CHARACTERISTICS OF RECOVERY

CHARACTERISTICS OF RECOVERY

Recovery can only begin when the problem of alcoholism is recognized and once recognized then acknowledged. Between acknowledgment and recovery is acceptance and between recognition and recovery people experience many frightening emotions among which are fear, anger, shame, and resentment of the problem. And all of these sentiments must be experienced before one can acknowledge and accept one's problem as a disease and diagnosis. This goes for the professional recognizing his own problem as well as his ability to guide his patients through these spelunking tours of the mind and soul. And as physicians it is important to acknowledge our limitations here if we are not up to the task of guiding our charges through territory that we have no professional training in. And I refer here, of course, to that task of guiding our patients in the path of spirituality.

By spirituality I do not mean religion because there are few among us truly qualified for that vocation and even fewer among our afflicted who would accept such advice particularly from their physician. Rather they should seek this from their religious leader. But a spiritual leader is another thing, and that could be anything and anybody who 'delivers the goods' as it were.

In my case I have been guided by reformed drug addicts, old hippies, women who have walked the streets and almost died at the point of a gun or knife but have found a higher power of their understanding that has brought them out of the depth of that bondage to substance and negative thinking. How were they able to do this when my psychiatrist, after ten years could not even touch areas that they reached?

Well I could tell their story but I am most familiar with mine and through mine I will go through those milestones of emotions that were required of me to get to acceptance so that I could begin to recover in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous . And I will state flat out that as I said above, you can stop drinking but that doesn't mean you are sober. And recall that the major part of alcoholism is that it is a 'thought disorder' and it cannot be cured by medication, at least not any medication that has yet been formulated. It is a thought disorder characterized by magical thinking, confabulative behaviors, wishful thinking, and poorly grounded reality. And without constant vigilance very easily is side tracked from the road of normal behavior onto the side rail of disastrous behaviors and ultimate death. And only by adopting new meaningful superego characteristics can one begin to live a normal life.

Some are able to achieve this with intensive individual psychotherapy but the gentler, more supportive, and enduring way is through the group efforts of being with others who suffer from the same malady, who have succeeded where you haven't and can offer that support any time of the day or night when the urge to drink should occur. Because we cannot rely on normal people for our sobriety. They don't get it. They may sympathize, they may empathize but ultimately we are a mystery to them and they do not have the least inkling what we go through and there is no point in trying to get them to understand. At best, they can take our word for it and have them step aside when the time comes for them to give their understanding of us 'to the care of their God as they understand him'.

So if it seems that I am advocating that we as professionals throw up our hands and say that we cannot treat alcoholics I am saying that is only true to the extent that we do not know how to include bringing spirituality into our practice. And maybe Blue Cross Blue Shield does not reimburse for this specifically but it is counseling none the less. But we must realize, however, that we do not receive this training in medical school or post graduate medical education. That is where professionals who are also 'in the program' are at a distinct advantage . If we have 'gotten it' we have learned the tools of the program in the program and we have learned how to pass it on and give it away.

Not everyone wants to be a member of AA, and I understand that. But they should at least have the benefit of the AA perspective so that once they leave your care they will have the opportunity to check out other systems of recovery. Those who will be most successful will return to the 12 steps and their principles, because those principle are a design for living and that is the new prescription that we are writing when we begin to treat our new charges.

FEAR
Fear is so basic to life it almost goes without saying that a life without fear is like a day without sunshine. It drives so much of life that is both good as well as destructive. Fear of poverty drives us to work, and fear of economic insecurity drives us to ever more lucrative forms of remunerative livelihood so that we may accumulate 'things and more things' until we are buried by our trinkets. Instead of us choosing to choose things in life, things start to choose how we live our lives. And when we have to then pay the mortgage, the car payments and are forced to stay in employment situations that are no longer any fun or are downright unpleasant, we get pissed off. But we are afraid because we have accumulated a life time’s worth of things and attention must be paid to all the bills that we have accumulated along the way; and we are afraid of the destitution that it would mean if we just threw up our hands had we wanted to just chuck it all. So the fear begets pissed ‘offedness’, or in other words anger.

ANGER
Anger is what I felt about everything in my life . My life was governed by anger and it wasn't just because I was angry that I was drinking or that I was afraid that I was alcoholic. I was angry that I had to pay the monthly mortgage that was so high. I was angry that I had made lousy investments. I was angry at the profession that I was working in or at the particular job or hell, that I had to work at all! And so I drank. So that I did not have to feel anger. And at first that helped. But of course that did not change the job, the bills, the work and so I drank some more. Until I was angry when I could not drink because I had to work. And then the cycle of anger, a drink to calm the anger, agitation when the drink wore off, more anger and on and on. Emotion feeding upon alcohol feeding upon emotion. All this usually led to family strife in the form of minor skirmishes, challenges over how money is spent, sexual relations and then finally the challenge that I drank too much itself. And of course I denied it. (Denial is a diagnostic sign, a sine qua non, of alcoholism taken up in other chapters, but certainly germane here and in any discussion of the diagnosis of alcoholism and its treatment). But when denial cannot be denied anymore shame sets in.

SHAME
And shame almost makes everything too hard to bare. You (I) look at yourself in the mirror and cannot believe that I (you) behaved that way, spent money, treated others, and ultimately drank that way. And you feel all alone not knowing what to do or where to go or who to turn to. And you can't turn to those who are closest to you because 1) you have alienated them already and 2) they really don't understand what is going on in your head so any help they could give you, even in their kindest most helpful moments, would be well -intentioned dribble. It would be completely off the mark. As my wife said, she gave up helping me because every time she tried to help, things came out worse and she finally realized that she could not help; it could only turn our worse regardless of her good intentions. So I began to resent the situation, my life, my family, my world.

RESENTMENT
This is the emotional state that can truly derail the whole process because it is at this point where we realize that there is something wrong, and things have been tried, some perhaps with some success but, as noted, with inevitable failure. And it is here that the towel can get thrown in. We get exhausted physically, emotionally and spiritually. We see no end to this and things truly look black and at this point and we go into deep despair. Without help or hope many of us seek an out through suicide. And if we are not careful as patients and with our patients, we may become lost or lose our patients. A critical stage. We must guide our charges from this stage to understand that we can give these resentments up if we acknowledge the problem of alcoholism and accept a new path to rehabilitation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT AND ACCEPTANCE
Until now I have been working, what in AA would be getting to, step 1, Admitting that we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable. Having admitted the former we have acknowledged a great deal and with that is implied that if we want to heal we will be willing to do anything to get better. If we are truly honest with ourselves and have realized that we have tried so many ways of getting sober and that none have worked, perhaps we are now willing to try another way and that is to admit that there is a power, ANY power greater than myself that I can believe in to help restore me to sanity. Whatever that power is, it must be out there and it can help me as it has helped others. (step 2) Others may call this power God, I can call this a power, a Higher power of My Understanding and I believe that I can give myself up to the CARE of this power whatever it may be. (I may choose to believe it is the greater conscience of the people in the Rooms of AA and the spirit of the program as I personally believe). (Step 3).

So what does all this mumbo jumbo mean? I understand it to mean (and others have a different interpretation) that I cannot do this thing called alcohol recovery by myself but I will go to any length to lick this problem and I believe that a higher power which I choose to call the spirit of the people in the rooms of AA can help me to do it. And I give myself up to the care of that spirit. (Not to a religion or a god but for me a philosophy of life, a modus vivendi, a way of looking at the world and living in it, to live by certain principles which I will say are consonant with the principles of the Golden Rule.

And what I have described for me is like a reset switch. A moral reset switch if you will, that puts aside all of the mired, frenzied challenged behavior of my past and places it on a shelf for consideration at a later time (later steps of the program) and starts my life afresh. It is a kick start. I cannot restart my life with all of the twisted baggage of my former life. I must leave that in the past and set myself to learn or relearn the NEW principles of life in order to move forward to enter the sober life ahead. Why is this so?

Alcohol has lead me (us) into very morally challenged murky waters. At times we were truly not responsible for the scrapes that we got into because the alcohol masked our moral compasses and sent us on the wrong heading. Without the haze of alcohol we have had to obtain a new compass. And that compass may lead us back to territories which may revisit old behaviors and history and we must be able to face them with a clean and clear mind, fully ready to accept responsibility for our actions and to make amends when they are appropriate.

This is the new spiritual basis of the program and we cannot get this through psychotherapy, drug therapy, jail, hypnosis or acupuncture. But it is the only true new design for living out there and for those who truly learn to follow the principles and practice them in all their daily affairs, you will find a true guide to a new life design.

© res 1/10/11