Recovery From Addiction

I struggled for so many years, falling on my face again and again. I could just never stay straight and sober. And of course I blamed everyone and everything else for it. Finally in the end, and I do mean the end because I was so sick physically and yellow "from my liver almost blowing up" I finally listened to those that knew what they were doing.....the people who had successfully sobered up.

I was 30 years old at the time and took my sobriety serious this time, I did what they told me and I prayed like I'd never prayed before.

Here I am almost nine years later and still clean and sober. My nine years is on may the 5th and I can hardly believe how the time has passed by so quickly....but it has.

My program is simple, just like I was taught. I stay away from the first drug or drink, not the second or third one because I've come to realize that as an addictive person it is imposssible for me to stay away once I've taken the first one. This so simple that you almost have to be a child to get it.

I never entertain the thought of using a drug or a drink. When I was younger I always thought I had more time, "I'll straighten out next week or next year" was my motto untill the day came when I couldn't, even though I really wanted too.

This is the game I see so many people play, everyone thinks their the exception, it will be different for them....good luck....I know people who have died thinking like that and I was almost one of them....no thanks.

Everyone I sobered up around, the new ones like me......are all back out there and a couple are in jail and a couple are dead with the exception of myself and two other people.

God gave me a gift, he gave me my choice back, I choose not to pick up the first one and I've been sober ever since.

I see a lot of new people in the program of A.A. and N.A. get too much into their deep seated emotional issues in early recovery.....this in my opinion is a grave error and I discourage people from doing that.

Let me explain. Early recovery is about staying sober, that's it, simple, those issues will continue to be there down the road I assure you, you don't need to fill your plate to overflowing in the beginning....even the first two years.

Being overwhelmed by these issues sends most people right back out.....and for what.....now they may die and never deal with them. A lot of pop psychology has seeped into the program over the years and it has no place there....none. I've even heard Dr Phil quoted at a meeting.

Sure professionals have a place in our society, but they do not have a place in A.A. or N.A. That place is for addicts and alcoholics to help each other, Dr's have never been able to sober us up.....only our own kind has been able to help us.

Save the pop psychology stuff for outside the meeting. Being raised in a bad home is not what made me drink or do drugs, neither did sexual abuse or abuse in general.....I have a desease....I believe in the desease concept because I have seen the proof of it in my own life. There is something physiologically different about me then the average Joe that can drink normally.

My issue is addiction and alcoholism....not my abuse.