LEARNING TO LIVE

As we adapt to the NA way of life, we are changed. Before we can begin rebuilding our lives, we need to get several things in order. The information and knowledge that we based our lives on is faulty. Otherwise, why would we need help? If we rush ahead blindly, we are just going to hurt more. We will be rushing ahead with all of our fearful limitations and misinformation limiting the world that we can enter successfully. There comes a time when we have to stand still and hurt until the pain stops - or at least subsides a little - so that we can locate ourselves. We learn to reach out to others right from the start.

If you are new to recovery and you are close to someone now, it may help if you tell them that you really want help. Ask them to tell you the truth and not to worry about hurting your feelings. Because we are in recovery we have to be careful about offering help when someone doesn’t ask for it. We have learned that this runs some newcomers off by intruding on their space, so most of us are careful not to be too forward. Asking for help is not only socially acceptable in NA but also highly recommended.

We use the principles, the Steps, the literature, the members, the meetings, and the power of prayer to begin to remake ourselves. There was a time, not too long ago, when addicts died because no one really understood what was wrong with us or offered us hope for recovery. Due to the loving dedication of all those clean addicts who have gone ahead of us in recovery, this is no longer true. Their availability matches their example. We don’t have to do it alone. It’s hard for us to open ourselves up to others yet by doing this one thing, we can discover at least one or two who completely understand everything we have to say.

We gladly render service, meet our obligations, and can accept or solve our troubles with God’s help. We know that it doesn’t matter whether at home or in the outside world, we are all partners in a common effort. We understand that in God’s sight, all human beings are important. Our daily lives give us proof that love freely given brings a full return. We are no longer isolated and alone in self-constructed prisons. We receive assurance that we fit and belong in God’s scheme of things. We no longer feel like square pegs in round holes. These are the permanent and legitimate satisfactions of living. True ambition is not what we thought it was. True ambition is the deep desire to live usefully and walk humbly under the grace of God.

What happens after we stop using is so confusing and chaotic that without the friendship and help of other addicts, almost all of us would fall back into active addiction. After all, addicts use. Our long sought peace of mind may seem like a tantalizing taste of freedom that can’t possibly be real. As we grow in recovery, we transmit our experience to anyone that needs it. It becomes our own in transmission.

While there is much to be said for ‘just not using’; we have many other things that have to be done. We are looking for ways to support others and ourselves in recovery. It means so much to us that efforts were made on our behalf long before we sought help in NA. This could only have come from a deep and abiding love. ‘Intention’ seems to be an important ingredient in this deep love. It is like a song. Intention correctly implies that we do it by choice and with love. When we do things of our own free will, we add the strength of commitment to our message.

Settling down and adjusting to life without using has to happen first. Only after we see ourselves as addicts and relate our pain to using do we have a chance at lasting recovery! Replacing our habits that were born in fear and desperation takes time. We obtain freedom in one area of our life yet we see our addiction controlling another. As we discover each area of loss and deal with it, our minds begin to clear and our appetite for freedom increases. One benefit of surrender that we experience in working the First Step is that we are not personally responsible for everything ‘wrong’ in the world! We chop our problems down to a workable size and thus begin to see some progress. We have chased an answer that appeared to be at some distant, perhaps unattainable point, therefore, we have to relearn to focus in today just like children. This takes the burden of ‘our expected future’ off our backs. The future, as we have come to expect it, it not going to happen to us if we are clean and practicing spiritual principles. It can’t happen because everything is different for us when we begin the internal process we call recovery. Changing the world might take forever so we can easily and quickly get results by changing ourselves. Personal responsibility means changing things within our person.

Personality change describes the process that allows us to develop a new relationship with life. Without a conscious choice combined with daily effort, our personalities will stay the same. This is especially visible when we are going through great stress and difficulty. Recovery allows us to set our mind on this process of change and eventually engage enough of our personal resources to get results. Usually, we have to have people we trust encouraging us to go a little further and to try a little harder in order for results to happen. We most often react in horror and feel threatened when change start happening. In the past, change has been a threat. It’s hard to relax and trust that changes are for the best.

In active addiction, many of us used character defects as a shield against attack. This is our ‘survival kit’. We seldom told the truth because we lived in an illusion created and maintained by our lies. Fear and distrust motivated us to build walls to protect us from emotional or physical harm, only to discover that these walls have become our prisons. We used anger and intimidation to keep people away. We feared that if they got too close they would see through us. We wanted what we wanted - when we wanted it. We had little patience with anything or anyone who stood in the way of our self-gratification. Recovery means becoming God-centered.

After coming to NA and beginning the recovery process, we find that some of the tools in our old ‘survival kits’ were more harmful than helpful. Addicts shared with us that we had to find a new way to live. They told us to practice honesty, ‘no matter what’, and with time telling the truth would feel natural. We all want freedom from the bondage of addiction. We want to have choices, to be able to move in many directions, and to feel full of energy and spirit.

We must take the time we need to regain our personal sensibilities. Next, we start to identify with people in meetings. We read NA literature and find that we relate to the stories of those gone before. We realize that we are not alone and that we do belong. We then establish a framework of understanding and supportive friends and begin to rework ourselves through the power of the Twelve Steps. We know that our disease is always chasing us and we realize that we are the ‘master of our own demise’. The reason that ‘surrender’ must be complete and a belief in a Higher Power must be revolutionary is that without them the gravity of the way we were will draw us back into the insanity.

Many of us have experienced initial confusion. We may have misused our newfound opportunities by seeking ways to regain the sense of personal power. Our self-centeredness takes our natural desires for sex, security, and fellowship and twists them into negative qualities such as lust, greed, pride, and extreme dependence. For recovery to occur, we have to learn to tolerate increased responsibility with gratitude and humility. Those who forget this, risk returning to active addiction. Surrendering, taking an inventory, praying, and meditating give us ways to live life. We visualize our goals. We honestly assess the obstacles in our way. If we are willing to ‘pay the price’, face the consequences of our choices then we can aspire to all our dreams in recovery. All of those goals are out there in front of us somewhere. Much of recovery is serendipity. Good things come to us when we stop trying to make things happen.

Today, we have a purpose for living. We don’t allow money, power, property or prestige to divert us from that purpose. To do so would negate our surrender. Today, we have become self-supporting and we contribute our fair share in all areas of life. We carry our own weight and are no longer a burden on family and society. We gladly give our time, talents, and resources to help others wherever and whenever we can.

Our disease has isolated us. It has prevented us from living life to the fullest. Recovery is not only regaining things that we lost in active addiction but also restoring our dreams. One of our greatest discoveries is nothing more than the ability to see a blessing for what it is. We accept goodness into our lives and act for the betterment of those around us. It may have taken a crisis to make us reach out for help in the first place and it may take more pain to keep us aware of the need for growth and change. Many NA members think that our chains are a natural part of us because they have been with us for so long. It is ‘for love’ that we care and reach out of our loneliness. We have protection from harm in our vulnerability by our courage. Those who lack a working relationship with a loving Higher Power may disagree with us. The strength and conviction of some of our statements may put them off but we still need to communicate our feelings and beliefs with others. We have found in recovery, something that was unexpected, and that something has re-ignited the fire of life within us.

Instead of envisioning painful encounters, we now see ourselves getting jobs or conducting ourselves in a responsible manner. We can rehearse what we will say and what it will feel like to say it. Many times, these scenes play out exactly as we have envisioned them. It slowly dawns on us that things as simple as this are what spirituality means. We could have died for lack of what is commonplace in the lives of non-addicts and were totally unaware of this fact while in active addiction. Nonetheless, that is how this disease works! It isolates us from people who care for us and would do all within their power to help us. In the same way, it separates us from our ‘good opinion’ of ourselves. The things that we did while influenced by drugs could make a fallen angel blush. We learn to judge ourselves anew. When we find ourselves lacking, we make up the difference with the help of our fellows.

We avoid situations that could make us feel even worse about ourselves because that is how we have survived active addiction. Any positive experience or reward could trigger the self-destructiveness of this disease. A little more shame or guilt and we might not have survived. We always lose sight of the fact that in the end, we only fool ourselves. After all the cons are run, the deals done, and the scams pulled, we ask ourselves, "Are we happy? Are we pleased? Do we feel good about ourselves and about the lives that we live?" If we answer in the negative, we work the program with more vigor for greater happiness and fulfillment. Freedom from active addiction, the ability to make choices, the flexibility to move in many directions, and feeling full of energy and spirit, is what most of us want.

As we adapt to the life of attending meetings and having contact with clean addicts, we recognize changes in the content of our thoughts. We take what we hear in meetings and study how to use it in our situation. We plan how we will handle certain situations before they come up. We try the things that appear to work for others. At this crucial stage of recovery, we reach out for help to deal with the things that have been bothering us for years. If we are honest in our desire to change, someone will come forward with an answer or we will stumble across it in a book we read. Sometimes this answer will come several times before we actually hear it.

When we pray or meditate, we open ourselves up inside for extra help like this. God answers all of our prayers. "No!" is sometimes the answer. Then, we waste time theorizing over whether the help would have come if we hadn’t opened ourselves up spiritually. The point is that today we can recognize and accept God’s help.

Many of us are pleased to find the world opening up for us. It is a world rich with help and support that we couldn’t obtain before. Sometimes we get impatient about the time this takes. Therefore, we must remember that results comes in God’s time, not ours. We are just grateful that the change comes at all.

As addicts, we live an all-or-nothing existence. We are creatures of extremes. It is all too common to see someone overextend themselves in service work, burn out, and then withdraw from service altogether. One example would be that we used to ignore our families while using yet we continue to ignore them in recovery. It doesn’t seem to make any difference whether we were gone and using or we are gone to meetings, we are still gone. We may smother them with our controlling love and attention in a misguided attempt at making amends and then feel hurt and rejected if they exert independence. Another example is that we used to not show up for work for days at a time and now we won’t even take a day off. We swing from irresponsibility to feeling responsible for the whole world. We then turn around and quit our job just because it’s just ‘too much’. Achieving both inner and outer balance is an elusive prize of recovery. We swing like a pendulum from one extreme to the other and hope to find that middle ground where peace and serenity reside. Eventually, we will find that peace and serenity. It comes along when we reach the point that we sincerely ask for restoration to sanity. When we take an inventory, do other step work, share at meetings, and work with our sponsor, we get on a course that most accurately reflects the vision of the life that we want for ourselves.

We have every right to aspire to all the good things of life. Perhaps for the first time after many years, we express love and kindness to others when we first meet rather than waiting to see if they deserve our friendship. As we gain self-acceptance, we lose the reasons that we hide behind our self-made walls of paranoia and fear. We begin to like ourselves and then we learn to love ourselves. We express our gratitude by serving others. Today, we intuitively know that we are cared for and are no longer alone.

Imagine how it would be if we had to fight with everybody and everything that got us mad? That would be a lot of fighting! How different this is from the old days when all we knew was to ‘fight with or flee from’ those who disagreed with us! We learn to stand our ground for the principles that we believe in while allowing others to do the same.

Surrender frees us to fight when there is no alternative. Suppose we could not inventory our assets and liabilities? How would we approach our life? We would always seek more. We have no way of satisfying our actual needs. Sound familiar? Suppose we had no way to reach God through prayer? Suppose we could not recognize or accept the spiritual answers that come to us? We would be ‘on our own’ and in active addiction again!

There are five steps to peace: Denial, anger, bargaining, acceptance, and peace. This information may help us get on with recovery. In response to someone who is stuck in anger, we may suggest bargains. If asked, we may suggest getting angry to someone who is stuck in denial to help them get going again. It is important to remember that life is a process of change and growth, only ‘dead things’ don’t grow. We engage the forces of life when we throw aside the labels that our addiction placed on us and begin the selective process. We can finally take steps to free ourselves from the limitations imposed on us by our disease and reflect our true preferences. We can become the human beings that we have been inside all along.

Sometimes, we give the impression that we like to preach. When we’re doing better, such things can become issues. In active addiction, we believed that someone loving us and going out of their way to help us created a debt that we couldn’t pay. In recovery, we learn that this demonstrates the principle of ‘giving back’. The only way we can maintain this gift of recovery is to continue to give it away. That is all we repay the ‘debt’ to those who helped us. If you feel that recovery is getting stale, look again. Ask yourself, "Am I still giving it away?" It may be God’s way of reminding you that you need to concentrate more on honesty, open-mindedness, or willingness to try.

Sponsorship is an essential element in working the NA program. The only way to learn and apply the principles of recovery is from someone who has worked them in their own lives. We call that someone a sponsor. It is important to find and use a sponsor as soon as possible. We may come to rely heavily upon them. In time, we too may become sponsors and grow from the opportunity to return that which was freely given. After acquiring some clean time, we recognize the rewards that come from principles living. We see that healing is happening in our lives and that it’s a direct result of working the Twelve Steps. We come to realize that because these principles help us deal with our addiction to drugs that they will also help us in all areas of our lives.

Fear and guilt may have been great motivators in our active addiction and early recovery. Fear and guilt keep us from doing what we can today. Both limit our lives in ways that we may have thought were blessings in active addiction as well as early recovery. In time, however, we will want to be free of these two defects just as we would want to be free of the cast after a broken bone had healed. It would be far more troublesome than helpful to keep them or the cast and we would again limit our lives needlessly. Feeling needless fear or unearned guilt creates limitations that steal freedom.

An indispensable tools for living clean is gratitude. This positive emotion is markedly lacking in addicts but we can learn gratitude by practicing it. Generally, if we aren’t grateful for what we have today, we most likely won’t appreciate what we receive tomorrow. Most of us we learned gratitude by patient practice after we come around to the viewpoint that it’s an item that is necessary for our self-improvement. Narcotics Anonymous gives us the opportunity to regain the things that we lost in active addiction and to reach goals that we never dreamed were possible before. When we experience conscious thankfulness, we feel as if we have added a new dimension to our existence.

Every time that we act on faith, we change the world for the better. This miraculous power helps counteract the feelings of worthlessness and despair that this disease gives us. When we begin to substitute actions that make us feel good, we find that we are doing better in the world than we may have thought. Our experiences benefit us even when they don’t seem positive. This is especially true when we find ourselves in the midst of tragedy. We can often learn as much from knowing how a thing doesn’t work as from how it does. We must learn to think clearly before we can take effective actions. Obviously, we must draw correct conclusions about what happened and be honest about how we want to change ourselves in order to get on to having different results.

A vital part of learning to live clean is the acceptance of our personal responsibility to our recovery and society. We look forward to contributing our fair share. We apply the principles that we learn in NA whether within the Fellowship, with our families, in our professions, or with other organizations. Exactly what is my fair share one might ask? It is simply doing ‘what I CAN do’ today. ‘Doing good’ makes us feel better about ourselves so why would we miss that blessing by shirking the responsibility?

In our meetings, we learn that the most precious gift we have to give is our loving attention. We listen actively with all our senses and try to establish empathy with other NA members. We apply what we learned at meetings and give this same level of attention to our families, friends, and co-workers. The concept of ‘our common welfare should come first’ extends to our families, neighborhoods, and communities. We surrender our egos into the larger group conscience by trusting that a loving God will speak through us all.

Life gets better as we practice unconditional acceptance with others. We simply give our love unconditionally. Unconditional means without expectation. One thing that can give us great difficulty is finding out that we may have unknowingly placed expectations on other addicts. We may find that if someone relapses, we had the expectation that they would stay clean. We may even tell ourselves that they just didn’t want to stay clean and seem to forget that they suffer from the disease of addiction. There but for the grace of God and the blessing of recovery, go I. We must be careful not to use this disappointment to justify isolating. We obtain freedom when we learn to make our own decisions and try not to hurt anyone in the process.

In the past, making compromises may have been difficult. Today we can compromise our actions without compromising our values. Recovery teaches us that we can disagree with others without being disagreeable. Most of us have witnessed two or more addicts arguing passionately over an issue. The conversation was animated and the atmosphere of recovery seemed in jeopardy. Somehow, the right answer became apparent to everyone. We have such a feeling of accomplishment when working through differences by listening to rather than bullying one another. Only minutes later, those addicts who were once arguing so forcefully are hugging, sitting together, and planning what to do next. As long as we show love and respect for one another, we will always find an answer that will work for all.

As we learn to live, we discover that we are not alone. We aren’t independent from one another because a power greater than we are connects us. We believe that things can get better and so our hope grows into faith. We realize that if we continue on this path, we have no need to be concerned for our welfare. Faith gives the courage to examine who we are, what we have done, and who we would like to become. We trust ourselves enough to share what we find in this process with someone else. We become more willing to change with the perspective that we get when we share our regrets, resentments, wrongs, assets, hopes, and dreams. We begin to become responsible and accountable for our past and start trying to repair our relationships. Only after we have forgiven the people who may have harmed us and ourselves can we seek the forgiveness of others. In order to maintain consistency in our lives, we monitor our behavior. When we pray and meditate daily, we discover God’s will for us as well as the power to carry it out that we need. Self-worth grows when we are of service in all areas of our lives. Amazingly, we find that the more love we give, the more love we have.

When a loved one dies or following a narrow escape, we realize that life goes on with or without our permission. We can turn our lives around at this point if we are aware of the message of hope that is Narcotics Anonymous. This discovery may make us want to be a part of life again. Clean, we realize that we might as well stop fighting and start figuring out how to be happy. We have the right to remove any obstacles that we find and get on with our lives.

This is what being a part of life is all about. Our addiction keeps us isolated and miserable and it destroys our lives by creating real and imaginary barriers to our happiness. Many of us feel that we have no right to happiness by the time we arrive in NA.

Words are symbols to many us and as such have the power to heal, wound, or kill. Some words have been off limits to us for a while so we need to make friends with them again. We must remind ourselves of our right and responsibility to do this. We have quite a story to share for most of us have histories that are far more dramatic and intriguing than a motion picture screenplay. In active addiction, we lived secret lives and didn’t want others to know what we had become. We came to believe our own lies and blocked out the truth maybe even after we got clean. Because so much of what happened to us is deep inside, it may be a while before the full stories come out. One of the miracles that we experience in Narcotics Anonymous is helping one another to get a new grip on reality. Only recovering addicts understand the courage that it takes to walk back from our own destruction one step at a time.

Human beings exist in terms of consciousness. Most of our actions are unconscious. We have to act before we can think clearly. It may be that surrender, prayer, and meditation are how we deal with the subconscious portion of life and give us an edge as we become better at applying these tools. We have learned how to appreciate and enjoy life. Many of us anticipate trying new things. Whether it is doing something simple or complex, we learn that getting together with other addicts, outside of the group meetings, can be a very enjoyable experience. We give ourselves permission to have fun in healthy ways, both inside and outside the Fellowship. We know that laughter is both spiritual and healing. The more we learn to laugh and enjoy ourselves, the better we feel. While we take our recovery very seriously, we try not to take ourselves too seriously.