of meaning or cure to lesson the loneliness and despair inside. Be careful what you grab. It has to be yours and relevant to your life in addiction recovery. Faith, forgiveness and God are always within you and readily available. They are individual and personal to everyone and always present for the taking. All you need to do is believe.

For more in depth information on addiction recovery you can get The Forgotten Five Steps Workbook.

Addiction Recovery

Some have asked why I feel it important to put a site out in direct opposition to what is currently believed in the addiction recovery field. Some feel if people don't believe addiction is a disease they won't get help. Why not just go with the status quo? Isn’t the addiction recovery system we currently have sufficient enough to deal with the problems of drug and alcohol addiction?


I do not agree. Currently, retention rates of AA have been shown to be around 5%-10%. In addiction recovery treatment many counselors will give you about a 10% to 30% success rate for drug or alcohol addiction recovery. Some would argue that the reason for these poor results is due to the disease itself: that the disease is difficult to overcome, there is denial, or the person has not hit bottom yet to be motivated enough to change in addiction recovery.


They would argue for more in depth addiction recovery treatment, more consequences, and tighter controls. Yet, Project MATCH showed that addiction recovery treatment obtained the greatest results when it was brief, motivational, and individualized.

In fact brief interventions get as good or better results than the current addiction recovery treatment practices.

Finally, of those people who succeed in AA or addiction recovery treatment, it has been shown that the majority were already motivated to change. In other words, motivation of the alcohol or drug user to stop is more important than the actual addiction recovery programs or counseling techniques.

I have been asked if I thought that taking away the disease of drug or alcohol addiction would only encourage people to drink or use drugs in addiction recovery. That the disease concept is needed to let people know they cannot keep using drugs or alcohol or face death.

 

This is a fear tactic and it does not work. If it did, our current addiction recovery system would not lose or exclude the majority of those seeking drug or alcohol addiction recovery help.

Do people need to fear to remain sober in addiction recovery? Some would argue, “yes”. Talk to a current outpatient program and they will tell you the majority of their clients remain sober for six months to a year. Most of these clients are court ordered to attend addiction recovery treatment and would rather attend therapy than sit in jail. But what about long term change? Recidivism is high, and relapse is accepted. What does this say about effectiveness of addiction recovery treatment?

Current addiction recovery treatment is not working. The majority of those who quit, quit on their own. They did not give up their will to a disease, but took personal responsibility for their behavior in addiction recovery.

 

But, what about those who are finding it difficult to stop drinking or using drugs?

I do not believe that because some cannot or will not stop using alcohol or drugs in addiction recovery that it must be a disease. The purpose of the disease concept is to justify behavior we cannot understand.

 

I would venture that most professionals in the addiction recovery field would agree.

Why do I say this? Because, moral inventories, amends, character defects, and different clinical therapies would be silly if addiction was purely a disease. Making amends or exploring childhood resentments would do little to eliminate something like cancer. What would be more effective is to teach the person the power of choice and empowerment in choosing coping responses to lead a more fulfilled life in addiction recovery.

So, my goal is to offer an alternative view of drug and alcohol addiction recovery. I would like to replace the fear of disease with the empowerment of choice. If someone chooses to continue using alcohol or drugs, it will not be because they are diseased, but because they have not been convinced they can successfully live life without alcohol or drugs in addiction recovery.

Addiction recovery

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