by Fiona Stockard | Jan 28, 2015 | Addiction Articles, Recovery
What Do I Do If a Loved One Relapses?
Relapse is a part of recovery. It’s an unfortunate part, but a part nonetheless. It’s like the sky being blue, grass being green, or Taco Bell being the tastiest fast food. Addicts and alcoholics relapse. It’s that simple.
So, what happens when someone close to us relapses? It could be a family member, friend, roommate, significant other, sober support, or even a sponsor. What happens to us when they pick up that drink? What are our options?
This is a selfish way of looking at things, but an absolutely vital one to preserve our own sobriety! This goes double if you’re in early-sobriety when a loved one relapses.
What do we do? Find some of my (hard won) advice below. I hope it helps!
Limit Contact
This one’s kind of obvious, but limit your contact with a relapsing loved one! Now, this might be hard depending on who it is that decided to pick up a drink or drug. It’s one thing to limit contact with a friend, it’s a whole other thing to limit contact with a significant other!
If it’s at all possible, don’t spend as much time with them. See them only in social settings. Don’t hang out with them late into the night. Take these general precautions to protect your own sobriety!
These might sound harsh, but remember – it’s easier for a relapsing loved one to take us out, than it is for us to get them back into the rooms.
Don’t See Them Alone
This goes along with limiting contact. Don’t hang out with your relapsing loved one alone!
I know what you’re thinking. “But So and So loves me! He or she would never use around me. I’ll be fine!” Guess what? You’re probably right. 99% of the time you will be fine. It’s that 1% that makes seeing a relapsing loved one alone dangerous.
Remember, you’re dealing with the disease of addiction and alcoholism. It overwhelms us all. It doesn’t matter how much your loved one cares about you. If they’re drinking and drugging, all that love goes out the window. That’s just how it is.
Seek Professional Help
Seeking professional help can take a few different forms depending on who in your life relapsed.
Let’s say it’s your significant other. Well, then seeking professional help could include going to marriage therapy, going to couples therapy, joining a support group like Al-Anon, or simply placing your loved one in treatment.
Let’s say it’s a friend that relapsed. If that’s the case, seeking professional help could take the form of attending a support group, going to more twelve-step meetings, or even planning an intervention (with an interventionist, of course!).
Let’s say it’s a family member. In this case, maybe you should attend family therapy. Whatever form it takes, don’t be afraid to turn to the professionals. After all, there’s a reason they’re called professionals!
Encourage Them!
This might also be kind of common sense, but I see it get neglected a lot! Remember, your loved one is in a lot of emotional, mental, and spiritual pain. They’re drinking, using, and engaging in harmful and selfish behavior. They could use some kind words!
So, if someone close to you starts drinking or drugging, tell them some of the things your sponsor tells you. It’ll help more than you know.
Pray For Them
And here we’ve reached the most important thing (in my humble opinion anyway!) you can do for a loved one who’s relapsing. Pray for them! It’s that simple.
Alcoholism and addiction are diseases of powerlessness. Addicts and alcoholics are powerless over drugs and booze. They’re powerless to say no. They need something more powerful than they are to help.
That’s where a God of our own understanding enters the picture. This God is much more powerful than any drug or drink.
So, say a prayer for your loved one. It’s one of the simplest, and most powerful, things we can do!
by Sally Rosa | Nov 26, 2014 | 12 Steps, Addiction Articles
Written By: Fiona Stockard
What are the 10th Step Promises?
Much like the ninth step promises, the tenth step promises are a section of the Big Book where recovering alcoholics are promised peace and recovery from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body.
Sounds too goo to be true, right? Wrong! The tenth step promises are available for everyone who works for them. They’re guaranteed to you, to me, and to the broken woman who just walked through the door.
Of course, there’s a pretty big caveat here. We have to do the work! These promises don’t just magically happen in our lives. We have to sweat. We have to earn it. We have to earn recovery!
Bill Wilson Wrote –
And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone-even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality—safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.
–(Big Book pp. 84-85)
Again, like the ninth step promises, I didn’t know what those words meant until I experienced them. It’s easy to read, “…the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us.” To experience that freedom firsthand, though? I can’t describe it. It’s simply freedom.
My Experience with the 10th Step Promises
I’m a tried and true alcoholic and addict. Before picking up a drink, I would use things like attention, controlling my weight, boys, and good grades to feel different. Then I got high. After that, all bets were off.
See, I have the three-part disease of alcoholism and addiction. My body processes alcohol and drugs differently than “a normie’s” body. Once I start, I can’t stop. Of course, stopping wouldn’t be a problem if I never started in the first place.
I always begin to drink again. I always begin to drink until I reached “a position of neutrality – safe and protected.” See, I had a mental obsession with drinking and drugging. Once I started to think about alcohol, I wouldn’t stop until the thought of drinking pushed out all else. I wouldn’t stop until a drink was in my hand.
That’s the heart of alcoholism – the bizarre mental obsession. Did you notice, though, that I wrote in past tense in the above paragraph? That’s because I’ve recovered. I’ve been granted safety from a God of my own understanding. I’ve been set free.
That’s my experience with the tenth step promises. They set me free. When I was newly sober, they offered me hope. My sponsor showed them to me almost immediately. I thank God she did. They showed me that recovery isn’t only possible, it’s promised if I do the work.
See, I have to complete the steps in order for these promises to manifest in my life. Even then, they don’t always occur during the tenth, eleventh, or twelfth step. It takes some women much longer to have them come true in their lives. For some lucky women, the obsession is lifted before they reach the tenth step. Like most of sobriety, these promises are an entirely subjective experience.
The bottom line, though, is if I do the work, if I search within myself and find God, the obsession to drink and drug will be removed. That’s all I can ask for and all I continue to ask for on a daily basis.
by Sally Rosa | Nov 19, 2014 | 12 Steps, Addiction Articles
Written By: Fiona Stockard
What are the 9th Step Promises?
The ninth step promises are a section of the Big Book where recovering alcoholics are promised certain things. I like the sound of that! Remember though, these promises only apply to alcoholics working the steps. Specifically, they only apply to those who’ve reached the ninth step.
So, what does the Big Book promise us? Red bottom heels and a hot guy? A Rolex and a smaller waist? Nope! It promises us emotional and spiritual health. It promises us that we’ll finally be okay.
Bill Wilson wrote –
If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us – sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.
(The Big Book, pp. 83-84).
Like many alcoholics, I’d heard the promises read at meetings. I’d seen them hanging on the wall of clubhouses. Hell, I even went to a meeting called “The Page Eighty-Three Promises Meeting.” I thought I knew the ninth step promises.
It turns out, like many blessings in sobriety, I knew these promises on paper, but had no idea what they looked like in real life.
My Experience with the 9th Step Promises
I got sober and I began to learn what these promises were really about.
See, things like “We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it” and “We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows” sound good. When they happen in your life though? The feeling is nothing short of amazing.
After completing my steps, I was stunned. I was, for the first time in my life, free. I was okay in my own skin. More importantly, I was able to show other women how to be free. I was able to be selfless, rather than selfish.
So, friends and dear readers, I’ll leave you with my personal take on the ninth step promises.
Fiona’s 9th Step Promises
If we complete the steps, we’re going to be amazing. Sometimes it’ll be halfway through, sometimes it’ll be afterwards, but it’ll always happen.
We’re going to know the freedom of sobriety and the happiness of recovery.
We won’t regret the past. In fact, we’ll embrace the past and use it to help other women recover.
We will live in serenity and we will practice peace, helpfulness, and love to others.
No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we’ll rise. We’ll rise because women lift us. We’ll then lift other women. Together, we’ll rise and never fall.
Uselessness will become useless. Self-pity will become useless. Service will become everything.
We will lose interest in our old lives and gain interest in God and other women.
Self-seeking will become uncomfortable. Selfishness will become uncomfortable.
Our attitude and outlook upon life will change and become whatever God wants it to be.
Fear of people, of economic insecurity, of being single, of gaining weight, of being rejected, of being embarrassed, of being anything other than exactly who and what we are – will leave us.
We will learn how to handle situations with grace and dignity.
We will suddenly realize God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves and that God has been with us, carrying and helping us, all along.
Are these extravagant promises? Hell no!
They’re being fulfilled among us – look around and see the beautiful healing power of sobriety.
They happen for everyone, always, if we do the work.
by Fiona Stockard | Oct 1, 2014 | Sobriety For Women
Written By: Fiona Stockard
My Name is Fiona and I’m an Addict
It took me far too long to say those words. It took me even longer to mean them. My road to recovery from substance abuse began the first time I made myself vomit. See, before I could imagine getting better, I had to get worse.
Growing up, I always felt like the weirdo, the odd-woman out (turns out most addicts felt this way!). I was overweight and had low self-esteem. I suffered from anxiety and depression. In turn, I felt like a piece of crap everyday.
My Story
At eleven years old, I made myself throw up and instantly felt better. That’s kind of sick, right?
I didn’t lose tons of weight. I didn’t become suddenly popular. The boy I had a crush on didn’t ask me out. What did happen was that I gained control. On some tiny level, I finally had control over my body, over my mind.
Fast-forward a couple of years, I found out pills worked better than vomiting. Fast-forward a couple of years from that, I found out heroin worked better than pills. Oh, and guess what? Cocaine and heroin worked best.
By seventeen years old (before I was even legally an adult!), I was one hot mess. I was addicted to multiple drugs, living on the street, and alienated from my family. I was more addiction than person. Luckily, my mom just wouldn’t give up on me. She got me a plane ticket and a bed in one of south Florida’s most prominent treatment centers.
That wasn’t happily ever after though. Though treatment was an amazing experience, I relapsed afterward. Life was hell for another year. Eventually, I went to another treatment center and got better. Turns out all I had to do was change everything. Though this sounds hard, it was so much easier than the alternative.
If my story sounds like a bad afterschool special, that’s because it is. I was a statistic. I was the story you told your kids to scare them. Today, well today, I’m much different. I’m writing this, exposing myself, in the hopes that other women might not have to go through all I did.
What I Needed WASN’T What I Wanted
I’ve been around the block when it comes to rehab. I’ve been admitted twice to in-patient, residential programs, and been to more intensive outpatients (IOPs) than I can count. I knew the system. More accurately, I knew how to beat the system.
It wasn’t until multiple therapists, doctors, and addiction professionals had called me on my s**t, that I began to heal. To put it another way, what I needed wasn’t what I wanted.
What I needed was an all women’s rehab, therapists who examined ALL aspects of my life, supportive peers, and aftercare. In my IOP experiences, I received none of the above. IOP works great for a lot of people, I can’t stress that enough. But for this broken woman (for this broken GIRL really), IOP didn’t even allow me to cut down my use.
My first time in residential treatment, I had two of the four. I was in a women’s treatment center and had great peers. What I didn’t receive was comprehensive clinical care, or any aftercare.
My second time in residential treatment, I had four out of four. I was surrounded by incredibly warm and supportive women, the entire treatment team kicked my metaphorical ass, then built me carefully back up, and the rehab looked after me upon discharge. Guess what? As a result of all that, I began to change. I was given hope and I wasn’t trading that hope for all the drugs in the world.
Recovery is For People Who…
Addiction treatment is a vital and necessary part of recovery, but ultimately it’s only the start of a lifelong process. Treatment offers a ton of crucial services (like those I mentioned above), a place to be physically separated from drugs, guidance, and hope. What treatment doesn’t offer is the desire to get better. That has to come from within.
Remember, I drank and used after my first visit to residential treatment. This was largely due to not being provided the safe environment rehab should be, but also because I wasn’t ready to change.
To put it a much simpler way, a woman needs the desire to heal more than ANYHTING ELSE. What women in sobriety need is a fire within their chests, a voice that won’t stop repeating, “you can do better, you can get better, you ARE better!”
