Gratitude = Recovery

Yesterday I ran into one of our longtime employees on the sidewalk in front of my office.

"How are you doing?" I asked him.

"My life couldn't be better," he told me, as he gave me a hug.

Then he proceeded to tell me how grateful he is for the way he lives today. He said he has a wife who loves him, a young son who greets him every day at the front door with a big hug when he gets home from work, and he's moving into a better home in a nicer neighborhood.

Then he went on to explain how he'd have nothing in his life today if he hadn't stopped using drugs after he got out of prison several years ago. He gives the credit to TLC and the circle of friends who have supported him in his sobriety.

And this man's attitude is not unique. Another gentleman I work with on a daily basis rarely lets the week go by without reminding me of how grateful he is. He says that when he turns the key in his front door after work each day he has a sense of gratitude for having a place to live and work. He remembers that six years ago he was homeless and in the grips of a serious drug and alcohol addiction. He makes it a point to express his gratitude for the way he lives today. And it shows up in his demeanor and the way he carries himself around our corporate office.

It's rewarding to talk to either one of these gentlemen because I always walk away feeling good about life. Their gratitude is contagious and they lift up those who come into contact with them.

Gratitude is a topic that often comes up in 12 step meetings. So much so that it's almost a cliché topic. Yet, more than probably any other characteristic an alcoholic or addict can have, gratitude is the fuel that keeps a person clean and sober.

I've never heard anyone say that they were so grateful that they felt like getting drunk or high. Instead, I hear just the reverse. What I hear them say is, "I lost my gratitude for what I had. I quit going to meetings. I quit talking to my sponsor. The next thing I knew I was drunk and homeless and had lost everything."

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Helping the Angry

Many of us have angry people in our lives, particularly those of us working in the recovery field. 

How do we stay above the fray?  How do we keep from getting sucked into negative emotions when others go sideways?  When they relapse?  When they do self-destructive things?  Or even when they threaten us?

One thing that helps me is to remember that I got into the recovery field to help others.  To share with others how I've managed to keep a needle out of my arms for 27 years.  To let them know that I was able to rebuild my life, even though I started relatively late - in my early fifties.

Another way to protect ourselves is to not take things personally.  Many of our clients are seriously traumatized and disturbed.  We must always keep in mind that it's not about us.  It's about helping clients to repair their emotions and to learn to live in reality.  When they're disturbed or upset it's generally about their distorted view of life and has little to do with us.  If they were well, they wouldn't need our help.

We need not beat ourselves up if it seems as though we're making no progress with a truculent client.  It helps me if  I look back at all the frustrated people who tried to help me before I was ready to change.  Many well-intentioned counselors, family members, and friends spent time and effort to help me shake the grip of drugs and alcohol.  But, until I was ready to change they were wasting their time.  On top of that, I was angry at them, even though they were trying to protect me from myself.

To shield us from burnout we must practice what we preach.  Use mindfulness techniques.  Get adequate rest.  Take responsibility for our mental and physical health - the same advice we give our clients.

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Being Kind and Loving

Left town on Friday to hang out at my favorite condo in Imperial Beach for four days with friends.

It's wonderful to get back to the ocean, to walk on the sand early in the morning.  It's cleansing and healing to listen to the waves as the sun rises.  So peaceful and soothing after a hot and crazy summer, dealing with angry people, people threatening litigation and more.

As I walk, I pass people of all backgrounds and ages.  Some are surfing. A few older people are fishing off the pier.  Two children are building a sand castle.  A father is collecting seashells with his children.  It's a peaceful scene of people immersed in their lives, people living in the moment.  While I can't see inside their heads, they all appear to be happily enjoying this moment of their lives.

As I continue along the sand, enjoying the morning, I reflect on what I've learned about living in the here and now - in this moment.  And what the people by the ocean seem to be doing is enjoying each minute as it unfolds, oblivious to time.  Exactly what I've been taught in the mindfulness meditation course I've been attending.

During my reverie, I begin to use another technique I've learned in my Vipassana studies, that of loving kindness.  This is a practice where we sending loving thoughts to first ourselves, then our family and friends, then to even our adversaries, until our good wishes cover the entire world.

A loving-kindness meditation goes something like "May you be safe, may you be healthy, may you prosper, may you be happy, may you be free from pain, may you be peaceful..." and so forth.  There are many variations to the meditation and practitioners can be as creative as they want.  It kind of serves the same purpose as praying for those you resent, as described on page 552 in the AA Big Book.  It helps soften the heart and to clear negative emotions.

And as I return to the condo after my walk by the sea I feel purged of negativity, having a sense of peace, of oneness with the world.

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Recovery Romance

One of our bigger challenges at TLC is helping clients avoid relationships.

You might wonder why we're interested in a client's personal relationships. What's the point of interfering with mother nature?

But experience has taught us that a quick path to relapse is a recovery romance. All of a sudden, instead of focusing on the nuances of staying sober, the client spends most of the day fantasizing about his or her sweetheart. Here's this wonderful creature who has led him out of the bleak landscape of recovery into the hormone-laced joy of a new romance. The world has come alive. Our self-esteem is boosted when we find that somebody, anybody, cares about us.

Some clients rush headlong into romances with little thought. The romance is a substitute for the drug they haven't been successful at using. They don't stop to think that 50% of most marriages end in divorce – and that's among so-called "normal" people. I've never read any statistics about the success of marriages between addicts or alcoholics. My guess would be that they fail at an even higher rate. And when the client is on psychiatric medications or suffers mental illness, the failure rate is likely even higher.

Over the last 25 years, we've seen many clients pair up and live together, or else get married. Many of them even have had children, but I can probably count on one hand TLC clients who have succeeded at long-term marriages or relationships.

Our recommendation to those who are head over heels in love with another alcoholic or addict is to give it a year and simply work on recovery. A year is nothing for people who are truly in love.

If they last that long and are solid into recovery, that's the time to get more serious.

They often accuse us of being mean because we don't understand what they're feeling.  But all we're trying to do is protect them from themselves - to keep them from heading into another relapse.

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Against the Odds

"If something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, you should still do it." -- Elon Musk, Tesla Inventor

When I got into recovery when I was 51, sobriety was the most important thing in my life.

After using drugs for 38 years and drinking for 42 years I had finally come to the realization that I was the problem. It wasn't my parents. It wasn't my ex-wives. It wasn't the justice system. My idea that I could successfully use kept me in constant trouble in every area of my life.

During the years of feeding my addictions, I served a lot of time on the installment plan. California State prison. Orange County jail. Metropolitan State Hospital, Norwalk, California. And several other jails. I burned through about 16 years of my life trying to prove to myself and everyone else that I could use heroin and drink without getting in trouble. But I was wrong. Nearly dead wrong, because my addictions almost killed me more than one time.

At some point, I decided I wanted to live. I was sick of the pain. I was sick of being homeless. I was sick of being broke. Even though I hated to admit it, those who told me I needed help were right.

I decided to change, even though the odds were against me starting over at the age of 51. But it was very important to me to do whatever it took to change my life. I still had children, even though all but one of them were grown. I still had parents who loved me. In other words, there were a lot of people that I didn't want to disappoint.

In the early years of my recovery, back in 1991, I started out in a halfway house where I lived for a year. And the secret to my success, I believe, is that I kept my eyes on my goal: the goal of staying sober regardless of what I encountered.

And the interesting thing is that when one has that kind of attitude, they can be unstoppable. Within a year, I had gone into the recovery business and was starting to build a team of like-minded people to help me.

Because I had the attitude that I could beat the odds I have a wonderful life today. Yes, I've had setbacks and losses. But none of them have taken my eyes off of my goal of living a sober life.

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Flowing with Life

After nearly 27 years of sobriety, it's easy to be a good mood. In fact, I'm pretty much in a good mood all the time. I don't have to work to get there because that's the way I wake up and that's the way I go to bed.

It wasn't always that way. When I first got sober, nearly 27 years ago, I was like many other newly sober addicts and alcoholics. I looked outside of myself to find happiness. If I was unhappy, it was because the external world was not complying with my wishes. People weren't doing what I wanted them to do. No one really appreciated me or understood just how important I was.

As the years went on, and I got further into recovery, I realized that the better relationship I had with my own thinking the better the outside world looked. No longer did I seek material things or other people for my happiness. Instead, I started paying attention to my own thinking and realize that I had to, first of all, get my ego out of the way – as much as possible. I had to learn how to accept others, just as they were – rather than as how I wanted them to be. And that shift – just looking at myself and my part in the world – made all the difference in my life.

I was at a meeting the other day where a gentleman was talking about how many problems he was having with his business partner. He said the situation was nearly driving him crazy.

But someone else in the room pointed out that there's always someone or something in our lives to challenge us. We resolve one problem or situation and another pops up. It's the rhythm of life.

And the way we stay happy and emotionally level is to realize that everything isn't always going to go our way. And if we take that view, we aren't going to pick up a drink, a drug, a cigarette, or engage in self-destructive anger.

Instead, we're going to accept the ups and downs of life and be grateful that we're here to enjoy them.

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Finding Gratitude

I was reminded the other day about how gratitude can make our internal landscape much more beautiful.

It occurred after a meeting where one of the participants droned on about the challenges he was facing. And the challenges were pretty minor, in my opinion. The person was complaining about his employer not paying him enough money. About the job itself. About his girlfriend, and the fact that his car was broken. And there were other issues that he also had mixed into this stew of complaints. When he quit talking, a sigh of relief passed through the room.

Later, after the meeting, a few of us – reacting to this young man's complaints – were talking about gratitude. That it's easy to be grateful for what we have when we look around at the world today.

A horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas that rained death on people having fun on a summer evening. A raging fire that blackened one of the more beautiful areas of northern California, leaving death and destruction behind. A huge truck bomb in Somalia that ripped a city apart, leaving an unknown death toll. Hurricanes and floods slamming the southeastern United States and the Caribbean, causing widespread destruction.

When we go beyond our own petty complaints and challenges and look at the world around us we can find many reasons to be grateful. There are people living in the midst of suffering due to no fault of their own. And the uplifting thing is that survivors of those tragedies are always expressing gratitude that they survived. That they still have their lives.

If we have the sensitivity and compassion to look at what our friends and neighbors suffer through, we can start viewing the world through a different pair of glasses.

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