Beware of those tentacles reaching out from the past because they have one thing in mind, leading you back to a drink or drug.  I’m talking about an insidious creeping in of old behaviors and attitudes that can take down anyone, no matter how much time you have in sobriety. I used the picture of ivy because that’s what I think really captures this phenomenon.  You have a wall – the wreckage has been cleared away and it’s like a clean slate of sorts. It’s your new life sober.  You are doing really well, so well in fact that you don’t think you really need to worry too much about the principles of recovery.

Ivy can be a good thing if those branches reaching out cover up an ugly wall, but they are also a problem, especially certain types of ivy. They can damage the wall, even the foundation upon which its built. They find their way into cracks and crevices, exploiting the weaknesses in the wall.

So if there a bad ivy growing on  your wall?  Did you decide that a principle that kept you sober for the last five years isn’t really that important?  Have you started hanging around with people who abuse drugs and alcohol because you feel you are strong enough to resist? Are you really strong enough to resist?

Bad ivy can manifest itself in many ways, through changes in attitudes – more sullen or resentful – or through changes in behavior – more reclusive and insular. You can always cut back ivy, but unless you get to the roots, it’s tenacious stuff, weaving its way back across your life with little regard for where it goes.

We know when we’re letting bad old thoughts creep back in. We start to feel more impatient. We start to resent our friends and family and employer. We begin to avoid people who aren’t validating our negativity, and we gravitate people who are letting us know it’s ok to hate everything because everything really is an awful mess.

So if this describes your sobriety, maybe its time to dig down deep and figure out what is really going on. Is sobriety still at the top of your list of priorities?

It’s a malady, that’s for sure. Maybe you don’t have it, but you know someone who does. It’s this state of being where a person is always discontented.  There is always something. It’s really a pretty unhappy way to live, and I think many times it is just a bad habit.  I know my first year of sobriety involved a lot of grousing, whining, and complaining.  It created an overall feeling of discontent.  Fortunately, a few things happened that woke me up and alerted me to the fact that I had really chosen to see the negative side of everything and that colored my day.  It suddenly occurred to me one day, oh my, I haven’t had a drink for almost a whole year!  How did that happen? (It happened one day at a time).  Then I thought, do I want to feel like this every day for ANOTHER year?  Hell, no.

I can’t describe this moment as anything other than an epiphany:  I recognized in that moment that I had become addicted to be discontented. I liked complaining!  And because I had developed this attitude that everything was blah, I felt like blah.   It’s one of the cornerstones of cognitive behavioral therapy that beliefs and attitudes influence how you think – and hence, how you feel.  It seems almost too simple to be true, but it is.  People who tend toward depression tend to think things like “this always happens to me,” “nothing ever goes right,” “no one understands.”  People who do not tend toward depression have more rational reactions, like “this wasn’t so good, but maybe it will be better next time,”  “Oh well, live and learn,” and “could be a lot worse.”

Perpetual discontent has its advantages, otherwise we wouldn’t fall into it. First, it gets you a lot of attention (at first, until people get sick of it) because it’s just so sad how pathetic your life is based on what you continually tell people.  You poor miserable thing! Let me see if I can help you!  It solicits attention, and sometimes attention is what we want.  Sometimes we just want the badge of honor of being the sickest person in the room.  But this is not fun. It wears you down and wears you out.  It’s exhausting to be lamenting life on a regular basis.

It’s hard sometimes to see the addiction to discontent. It feels very real to you when you are in it.  But in 99% of cases it is not rational.  Life is not that bad for most people. Oh, there are bad things that happen and we don’t always get our way, but most of the time the bad things are just things – they do not define our whole life.  I hope if any of you have a case of perpetual discontent that you have your epiphany too. It feels oh so good.

I’ve said this before, you know you need help with your alcohol use if when you drink, bad things happen.  It’s so much simpler than asking yourself what I call “denial questions” – do I drink in the morning? no. Does that mean I’m not really an alcoholic?  Argggh! What a great way to make sure you don’t get help.  I mean, how many of us were full-blown drunks but never ever ever drank in the morning so we concluded that indeed we were in full control of our drinking?

Over the last two decades I’ve learned not to roll my eyes when I hear the “denial questions”:

I don’t drink every day (I did, but I know a lot of drunks who were binge drinkers)

I only drink when I’m out – never alone (big deal, where you drink has nothing to do with how you drink)

I don’t really have blackouts (translated: I occasionally do forget a few things I said or did, but it’s not like I forget the whole night!  Good for you! Hope the part you forgot wasn’t too bad!)

I don’t drink as much as X, Y, or Z (comparing yourself to even bigger drunks is an excellent way to talk yourself out of needing help! Sort of like, I’m not fat because I’m only 40 pounds overweight, but that gal is a good 70 pounds overweight!)

I just have really high tolerance – so I can drink a lot more than other people with no effects (you just have really high tolerance because you’ve been drinking a lot for a really long time, oh, and guess what, alcoholics tend to have really high tolerance.)

I’ve never had a DUI (yet)

I have a really good job and make a lot of money. I’m too successful to be a drunk.  (Hope it doesn’t catch up to you – it usually does – plus it’s fun to go to early morning meetings with a headache or sick stomach)

I’ve never done anything I wouldn’t have done sober (are you absolutely sure of that?)

I only drink beer.  (Uh, beer is alcohol, you just have to drink a bit more liquid – one beer = one shot.  Six beers = Six shots.)

I only drink fine wines (this one makes me smile; many times I would buy expensive wines and liqueurs to convince myself I was a connoisseur – gotta research the latest cabs, you know!)

No one in my family is a drunk and it’s supposed to be genetic (often is – and chances are there is a drunk in your family; either no one talks about Great Grandpa James escapades  or that person figured it out early enough and stopped drinking; but if you don’t, congratulations on starting a new branch in the family tree)

Frankly, if you are spending any time whatsoever trying to come up with reasons you do NOT have a problem with alcohol, chances are, you DO.

• RT @addictiontweets Facebook Addiction http://ow.ly/1pFb0w #
• RT @addictiontweets: House Bill replace jail time with addiction treatment http://addictiontreatmentmagazine.com/housebill #

Powered by Twitter Tools

If you are anything like me the phrase Keep It Simple Silly/Stupid irritated the heck out of you.  What does that mean?  Life is complicated! For goodness sake, tell me how and I’ll do it!

Like most things that came my way, I complicated the issue – I couldn’t even keep “keep it simple” simple. I saw only insurmountable complexity.

Face it, when you come out of years of alcohol or drug abuse your life is a chaotic mess. You have broken relationships, money issues, your career may be teetering, and you feel like a walking corpse.  The last thing it feels like is simple.

Yet it is.

Humans need just a few things to survive. They need water, food, shelter, and I believe, human warmth (e.g., love or at least like). Now some of you throw sex in there, and granted that’s important, but that’s more about species survival than surviving the day or week or month.

There is a strange thing that happens when you stop the madness – not just drinking but the wild, unfettered thought processes that go with being an alcoholic. When you stop and sit and focus on the important things, the other stuff is still there, but you begin to recognize your priorities.

#1 – Do not drink today

So much of the complexity of our lives was influenced by drinking.  Over time, as we gather days under our belts, the haze slips away and we start to see what is really important.  We don’t have to fix everything this minute. We just need to make sure we have food, water, shelter, and some good friends to help us through it.

What seemed like the end of the world to me 20 odd years ago now seems like a little blip on the radar. My hyper-concern was all part of this sort of reptilian brain reaction to life: ohmygodohmygodohmygod was the reaction to any obstacle or upset.  I had (and sometimes still have) a very low frustration level. Ask my computer mouse. He’ll tell you it’s true.

There is no question that you likely have some really big things to deal with, but you can deal with them if you stay sober. You won’t fix them today – highly unlikely you’ll fix them in a week or a month – but if you follow a strong program of recovery, you will find a way out of the messes you’ve created.  You will make amends. You will create a plan to pay off debt or heal a relationship.  You will take one little step today, another next week. Each day those steps accumulate into giant staircases closer and closer to your goal.

So how exactly do you simplify your life?  First thing to do is set your main priority and being an absolute despot about it:  Do Not Drink Today.  It’s simple: your plans, your day, everything then flows from that priority.  Accept that you cannot change and fix everything today.  Get support from peers in recovery and family who want more than anything for you to be clean and sober.