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Addiction Treatment: The Road to Recovery

Except for a short period of time when my mother was facing a serious illness, I never had any spiritual beliefs. During my brief encounter with religion, the only thing I took away from the experience was that I would never be able to live up to what the minister said. God would smite me for sure, and when I died, I would live in hell and burn for an eternity. Maybe Grandma Alma was right when she said I was a devil child.

I wanted to be good, but it never seemed to work out that way. No matter what I attempted to do, it was never good enough. Since it didn’t seem to matter, after a while I couldn’t distinguish the difference between right and wrong. As I aged, my life became about survival, and doing whatever I thought I had to do to that end.

Prayer: No Help For Addiction?

From time to time, when my circumstances were dire, I secretly tried praying. I wanted to believe it would work, that my babies and my mother wouldn’t die, that my husband at the time would stop hitting me, that I’d find a way to feed myself and my son, that we would have a warm, safe place to sleep at night. But death took those I loved. I had to do some disgusting things to fill our bellies and find a place to sleep. I never felt safe. Finally, I gave up on prayer.

When my oldest son was killed at age fifteen, I thought my life was over, the pain of love and loss turned my heart to stone, my thoughts to rage, and all I had left was my fear, grief, and addictions... or so I thought.

I thought about suicide all the time. But I was afraid that I might screw it up and end up a vegetable. And I doubted that there was another life waiting for me on the other side, if there was indeed another side.

Tired & Exhausted: Starting the Road to Recovery

Exhaustion was the catalyst that took me to a recovery program. I was just so tired — tired of being sad and lonely, tired of fighting everything and everyone, and tired of living with my strange thoughts that would surely lead me to insanity. The day my mom shot herself, I asked her what was wrong, and she said, “I’m just tired.” I didn’t understand her then, but I came to understand what she meant.

Do you know that feeling of being so weary with life that you simply want to step out of it?

Do your days feel like an exercise in frustration and misery?

Do you wake up with a feeling of dread?

Are you using an addiction to escape your feelings?

Road to Addiction: Abuse & Neglect

The people who were supposed to love and protect me hurt me, left me, and died, and they taught me early in life that to love another person was to set myself up for disappointment and pain. I had no idea what it meant to feel loved, or to trust my heart to another human being. I told myself that I had been beaten and bruised too many times — no one would ever get close enough to touch me again.

How’s your heart? Has it been abused? Have you built a cage of fear around it? Do you use anger and addiction to keep others at arm’s length to protect it? The problem is that although those things might work to keep others out, they also keep you in. As long as your heart is locked in, you will know a loneliness that can never be filled with any addiction.To be happy, healthy human beings, we need love as much as we need air to breathe, water to quench our thirst, and food to nourish our bodies. Overcoming past painful experiences will mean learning to trust again. I don’t know about you, but for me it took divine intervention.

Addiction Treatment: Happily Ever After?

Great events came to pass. I married the love of my life, the man I had been afraid to be with for eighteen years. I had a real home. I started my own costume rental business. I felt like a real person for the first time in my life.

Addicts in recovery know to be extra cautious when something bad happens, but what about when things are going well? Once we have “arrived,” we may think there is no need to continue doing those things that worked to bring us to a better life. That’s what happened to me. Suddenly I thought I could indulge again, but this time I’d be able to handle it because I had such a good life.

I’d made countless excuses for not praying and meditating in the mornings. I was busy. I was tired. I slept in. What I discovered was that we make time for what is important. All I had to do was get up an hour earlier in the morning for the prayer and meditation that reminded me each day of who I was and what I was supposed to be doing.

Prayer and Meditation: The God of Your Understanding

Prayer and meditation is not some automated habit for me. It is serious business, and the quality of my life depends on it. I talk to the God of my understanding as if he were my best friend, because he is. When I listen for direction during meditation, I always find a solution to whatever problem I might be facing. It’s not always an easy solution, but it’s always the best.

God healed my heart, which allows me to entrust it to others, to open myself to loving and being loved without fear. There is no room left for anger and resentment. I am not perfect, but as long as I make that conscious connection to the God of my understanding each day through prayer, I am the best me I can be.

This article was excerpted with permission from:

Addiction & Grief: Letting Go of Fear, Anger, and Addiction
by Barb Rogers.

Reprinted with permission of Conari Press, and imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser LLC. ©2011 by Barb Rogers. Addiction & Grief is available wherever books are sold or directly from the publisher at 1-800-423-7087 or http://redwheelweiser.com.

For more info and/or to order this book on Amazon, click here.

About the Author

Barb Rogers wrote several books on recovery, alcoholism, addiction, and well-being, including Twenty-Five Words: How the Serenity Prayer Can Save Your Life, Keep It Simple and Sane, as well as her memoir If I Should Die Before I Wake. Barb died in early 2011. Her website is still accessible at http://www.barbrogersinspirations.com/Addiction_and_Grief_1.html

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