My Journey To Recovery I strived to improve, in recovery, not only my personal life, but the lives of everyone I comes in contact with. Live life to it's full potential through personal development. I cannot undo what I've done but I can live better today. If you have an addiction, whether it's Alcohol, Drugs, Gambling, Sex, Love Addiction, or whatever, then you will discover that this Blog is for you. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 3 0 38 4422

Articles from My Journey To Recovery

Responsibilities 2007-08-23 11:56:00 Decision-making"Before we got clean, most of our actions were guided by impulse. Today, we are not locked into this type of thinking."Basic Text, p. 87Life is a series of decisions, actions, and consequences. When we were using, our decisions were usually driven by our disease, resulting in self-destructive actions and dire consequences. We came to see decision-making as a rigged game, one we should play as little as possible.Given that, many of us have great difficulty learning to make decision in recovery. Slowly, by working the Twelve Steps, we gain practice in making healthy decisions, ones that give positive results. Where our disease once affected our will and our lives, we ask God to care for us.We inventory our values and our actions, check our findings with someone we trust, and ask God to remove our shortcomings. In working the steps we gain freedom from the influence of our disease, and we learn principles of decision-making that can guide us in all our affairs.Today, our de ...

Living Life On Life's Terms 2007-08-10 18:28:00 Active Listening"Through active listening, we hear things that work for us."Basic Text, p. 102Most of us arrived in Narcotics Anonymous with a very poor ability to listen. But to take full advantage of "the therapeutic value of one addict helping another," we must learn to listen actively.What is active listening for us? In meetings, it means we concentrate on what the speaker is sharing, while the speaker is sharing. We set aside our thoughts and opinions until the meeting is over. That's when we sort through what we've heard to decide which ideas we want to use and which we want to explore further.We can apply our active listening skills in sponsorship, too. Newcomers often talk with us about some "major event" in their lives. While such events may not seem significant to us, they are to the newcomer who has little experience living life on life's terms.Our active listening helps us empathize with the feelings such events trigger in our sponsee's life. With that understanding, we ...

Personal Inventory 2007-08-07 18:05:00 Responsible Recovery"... we accept responsibility for our problems and see that we're equally responsible for our solutions."Basic Text, p. 94Some of us, well accustomed to leaving our personal responsibilities to others, may attempt the same behaviour in recovery. We quickly find out it doesn't work.For instance, we are considering making a change in our lives, so we call our sponsor and ask what we should do? Under the guise of seeking direction, we are actually asking our sponsor to assume responsibility for making decisions about our life. Or maybe we've been short with someone at a meeting, so we ask that person's best friend to make our apologies for us. Perhaps we've imposed on a friend several times in the last month to cover our service commitment. Could it be that we've asked a friend to analyze our behaviour and identify our shortcomings, rather than taking our own personal inventory?Recovery is something that has to be worked for. It isn't going to be handed to us on ...

In Recovery 2007-08-03 10:51:00 Trusting people"Many of us would have had nowhere else to go if we could not have trusted NA groups and members."Basic Text, p. 81Trusting people is a risk. Human beings are notoriously forgetful, unreliable, and imperfect. Most of us come from backgrounds where betrayal and insensitivity among friends were common occurrences. Even our most reliable friends weren't very reliable. By the time we arrive at the doors of NA, most of us have hundreds of experiences bearing out our conviction that people are untrustworthy. Yet our recoverydemands that we trust people. We are faced with this dilemma: People are not always trustworthy, yet we must trust them. How do we do that, given the evidence of our pasts?First, we remind ourselves that the rules of active addiction don't apply in recovery. Most of our fellow members are doing their level best to live by the spiritual principles we learn in the program.Second, we remind ourselves that we aren't 100% reliable, either. We will surely disa ...

Spam: Even From A Friend! 2007-08-02 00:08:00 Practicing Honesty"When we feel trapped or pressured, it takes great spiritual and emotional strength to be honest."Basic Text, p. 81Many of us try to wiggle out of a difficult spot by being dishonest, only to have to humble ourselves later and tell the truth. Some of us twist our stories as a matter of course, even when we could just as easily tell the plain truth. Every time we try to avoid being honest, it backfires on us. Honesty may be uncomfortable, but the trouble we have to endure when we are dishonest is usually far worse than the discomfort of telling the truth.Honesty is one of the fundamental principles of recovery. We apply this principle right from the beginning of our recovery, when, we finally admit our powerlessness and unmanageability. We continue to apply the principle of honesty each time we are faced with the option of either living in fantasy or living life on its own terms. Learning to be honest isn't always easy, especially after the covering up and deception s ...

Postcard From Exotic Malaysia 2007-07-30 01:16:00 Regular InventoryContinuing to take a personal inventory means that we form a habit of looking at ourselves, our actions, attitudes, and relationships on a regular basis.Basic Text, p. 41Taking a regular inventory is a key element in our new pattern of living. In our addiction, we examined ourselves as little as possible. We weren't happy with how we were living our lives, but we didn't feel that we could change the way we lived. Self-examination, we felt, would have been a painful exercise in futility.Today, all that's is changing. Where we were powerless over our addiction, we've found a Power greater than ourselves that has helped us stop using. Where we once felt lost in life's maze, we've found guidance in the experience of our fellow recovering addicts and our ever-improving contact with our Higher Power. We need not feel trapped by our old, destructive patterns. We can live differently if we choose.By establishing a regular pattern of taking our own inventory, we give ours ...

Old Dreams Needn't Die 2007-07-08 23:49:00 Old dreams needn't die"Lost dreams awaken and new possibilities arise."Basic Text, p. 88Most of us had dreams when we were young. Whether we dreamed of a dynamic career, a large and loving family, or travels abroad, our dreams died when our addiction took hold. Anything we ever wanted for ourselves was cast away in our pursuit of drugs. Our dreams didn't go beyond the next drug and the euphoria we hoped it would bring.Now in recovery, we find a reason to hope that our lost dreams could still come true. No matter how old we are, how much our addiction has taken from us, or how unlikely it may seem, our freedom from active addiction gives us the freedom to pursue our ambitions. We may discover that we're very talented at something, or find a hobby we love, or learn that continuing our education can bring remarkable rewards.We used to put most of our energy into spinning excuses and rationalization for our failures. Today, we go forward and make use of the many opportunities life prese ...

Sick And Tired 2007-07-02 09:08:00 Sick and tired"We wanted an easy way out ... When we did seek help, we were only looking for the absence of pain."Basic Text, p. 5Something's not working. In fact, something's been wrong for a long time, causing us pain and complicating our lives. The problem is that, at any given moment, it always appears easier to continue bearing the pain of our defects than to submit to the total upheaval involved in changing the way we live. We may long to be free of pain, but only rarely are we willing to do what's truly necessary to remove the source of pain from our lives.Most of us didn't begin seeking recovery from addiction until we were sick and tired of being tired and sick." The same is true of the lingering character defects we've carried through our lives. Only when we can't bear our shortcoming one moment longer, only when we know that the pain of change can't be as bad as the pain we're in today, are most of us willing to try something different. Thankfully, the steps are alw ...

The Secret 2007-06-17 07:41:00 New updates (June 18th, 2007): Yeeessssss! Thank you Scott W for solving my problem. It's very simple really but I was too messed up trying to solve the problem, I can't see the answer that was staring right in front of me all along! (Usually I wrote my post in Edit HTML mode.) But Scott W, even though I clicked on Align Left button, The title of this post is still centered. And that included my welcome message, "Hello there. I see you are from..." and the date. FYI, I have to center the flags to justify it with AdSense. Anyway, my heartest thanks to Scott W. I salute you ...Walls"Reaching out is the beginning of the struggle that will set us free. It will break down the walls that imprison us."Basic Text, p. 80Many of us came to NA emotionally shattered. Years of using people and allowing them to use us had taken their toll on our ability to trust anyone, ourselves included. But the love and acceptance we found in Narcotics Anonymous encouraged us to reach out and get close to other ...

I'm Baaaack!!! 2007-06-13 10:18:00 A full life"The program works a miracle in our life... We become free to live."Basic Text, p. 11Most of us - if we've been in recovery for any length of time at all - have heard some member complaining in a meeting about being terribly overworked, too busy for meetings or sponsorship or other activities. In fact, we may have been the complaining member. The days seem so full: job, family and friends, meetings, activities, sponsorship, step work. "There just aren't enough hours in the day," the member complains, "to get everything done and meet everyone's demand on my time!"When this happens, usually there's soft laughter from some of the other members - probably members who had planned to grumble about the same sort of thing. The laughter stems from our recognition that we are complaining about the miracle of the life that is ours today. Not so long ago, few of us were capable of having any of these "problems" in our life. We devoted all of our energy to maintaining our active addi ...

What Is N.A? 2007-05-26 01:14:00 "Good" and "bad" feelings"A lot happens in one day, both negative and positive. If we do not take time to appreciate both, perhaps we will miss something that will help us grow."IP No. 8, Just for TodayMost of us seem to unconsciously judge what happens in our lives each day as good or bad, success or failure. We tend to feel happy about the "good" and angry, frustrated, or guilty about the "bad". Good and bad feelings, though, often have little to do which is truly good or bad for us. We may learn more from our failures than our successes, especially if failure has come from taking a risk.Attaching value judgments to our emotional reactions ties us to our old ways of thinking. We can change the way we think about the incidents of everyday life, viewing them as opportunities for growth, not as good or bad. We can search for lessons rather than assigning value. When we do this, we learn something from each day. Our daily Tenth Step is an excellent tool for evaluating the day's events a ...

Reaching Out 2007-05-23 20:53:00 Risking vulnerability"As we grow, we learn to overcome the tendency to run and hide from ourselves and our feelings."Basic Text, p. 81Rather than risk vulnerability, many of us have developed habits that keep others at a safe distance. These patterns of emotional isolation can give us the feeling we can hopelessly locked behind our masks. We used to take risks with our lives; now we can take risks with our feelings. Through sharing with other addicts, we learn that we are not unique; we do not make ourselves unduly vulnerable simply by letting others know who we are, for we are in good company. And by working the Twelve Steps of the NA program, we grow and change. We no longer want or need to hide our emerging selves. We are offered the opportunity to shed the emotional camouflage we developed to survive our active addiction.By opening ourselves to others, we risk becoming vulnerable, but that risk is well worth the rewards. With the help of our sponsor and other recovering addicts, w ...

Votes And Comments 2007-05-20 01:17:00 Updates: Where has my comments' tab gone? Anybody knows anything about it? Now Sylvia is online with me trying to solve the problem together. It seem that, they are many bloggers at Blogger Help Group having the same problem as mine. I'm sorry about that, I'm trying my best to solve the problem. You can leave your comments by emailing me.Comments are available now. Thanks Sylvia for sticking it out with me.Coming out of isolation"We find ourselves doing and enjoying things that we never thought we would be doing."Basic Text, p. 98Active addiction kept us isolated for many reasons. In the beginning, we avoided family and friends so they wouldn't find out we were using. Some of us avoided all nonaddicts, fearing moral backlash and legal repercussions. We belittled people who had "normal" lives with families and hobbies; we called them "uncool," believing we could never enjoy the simple pleasure of life. Eventually, we even avoided other addicts because we didn't want to share our dr ...

Royal Wedding in Kuala Kangsar 2007-05-16 22:54:00 "Defects""We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character."Step SixAfter taking the Fifth Step, many of us spend some time considering "the exact nature of our wrongs" and the part they'd played in making us who we were. What would our lives be like without, say, our arrogance?Sure, arrogance had kept us apart from our fellows, preventing us from enjoying and learning from them. But arrogance had also served us well, propping up our ego in the face of critically low self-esteem. What advantage would be gained if our arrogance were removed, and what support would we be left with?With arrogance gone, we would be one step closer to being restored to our proper place among others. We would become capable of appreciating their company and their wisdom and their challenges as their equals. Our support and guidance would come, if we chose, from the care offered us by our Higher Power; "low self-esteem" would cease to be an issue.One by one, we examined our character ...

Your Recovering Son 2007-05-13 21:53:00 Oops!Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results."Basic Text, p. 23Mistakes! We all know how it feels to make them. Many of us feel that our entirelives have been a mistake. We often regard our mistakes with shame or guilt - at the very least, with frustration and impatience. We tend to see mistakes as evidence that we are still sick, crazy, stupid, or too damaged to recover.In truth, mistakes are a very vital and important part of being human. For particularly stubborn people (such as addict), mistakes are often our best teachers. There is no shame in making mistakes. In fact, making new mistakes often shows our willingness to take risks and grow.It's helpful, though, if we learn from our mistakes; repeating the same ones may be a sign that we're stuck. And expecting different results from the same old mistakes - well, that's what we call "insanity." It just doesn't work.Just for today: Mistakes aren't tragedies. But please, God, help me learn from the ...