I know people do get tempted, because if they didn’t, we wouldn’t see relapses. But what is it that leads a person who clearly devastated their life with drugs and alcohol to give up on the positive path of recovery?  I think there is one word for what causes it: FEELINGS.

Why are feelings so hard for us to take? Is it genetic or environmental? Why do other people seem so comfortable with their feelings?

I wish I could give an easy answer, but I think it’s very complex, and I can only talk about my own experience.

Feelings were not particularly welcome in my home.  If you were sad, you were a sour puss. If you were happy, you were hyper. I also had a father who personalized everything, so your feelings were a reflection on him.  If you had a bad day and your face reflected that, my father interpreted it as an indictment of him. We didn’t appreciate how hard he worked. We were spoiled and selfish.

So what lesson did I take away from that?  Basically, feelings were bad. They were overwhelming. They ruined everything. But it’s not normal to not have feelings, sometimes really strong, visceral feelings. It’s really pretty hard not to have them unless you are a sociopath. So what to do with these dangerous feelings that triggered my father to go into a rage?

Find a way to mute them.

I started with food. And believe me, that wasn’t easy. My mother was obsessed with what food we ate, so we didn’t have treats or the like in the house. We got donuts twice a year on a Sunday after church.  But it didn’t take long for me to discover that sugar makes you feel better.  I certainly wasn’t conscious that I was squelching feelings, only that I really wanted carbs – and I’d do what I could to get around my mother to get them.  In kindergarten that meant making sure I got extra helpings of macaroni and cheese.  At home, that meant searching my dads jacket pockets for change so I could sneak over to the 7-11 and get some M&Ms.

I discovered alcohol pretty early as well. I’d ask my dad if I could taste his scotch or wine. I’d be allowed a tiny sip.  I was enamored immediately.  My mother also thought hot toddies were a great way to get me to settle down at night when sleeping seemed to evade me.  A little brandy in warm milk and off to sleepy land.

I remember the prized bottle of paragoric in the cabinet. My dad was a doctor, so he kept it around as a remedy for the runs. I think I almost wanted to get diarrehea so I could get a teaspoon of the medicine. It’s an opiate. It tasted like licorice. It made me feel all warm and safe.

With this kind of history, it seems almost inevitable now that I ended up using alcohol to mute my feelings and escape the uncomfortableness of strong emotions.

In sobriety, I don’t have that option. I have to feel my feelings. Ugh.

I’ve been fortunate in my almost 24 years of sobriety that I haven’t been tempted to have just a little – but I certainly know why smoeone would be. Feelings are rather inconvenient at times. In those two decades I’ve felt some that were utterly devastating. I have felt feelings that literally caused physical pain in my head, my heart, my stomach. But for some reason, I didn’t give in.

I think because I truly, at the deepest level, know it didn’t do anything for me when I did use alcohol.I didn’t really get rid of feelings, I just felt depressed and miserable – one note, all the time. 

It’s important to recognize it if you are having a feeling you want to squelch, because that can be the first step toward temptation if you don’t.  Knowing that you are fighting natural feelings alerts you to the possibility you will try something to get rid of them: if not drink, maybe spend money or eat a pint of ice cream.

Funny, though, the feelings come back. So you have a choice to make: feel the feelings and work through them, or keep kicking them down and getting kicked in the butt again and again.

I remember when I had my first anniversary of sobriety. I was excited to go to my home group and celebrate. When I got there, I was sad to see that a man who had come in the same time I had was once again saying he had just a few days.  For the next five years I watched his desperate struggle to pull together more than a few months of sobriety.  It saddened me, but also terrified me. I could not imagine coming back over and over to say I had slipped, once again.

In some ways, my understanding that I would have trouble doing that kept me sober. I know myself – I would be too embarrassed to show up time and time again with the same story.  My terror was that if I slipped that would be it for me – and that fear has worked for me for more than two decades. Healthy fear is good fear.

I often still wonder, though, why it is so much harder for some people. I have my theories, but they are, of course, colored by my own experience (and my personality), so they might not be true for everyone.  But I still think it’s important to talk about it – so that maybe we can find a way to help others walk through that door, especially those like the man I remember who clearly desperately wanted it to work.

My first theory is that it has something to do with denial. You can recognize and accept you’re an alcoholic, but still have plenty of denial about what that means.  I know I had zero denial about my ability to handle alcohol. I handled it poorly from the beginning. I had absolutely no illusions about my ability to control my drinking. I think that total acceptance of the fact that I’m an utterly incompetnent drinker made it a lot easier for me not to romanticize what it would be like to have another drink.

My second theory is tolerance for pain. I have extremely low tolerance for any sort of misery. Relapsing sounds miserable. No thank you. It was hard enough to get me in the door the first time; would I even be able to do it a seconde time? I would rather not find out the answer to that.

My third theory is maybe a bit more controversial – I’m competitive. I like to do things well.  That’s not to say I don’t do some thinks really not so well, but I prefer to do things the best I can with the tools available to me. I have made a point of getting really good at certain things – and I always liked the feeling of excelling at something.  Maybe there was a part of that competitive nature that helped me in early sobriety. I was really young, and I wanted to be really successful, not just at staying sober, but in my career and life. Drinking was definitely not taking me there. It was an utter waste of my life.

I think there are some personality characteristics that really help with staying the course.

Not being an absolutist. In other words, understanding that everything is relative. Superficially, my life might not seem as good as Sober Joe’s, but that doesn’t mean my life is not perfectly fine for me. It’s all relative. 

Another trait – open mind. You need to be really open to new ideas, and not get all bent out of shape if you don’t like a particular idea. Just let that idea be and don’t worry about it. Maybe one day it will make sense. If not, maybe that’s okay too. Just ride it out. I learned that pretty quickly, because all the little sayings that are so popular in the rooms drove me nuts. They sounded like cliches.  I had to learn to let it go really quickly, and understand that under those annoying jingles there was wisdom and truth. I just needed more time to understand them.

Know yourself. You have to really know yourself. Know what gets you into trouble. Know what puts you in a tailspin. Know what types of people lead you down the bad path. Know when you are lying to yourself. Don’t let yourself get away with bs. Understand that everytime you deceive yourself, you risk a real life.

I don’t know if these ring true to others, but they certainly seemed key for me.  I’d love to hear your ideas!

“History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats.” B.C. Forbes

Most people have heard the name Forbes – as in the Forbes list of richest people in the world. Considering what a powerful man this was, it’s probably a good guess that he had to overcome a lot of obstacles to build the family legacy.

One of the toughest things to do is to come back to sobriety after a relapse. Relapses are heartbreaking. I’ve seen many over the past 20 odd years, and some people have them like clockwork.  But you also see real perseverance among those people. They are determined to get it, even if it takes five, six, or even twenty tries.  I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, but if you ever relapse, the best thing to do is get back up on the wagon.

You really have to refuse to become discouraged. Most of the obstacles to sobriety after relapse probably have one underlying cause: ego.  No one wants to stand up and say I have one day when they were saying they had 90 days, five years, or 20 years. But the truth is, all we have is one day, not just in terms of sobriety but in terms of life as a whole.  Today. You can say you are going to do something tomorrow, but it’s actually a physical impossibility to actually do something tomorrow. When you do it, it’s today.

Here’s a great quote from Anthony Robbins on how to accomplish just about anything:

“The truth of the matter is that there’s nothing you can’t accomplish if: (1) You clearly decide what it is that you’re absolutely committed to achieving, (2) You’re willing to take massive action, (3) You notice what’s working or not, and (4) You continue to change your approach until you achieve what you want, using whatever life gives you along the way.”

When I was in rehab back in the 80s, I remember very well the therapists words of warning:  if you notice you are not taking care of your appearance, not caring about how you dress etc. see that as a warning sign for you.  They noticed during those 30 days that when I was struggling, I didn’t care how I looked.  Therefore, I learned early on to watch out for this relapse warning sign.

Everyone has their own set of relapse warning signs. These are behaviors or attitudes that can start to reappear during recovery and can undermine your continued success at abstinence.  If you don’t know your warning signs, you are at a disadvantage. Think of these signs as an early warning system, like those sensors in the ocean that warn us about tsunamis so everyone has time to evacuate.  Back when that horrific tsunami hit Thailand and other countries in the area they didn’t have an early warning system for tsunamis triggered by earthquakes – over 200,000 people died because of it.

How can you figure out what your warning signs are?  First place to look is at your life when you were drinking.  What were your typical habits?  How did those change as you progressed in recovery?  You are essentially looking at how your behaviors and attitudes improved, then you backtrack to the place when they were making your life a misery.  Those behaviors and attitudes are probably a pretty good place to start building your early warning system.

Maybe when you were drinking you tended to be cruel toward your spouse.  In sobriety you started to be more patient and kinder.  Your spouse noticed.  Things got better.  If over time this new behavior starts to change – erode, so to speak – that could be a warning you’re going back to the place where alcohol was your fix.

Maybe when you were out there using you were very dishonest, even about the smallest things.  Over time you became more honest and open.  But now you notice you are slipping back into patterns of deception.  You tell “little white lies” to avoid uncomfortable situations or confrontations.  That could be an early warning sign for you.

Why is it that these old behaviors and attitudes often precede the first drink or drug?  Because those behaviors are generally not comfortable.  We naturally feel a little guilty when we deceive those we love.  We feel bad about being needlessly cruel or critical, hurting our loved ones.  The problem is, we don’t like being uncomfortable.  If we put ourselves in a situation where we are very uncomfortable much of the time, it could be that we turn back to our old solution:  drinking or taking drugs.

Develop your early warning system when you are healthy and strong in your recovery. Don’t wait until problems start to crop up – because we tend to lie to ourselves a little better and a little more often when we are off track in recovery, and that list might not be so accurate if we are in denial.

Sound familiar?  It’s one of the big lies we told ourselves when alcohol or drugs were taking a wrecking ball to our lives.

I wouldn’t drink so much, if…(fill in the blank with the excuse of the day/week/month/year)

I’ve noticed when I see someone now struggling with addiction that I often wonder what the chances are that they will see the light.  Unfortunately, the vast majority of people whose lives are ruled by substances never do. Does it ever make you wonder why you were so blessed to have been able to open your eyes?  Make you wonder how you could break through the veil of denial and delusion and go for this crazy thing called sobriety?  Abstinence from drugs and alcohol?  Who would  have ever thunk it when they were out there believing they just HAD to have that drink or that drug to just feel normal?

Don’t get complacent. Those delusions (I think that’s more accurate than denial in some ways) can creep back in if you aren’t on guard.  They can start as little nagging thoughts, then lead to changes in behavior, and those lead to those old chaotic feelings and sense of needing to fix it fast.

I remember a guy who would “get it” every 60 days or so, get clean, then go back – my five years I saw him come and go, cobbling together a few days or weeks at a time, over and over and over.  Twenty odd some years later I always wonder if he ever truly got it.  I still remember his suffering – he would show up at meetings drunk and help set up chairs.   I remember a friend who was prescribed Xanax by a “doctor” at 15 years of sobriety.  He calmly explained how it was different for him -he had real anxiety and this was okay.  I remember when that led to Klonipin, then that fatal drink on a plane…I say fatal because he was dead 5 years later.

Don’t think that inner addict isn’t looking for opportunities.  Not every one has the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other, each giving conflicting advice.  (“Do it!”  “No, don’t do it!”), so sometimes it’s hard to remember that inner addict just waiting for its fuel.  Believe me, he’s  in there.  It’s up to us to keep him in his place.