HOLD FAST by Mercy Me

RECOVERY VIDEO

Nothing has worked so effectively, for so many people,
for so long. There is a way out of active addiction and it
lies in the power that is to be found when one addict or
alcoholic helps another by sharing his or her experience
strength and hope in recovery.

For me the "only game in town" is 12 Step recovery.
I tried pretty much everything else and none of it came
close.

This is a really hopeful video set to a great track.

HAZELDEN

Just a few words about Hazelden to which I have no connection.

The Hazelden Foundation is widely considered the most influential chemical dependency treatment center in the world today. It provides residential and outpatient treatment for adults, young people, and families affected by chemical dependency. Further, it trains addiction professionals and is a vast publishing empire dealing with recovery related literature.

Hazelden was the first pioneer 12 Step treatment facility and this approach was to pave the way for countless other centres worldwide to follow in its wake.

It opened in 1949 on a farm in Minnesota USA. There was no model to follow other than it provided an environment where alcoholic men could dry out and then be introduced to, and educated about, the A.A. program. This was the core philosophy of 12 Step facilitation.

It was admission to a similar 12 Step treatment facility in the UK, based on this model, that saved my life in 2002.


I work in a similar 12 Step treatment facility today. 


When I see the word "Hazelden" my heart softens a tad!

This a great starting link if you are new to recovery or are considering treatment.

Recovery networks and communities: blogs, chats, forums and online meetings -- Hazelden


Never forget AA/NA/CA is not Treatment and Treatment is not AA/NA/CA. Treatment may get you into recovery...........staying in recovery requires more........ much much more. How to do this you will find with "Fellowship"and a "Program".
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PLEASE HEAR WHAT I AM NOT SAYING - a poem by Charles C. Finn

When I first came to the rooms I was finally 
among people who knew me. I knew they 
knew me . And more.... I never felt judged. 


Therein lay salvation and I see that today.

The most powerful lines of this wonderful 
poem for me are: 


"That's why I frantically create a mask to hide 
behind, a nonchalant sophisticated facade, 
to help me pretend, to shield me from the 
glance that knows.
But such a glance is precisely my salvation, 
my only hope, and I know it."

Here is the full poem:

PLEASE HEAR WHAT I AM NOT SAYING

Don't be fooled by me.
Don't be fooled by the face I wear
For I wear a mask, a thousand masks, 
Masks that I'm afraid to take off 
And none of them is me. 

Pretending is an art that's second nature with me, 
but don't be fooled,
for God's sake don't be fooled. 
I give you the impression that I'm secure, 
that all is sunny and unruffled with me, 
within as well as without, 
that confidence is my name and coolness my game, 
that the water's calm and I'm in command 
and that I need no one, 
but don't believe me.

My surface may be smooth but
my surface is my mask, 
ever-varying and ever-concealing. 
Beneath lies no complacence. 
Beneath lies confusion, and fear, and aloneness. 
But I hide this. I don't want anybody to know it. 
I panic at the thought of my weakness exposed. 
That's why I frantically create a mask to hide behind, 
a nonchalant sophisticated facade, 
to help me pretend, 
to shield me from the glance that knows.

But such a glance is precisely my salvation, 
my only hope, and I know it.
That is, if it is followed by acceptance, 
If it is followed by love. 
It's the only thing that can liberate me from myself 
from my own self-built prison walls 
from the barriers that I so painstakingly erect. 
It's the only thing that will assure me 
of what I can't assure myself, 
that I'm really worth something. 
But I don't tell you this. I don't dare to. I'm afraid to.

I'm afraid you'll think less of me, 
that you'll laugh, and your laugh would kill me. 
I'm afraid that deep-down I'm nothing
and that you will see this and reject me. 

So I play my game, my desperate, pretending game 
With a façade of assurance without 
And a trembling child within. 
So begins the glittering but empty parade of Masks, 
And my life becomes a front. 
I tell you everything that's really nothing, 
and nothing of what's everything,
of what's crying within me. 
So when I'm going through my routine 
do not be fooled by what I'm saying. 
Please listen carefully and try to hear what I'm not saying, 
what I'd like to be able to say,
what for survival I need to say,
but what I can't say.

I don't like hiding.
I don't like playing superficial phony games.
I want to stop playing them.
I want to be genuine and spontaneous and me 
but you've got to help me.
You've got to hold out your hand
even when that's the last thing I seem to want.
Only you can wipe away from my eyes
the blank stare of the breathing dead.
Only you can call me into aliveness.
Each time you're kind, and gentle, and encouraging,
each time you try to understand because you really care,
my heart begins to grow wings -- 
very small wings,
but wings!

With your power to touch me into feeling
you can breathe life into me.
I want you to know that.
I want you to know how important you are to me,
how you can be a creator--an honest-to-God creator --
of the person that is me
if you choose to.
You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble,
you alone can remove my mask,
you alone can release me from the shadow-world of panic,
from my lonely prison,
if you choose to.
Please choose to.

Do not pass me by.
It will not be easy for you. 
A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.
The nearer you approach me 
the blinder I may strike back. 
It's irrational, but despite what the books may say about man 
often I am irrational.
I fight against the very thing I cry out for.
But I am told that love is stronger than strong walls
and in this lies my hope.
Please try to beat down those walls
with firm hands but with gentle hands
for a child is very sensitive.

Who am I, you may wonder? 
I am someone you know very well.
For I am every man you meet
and I am every woman you meet.

       By Charles C. Finn

IMAGES

"A picture is worth a thousand words".


 Bondage,,suffering, ready for slaughter



From underworld into the light of Hope... 



Free at last,...... Free at last!


Photos by rezaalizade Flikr


How does this change in fortune come
about? What forces are at work? Where
can one find the power to move from
addiction to freedom and more importantly
stay free?,


Medicine, religion, psychiatry, science,
theory, opinion, best practice, knowledge
wisdom, incarceration, treatment, counselling, 
therapy or doctrine availed me nothing.


Finally when I sought out the company of those
who were like me, and who I saw, with my 
own eyes, had "recovered from a hopeless 
state of mind and body", I knew I was on to 
something.


Simple stuff really. Want recovery? Go ask 
those that have recovered. "How did  you do it"?
Then make a decision. Shall I do what they do?
What is it to be.? Ball is in my court! Yes or No?


For me it was a no brainer. It had to be Yes. 
I had nothing to lose. I was willing to do 
what it took. I was beat. (I have noticed a direct
correlation between being beat and becoming
willing.) 


Pretty much anything then became possible
and so it has come to pass.

LAUGHING and not taking ourselves too seriously!

Laughter is strong medicine for mind and soul.

"Our sense of humor is one of the most powerful tools we have to make certain that our daily mood and emotional state support good health and sobriety.”
~ Paul E. McGhee, Ph.D.

Laughter is a powerful antidote to stress, pain, and conflict. Nothing works faster or more dependably to bring my mind back into balance than a good laugh. Humor lightens my burdens, inspires hopes, connects me to others, and keeps me grounded, focused, and alert. Above all it lifts my spirit.

The great thing in recovery is we also get to have a good laugh at ourselves!

With so much power to heal and renew, the ability to laugh easily and frequently is a tremendous resource for surmounting problems, enhancing our relationships, and supporting both physical and emotional health.

Here are some clips which really tickled me.




Now this is what I call a "belly laugh"







And finally how infectious the process is!



Ain't life a hoot!

IF by Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling's poem 'IF' first appeared in 1909. 


The poem 'IF' is inspirational, motivational, and a set of rules for 'grown-up' living. 'IF' contains mottos and maxims for life, and the poem is also a blueprint for personal integrity, behaviour and self-development. 


'IF' was relevant to me as an ethos and a personal philosophy that spoke clearly of spiritual living. It never ceases to fill me up and has a timeless quality that sits easy with recovery. 

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,                            
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling 

DESIDERATA …..things to be desired!

I  love this verse.
It expresses much about life and trying to live it right.
The reading is followed by a “Child of the Universe" clip

I lost a clip of Desiderata with a background  of dolphins. I was
 so taken by the dolphins and their sheer exuberance for life
I had to find another clip
There was something about their freedom I love.
                                         
Here you go. Enjoy

THE PROBLEM.... what I was up against !!

This warmed the cockles of my heart when I first read it. It is a transcript by a man called Wayne B which summed up, to the letter, what I was dealing with in active addiction..........using or not!

He could have been describing  me......... clever old me, who really thought the problem was all about chemicals or whatever other mood altering compulsion was the flavour of the moment. 


What a "donkey"! But that's OK because I did not know.


Thank God for other addicts and alcoholics in recovery, for it was they who showed me what the real PROBLEM was, but also, far more importantly, what the SOLUTION was as well.


Here you go. 

"Although I look like a full grown adult, I remain childish, grandiose and gravely emotionally immature.  As a going human concern, my natural state is one of growing anxiety, depression and fear, coupled with an intense desire for excitement.  A condition of being which is exacerbated by and complicated by an obsessive, compulsive, impulsive, excessive, controlling, demanding need for attention, acceptance and unqualified approval.  

A condition of being which renders me restless, irritable and discontented with life. 

Mentally, my thought life is controlled by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking and self-pity; all of which drive me to live my life according to selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, inconsiderate, resentful and frightened motives; motives which left unattended in me arouse and engage dangerous and life threatening levels of lust and want.  Pride, anger, envy, greed, sloth, gluttony, I turn into a pig, I want it all which can render me emotionally a bit sensitive. 

This means I have a strong tendency toward taking everything I see or hear personally.  I don't like criticism and I'll be damned if I can stand praise .... actually "I don't believe you".  

When it comes to suffering emotionally, I don't like to suffer emotionally. I don't suffer well and I don't suffer alone.  Socially, I'm a bankrupt idealist and brooding perfectionist who lives defensively and guarded in fear of being found out.  As such, I tend to rationalize, minimize, justify and deny all of my actions while casting blame upon innocent people in a vigorous attempt to avoid attention.  

When it comes to my fellow man and woman, I demand the absolute possession and control of everybody and every circumstance that enters my arena of life.  My response to you is that I am quick to anger, I'm slow to virtue, and, I get a distinct and succinct delight and twisted pleasure out of judging and criticizing everybody I see.  My outstanding characteristic is defiance, and rebellion dogs my every step. 

Now, as a child of God, that is a list of my finer qualities .......anybody want a date?.  

You'll hear this at every meeting you go to, but from newcomers, this is how you hear them:  "I don't fit in, I don't belong, I'm not a part of, my God what's wrong with me - I must be different."  And the only thing that satisfies that restless, irritable, dissatisfied nature in me is alcohol or drugs.  

In "A Vision For You" it tells me that there's a sufficient substitute and it is vastly more than that.  So I don't have to drink and use and I don't need to run away anymore. - Wayne B.

Hahaha, don't you just love it. Thank you Wayne.

This is a powerful description of the "Spiritual Malady" which we are up against and which no human power can relieve us of. 

If it can I have yet to find it ! 

THE GUY IN THE GLASS

One of my favorites “The Guy in the Glass,” which is about integrity and honesty to oneself. The true author of the poem is Dale Wimbrow (1895-1954), who wrote it in 1934.


I remember many times in active addiction, often in the wee small hours when there was just me and my maker, it was impossible to bullshit myself about my dreadful truth. 


They were short lived moments because my shame guaranteed that I sucked back into the blindness of denial the next morning. 


This verse puts me in mind of those lonely powerless times, when in truth, I detested what I saw.

Here it is:

                      THE GUY IN THE GLASS

When you get what you want in your struggle for pelf,
And the world makes you King for a day,
Then go to the mirror and look at yourself,
And see what that guy has to say.

For it isn’t your Father, or Mother, or Wife,
Who judgement upon you must pass.
The feller whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the guy staring back from the glass.

He’s the feller to please, never mind all the rest,
For he’s with you clear up to the end,
And you’ve passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the guy in the glass is your friend.

You may be like Jack Horner and “chisel” a plum,
And think you’re a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum
If you can’t look him straight in the eye.

You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years,
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears
If you’ve cheated the guy in the glass.

* The word pelf in the first line means “wealth.” 

It is a reminder to me to cut the crap and keep it real. Every time I read it, I gain a greater sense of clarity, a feeling of certainty about what I need to focus on next.

Recovery has shown me that the guy in the glass can be my friend!

FOOTSTEPS

This passage is well known.

I remember this had a profound effect on me because I was very angry with God. This arose because of an austere and punishing catholic boarding school education. I had no time for men of the cloth and all things religious. I was pretty angry with most things actually.

I recall rarely crying, not since childhood but this verse burst something in me at the age of 52 because I bawled like a baby. I read it about a week into treatment pretty strung out on a detox! The experience left me feeling completely defenceless and I was aware of a terrible loss and grief. It was as Bill put it, truly, "ego deflation at depth".

I have the following screen saver on my iphone today. One set of footprints!

Here it is:

Footprints
Also Known As "I Had a Dream"

One night I dreamed a dream.
I was walking along the beach with my Lord. Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life. For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand, one belonging to me and one to my Lord.

When the last scene of my life shot before me I looked back at the footprints in the sand. There was only one set of footprints. I realized that this was at the lowest and saddest times of my life. This always bothered me and I questioned the Lord about my dilemma.

"Lord, You told me when I decided to follow You, You would walk and talk with me all the way. But I'm aware that during the most troublesome times of my life there is only one set of footprints. I just don't understand why, when I need You most, You leave me."

He whispered, "My precious child, I love you and will never leave you, never, ever, during your trials and testings. When you saw only one set of footprints, It was then that I carried you."

---

Margaret Fishback Powers, 1964 originally attributed to Mary Stevenson 1936.

THE START

THE GOOD STUFF IN RECOVERY

This weblog is simply a space of recovery stuff that has had meaning for me and taken my breath away if you will. It is a collection under one roof involving the words, images sounds and events of my fellows, that has awoken feelings in me which I hitherto had never been aware of, through many years of active addiction. 

Some of it still fills me up when I re-read.

Feel free to read and comment. Please share and contribute your own moments and examples where you have been so moved.  Post me a link, an image, or file and how it has made you feel. I will post it for us all to share. Most of all enjoy.

Hit the "follow" link at the top of the page and the "subscribe to posts" box above to keep updated and be part of the community. 

Don't forget to feed the fish with your mouse!

WHY MANNA?

Manna (Hebrew) is the name of the food that was God given and provided for the Israelites during their travels in the desert as recorded in the Bible "It was said to be sweet to the taste, like honey, and its juice was a life giver and a medicine for the eyes. It appeared like morning dew and when collected and consumed was uplifting of body and soul"

The Gathering of the Manna by James Tissot

 I have experienced much on this journey of recovery that has felt like "manna" a food for my soul if you will. Some I discovered my self; but much was revealed to me by others. I am profoundly grateful for my life today because of many unexpected gifts I have received. I am thankful for the experience and wisdom I have heard from those that have gone before me, those that I still know, and, those I continue to meet today, many who are themselves in recovery. 

I know now I have been touched by a grace which is closer to me than breathing, a power that was always close, but which I was asleep to, and blocked from, for decades. 

I wished I had started this back then but I didn't. Of necessity it will have to be both, an exploration, back through time as well as forward into the future. 

The common tread that runs through these posts is an experience of being moved by what I have read, seen or heard. Invariably it has been what I felt was in another's heart.

The intention is for this weblog to be a positive message for all on their journeys.

In Fellowship.

Shay 

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