Addiction Recovery stuff that has uplifted, ennobled, moved, awakened and empowered my spirit.
I am going to start to collect this stuff so I can come find it whenever I want.
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.
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.
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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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
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.
"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.
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!
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.
