Treating Addiction as a quest for wholeness
Call Now 082-442-4779 or email info@pathwaysplettrehab.co.za
Willingness in recovery from Drug Addiction
Openness and willingness in recovery, along with Honesty are said to be prerequisites or foundations of 12 Step recovery. And of course we need to develop a relationship to a Higher Power of our own understanding. Remember this, transformation has little to do with intelligence, willpower, or perfection. It has everything to do with honest humility, willingness, and surrender.
It’s confronting to look at how much willingness in recovery and openness we had to our addiction, our drugs or compulsions of choice. Willing to “go to any lengths” to obtain and use it. Open to new behaviors – hiding, lying, perhaps cheating and stealing, risking our own lives and those of others… behaviors that changed our personalities for the worse, and damaged important relations, career, and health. And it’s then not hard to see how we devoted ourselves to those substances and behaviors as if they were our God. Spending time, money, and self-respect to “worship” it. The good news is that in recovery we can replace the “false idols” that brought us stress, suffering, and harm, and find a genuine path of spirituality that brings us to freedom.
Addiction makes us automatic liars. We hide. We cheat, manipulate, steal, minimize, keep secrets and all out talk a load of bullshit. Anything to keep us using, as selfish and narcissistic as it may be. It’s what all of us want – to like ourselves – to be really comfortable in our own skins. You wouldn’t think that would be so hard, would you? But, willingness in recovery, is actually very difficult to develop. It is not just an idea, it is something that has to happen and then keep on happening. Willingness in recovery is very much a verb!
Denial blocks willingness in recovery
We all hoped that getting high would do the trick. Sometimes it did. Sometimes we’d love ourselves, but always only temporarily. Then the self-loathing would be back, stronger than ever. Self-acceptance still out of our grasp, we’d look elsewhere. We may have tried to reassure ourselves with overeating, sex, spending, or some lethal combination of all three. Still no luck – we hated ourselves even more. By the time we arrived at AA or NA, most of us had years of self-contempt under our belts. How were we ever going to face who we’d been in the past? No matter what our history has been, we almost always approach the programme with hesitation and denial. We can’t admit what is. We can’t admit it is our fault, our responses to life events, our inability to ask for help! We deny we didn’t work hard enough, party less than we should have, and been calmer, kinder and more caring of ourselves and others along the course of the paths we have trodden. In fact, we usually take denial to new heights – vehemently denying everything and finding exceptions to every rule.
One denial first surfaced in Steps One, Two, and Three. We denied we were powerless over alcohol and drugs. We denied that our lives were unmanageable. We denied that anything could be greater than we were or that anyone or anything could help us with our lives. We denied that giving up control was the best way to gain control. You get the picture.
Dishonesty becomes a way of life for most alcoholics and addicts. They lie to themselves and they lie to others. About feelings. About substance abuse. About money. About where they’ve been and what they’ve done. Partly it’s a way of protecting their drinking or drug use and partly it’s because their minds are so addled and emotions so muddled they can’t really discern the difference between truth and fiction. As you’ve discovered, the tendency to be untruthful doesn’t just disappear when you swear off booze and drugs. Dishonesty is a longstanding practice that has to be unlearned. And the fear that the consequences of telling the truth (to an employer, for example, or a spouse or even friends) will be disastrous has to be overcome. Neither of these challenges is easily met. But you can’t have a good recovery without meeting them. You probably slipped into your dishonest ways in active addiction gradually.
Surrender takes us into a place of not knowing what will happen next, not needing to control it, and trusting that Higher Power will direct us. This is the step of unconditional surrender – letting go of “knowing what we’re doing”. Rather we develop willingness in recovery to allow us to take direction, moment to moment, from another source of Power. Remember that wherever you are that it is your best thinking that got you here. You need others, you need a Higher Power and you need to ask for help! Blessings.
For more assistance with willingness in recovery contact our team at Pathways, for inpatient treatment, outpatient treatment and our online drug rehab programme.
Treating Addiction as a quest for wholeness
Call Now 082-442-4779 or email info@pathwaysplettrehab.co.za