Recovery is Freedom

Human beings have a natural tendency to crave pleasurable feelings and to avoid unpleasurable feelings. We want to feel joy, peace, and happiness while avoiding anxiety, vulnerability, and dissatisfaction.  We innocently grasp for things that will bring some relief to internal discomfort.  Eventually, the grasping and self-medicating begins to cause life unmanageability.  It is at this point that we begin to use words like “addiction” and “alcoholism.”  Then there is the question – how do I know if I am REALLY an alcoholic or addict?  It has been my experience that the asking of the question is the answer to the question: yes.  To ponder whether or not something has become an addiction says that things are out of control.

Abstinence is freedom.  Abstinence is the first step towards healing.  Abstinence means not putting mind and mood altering drugs or drinks into your body.  In Alcoholics Anonymous members often say “just don’t take the first drink.”  That is a grand idea and a wise suggestion.  The problem is that when you are stuck in the cycle of craving, obsessive thinking, and using your substance – it may be easier to walk to the moon than to not take the first drink (or drug).  It is sometimes necessary to seek outside help when learning how to not take the first drink.

Recovery is freedom.  So then what … a life of misery?  Substances have been your greatest solution to life’s discomforts and now you find yourself sober.  Geez, that sounds awful!  Oh but wait, what if it is actually the life you have been craving all along. What if the things you’ve been looking for in the drug or drink are actually available on the path of recovery?

Recovery:  living a sober life mindfully and present while learning and growing.  There are many paths of recovery.  Alcoholics Anonymous is the most accessible recovery program.  AA is a spiritually based program which advocates for abstinence, building a recovery community, and giving back to those in need.  AA meetings happen around the clock in pretty much every location.  Refuge Recovery is a Buddhist based recovery program which also offers meetings and a supportive sober community. Refuge Recovery is built on the Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path of Buddhism.  RR also advocates for abstinence, community, and giving back to those in need.  These are just two of many types of recovery programs.  Which path you choose is not as important as choosing a path.  To get anywhere in life we must understand the path we are walking.

Recovery is a path of discovery.  You get to discover who you actually are, why you felt the need to medicate, and how to create a life of peace.  I believe that at the root of every single addiction is the desire to feel at peace.  Peace is an inside job – it will never be found in a bottle, a pill, or a needle. Recovery is about connection – connection to ourselves, to others, and to our life as a whole.

This is a reading from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.  It is a beautiful summary of what it feels like in active addiction and what it can be like in active recovery.

The last fifteen years of my life have been rich and meaningful. I have had my share of problems, heartaches, and disappointments because that is life, but also I have known a great deal of joy, and a peace that is the handmaiden of an inner freedom. I have a wealth of friends and, with my A.A. friends, an unusual quality of fellowship. For, to these people, I am truly related. First, through mutual pain and despair, and later through mutual objectives and new-found faith and hope. And, as the years go by, working together, sharing our experiences with one another, and also sharing a mutual trust, understanding and love—without strings, without obligation—we acquire relationships that are unique and priceless.

There is no more “aloneness,” with that awful ache, so deep in the heart of every alcoholic that nothing, before, could ever reach it. That ache is gone and never need return again.
Now there is a sense of belonging, of being wanted and needed and loved. In return for a bottle and a hangover, we have been given the Keys of the Kingdom.