by Sally Rosa | Jul 16, 2014 | Addiction Articles, Benefits of Sobriety
Living Life on Life’s Terms Isn’t Always Easy
I Was An Addict Before I Started Using Drugs
My mother claims that, even when I was younger, I needed outside stimulation. Living life in a normal way just wasn’t doing it for me. I wasn’t allowed to watch TV at home, but when I went to friends’ houses I watched a lot! I remember my best friend complaining that I wasn’t fun to be around because all I’d do was watch TV. She used to say things to me and I was so entranced I wouldn’t hear her.
To me, this is an early example of my difficulties with living life on life’s term. It’s an early example of my alcoholic tendencies. Guess what? Drugs had the same effect on me as TV. The world suddenly wasn’t so boring. I wasn’t interested in living life for what it was. I found ways to escape, first as a young girl with TV, and later as a teenager with drugs and alcohol.
Read about how you can live your dreams!
An Escape from Life on Life’s Terms
Drugs took me away from the world I lived in. In the beginning they made life more exciting. With them came a ton of new experiences and people. Many of the drugs I tried made the world change. I thought they were giving me a new perspective.
What I was unaware of was that they also shortened my perspective. The group of people I hung out with became smaller and more selfish. We stopped talking about the world. Instead, we spoke about the made up experiences in our minds that we found while high. Drugs became our sole topic of conversation. It was this kind of thinking that landed me in rehab.
Understanding the Concept of Life on Life’s Terms
Another part of the thinking that lead me into rehab was how I’d always feel like there was something I was missing out on. I’d always feel like there was something more than living life at the moment. I didn’t understand the concept of life on life’s terms. I had distorted beliefs about what I deserved and what my life should look like. It was like I was always waiting for something to happen. The problem with this way of living is that life was happening and I let it pass me by. By not accepting life for what it was, I was choosing to ignore it. By making the decision that life was boring as it was, and only drugs could enhance it, I was missing the actual opportunities that life provides.
Read this amazing story about one women’s journey to sobriety
Living Life in Recovery
Humans are hardwired to endure. Our bodies have survival responses programed into them. For thousands of years, we produced adrenaline so we’d avoid death in dangerous situations. Today, we don’t use these instincts as often as we used to. Addicts and alcoholics sometimes create situations to stimulate these senses. We create challenges in a world where we may not need to. When we stop creating fake realities to stimulate our senses, or fake problems to make our lives more interesting, the world can reveal what it really is. I’m constantly amazed by what I can do when I let life be, now that I’m living life in recovery.
by A Women in Sobriety | Jul 14, 2014 | Addiction Articles, Benefits of Sobriety
Written By: Katie Schipper
Enjoying the Gifts of Today by Living in the Moment
Nothing is More Important Than Living in the Moment
The intensity with which we naturally think about the future is so strong that, more often than not, we’re not living in the moment. Instead, we’re completely missing out on the only thing that really exists, the exact moment that we’re in.
A whole lot is lost by focusing on the future and outcomes – it causes, and in turn is caused by, anxiety, fear, and worry. Thoughts about the future are valuable, yes, but they should NEVER come at the expense of the present moment. Learning to be mindful of what’s right in front of us is one of the gifts of being in recovery. It’s not always easy to be mindful, but conceptually speaking, it’s pretty simple. Not to mention, there are endless reasons why it’s worth exploring.
Learn about Jim Carrey’s speech on living in today!
Living for Today Requires Practicing Mindfulness
The absolute and unavoidable reality for every person is that someday they’ll take their final breath. Someday they’ll die. The majority of us have knowledge of, or say in, when that day’s going to come. You can plan your future around this day. You can plan your future out day-by-day, week-by-week, even year-by-year. You can plan what you want to be doing years from now. You can do plan to an obsessive degree, but in the end, you may never see the day when your planning comes to fruition.
So, the real why of practicing mindfulness and living in today is that we have no way of knowing which day will be our last. If all our days are spent worrying about the future, do we have any room left for joy? Do we have any room left for actually living?
Now, that doesn’t mean we have to float around with no direction, or become a monk, or live outside of society, though we can do all of these if we want to. It means a very radical shift in thinking. After all we’re programmed to plan, think, and worry about the future. It seems to be written in our DNA. But thoughts of the future don’t have to control us.
Mindfulness takes on a stronger meaning for addicts and alcoholics because our sobriety begins over each morning when we wake up. Our sobriety is contingent upon our action that day. It doesn’t matter what we say we’ll do in the future, and the past doesn’t guarantee that we’ll stay sober for today. Nope, we have only this exact moment to choose not to pick up a drink or get high. We learn that living in the moment, and applying the knowledge we gain in recovery, helps us stay sober. More importantly, it helps us enjoy the gifts of today!
Learn how to be grateful for today
How to Practice Living in the Moment and Enjoying the Gifts of Today
Mindfulness and living for today are simple concepts. Remember though, simple and easy aren’t the same thing! It’s simple enough for a child, but the actual practice takes time, maybe even a lifetime, to really learn.
A good place to start in any mindfulness practice is to focus on your individual breaths. From there, notice the things around you. What sounds do you hear? What’s under your feet or in your hands? What can you see directly in your vision? What do you smell? Try to notice these basic senses without thinking about your to do list, what’s for dinner, or an argument you had. Try to notice what’s right in front of you for sixty seconds.
Mindfulness is a practice that helps you enjoy the gifts of today. Knowing that all we have is now sets us free to live fully in the only moment that’s real – this moment.
Find a women’s alcohol treatment center that will help you learn how to live in today!
by Sally Rosa | Jul 10, 2014 | Addiction Articles, Drug Addiction
By: Tim Myers
Dear Josh Gordon,
I get it. I understand. I’ve got your back. There’s not a lot of that being said to you right now, in any of the media. There’s not a lot of anything except projection, advice, and doomsday scenario banter. Oh, and all the should of, could of, would of’s. “He should of done this,” “I wish the NFL would of done that,” and “The Browns could of done this.”
I get it, Josh Gordon. I understand and I’ve got your back. You’ve got a problem, Josh. I don’t mean to judge, but based on the staggering facts alone, I’m pretty confident I’m right. Multiple substance abuse violations in college, drug arrests and citations involving marijuana, codeine cough syrup, and alcohol in just the last eighteen months. You’re the premier NFL wide receiver. Yet your substance abuse stats fill the back of your trading card more thoroughly than your career numbers. You have a life and a career anyone would die for, yet you’re dying to give it all away.
I get it, because I did the same thing. So did my best friend, and my uncle, and my grandpa, and my aunt, and millions of people all over the world. We gave up everything so we could have one thing – drugs. Then, one day we decide to give up one thing to have – everything.
Josh, I have the greatest family in the history of the world. I have a college degree, a car, and a great job, but three and a half years ago I decided that snorting cocaine, smoking pot, drinking ‘till I blacked out, driving drunk, and having guns pointed at my head were the most important things in my life.
They were. People like you and I, Josh, have a mental illness. We have a disease. It makes us do crazy things. It makes us feel so incredibly alone and scared that we keep using because no one will ever make us feel as loved and appreciated as drugs do.
That was my life, until one day a man named Chris told me, “Tim, I don’t even know you, but I love you because you’re just like me.” He got me, understood me, and had my back. He told me that I was still alive so I could get sober and help other people stay sober. He showed me how to stay sober and unlocked the enthusiasm, excitement, potential, love, compassion, and determination that drugs and alcohol had held captive for ten years.
Josh, I live in Delray Beach, Florida, a city known to have more residents recovering from drugs and alcohol than any other city in the country. Everyday I see people as lost and hopeless as I once was. Within a few months, I see them alive, laughing, joking, happy, and free! Yet sometimes, I get the tacky, insensitive, sad and all too frequent Facebook notification saying, “RIP Jane Doe, this disease claims another Angel.”
Don’t become one of those angels, Josh. Don’t become another celebrity to shine a light on the death toll of addiction. Become a warrior of recovery! Become the man you were always meant to be.
I was in rehab when Josh Hamilton entered the home-run derby at Yankee Stadium. His long history of crack use had been exposed and talked about in the media for years. In rehab that night, they let us watch the home-run derby. Ball after ball after ball went soaring over the fence as Josh set the single round record for home runs in a home-run derby, at the most historic ballpark ever built! I cried. A lot of the men in my unit cried. It gave us hope. It gave us someone to look up to. Not for what he was doing on the field, but for what he’d off the field.
You can be that guy, Josh. Hell, you already have the same first name so you’re halfway there! You can change other peoples’ lives, Josh, but first you have to change your own. I want to see you in the playoffs. I want to see you catch a touchdown in the Super Bowl. I want to wear your jersey and get your autograph, but not because of what you accomplish on the field. I want to be your biggest fan, for what you achieve off of it. I love you Josh Gordon, because you’re just like me.
I get it. I understand. I’ve got your back.
Love,
All of Us
by A Women in Sobriety | Jul 9, 2014 | Addiction Articles, Sobriety For Women
Written By: Katie Schipper
Giving Back Is Whats It’s All About
You Get What You Give
There’s a saying in recovery that gets repeated so often it sometimes loses its power. It goes a little something like – you’ll get from your sobriety exactly what you put into it.
This initially sounds like another annoying cliché that at some point had meaning, but it’s much more than that. The truth is, recovery can be viewed as a metaphor for the rest of your life. What you put in, you’ll get back (and usually, you get back a little more than expected).
Giving Back and Learning to Try
The early stages of recovery are usually very uncertain territory. Even if you’ve tried to get sober before, or gone for periods of time without drinking or using, the time it sticks is usually a particularly desperate time. Now, this isn’t always true, but seems to happen a lot. Desperation is one of the best gifts an addict or an alcoholic can receive, but with desperation comes fear and uncertainty about what to do next.
That’s why a drug rehab for women, an IOP therapy group, counselors, and people in meetings suggest the freshly sober woman doesn’t wait to focusing on her recovery.
There’s a window within this desperation that’s opened by pain. Once that pain begins to subside, the window starts to close. At some point, if work on your recovery hasn’t begun, the initial pain and desperation will have subsided enough that reasons for staying sober magically disappear. At this point, drinking and getting high seem totally reasonable. However, if you start making changes while this window is open, there are some pretty immediate benefits.
It’s in this space that newly sober women discover the value of trying. Many of us feel like we’ve been trying desperately for months, years, and lifetimes to effect a change, yet nothing’s happened. Most opportunities come up as dead ends in active addiction. Even for those women who managed to maintain a home, or hold onto a job or relationship, there’s usually a pervasive feeling of emptiness and self-doubt. Those feelings make the idea of trying for anything sound overwhelming. On a personal and individual level, you have to be fed up with yourself to the point that change and effort seem the better option.
One of the beautiful truths of recovery is that from that place of desperation often comes a wellspring of hope. Still, the only way to get there is to try, in spite of past experiences that taught you trying’s fruitless.
This is the “giving” portion of getting back what you give. You have to try. You have to show up in spite of changing moods and circumstances. You have to put forth an effort regardless of how you feel.
Read more about becoming grateful through giving! It’s so easy!
Getting Back What You Give
The flip side of giving back and trying and working and consistently showing up is what you get in return. The reality of giving is that it has very little to do with what your actions. It has more to do with the willingness to try giving.
The idea isn’t to reach a certain step, or a certain life goal, or a certain benchmark by a certain time. The idea is to move through recovery with your eyes ever on willingness, honesty, faith, and other ideals of spiritual growth. With those concepts as your focus, the universe (God, your Higher Power, who or however you conceive of a loving consciousness) gives back to you endlessly. Of course, there are material gifts for hard work (if you get a job and save money, you can move into an apartment and buy a car, etc.), the real reward take the form of what we sought in the bottle, the pill, and the powder. The real reward is peace. Peace of mind, body, and soul.
What you find when you give yourselves to recovery is that within you there’s a treasure you can access at any time. It’s always been and will always be there. That is what makes the work, the seeking, and the effort so worthwhile.
Read about the blessing you get in sobriety from giving
by Fiona Stockard | Jul 7, 2014 | Addiction Articles, Benefits of Sobriety
Written By: Katie Schipper
How Living Your Dreams Can Be a Real Thing!
Paralyzing Fear Can Stifle All Dreams
Fear is the ultimate culprit when it comes to living your dream. This doesn’t just apply to addicts and alcoholics in early-recovery, it applies to everyone. Fear can be totally paralyzing. There’s the fear of failure, the fear of what other people will think, the fear of what might go wrong. Then there’s the power of regret, which is really just a fear of the past combined with a fear that you’re not good enough. All of those fears and their offshoots are responsible for killing dreams before they even have a chance to see the light of day. Sounds kind of bleak, huh? Fear not, there are some ways to keep your dreams alive!
Watch Jim Carrey’s amazing speech about living your dreams
Stop Living in Regret, Start Living Your Dreams
The first thing to remember is not to focus too much on eliminating fear and regret. If you focus on the negative side of things, that’s where your energy is. You’re eliminating some of the focus you could give to living your dreams. So, don’t freak over the fact that you have fears and if you’re living with regret. Everyone has fear. I repeat: EVERYONE HAS FEAR. It’s in our DNA. It’s hardwired in our brains. We feel fear as an instinct designed to help us survive.
On a personal level, you can decide if fear drives you or you can acknowledge it and grow. So, focus on the positive. This means whatever your dream is, start believing it now. You can start living your dreams, today! Tell yourself your dream is already real. If your dream is to go back to school, believe that you’re a student. Tell yourself you’re a student and guess what? You are! Say it out loud and have faith in it.
See how one act of kindness helped a homeless man’s dreams come true
Living Your Dreams Starts With Saying It Until You Believe It
So, you repeat your dreams until you believe them. What then? You have to actually do it! Faith and intention are vital. They motivate, compel, and drive us, but you still have to get off your a*s and do it.
You can’t just sit around dreaming about something and think it will happen without any work. That’s a fantasy and a daydream. You can do anything you dream is possible. The problem is that without meaningful, consistent, and focused effort all those dreams will remain nothing more than that, dreams. Set goals and work towards them.
Focus on the Now!
There’s nothing that can be done today, tomorrow, or the next day that’ll change the past. So, stop living with regret! Sometimes this is hard. Hell, often it’s hard. From the right perspective though, it’s incredibly empowering.
If you fully believe, understand, and accept that you can’t change what’s already happened, then you also have power to put all your focus and energy into right now. What can you do differently today so you don’t ever have to feel like you want to change the past? How can you learn to turn your regret into motivation to start living the life you’ve dreamed of?
These gifts aren’t reserved for an exclusive group. If you have the willingness to state your dream, to believe in your dream, and to take action towards making your dream a reality, then you can live any life you choose. You can live without being a slave to fear and regret.
Are you a women whose dreams have been destroyed by drugs and alcohol? Seek help at a treatment center for women
