Our Associate Sponsors provide valuable support to our community and help build 'The Wall'.
Our partners help move the Wired In agenda forward.
Join our community, create your own profile page, and communicate about what matters to you.
Wired In envisions a community that enables individuals to access the tools they need to support their own Recovery and the Recovery of others. Wired In envisions a safe and welcoming environment where knowledge and experience, celebration and loss, lessons learned and mistakes made can be shared openly.
“I always wanted to be someone. I know realise I should have been more specific” (Lily Tomlin)
Recovery has given me the opportunity to find out who I am. In my years of running away from feelings, life, responsibility and myself, I lost track of who I was, who I am. Recovery has been both a rediscovery and in fact just a discovery.
Initially I tried hard to fashion an identity as a recovering person, and of course that’s part of who I am, but I’m more than that too and in trying to be a dozen people at once, the committee in my head gets out of order at times. Then I need to have a sense of self honesty and self integrity and just try to be.
My hardest challenge is just to be myself in a world where others (and I) are trying to make me something else. As the rabbi says: “In the coming world they will not ask me ‘why were you not Moses?’, they will ask: ‘why were you not yourself?”
Wise words.
I need to confess to finding life particularly irksome recently. Things not going my way. The salt a bit damp; sticky stuff on the iron plate; the other queue moving faster at the supermarket: that kind of thing.
And then there are the underlying real reasons for irritability, restlessness and wooden discontent: bigger and more difficult to manage life events. And even behind this there are other reasons: self esteem lower than the average bear; a hundred types of fear, lack of agency and, of course, the old chestnut: not getting enough love as a child. I don’t much like pain, but it is inevitable in life.
My wellbeing can be monitored through my tolerance barometer. When I’m in a good space, I can whistle a happy tune and people are lovely. Watch these feet tap. When I’m not in a good space, then watch out!
This morning on my way to work, I was walking behind a chap who had fairly short dark hair. Short, except for a braided length of hair dangling at the back. Not only was it too fussy and delicate and girly, but it was way off to the right like a dodgy political party.
God, that tiny little pigtail irritated me. Didn’t he know how utterly ridiculous it looked? What was he thinking? Why do people do these things.
I realised I was unconsciously scrabbling in my pockets for a pair of scissors. No wait, if only I had a scimitar, I’d show him….Why oh why had I lifted the umbrella instead of the ceremonial sword this morning after porridge?
My mental ravings were suddenly interrupted by the loud klaxon of a fire engine as it raced by and I felt a burst of shame. I was suddenly back in the real world of danger and valour and of risk and rescue. I let my pig-tail man go about his business, coiffure intact.
If lack of tolerance is my red flag in terms of not being grounded and connected (part of what I call spirituality) then gratitude is both my guiding light back and my anchor.
Sometimes sponsors ask their sponsees to write “gratitude lists”. (Usually when the sponsee is being truculent, arrogant and irritating). This is a useful way of letting that anchor down and getting things back into perspective. But can you be grateful for the tough stuff?
Elsewhere on the site, there was a lengthy and impassioned debate about methadone. I spotted someone referencing Bill Wilson’s phrase about pain being the touchstone of spiritual growth. I don’t think it was in an approving way.
It’s in the AA text. Actually Bill Wilson rephrased some wisdom that has been around for much much longer than the AA programme and has been discussed at length by philosophers, mystics, spiritual and religious people and psychologists throughout the centuries.
A sufi mystic said: “When the heart weeps because it has lost, the spirit laughs because it has found”. Carl Jung was of the opinion: “Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health”.
Kahlil Gibran wrote: “Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.” Thornton Wilder said: “I not only bow to the inevitable, I am fortified by it.” This paradoxical growth through adversity and pain is an established principle.
And though I am reluctant to admit it, this theme, these observations have also been my experience in recovery. Were it not for the misery of addiction, I could not know the freedoms my recovery brings me. I would not know myself the way I do and I would not be the person I am today, which despite my faults and neuroses, is a better man than I’ve ever been.
So I might not welcome pain, but I accept it’s part of life. And now I look for the gift in it, which is usually related to growth.
You know the old Alanon joke? How many Alanons does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None; they just detach and let it screw itself.
That made me chuckle because it is so well observed, but the wisdom in the humour has helped me in my own journey. As a compulsive helper and rescuer, I tried to bale out a close family member when she was drinking. Rescuing, helping, available day and night, doing my best with advice, visits and attempts to cure. It didn’t work.
When I started going to Alanon, I heard the advice to “detach with love”. I had to learn what it meant, but I practised. Amazingly when I did, my family member began to take responsibility for her own recovery and I stopped being in the middle of the chaos and managed to let go of some of the stress. Today she is in recovery through AA and I’m not stoking the fires of unmanageability.
Allowing loved ones and friends the right to make their own journey (with support and love, but not with enabling) is a hard thing for many of us to do, yet it’s worth exploring.
Balanced? Don’t look at me. I’m about as balanced as a unbalanced chimp carrying an elephant across an electified tightrope in time to Bohemian Rhapsody played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra where all the players mistook crack for coffee just before going on.
Actually slightly less balanced than that. The chimp’s wearing roller skates, has a cumberbund round his eyes and forgot to take his antiseizure medication.
Are you getting the picture?
I find balance difficult. Glee has finished and with one obsession less, I stuggled to find a new obsession to throw my life out of kilter. I’ve found it now though.
It’s “Words for Friends”; a nice little iPhone application where you can play a Scrabble like game with folk from all over the world while you neglect to eat, go to the bathroom or find a civil word for your partner.
What is it with my addiction addled brain?
So what do I need to do? I need to hand myself in to my sponsor, take stock of what’s going on and move back to a healthier balance.
In the meantime, anyone fancy a game?
“Wisdom doesn’t necessarily come with age. Sometimes age just shows up all by itself” (Tom Wilson)
When I’d been around the recovery community for a few months, I observed a well established phenomenon; the mark of respect paid to “old timers”, those who’d been in Recovery for many years. It’s not specific to Recovery, age and more importantly experience is valued in most cultures around the world.
However I also observed that while, by definition most old-timers were… well…OLD, not all were wise. Yes there was some logic in the argument: “Well, they must be doing something right to stay clean and sober, let’s learn what.” But as odd as it might sound, there’s a lot more to Recovery than staying drug-free and sober.
As I’ve gone on to rack up a few years in Recovery myself, I am aware of the need to continue to grow. For me that’s about flexibility; making mistakes; not holding onto dogma; accepting that life is not fair and will be uncomfortable at times; listening; becoming self aware; not seeing myself at the centre of the universe; giving myself the right to be wrong and staying grounded.
Wise is not an adjective I can honestly apply to myself (yet!), but I can hopefully say I’m open, learning and growing. In any case, as Bill Cosby says: “A word to the wise ain’t necessary. It’s the stupid ones who need the advice”.
Count me in.
David Clark
desigol1979
Graham Woods
GuyinGHo
mark burns
oliver
Phil Hughes
Phillipa M
Sarah Davies
Tony A