Embracing Joy and Frustration Equally in Recovery
I grew up in a small town in northwestern Ontario where there are literally more moose per square kilometer than there are people. We played in the bush and lived off the land. It was our way of life.
So, living in the city is sometimes challenging. But even in the city, I have found that I can embrace the wonderful ways our lives intersect with the natural world. Sometimes this can be a joyful experience and sometimes it can be frustrating.
The Joyful Part of My Day
I have a lovely water feature in my backyard that pours water out of a large spout. I’ve often seen the hummingbirds come and feed off the flowers that I planted specifically for them. I saw something even more remarkable.
I was taking a moment to simply gaze at my beautiful backyard from my upstairs bedroom window. I saw a hummingbird fly straight towards the water fountain. Flapping its wings at incredible speed, it hovered above the water flow and took a drink. As I watched her, she did something amazing.
She seemed to sit herself on top of the water and just enjoy the cold stream flowing along the lower part of her body. She did it over and over again, drinking and bathing in this flow of water. Once she was done, she flew upwards towards where I was standing as if to say thank you and then flew off.
In that moment, I felt so alive and I felt so grateful that I was sober and present enough to have this marvelous and simple experience with one of God’s beautiful creations.
The Frustrating Part
A few hours later I had a completely different experience with another of God’s creatures.
I made myself a healthy lunch which included a veggie burger (no bun, which is important to the story). I put it outside on my backyard table and went inside to get something. As soon as I abandoned my plate, a crow flew down and grabbed my burger and flew away. I ran out yelling at him to “put that back” and “how dare you!”
My neighbor came outside in alarm, wondering what had happened – thinking I was being robbed or assaulted! “Well yes, sort of,” I said. It was my lunch that I was robbed of and for a few minutes I was totally unhinged. I eventually resigned myself to having to start over but this time I made sure I did NOT leave my plate unattended. (I noticed that crow hovering on the roof waiting for another opportunity).
Staying Steady in the Ups and Downs of Life
Now, I get that this is not a big, life-shattering loss. And yet, there are lessons here that can be applied across the board when we face life in recovery.
For me, it’s about working to maintain our emotional balance.
When I was still in my addiction or even earlier on in my sobriety, I was not emotionally healthy. When I’m not present and emotionally balanced, I will totally miss the hummingbird bathing incident because I will be too busy doing “more important” things, running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I am either trying to impress someone or I’m preoccupied with ruminations about how I’m going to be more or be better.
And if the crow took my burger, well, I would be so pissed it would ruin my entire day. I would be telling anyone who would listen just how awful life treated me and what a total victim I am.
Building Resources for Emotional Balance
But today, that is far from my reality. I have learned how to go with the flow of life. And that bad things happen to good people. None of us gets a pass on ‘life on life’s terms’.
Sober or not, life doesn’t always go the way we wish it could be. When you work on your emotional sobriety, it’s possible to be awake to the beauty around you and to accept when something difficult shows up. Acceptance is the key.
Are Your Resources in Place?
Ask yourself the following questions:
- Do I have 2-3 trusted friends in recovery or supportive of my sobriety that I can call any time of the day or night?
- Have I accepted my own limitations and consequently am not so hard on myself?
- Have I sought out and put into practice self-soothing and self-regulation techniques, so that I can calm myself down when I am upset?
If you can answer ‘yes’ to the above questions, then it will be easier for you to adjust your emotional dials, being the best version of yourself, despite life’s challenges.
Addiction: Saying Goodbye to a Good Friend
“Those who do not grieve with their whole hearts,
Do not laugh either.”
– Golda Meir, (1st woman Prime Minister of Israel)
Giving up our addiction is like saying goodbye to a best friend. For many of us, it is because of our addiction that we survived a life that was too emotionally difficult to manage. We used substances or behaviours as a way to numb our emotions and block painful memories.
Many people refer to it as their “liquid courage”, having given them a confidence they didn’t have without it.
Many addicts are “egomaniacs with an inferiority complex”. This describes the dichotomous internal conflict of many addicts. Addicts often act as if they’re better than others because they don’t feel as good as others. Often this “false self” is a bravado aimed at getting love and acceptance from others.
But how can we blame ourselves for that? It’s something we all need. It’s a basic survival need.
When we are active in our addiction, we silence that critical voice inside our head and therefore often feel more at peace. That’s why when we get sober, we are giving up a strategy that, despite its destructive nature, has a way of making us feel better for a short time.
The problem is that it’s temporary. Once we come down, run out of cash, pass out and/or come to the following day, we feel worse.
It’s not who we really are. It’s just a means to a dead end.
It’s one of the many paradoxes of addiction – that what helped us survive initially, ends up nearly killing us.
And for that reason, one day we simply know that it’s enough.
We hit our “bottom”.
As painful as this point is in our lives, it’s a necessary precursor for the surrender to occur. This surrender opens the door to something new and exciting in our lives.
Receive the Gift of Sobriety
In order to fully receive the gift of sobriety, we must grieve the loss of our addiction.
I believe that the inability to grieve this loss is one of the reasons why people relapse back to their drug of choice. Grieving the loss of our addiction means that we can look at what we must give up as we choose to face life rather than run from it.
Some of these losses might include:
- Friends that you participated in your addiction with
- A sense of confidence
- The opportunity to numb out and not have to face painful feelings
- The belief that you are the life of the party or the center of attention
These and many other things are ways that addicts learn to be OK with themselves in the world. Recognizing and grieving the loss of these survival strategies is one of the signs that you are maturing emotionally.
A Balanced Ledger
There are so many things that can be listed as benefits to getting sober as well. Of course, these are spoken of much more often. They tend to be all that is ever focused on. This precludes our grief and dismisses our losses – which is not helpful.
It’s true that getting sober means getting healthy, getting our families back, feeling true self-esteem because we are acting in esteem-able ways, waking up and recalling the night before, being responsible with our finances, our relationships, and our health.
While all of these benefits and many more are the reasons why we get and stay sober, we also must acknowledge the sadness and mourning of a lifestyle that kept us alive for many years.
We must let ourselves process this loss and say goodbye to what once was and yet never will be again.
Like the death of a loved one, we must let ourselves grieve. Nothing less is required.
Look at the following grid and use it to help you identify both the losses and the gains of being and staying sober, one day a time. Make a list for each of the 4 quadrants and let yourself process your feelings with a sponsor, a therapist or a trusted mentor.
In my Good Life Recovery program, we look extensively at how to face and transcend our grief in order to fully embrace our joy and laughter.
I hope you will join us.
In gratitude,
Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Again, To Get a New Result
I am currently reading an excellent book, titled, “The Gift of Presence: A Mindfulness Guide for Women” by Caroline Welsh. Even though it’s written for women, of course men can benefit from it as well.
I wanted to take a minute and share a few gems I came across that I feel relate particularly well to those of us in recovery from addictions. First of all, presence or mindfulness is about attention and awareness to the here and now. Sounds simple. But it’s not easy.
Welsh quotes author Susan Bauer-Wu: “When you are mindful, you have emotional balance, with fewer extreme highs and lows, and a sense of spaciousness and inquisitiveness toward whatever arises.” In other words, balance does not mean we put equal amounts of time and energy into all the competing aspects of our lives. That would be impossible. What it means is that we have found that place within us – where water has found its level – and we are calm, centered, and intentional in our tasks.
We can prioritize.
We can cut ourselves slack when a job doesn’t get done, or an invitation is out of reach.
Most Importantly, we learn to include self-care into our daily life without feeling either guilty or selfish. It shouldn’t surprise anyone to discover that people who live this way report greater levels of happiness.
Purpose Gives Us Our Why
Having a sense of purpose gives us the motivation to get up each day and get excited about what we can contribute. Small or big – one person or a nation – we all play a part in the greater scheme of things.
It’s difficult to find our purpose when we are barely surviving our busy lives. Running from one obligation to another hardly provides the “spaciousness” to be “inquisitive” about what else we may desire… To create the space to ask “What makes my heart sing?”
Often, our psychic, emotional, and spiritual energy is sucked dry by constant ruminations – worrying about the future (and what catastrophes are awaiting us), or regretting past actions that didn’t meet the high standards that we set for ourselves.
According to neuroscience, Welsh says this takes place in what is called the “default mode network” DMN. This bundle of neural pathways fire down the midline of the brain and are responsible for a preoccupation with self. Addicts are notorious for this – being self-absorbed, self-centered, and self-referencing.
That’s why this information is so important for those of us in recovery. When we spend more time practicing being present in our lives, we activate other regions of our brain (lateral sensory regions) which then calms the DMN down and helps create a sense of inner peace and clarity in our thinking.
Being Present in Our Lives
Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb, made a ground-breaking finding on neuroplasticity, when he discovered that “neurons that fire together, wire together”.
In his book, “Aware,” neuroscientist and therapist extraordinaire, Dan Siegel, explains it this way:
Where attention goes
Neural firing flows, and
Neural connections grown.
(Cited by Welsh, pg. 22)
In other words, if we make it a habit to sit in meditation, do mindfulness practices, yoga, tai chi, or other martial arts and/or eastern practices, we slowly change the structure and function of our brains.
- We become more resourced because we are more present.
- We think clearer therefore we accomplish more.
- We are internally quieter, so we feel more peace and bring more peace to the world.
When I was still in my addiction, my mind was a “dangerous neighborhood” – and I should never have gone in there alone. It was dark and gloomy, full of fear and worry. And I had few people in my life who could truly understand how much I was suffering, let alone support me to grow.
Thankfully, all of that has changed. After many decades working on my own emotional sobriety and helping hundreds of others to do so also, my mind is at peace most of the time. For those of us in recovery, this is paramount. Practicing presence is a gateway to building an ever-deepening relationship with that power source greater than ourselves.
In the Good Life Recovery membership program, we are teaching members how to integrate better habits that become our ‘automatic’ default mode, which supports and sustains us to achieve long-term contented sobriety. It’s a life worth having.
Until next time,
Transform Your Recovery Today
The Road to Good Life Recovery:
When I got sober, I figured all I had to do was stop drinking and drugging, avoid the people and places that got me in trouble and everything would be fine. I thought to myself, “Well, that’s done.”
Ha! I was wrong. I had no idea that I had to learn to think, feel, and act differently if I wanted to have a life free from addictive functioning and full of joy.
Over three decades later, I understand through my own experience, and from helping hundreds of others, that addiction affects every aspect of our lives, our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. That’s why we can’t ‘just stop.’ As the saying goes, ‘If you sober up a drunken horse thief, you still have a horse thief.’
If we want to attain long-term contented sobriety, there is so much more we must do.
That’s why I want to share this simple fact with you: every one of us faces a fork in the road once we get sober.
That means that there are really only two roads in sobriety. The first road is a dead end and the other takes us as far as we can go. If you are a professional in recovery who has settled for the first road, this is what you may be experiencing.
The Dead End Road in recovery is where you keep spinning your wheels and going nowhere.
Ask yourself if you experience any of the following:
- Feel overwhelmed with everyday life
- Struggle to keep producing at work AND nurture your recovery
- Know your loved ones are tired of your excuses
- Are lonely, but won’t ask for help
- Have emotional outbursts or feel nothing at all
- Question your decision to stop your addiction – or worse,
- Have thought about relapse
It’s easy to step onto this road.
You give up your drug of choice and then get busy living your life, attempting to make up for the years of bad behaviour that have hurt both you and those you love the most. You believe you are now doing the right thing: and those around you ought to appreciate you for it.
You may attend some recovery meetings, go to church, or practice a few recovery strategies at first, but those are inconsistent at best or wane or fall off entirely, at worst. They are not enough to create meaningful and lasting change.
Before you know it, you have slid into compulsively working, exercising, eating, shopping, sexting, gambling, gaming, or any other excessive behaviour. Without ever meaning to, you have slid back to being obsessive and compulsive, trying desperately to feel ok.
“I can do this (on my own),” remains a core belief.
In a moment of honesty and exhaustion though, you know that things are out of control. You are restless and irritable. Your suffering is on display. Your family is suffering too. Your partner feels abandoned. Your kids are desperate for more quality time with you.
The fact is this: Your focus is misplaced. Your life is totally off balance.
Whatever meaning you might glean from work is undermined by the enormous price you are paying emotionally, mentally, and relationally. You have not taken the time to get to know yourself – who you are as a sober person and how you aspire to be in the world. You have not invested the time and effort needed to learn what it takes to have emotional sobriety.
Worst case scenario: you pick up again and start spinning even further out of control.
Best case scenario: you stay ‘dry’ but you are isolated from others in recovery, don’t know yourself, and resentment and self-pity build day by day.
Some of what you might be experiencing includes:
- You have quit your drug of choice and run on the belief that you have your addiction beat and you can go it alone
- You notice that you are getting compulsive or obsessive in other areas of your life
- Your relationships are non-existent or on the verge of disaster.
[You can download the entire assessment tool checklist HERE.]
Obviously, spinning your wheels and going nowhere is not what life in recovery is intended to be.
I believe that sobriety is the greatest gift anyone suffering from addiction can ever hope for.
So, challenge yourself to think of what more is waiting for you:
- Are you interested in learning more about who you really are, free from addictive behaviors?
- Do you want meaningful connections with family, friends, and colleagues?
- Do you care to find your true passion and turn that into a beautiful life?
- Are you willing to admit that recovery is best done alongside others?
In my next email, I will explain where the alternate road in recovery, road #2 leads us.
It’s impossible to do quality recovery alone, but it is something we can master together.
The Path to Good Life Recovery:
In my last email, I talked about how as entrepreneurs and professionals in recovery, there are just two roads in recovery that are available to us.
I elaborated on how easy it is to get stuck on the dead-end road that goes nowhere, spinning our wheels – sober but not serene.
In fact, it happened to me.
I know firsthand how easy it is to slip onto the path of misery in sobriety. I was about 4 years sober when I stopped taking my recovery seriously and was giving it minimal effort. I had landed a prestigious position and threw all my time and energy into ‘proving’ my worth through my work.
My ego took over. I slowly began to eliminate the routines and strategies that kept me on track in my recovery. I forgot what I had learned – that my addiction affects every part of me – my body, mind, heart, and soul – no matter how long it’s been since my last high. If I don’t stay focussed on investing in my recovery, a little bit every day, it will eventually overtake my life once again.
While on this dead-end road, I wasn’t talking to anyone in recovery.
I wasn’t accountable for my own self-absorbed behavior or taking the initiative to apologize for any harm I had caused others.
I spent very little time in prayer and meditation – so I had little conscious contact with the Divine Will that brings a sense of peace and calm to my life and keeps me striving to be my best self.
Instead, I was running completely on self-will. I slipped back into chronic negativity. I was bossy, entitled and complained when I didn’t get my way. I wasn’t treating the people who worked for me (or anyone else for that matter) with respect and kindness.
I started smoking cigarettes again, trading one destructive habit for another.
The problem was this: I couldn’t see it. I thought I was “just fine.”
That’s because a sick mind can’t recognize a sick mind.
Albert Einstein said it best:
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
And that’s why we need each other.
I got sicker and sicker in self, to the point that one day my thought was, “Sue, you could have a drink again. You weren’t really that bad. You were just making too big a deal of it all.”
Little did I know, but I was a hairbreadth away from picking up again, and I doubt if I would be here to write this today, had I not been rescued from myself.
Because for those of you who don’t know me, I was that bad! I was a heroin addict, a cocaine addict, a pill addict, a pot addict, and an outrageous alcoholic.
If you can relate to any of this, let me assure you there is a way out.
It’s not the easier, softer way. Or the most comfortable. Because it demands that we take actions to promote our emotional sobriety.
But when you make that decision – at the fork in the road – and go towards emotional recovery, rather than ‘just stopping’ you have a chance to live your best sober life.
On road #2, you will:
- Understand and practice new habits and rituals that support and sustain inner peace and happiness.
- Go on to have a fulfilling career without sacrificing time with family, friends or your recovery.
- Learn to live with a permeating sense of gratitude rather than ruminating on your past hurts, resentments and fears.
- Think less of your own problems and focus instead on the contributions you can make that make the world a better place.
- Discover what your true passion in life is and how to use your gifts and talents to live a life that has balance and purpose.
- Be the change you want to see in the world.
I call this road the Highway to Happiness. This is exactly the road I teach and advocate for. It’s also the way I live my life.
I was given a second chance in recovery and shown what it was that I had to do in order to get well and stay well. I had to stop playing God, for one thing. I needed to let others get to know me and take an interest in the well-being of others. I had to look at my own emotional shortcomings, my unresolved trauma, my lifelong resentments and be willing to do something about it all. I needed to find a Power greater than myself that I can learn to believe in and relate to.
Once I had turned in this direction and begun to accelerate down this highway, happiness was to follow. It may not happen overnight, but I guarantee you, if you engage in the program you will find the best life sobriety has to offer you.
I’d like to show you how this transformation is totally possible for you too.
Transform Your Recovery Today:
I am passionate about helping people like you get and stay sober, and live a life of ever-new joy and purpose.
I struggled for many years wanting so badly to “live my potential” and have the peace and happiness I saw in others. I didn’t want to admit that my drinking and drug use was getting in the way. I tried desperately to quit and felt like a failure when I couldn’t do it on my own. When I did quit on my own, I was miserable. I had no skills for living without my addiction. I felt trapped and wanted so much more for my life.
And then I found it. I began my journey from despair to daily gratitude – for my life and all that has shaped me to be who I am today. Yes, even my addictions!
I sincerely believe that if I can do it, you can too.
Remember that addiction impacts every part of our lives – our bodies, our minds, our hearts, and our soul. It is insidious and negative. It undermines our wellbeing because we don’t like who we are. Even though we may look successful on the outside – because many of us are ‘functioning addicts’ – deep down inside we feel a lot of shame and guilt. Often, we don’t know who we are because we have spent most of our lives attempting to be who we think others need us to be. We are hopeless and helpless to make this sense of isolation go away.
For this reason, recovery must be mastered holistically. We must make whole each of these parts of ourselves if we are to build a strong foundation in recovery and go on to inspire others. We need to stop our addiction so our brains can rewire to sobriety. We need to change our negative thinking to positive thinking. We need to learn to love ourselves and others, developing compassion and a forgiving heart. We need to lean on our new-found spiritual beliefs to comfort and direct us into the light of a new life.
You CAN heal and become your best self.
- Free from emotional blocks and limitations.
- Free to rise to new heights.
- Giving back to the world the gifts you have to offer.
The highway to a happy, useful and free life is waiting for you.
I have realized over the years, both professionally and personally that many people don’t have a clear pathway on how to make this happen for themselves.
So I made it quite simple by designing a program that incorporates both the best approaches to understanding the physiology of addiction and why abstinence makes sense; alongside the best psychological and emotional strategies for total health and wellbeing.
For those of you who are sick and tired of the revolving door of relapse – either back to your drug of choice, or back to a negative mental and emotional state, I have created a plan that will guide you to break this cycle.
The Good Life Recovery Plan does just that. It’s a 5 stage process of transformation that creates freedom from the destruction of addiction.
Members who are participating in this plan, are loving it. They appreciate both the ongoing learning and the support they receive from fellow members. They are staying clean and sober and healing their lives so that escape through addictive functioning is no longer an option.
So whether you are new on your journey to sobriety or you’ve been sober but stuck for years, this program will work for you.
With my 30+ years as a psychotherapist and a person in recovery, I have designed it to include the best recovery strategies and the best approaches to emotional health and well-being.
What we cannot accomplish alone, we can tackle together. That’s why, if you have not signed up already, I’m inviting you to…
Join me on Thursday, March 3rd @ 5pm PST for a complimentary live webinar to discover the same proven process I’ve used to help hundreds of people create their successful recovery.
I’ll reveal how a simple reframe, based on the science of addiction, can set you free and point you toward the highway to happiness.
Come join us and learn how to make this happen and stay for the live Q&A. I will stay on until all your questions are answered.
Not able to attend? Don’t worry, a link to a replay will be sent as long as you have registered.
The only way to join live or get the replay is by clicking the link below.
Take the first step toward the life that is waiting for you.
In service of recovery for all,
The Road to Good Life Recovery
The Road to Good Life Recovery:
When I got sober, I figured all I had to do was stop drinking and drugging, avoid the people and places that got me in trouble and everything would be fine. I thought to myself, “Well, that’s done.”
Ha! I was wrong. I had no idea that I had to learn to think, feel, and act differently if I wanted to have a life free from addictive functioning and full of joy.
Over three decades later, I understand through my own experience, and from helping hundreds of others, that addiction affects every aspect of our lives, our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. That’s why we can’t ‘just stop.’ As the saying goes, ‘If you sober up a drunken horse thief, you still have a horse thief.’
If we want to attain long-term contented sobriety, there is so much more we must do.
That’s why I want to share this simple fact with you: every one of us faces a fork in the road once we get sober.
That means that there are really only two roads in sobriety. The first road is a dead end and the other takes us as far as we can go. If you are a professional in recovery who has settled for the first road, this is what you may be experiencing.
The Dead End Road in recovery is where you keep spinning your wheels and going nowhere.
Ask yourself if you experience any of the following:
- Feel overwhelmed with everyday life
- Struggle to keep producing at work AND nurture your recovery
- Know your loved ones are tired of your excuses
- Are lonely, but won’t ask for help
- Have emotional outbursts or feel nothing at all
- Question your decision to stop your addiction – or worse,
- Have thought about relapse
It’s easy to step onto this road.
You give up your drug of choice and then get busy living your life, attempting to make up for the years of bad behaviour that have hurt both you and those you love the most. You believe you are now doing the right thing: and those around you ought to appreciate you for it.
You may attend some recovery meetings, go to church, or practice a few recovery strategies at first, but those are inconsistent at best or wane or fall off entirely, at worst. They are not enough to create meaningful and lasting change.
Before you know it, you have slid into compulsively working, exercising, eating, shopping, sexting, gambling, gaming, or any other excessive behaviour. Without ever meaning to, you have slid back to being obsessive and compulsive, trying desperately to feel ok.
“I can do this (on my own),” remains a core belief.
In a moment of honesty and exhaustion though, you know that things are out of control. You are restless and irritable. Your suffering is on display. Your family is suffering too. Your partner feels abandoned. Your kids are desperate for more quality time with you.
The fact is this: Your focus is misplaced. Your life is totally off balance.
Whatever meaning you might glean from work is undermined by the enormous price you are paying emotionally, mentally, and relationally. You have not taken the time to get to know yourself – who you are as a sober person and how you aspire to be in the world. You have not invested the time and effort needed to learn what it takes to have emotional sobriety.
Worst case scenario: you pick up again and start spinning even further out of control.
Best case scenario: you stay ‘dry’ but you are isolated from others in recovery, don’t know yourself, and resentment and self-pity build day by day.
Some of what you might be experiencing includes:
- You have quit your drug of choice and run on the belief that you have your addiction beat and you can go it alone
- You notice that you are getting compulsive or obsessive in other areas of your life
- Your relationships are non-existent or on the verge of disaster.
[You can download the entire assessment tool checklist HERE.]
Obviously, spinning your wheels and going nowhere is not what life in recovery is intended to be.
I believe that sobriety is the greatest gift anyone suffering from addiction can ever hope for.
So, challenge yourself to think of what more is waiting for you:
- Are you interested in learning more about who you really are, free from addictive behaviors?
- Do you want meaningful connections with family, friends, and colleagues?
- Do you care to find your true passion and turn that into a beautiful life?
- Are you willing to admit that recovery is best done alongside others?
In my next email, I will explain where the alternate road in recovery, road #2 leads us.
It’s impossible to do quality recovery alone, but it is something we can master together.
The Path to Good Life Recovery:
In my last email, I talked about how as entrepreneurs and professionals in recovery, there are just two roads in recovery that are available to us.
I elaborated on how easy it is to get stuck on the dead-end road that goes nowhere, spinning our wheels – sober but not serene.
In fact, it happened to me.
I know firsthand how easy it is to slip onto the path of misery in sobriety. I was about 4 years sober when I stopped taking my recovery seriously and was giving it minimal effort. I had landed a prestigious position and threw all my time and energy into ‘proving’ my worth through my work.
My ego took over. I slowly began to eliminate the routines and strategies that kept me on track in my recovery. I forgot what I had learned – that my addiction affects every part of me – my body, mind, heart, and soul – no matter how long it’s been since my last high. If I don’t stay focussed on investing in my recovery, a little bit every day, it will eventually overtake my life once again.
While on this dead-end road, I wasn’t talking to anyone in recovery.
I wasn’t accountable for my own self-absorbed behavior or taking the initiative to apologize for any harm I had caused others.
I spent very little time in prayer and meditation – so I had little conscious contact with the Divine Will that brings a sense of peace and calm to my life and keeps me striving to be my best self.
Instead, I was running completely on self-will. I slipped back into chronic negativity. I was bossy, entitled and complained when I didn’t get my way. I wasn’t treating the people who worked for me (or anyone else for that matter) with respect and kindness.
I started smoking cigarettes again, trading one destructive habit for another.
The problem was this: I couldn’t see it. I thought I was “just fine.”
That’s because a sick mind can’t recognize a sick mind.
Albert Einstein said it best:
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
And that’s why we need each other.
I got sicker and sicker in self, to the point that one day my thought was, “Sue, you could have a drink again. You weren’t really that bad. You were just making too big a deal of it all.”
Little did I know, but I was a hairbreadth away from picking up again, and I doubt if I would be here to write this today, had I not been rescued from myself.
Because for those of you who don’t know me, I was that bad! I was a heroin addict, a cocaine addict, a pill addict, a pot addict, and an outrageous alcoholic.
If you can relate to any of this, let me assure you there is a way out.
It’s not the easier, softer way. Or the most comfortable. Because it demands that we take actions to promote our emotional sobriety.
But when you make that decision – at the fork in the road – and go towards emotional recovery, rather than ‘just stopping’ you have a chance to live your best sober life.
On road #2, you will:
- Understand and practice new habits and rituals that support and sustain inner peace and happiness.
- Go on to have a fulfilling career without sacrificing time with family, friends or your recovery.
- Learn to live with a permeating sense of gratitude rather than ruminating on your past hurts, resentments and fears.
- Think less of your own problems and focus instead on the contributions you can make that make the world a better place.
- Discover what your true passion in life is and how to use your gifts and talents to live a life that has balance and purpose.
- Be the change you want to see in the world.
I call this road the Highway to Happiness. This is exactly the road I teach and advocate for. It’s also the way I live my life.
I was given a second chance in recovery and shown what it was that I had to do in order to get well and stay well. I had to stop playing God, for one thing. I needed to let others get to know me and take an interest in the well-being of others. I had to look at my own emotional shortcomings, my unresolved trauma, my lifelong resentments and be willing to do something about it all. I needed to find a Power greater than myself that I can learn to believe in and relate to.
Once I had turned in this direction and begun to accelerate down this highway, happiness was to follow. It may not happen overnight, but I guarantee you, if you engage in the program you will find the best life sobriety has to offer you.
I’d like to show you how this transformation is totally possible for you too.