Building a Life Worth Living

If AA doesn't work for you and if long-term abstinence is elusive, I'd like to introduce you to some processes and ideas that can help. Welcome to Eclectic Recovery, where recovery programs are self-designed, tailored to the individual and most importantly, effective.

It's been over two years since I began writing here on Eclectic Recovery and I began with a couple of goals in mind. The first is selfish and remains so with no apologies: I was looking for a way to live long-term, comfortably, without alcohol. The usual method, i.e., AA, was no longer effective for me and the treatment programs weren't much better. The second reason is not and also remains not with no apologies: I thought there had to be others like me and I hoped to reach and build a community with these people; a community that would help me, and others, find a sustainable sobriety.

Here's a problem with exploring any dark, negative, life-threatening problem on the web: people can't handle their own darkness and they certainly can't handle yours. So no matter how valiant your efforts, if you slip up, people run like crazy and I'm not saying I blame them. Or maybe the blog is just not that good, although I have to tell you when I look at it as a whole, I'm pretty impressed. There's a lot of good information here, and there's a lot of crap here, but I think all in all it's balanced.

To be honest, it was touch and go for a long time as to whether I ever was going to find anything that would be effective for me - in the long-term and considering I just relapsed yet again maybe I shouldn't be as hopeful as I am. But I am. Hopeful, that is. I've been observing several types of recovery communities over the past 20-25 years and something new and beautiful is emerging. My work at the chemical dependency center, with my mental health counselor and my own continued efforts to understand and change my thinking, and thus my life, is starting to take root and I have no idea what the flower will look like, how long it will last or even if it will smell pretty. But the stirrings of new life are unmistakable. I'm learning and awakening in a way I can 100% believe in. No dogma. No rules. Everything I'm doing shares one thing in common: it starts to heal the problem. The real problem, which actually could be different for you, even if it manifests as a problem with alcohol. If it doesn't go toward healing our souls, it's outta here as a method for me. Simplifies things a lot, too.

I have looked at my goals and I still deem them worthy. As a matter of fact, I deem them worthier than ever before, and closer. I am so excited to be alive at this time and right where I am in all ways and it's a privilege and an honor to begin to accept the responsbility of co-creating a life. All I really have to do is make sure the focus stays on my own spiritual connection and behavior and respond as appropriately as possible in any given situation while working to embrace what's empowering, life-affirming, real and most of all helpful. Which is obviously not always as easy as it seems!

If any of you in AA are still reading my blog, I would ask you to give it another chance, maybe get it on your blog roll, in the hopes that it would reach another woman quietly and surely drinking herself to death. I am finding my way though the labyrinth and I want to share. After all, what we're doing here is building a life worth living. Let's get on with it, shall we?

So, every day for at least a month, and that's quite a commitment considering I was romancing taking a midnight swim in a January Flathead Lake, considering that I've moved 4 times in the past year and been through some pretty nasty stuff, both here, and in my professional life, considering I came very close to not making it and considering that I know, personally, of at least 100 women who are spinning their wheels with this thing and slowly dying. Man, that sentence got long. Anyway, considering all that, I'm going to post every day for a month about something that is really helping me stay sober today. I'm going to finally do this like I was told to do it a while ago: do it like it's your job she said. Okay. Okay.

Here are some of the methods we'll be looking at in the coming days, weeks, months and yes, years. Because if I've finally gotten one thing it's that for most of us this is a lifetime deal. Alcoholism and its denizens are chronic, progressive and if not treated, fatal. But I don't want to focus on that because I want you to be as excited as I am about moving forward with life without alcohol. So we're going to be looking at and discussing a varied and very eclectic array of ideas from vampire slaying to dialectic behavior therapy, from mindfulness and meditation to nutrition and exercise. We'll be re-exploring issues like dealing with pain in recovery, dealing with co-occurring disorders like depression and anxiety and learning how to skillfully handle our own emotions and interpersonal relationships. We'll look at possible sources of community other than AA where a person can safely begin to explore their own shadow and how that manifests in their life. We're going to look at what to do if you slip up or totally go on a bender and how most quickly to get ourselves back on our recovery program if that happens. We will look honestly at the damage caused by alcoholism, both to ourselves and the others in our lives. We will not flinch when faced with the darkness in our own soul.

I will tell you about many things that apply to me that won't apply to you. I am not recommending anything - only sharing my own journey and what I'm finding that works for me. If you have been drinking alcohol on a daily basis for quite some time you will most likely need medical assistance to detox. Please don't underestimate, as I have at times, the deadliness of this disease and the danger you and others are placed in when alcoholics drink.

We'll also be looking at some ideas, and people, who can be very dangerous for folks trying to manage their recovery.

There are a few things I promise to never do. I will never blame the alcoholic for having the disease of alcoholism and I will never turn anyone away no matter how many times they "relapse". I will not blame, scold, argue with or attempt to set anyone straight. I will not punish you nor myself any further. I want this to be the safest space possible for anyone desiring to live without alcohol. Also, while this is a blog for people who may find AA difficult or just undesirable, there will be no AA-bashing and that never was what this blog was intended to be about. And no Angela bashing, please. I'll just ignore you, and then delete you.

It's been 60 hours for me without alcohol and in one of AA's somewhat quaint terms I went on a prodigous bender. I would like to say that these are ALWAYS DANGEROUS AND DEFINITELY NOT RECOMMENDED. I try and practice some harm reduction but once I start drinking it's kind of anybody's guess where it might end up. That is scary as all hell. I hesitate to say it, but I've gotten pretty good at rapid detox and I've had some help from dear friends, but it is still horrible. We don't wake up one day and think, oh yeah, that's what I want to be: an alcoholic. Yes, that's it. A life of sobriety, relapse, denial, withdrawal, sickness, hallucinations (my Freida print was talking to me the other night), every negative emotion imaginable - rinse and repeat. No one decides to do that. And it takes a lot of grace and a lot of love to begin to recover. And it takes even more grace and even more love to keep trying over and over, to not be discouraged or disheartened or decide that it's just not worth it, which is unfortunately what a lot of us do every day.

So I hope you'll join me as we once again try to put one foot in front of the other and build a sober life worth living.

Radical Acceptance

I haven't written much yet about my treatment experience, the main reason being that I was afraid it might not be worth sharing, but it is. I went to this same treatment facility several years ago and had a much different experience. The counselor I was assigned subscribed to the "beat 'em down" philosophy and thought I was just acting way too big for my britches by not submitting to the 12 steps, or to his suggestions as to what I should do, or to his authority as a sober person with THE ANSWER. What no one seems to hear me say is that I did submit to the 12 steps. I did it thoroughly and honestly for six years. Certain aspects of my AA experience kept me sober for six years which is most absolutely nothing to sneeze at. And certain aspects of my AA experience worsened my mental and emotional state, even while abstaining from alcohol. As anyone in AA will tell you, alcohol is not the problem and about that I think they're absolutely right. But I think we should not forget that alcohol is a goodly portion of it.

To my extreme amazement and delight, the focus is now towards a treatment methodolgy called Dialectical Behavior Therapy. I'm still learning about it as it's being taught in the treatment center, but the most interesting thing is that they're teaching us skills I've used in the past that have helped me tremendously in my recovery efforts. Mindfulness, meditation, emotion identification and regulation, distress tolerance (which reminds me of Scott Peck's delay of gratification) and radical acceptance. While I had continued with meditation, mindfulness and other practices I found helpful, I was not practicing radical acceptance and it seems like that was a key for me.

So what is radical acceptance? It's acknowledging one's present situation without judgement or criticism of self - seeing the situation as it really is, acknowledging all the feelings around it, whether they're socially acceptable or not (they probably won't be) and just not attemtping to change anything about it. Just be with it as it is.

That's all good and fine but I'm not sure I would've been able to get there if it weren't for my counselor. For the first time in 15 years I sat across from someone whom I felt really heard what I was saying and didn't automatically assume something about me just because I was still struggling with alcoholism. I am beginning to realize that a lot of the assumptions I felt may have been in my own mind - that's called projection and it's a pretty common psychological maneuver. But she managed to validate my experience and my feelings and it seems that has opened the door to a deep healing process in my life. The mental health counselor I have been seeing since January has also been doing the same thing - nurturing those aspects in me that encourage me to boldly participate in this game of life, despite the fear, despite the anger, despite anything that might attempt to block me.

Both of these women are doing very good work here on this indian reservation in the middle of nowhere and while they've got a big pool to draw from, I don't think they see many people who are sincerely seeking big change. The addictions counselor is working with two other women in my group, both over five years' sober, who have been badly abused in one way or another. Her approach with them, and me, is the same one Marty Nicolaus describes in his book, Empowering the Sober Self: build up the sober self. Focus on the positive aspects of the personality, the desire to live a better life and the innate spiritual strengths of the individual. Be truly open-minded. DO NOT ASSUME THAT YOU KNOW HOW THIS PERSON SHOULD FIND RECOVERY. Create fertile ground for their own finding of that path no matter how twisted it may look at the time.

This is really good stuff.

The Medicine Wheel

The Medicine Wheel is an ancient healing/living modality created by Native American and other indigenous peoples throughout the world. It's a way of moving through life which is closely infromed by our connection to the earth; earth as mother, nurturer, healer. Earth as home and hearth. Earth now as victim who requires our assistance and cooperation to help her return to balance. I believe recovery is dependent on this connection and on our willingness to begin to treat the Earth, and ourselves, with respect.

Our physical bodies are part of earth, part of this dense matter, but our spirit - through our consciousness - is not, and exploring that frontier is also part of the Medicine Wheel. Freedom of consciousness is encouraged through intention, ritual and celebration. Acquiring even a small amount of freedom of consciousness requires some level of purification and so purification is also part of the Medicine Wheel.

The Medicine Wheel is a circular and organic process wherein each direction offers specific lessons that bring about balance, joy in living, respect for self and others, understanding and growth. Many of the processes I've previously explored and continue to explore: archetypes, meditation, ritual, mindfulness, self-examination, tarot, astrology and writing have their place within the wheel. The Medicine Wheel is a framework with tremendous room for individual expression and the freedom to customize what is chosen to place within that framework.

Of course, the most important thing about the Medicine Wheel for me is that I'm attracted to it. One of the principles of AA is that it is based on attraction rather than promotion, but in my experience AA was, and continues to be, promoted as the best if not the only way to recover from addiction. It wasn't intended to be that way, but the treatment industry (I think especially here in the west, but I'm not sure about that) basically grabbed onto the 12 steps and for years made it the only available option. When other programs began to spring up, they were mostly secular in nature, touting the rational road to recovery and these programs work well for many people. But the spiritual aspect of AA is not what bothers me at all. I want my recovery to inform my spirituality and vice versa so the secular programs left me feeling like something was missing as well.

I'm excited about exploring this framework here at Eclectic Recovery.