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Morning Attitude

October 29, 2024 by Ken Wells

READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing—the last of human freedoms: to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” — Victor Frankl

Most days I wake up with a bad attitude. Bleary-eyed, I crawl out of bed early in the morning feeling a hangover from the intensity of yesterday’s activities. My attitude screams at the absurdity of getting up so early. It argues that there is no good reason to get out of bed and that this would be a good day to sleep in. In spite of the pitch to roll over and go back to sleep, I usually get dressed and pour a cup of coffee. I wait till my head clears and then consider the challenges of a new day. I am vulnerable to feelings of dread, uncertainty, and other unwanted emotions.

I remember when I went to sales school in Nashville, Tennessee to sell Bible books. They told me that I should get out of bed each morning, get dressed, jump in the air, click my heels, and shout out “I feel healthy, happy, and terrific!” I did this only one time. First, I almost tripped. Second, I quickly concluded that this is stupid! I didn’t feel any of those things. I didn’t then and I don’t now.

Nurturing negativity does not work for me. Shifting my thoughts from negative expectations to positive possibilities propels me to create a fulfilling and purposeful day. It is important to take a deep breath and then suck it up and do the next right thing. This action step helps my brain catch up to my behavior. It generates inspiration and aspiration throughout the entire day. Addressing negative attitudes and emotions is difficult. Here are a few things to consider.

1. It’s ok to be you, and when life sucks just admit it and work with it. Some people seem to always have the right attitude about life. Yet, everybody’s life sucks sometimes. You cannot change what sucks until you embrace what is real. So when life sucks just admit it. Be willing to accept the highs and lows and the ups and downs of everyday living. It’s the first step.

2. Understand that what you think about will expand. What you dwell on and think about is what expands in your mind. So if you think that you were screwed and you don’t work through it, then you will go through your day dominated by this negative energy. Hurt and disappointment happen in life. We are not robots and it takes time to work through harm and hurt. At some point, you will need to turn your suffering over to your Higher Power. If you don’t your wound will dictate how you will live your life. If you dwell on what is missing that is what will expand in your mind. Discipline yourself to focus on the necessary steps to heal your wound.

3. Commit to the power of reframe. Every morning as I sit in my chair with a bad attitude, I have a choice to make. I can take myself by the nape of the neck and decide to shift from enervating thoughts to empowered and energizing action. It’s up to me. I choose to never let a negative thought dominate me past those early morning hours. There is power in reframing. It doesn’t come easy. You, too, have the power to shift your thinking from victimized to empowered living. You will create empowerment through action in doing the next right thing. Once you engage in reframing your life situation with possible positive outcomes, life will magically transform from negativity to empowered living.

4. Condition your life with positive affirmations. Easier said than done, yet this conditioning determines lifelong sobriety. Bathe your mind in positive affirmations in the same way you bathe your body for cleaning and hygiene. Positive affirmations are necessary to overcome a bad attitude and self sabotage. In recovery, most addicts either ignore or go light on mastering positive affirmation. Long term sobriety requires consistent exposure to positive affirmative thought. It makes a big difference!

5. Be what you aspire in the here and now. In order for aspirations to be realized you must act in the present that which you hope to become. Be, act, and live sober now. When your behavior falls short of ambition you will be tempted to give up or hope that someday later you will attain your aspired behavior. Shame will mock you and tell you that you will not achieve your aspirations. It will make sobriety or any other desire elusive and impossible to attain. Embracing aspiration is awkward in the presence of shame. You will need to ignore the voice of shame and focus on affirmations that release your power. This process confirms and enables you to realize your aspirations. It is an exercise that requires practice and conditioning. As you practice your aspiration for sobriety it will bear fruit.

Attitude is more important that whatever fact you must face. Being able to shift from a negative attitude each day will dictate your destiny of sobriety and long term serenity.

Gray Zones

October 25, 2024 by Ken Wells

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Living out a sober life is quite a feat regardless of the addiction. Cravings dominate to varying degrees. Commitments begin to melt down as soon as some addicts close their mouths in a 12-step meeting. We have all heard stories of addicts who swore to commit to sober living and who began acting out before they left the parking lot. I once led a group of sex addicts where one of the addicts was sexting his affair partner just after his share while the meeting was in progress! The truth is that intrigue is a drunken dreamland with bewitching charm. The junkie worm that undermines rational sober living is:

“like a hard-nosed hound, the lion never ends its chase. It lures me to the dance, as I look to hide my face—The monkey’s always talkin’ trash in his deep clear voice—
He talks about a paralyzed paradise—
I quickly lose my choice”
—Stalking the Lion King by K.W.

From another perspective, sobriety can be like nailing jelly to a tree. If I’m an alcoholic, obviously getting loaded with alcohol is an example of relapse. But what about substituting a favorite IPA beer with an O’douls or any other of a number of non-alcoholic beer choices that have 0.4 percent alcohol content? Am I sober with this choice? For sure, some hard-core recovering folk will answer with the charge that you are just bullshitting yourself while others contend differently. If I’m a sex addict in a committed monogamous relationship and jump in the sack with another person, I have given up my sobriety, right? But, what if I just masturbate to images of the other person but have not engaged that person in a face-to-face, skin to skin contact? Am I sober? Well, some people say yes while others say No and most would say you are playing with fire. What becomes ominous is the growing reality that to live in sobriety suggests that I must manage “gray zones”—places in my life that without question create a high risk toward relapse.

Most of us who have hung out around 12-step digs have long since heard and understand the reference “If you hang out at the barbershop you’re gonna, at some point, get a haircut”. For most, this is true! Most of us addicts have our own stories of playing with fire and getting burned. It could be sitting in a bar as an alcoholic or toying with “eye candy” on the internet, flirting with the desire to look at porn, for a sex addict. Some gray zones differ between addicts while others are more common and universal. Usually, an addict cannot eliminate all the gray zones in their life.

The question that haunts me is how I manage my “gray zones.” There is no holy grail that is retrofitted for all addicts. Here are a few suggestions for managing gray zones.

1. Be honest with yourself. I am convinced that one of the hardest things to do or be for any of us, addict or otherwise, is to be emotionally honest. Addictive rationale, Not getting enough of what I really don’t want, is a constant storyline that requires rigorous honesty. Most will avoid this inquiry because it demands an open moral search and an embrace and exposure to what is inevitably uncomfortable and even painful. Yet, without everyday rigorous honesty in the life of addiction recovery, gray zones quickly become red zone relapse behavior.

2. Tell on yourself. For addicts, D-Day always refers to the day of disclosure—turning over every stone and releasing all the secrets around acting out behavior. The truth is that D-Day is the threshold of reality for the rest of life for those who choose recovery. Secrets must become bygones. Rigorous honesty only grows when I tell on myself to my support people. I believe that for recovery to be effective in 12-step meetings, an addict must embrace an approach that requires the last thing I want group members to know about me is the first thing I will share with the group. This admission grounds an individual with the degree of honesty required to manage gray zone behavior.

3. Live in consultation. Hypocrisy, incongruence, and inconsistency are trademarks of reality for anyone who is alive. Addicts, particularly, require accountability in order to manage these compartmentalizing dynamics that fuel double-life living. One of the most difficult concessions for an addict to embrace is that I can no longer act in isolation and alone. I must live in consultation with those I choose to trust. Addicts who are not meticulous with consultation seldom manage gray zones and most likely end up with red-zone relapse. Whatever challenges I face today, if I anchor my decisions in the context of the support community, I am most likely to manage gray zone behavior and avoid red zone relapse. Many of us have heard the recovery reference for group work “If 8 people tell you that you have a tail, the least you should do is take a look at your ass in the mirror”. The wisdom of this homespun truth has helped to manage gray zones many times in my life. On a bad day, I may get a crook in my neck, straining to look at my ass in the mirror, but I have avoided red zone relapse and have successfully managed gray zone behavior.

All in all, living in consultation and telling on myself with rigorous honesty has proven to be a solid pathway to managing gray zone behaviors and establishing successful long-term recovery.

For the Addict – Integrity More Important than Sobriety

October 22, 2024 by Ken Wells

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“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hard-won sobriety is a treasure. The stories of addicts who fail to achieve this elusive paradise are replete. For some, sobriety has been inaccessible. In support groups, addicts take chips to mark sobriety by the hours, days, months, and years. The permanence of sobriety can never be taken for granted. The struggle to attain a sober life is painful. Sometimes it seems like trying to nail jelly to a tree. You work so hard to avoid the junkie worm, yet the immediate reward seems to be dominated by discomfort, emotional and physical pain. Others talk about serenity but in the early stages of sobriety, it feels more like misery, not serenity. It isn’t any wonder why addicts who achieve the hard-fought victory of sobriety cherish the experience.

All that being said, I would suggest that what is more important than hard earned sobriety is integrity. Integrity is the adherence to moral and ethical principles. It is the quality created within that promotes honesty and provides cohesion and coherence without corruption and with virtue. Another way of saying it is that integrity is a forerunner to hard earned sobriety.

Oprah Winfrey says that “real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.”

There is integrity in failure. Integrity in failure is what helps an addict get up again and stop wallowing in the mud of acting out. It is what comes forth when an addict chooses to ask for help in the presence of overwhelming defeat. It is the stuff inside that creates the step to do the next right thing when everything within cries out “Just quit.” When defeat and disapproval surround and engulf, it is integrity to be true to yourself that is sacred. This is what Emerson means when he writes about the sacredness of the integrity of your own mind.

Integrity is what transforms failure into meaningfulness in addiction recovery. Every addict knows what it feels like to wake up with the ashen taste in your mouth and a hollow pit in your stomach that comes at some level from the experience of relapse failure. It’s integrity that is required for you to take yourself by the nap of the neck and stick your nose back into the mix of recovery solution. It’s not about waiting till you feel like doing something, or when you get a good sponsor, or when your partner finally supports you in the way you think you deserve. It’s the integrity of determining that you will be true to your heart no matter what. It’s the only thing that matters.

Sometimes I hear recovering addicts lament that if only I lived in Phoenix, Dallas, or Nashville—some mecca for recovery, then I would feel like I could get some good traction and remain sober. Nonetheless, it is integrity that makes the difference, not location. Descriptions of this type are only fantasies. These figments of imagination remind me of people who say they live in the Bible belt which seems almost everywhere, except New York City and California. Through integrity, recovery is hammered out wherever you live in whatever situation is real to you.

Integrity is a requisite in order to uncover the underlying mistaken beliefs that fuel addiction behavior. Giving yourself the permission to be a mistake-making person is necessary in order to determine that you are the person that will take meaningful wisdom from every mistake and move forward in recovery. An addict’s integrity is the propellant that pursues this wisdom and insight.

Integrity fosters habits so necessary in recovery. When I was a kid, my mom would tell me, “If you are too sick to go to school, you are too sick to get out of bed, watch TV, listen to your transistor radio, or read sports magazines.” While I did sneak sports magazines and my transistor radio into my classrooms, I seldom missed attending classes because of sickness. Upon reflection, I think my mother was over the top with her emphasis on school attendance. Later, I applied that while it is important to stay home when you are sick, my mom’s attitude toward school attendance taught me the integrity to do what was right even when you didn’t feel up to it. Translating life experience into recovery knowledge is necessary for building integrity in recovery. It becomes a key part of the foundation for sobriety.

Working the 12 steps is so helpful toward establishing sobriety. However, drawing from your life experience is also a great resource. You can develop and deepen the integrity of your addiction recovery experience by drawing from other aspects of your life that you managed to do well and translating that skill into your recovery life. For example, you can borrow from your life experience of doing the next right thing no matter what you feel in your professional life and translate that into doing the next right thing in your recovery life, when you feel like giving up. There are a myriad of skill sets that you can borrow from your everyday life to do recovery tasks. Integrity provides the link to integrate these skills.

Integrity is necessary in order to promote honesty in recovery. Dishonesty and secrecy are the breeding grounds for addictive act out. It is my belief that everyone is hypocritical, incongruent, and inconsistent about some aspect of their life. People embrace what they believe, feel something different, and can say and do something different than all of that, even so. To avoid insincere idealized living, integrity gives birth to accountability, which is necessary in addiction recovery. An addict needs accountability which only has teeth from the integrity to tell on yourself and become responsible to another addict.

Integrity is the foundation for telling on yourself. Many addicts who attend 12-step meetings hide in the numbers and fail to open their hearts and truthfully admit where they are at any one moment. In order to effectively tell your recovery group the last thing you want them to know, as the first thing you share, you have to cultivate the integrity of living with an open heart in safe places. Support groups are designed to be safe. Yet, they never become safe unless an addict cultivates the integrity of telling on themselves.

Integrity is the foundation that sobriety is built on. Even in the presence of addiction failure, integrity is the quality that produces the resilience to get back up one more time and move forward. Emerson was spot on when he endorsed that “nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

Junkie Worm Blues #6 – Figuring Out Fantasy

October 18, 2024 by Ken Wells

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My Experience with the Junkie Worm

I may know days of sanity—

sealed with deep commitment to sobriety

I may long for something richer

that which is deeper more satisfying than sobriety

which melts together life’s contradictions and complexities in the presence of confusion and uncertainty

Perhaps, I will know but for a brief fleeting moment the sweet song of serenity—

that elusive, evasive intangible described as heaven on earth—for but a few seconds takes me away from deficiency and dearth

Yet, the silk of life experience and the ilk of family heredity

tells me there’s something different—something missing in my pedigree

Hell is the reality—not heaven, which is but a lie, like Santa Claus and fairytale

The monkey’s off my back but the circus plays on and is Holy Grail

I run as hard as I can trying to escape the wolves that chase me through the wood

No matter what I say about who I am or why I do what I do, I’m never understood

Lonelybooking is as good as it gets—

the shame over reminds the one who forgets

My roots were born and have grown in the soil of struggle

My DNA betrayed by craving and binging—my steady constant slime

Not getting enough of what I really don’t want has been my changeless storyline

With carnage of heart and wreckage all about

The junkie worm, with con and cajole tells me ‘There’s magic just one more time’

With whip and whimper, darkness and defeat takes its toll

There’s no magic, no mojo that I can find

With all the meaning of life squeezed out, emptiness resides with no escape route

Compassion is love birthed inside before it makes its way out

It grows in struggle, in a heart that knows trouble

Anger and hate are common bedfellows

they’re friends who nag and rag and never let go

Religion and snake oil salesmen sell sedatives—promising to heal

Yet anger and hate remain embedded, an experience to feel

When I face what I fear and embrace what I feel

I transform my insides—the rage and hate to something that is real

It’s been the only thing I know that has sustained sobriety and transformed a lot of hell into a little bit of serenity. —KW

I wrote this poetry as a reflection of 35 years of struggle in addiction recovery. Regardless of your drug of choice, as an addict you can touch your experience in these written words.

I have chosen to write six blogs dedicated to managing the junkie worm of addictive desire. This is the last in this series. Today, I chose to write about fantasy and its tentacles of temptation. Fantasy is subtle, secretive, and powerfully alluring. In the addiction world, it is not only a triggering moment. It embraces a hovering mindset that invades every thought. Behind every act out there is a preceding fantasy thought. It may seem to have been triggered in a lightning moment. The truth is that the build-up that fuels temptation has been culturing for a long time.

I recently met with a person who had been in recovery for a long time. Their stated addiction was sex addiction. They announced a decision to be open to “friends with benefits” regarding future sexual pursuit even though in a monogamous partnership. This decision created a precarious position for their marriage. It didn’t happen overnight. There was a considerable build-up of disconnect from feelings and a brooding rationale about unmet relational needs.

That’s the way it goes with fantasy and temptation for addicts. The roots of fantasy are never about the lightning bolt trigger. There is always a build-up underneath the trigger that must be addressed.

In this last, in a series about managing the junkie worm blues, I would like to offer perspective and suggestions toward managing fantasy.

1. Fantasy to act out never comes out of the blue. It seems this way, but its roots are deeper. It is always connected to unmet needs that must be met in a healthy way through mature self-parenting skills developed through recovery. And, thank God, it’s not an out-of-the-blue experience! Addicts would be far more dangerous and unpredictable if it were out of the blue. You are responsible for identifying the mistaken beliefs, the anticipation of rejection, and the victim posture that fuels fantasy and execute a positive intervention. Addressing the root build-up with healthy intervention works in managing the junkie worm blues.

2. Put yourself out of harm’s way. This is not rocket science! If you are sitting in the middle of an intersection and a bus is coming at you, by all means, your first priority is to remove yourself from harm’s way—not try to figure out how you got there! That seems obvious but addicts become great philosophers in dangerous moments when they need to focus on pragmatic interventions. Get the hell out of the way of the Big Mac Truck coming to run over you called the Junkie Worm! During these moments addicts tend to ignore the obvious embrace the improbable and get run over.

3. Use the 3-second rule. Ground yourself in being human. If you’re an addict, it’s normal to want to act out. Your brain chemistry is part of what sets you up for addictive behavior. The 3-second rule is simple. It concedes that you will have intrusive thoughts that trigger your addictive desire. The strategy is that you give yourself 3 seconds to engage the desire to act out. Then you make an intervention to interrupt the destructive pattern of thought. Some addicts say that 3 seconds is too long—that even 1 second is too long! That particular addict is struggling with recognizing their humanity and the reality that intrusive thoughts will invade consciousness. Whatever, the time frame, cultivate a strategy that will interrupt destructive and unwanted fantasy.

4. Dialogue with the fantasy. Once you put yourself out of harm’s way, take time to dialogue with the junkie worm. It is helpful to listen to addiction rationale and allow the junkie worm to build its case as to why addictive behavior makes sense. Then, with your wise mind outline what a healthier alternative would look like. The junkie worm has attempted to provide an escape from unwanted feelings and experiences that have been threatening and devastating in the past. Your assignment as an addict is not to run from the voice of addictive rationale but to respect why it is there, and use your wise mind to navigate to a safer place anchored in sober response.

5. Practice Cherish. One of the laments I hear from addicts who have relapsed is that they failed to cherish all the work they did to achieve sobriety. There is a hollow sense of contrition that they did not cherish their partner, loved ones, or the recovery community that supported them. I hear a tormented cry about how awful and empty it feels to have thrown it all away! The junkie worm mentality contains no cherish. One way to interrupt addictive fantasy is to deliberately force your mind to consider and appreciate what and who you cherish—your partner and family, the solid grounding that recovery creates, predictable routines that promote healthy thoughts, and those who champion you and their own recovery. Cherish the day, your health, and nature around you. Cherish is one of the first things that goes when an addict gives way to fantasy but it represents a great intervention toward bringing one’s thoughts back from fantasy to recovery reality.

The junkie worm has a voice. As an addict, your best bet is to recognize its presence. Running from it never works. The junkie worm is an unrelenting long-distance runner. It will find you! Minimizing and pretending only procrastinates reality. Respectfully managing with healthy self-parenting tools suggested in this blog can transform the curse of your junkie worm into a blessing of sobriety and serenity.

Junkie Worm Blues #5 – Subtleties that Sabotage Sobriety

October 15, 2024 by Ken Wells

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“Your greatest enemy is unguarded thought.”

Addicts suffer from monkey brain thinking. Operationally it helps to avoid the feared empty and quiet moments of life. It creates a distraction that helps to disregard the impact of destructive addictive behavior toward themselves and others.

Addicts live a life of self-sabotage. Inconsistency, incongruency, and hypocrisy pockmark everyday living. Addicts feel one thing, say another, and ultimately do behavior different than what they feel or say. Double-life living is the hallmark of an addict’s lifestyle.

Addicts struggle with blind spots. When there is a relapse, I frequently hear “I never saw it coming.” The truth was that relapse was as clear and obvious as the nose on their face. Everyone knew that acting out was inevitable, except the addict himself/herself. Recovery provides a space and place to corral monkey-brain thinking, blindspots, and self-sabotage. Here are some proven steps to take to manage the junkie worm blues.

1. Make mindful living a daily discipline. Rumination and racing thoughts dominate an addict’s brain. Medication is helpful and is often overprescribed. Addicts need to learn to sit and settle into themselves. But, present and past traumatic experiences haunt and taunt every addict. Ultimately, addicts need to practice mindful living. This involves learning to become solid with yourself.

Addicts are taught to live one day, even one hour, at a time. Yet two eternities, yesterday and tomorrow play tug of war with an addict’s brain. Remorse or bitterness for something, that happened yesterday, or the dread of what tomorrow may bring, distracts an addict’s attention from the here and now.

Mindfulness confronts monkey brain activity with calm and presence. Nothing needs to change, only needs to be noticed and observed. For a period of time, the mind rebels and dismisses the idea of quietly embracing the challenge to simply sit with whatever is present in the mind.

In the beginning, it is work that shifts, in time, to acceptance, followed by peace and calm.

Mindfulness cultivates faith in yourself and belief and confidence in your insights. It’s the place where you can grow the seed of compassion for self and others. It points to that which is solid—the sun, the ocean, the mountain. It leads you to those who are solid in their recovery. Those you know are solid like the mountain, the ocean and the sun. Those who through mindful living have calmed their monkey brain. Make mindfulness a daily practice.

2. Manage the closed-heart dynamic by practicing open-hearted living. Addicts learned to close their heart. They operate with a zero sum mentality. There are losers and winners. They desperately want to win but inwardly believe they are losers. Losing inevitably wins out because addict’s live life with a closed heart.

In recovery, addicts learn to open their hearts to other possibilities. Thoughts like “to win you gotta lose” and; to be more you gotta be less” are paradigm shifts in thinking that blow the mind of an addict.

Opening your heart is scary. Being emotionally naked to someone is overwhelming. Then, to live life this way as a constant is off the planet! Yet, open-hearted living is the only place where sobriety and serenity can thrive. It cultivates humility, spirituality, and is the place you can go down and explore your own brilliance.

Do you know who you, are or what ideas you, are closed to? Do you know why you are closed to that thought, idea, or person? Do you know what scares the shit out of you and triggers your monkey brain? Recovery requires that you be open to that thought, person, and unwanted feeling. Lean into it. It doesn’t mean that you have to do anything. Just simply be emotionally naked to the thought and be open. In time, it will spawn joy and happiness. It is the very property of open-hearted living.

3. Focus on quality and depth rather than quantity and breadth. More isn’t always better. The culture in America is consumption-driven. The mentality is to make your stock value at least $1 more this year than last and next year even more yet into perpetuity. Cancer grows that way. Do you ever tell yourself enough is enough?

Addicts in recovery must learn their limits or else they lose themselves in the consumerism of their drug of choice. A consumer mentality fuels monkey-brain thinking. It becomes an unguarded thought that invades and dominates and destroys life balance.

Addicts are forever seeking ways they can stretch their limits to live like “normies,” Why can’t I drink socially and control my drinking? Pot is not addictive, so why not an occasional doobie? What’s the problem with a 14-hour day? The world applauds achievement, don’t they? Questions like these rattle through the brains of recovering addicts every day.

What becomes elusive is the quality of depth. What every addict must learn is that their addiction is a clarion call that more of what others do is not better. What is better is the call to go deep within oneself, to explore the depth of one’s own brilliance in the context of one’s limitations. Personal brilliance is deeper than any of us know. Even Jesus said, “he who believes will do the works that I do and even greater things than these.” Belief is cultivated by going deep into oneself and connecting to your own personal brilliance. Trust the journey of quality and depth. It always exceeds quantity and breadth.

Addicts manage the junkie worm blues and monkey brain thinking that sabotages recovery by cultivating their own brilliance through mindful practice and open-hearted living.

Junkie Worm Blues #4 – Grounding Skills

October 11, 2024 by Ken Wells

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“Life can only be found in the present moment. Your true home is in the here and the now.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

The greatest challenge I have ever had in addiction recovery is being present in the here and now. If this is where my true home exists, there have been many days that I have spent on the road, even though geographically I am home. I become preoccupied with yesterday’s behavior, thoughts, and other people’s actions. I have engaged my mind for hours thinking about the anticipation of tomorrow’s activities and what I need to do or what I think about what the responsibility of others should be. Some days there is a nonstop ping-pong match between past and future that preoccupies my mind and keeps me from being just where I am. This mind mesh unmanaged triggers the junkie worm blues.

In your recovery do you know this dynamic? It short circuits the serenity of sobriety. It creates a brown out from self empowerment. It breeds an environment that is ripe for relapse. Here are some short suggestions to manage past and future distractions that pull you away from the present moment.

1. Practice noticing nature: We live our lives as if everything is centered around our perceived wants and needs. I am in the process of deepening my awareness that when I am distracted and stuck wallowing in past thoughts and behaviors or worrying about the future nature can bring me back to the present. Nature is sacred in this manner. Thich Nhat Hanh reflected “Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” Nature brings us back to the present. Black Elk, the Oglala Sioux leader, offered grounding in this description “What is Life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. The True Peace. The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Taka (the Great Spirit), and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this.”

Eckart Tolle said, “You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are. Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life. Sometimes, letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.” The practice of noticing the nature around you cultivates the awareness of being present in the here and now.

2. Slow down and do things mindfully. Meditation brings us back to center. Some people have found grounding by doing a walking meditation, feeling their feet connected to the earth, their bodies at one with the trees and animal life around them. They experience the energy of life by inhaling the breath of fresh air in the great outdoors and taking in the warmth of the constant sun. Recovery author Melodie Beattie wrote, “At no day, no hour, no time are you required to do more than you can do in peace.” Shifting to a slower speed can help you center yourself and promote a clear perspective in recovery.

3. Pay attention to your purchasing patterns. It is easy to lose yourself in the frenzy of consumerism. We have all compulsively purchased something we did not need. There is an amazing number of people who have bought items that they don’t even take out of the box. It is important to ask yourself what the compulsive urge to buy something is all about. What emotion am I trying to avoid? Compulsive purchases not only block awareness of emotional needs, it will set you up to feed the junkie worm in your addiction.

4. Cultivate sensitivity to ways that you presume upon the people around you. If you are an addict and an entrepreneur, you must pay attention to this subtle yet dangerous dynamic in behavior. Are there people around you that you take for granted? Do you expect others to take care of your personal needs? In what ways do you presume upon those around you, your partner, family, colleagues, and those who work for you? It is easy to create a calloused expectation about those who are hired or in a relationship with you that subtly fuels entitlement. Celebrity status is dangerous this way. Most of us think of celebrities as Hollywood, athletic, or rock star status people. But, we are all celebrities in our own world. There are people who look to you and tend to put you on a pedestal no matter who you are or the world you live. Pay attention to the way in which you might presume upon them. The presumption always accelerates an entitled attitude. Entitlement comes from deprivation. Ask yourself what legitimate need must be met that when neglected triggers me to presume upon someone else to meet that need.

Sensitivity to the present moment, nature, and personal patterns that lead to destructive behavior are necessary grounding skills in managing the junkie worm that wants to be fed one way or the other.

Junkie Worm Blues #3 – Outside Distractions

October 8, 2024 by Ken Wells

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“Our boundaries define our personal space–-and we need to be sovereign there in order to be able to step into our full power and potential.” – Jessica Moore

People who are in a relationship with addicts learn to read them like a book. However, oftentimes they deny what they see. For an addict, they don’t even see what is. The ominous cloud of relapse builds when both the addict and support ignore the obvious and embrace the improbable.

Ultimately, as an addict, you are responsible for reading the tea leaves in your life. No one else is responsible for recognizing high risk and managing it but you. Sometimes I hear addicts lament “I need a kick-ass therapist” or a “kick-ass sponsor”. I have learned that ultimately you have to be your own “kick-ass”. In life, we all must learn to be both steel and velvet. Typically, addicts tend to be gentle where they need to be steel and steel where they need to be gentle.

Reading the tea leaves means managing outside distractions that inevitably weigh lay recovery. There are many outside distractions. Hindrances to recovery require boundaries, both internal and external. In the beginning stages of recovery, addicts are in crisis. They gladly do anything to ease the discomfort and save themselves from the crisis they have created by acting out. Over time, the pain eases. That’s when outside distractions come into play. Addicts begin to fit recovery tasks around their lives rather than build their lives around recovery. It can be a subtle shift but it quickly becomes lethal to both sobriety and serenity. The list of outside distractions is many. I want to address one that seems subtle but is prevalent and stymies recovery growth while triggering relapse.

The pressure to function for others

Addicts who want to prioritize their recovery don’t get a pass for being responsible for the demands of everyday living. Those who have taken a break and went to rehab, face the demands of everyday life whenever they step back into their real world. There are family obligations, hopefully work pressures, and suddenly from a sequestered environment, they are faced with the immediate stress to function for others. Many addicts flip out right here.

The outside distractions to function for others who face addiction recovery are immense. Let’s talk about an important one.

Family

There are important family obligations. How do you reintegrate, particularly when your family is dysfunctional? You do that with boundaries, internally as well as externally. Caring for others will look different. In recovery, you must be in control of your life. This means removing toxic influences from your life, including family members. For some, you will need to distance yourself—lovingly but firmly. For others, you will need to practice saying no. It may feel awkward but “No” is a complete sentence. Without internal boundaries, you will lose yourself in the world that gobbled you up in the first place.

If you are in a relationship with a significant other, you both will need recovery support. After all, you did betray them and they have been traumatized by your behavior. Sometimes partners do not want support. The response is that it is your problem, fix it! Addicts are not the only ones who deny the obvious and embrace the improbable. Here’s the scenario. You just ran over your partner with a big Mac truck. It would not make sense for the paramedics to rush to the scene of the accident and pick up you, the driver, and then rush you to the emergency room of the hospital while leaving your partner, the victim, on the side of the road to figure out how to heal! But, that’s the reality when your betrayed partner refuses to accept treatment for the betrayal behavior. Yet, you cannot control your partner’s response. It becomes a distraction to your own recovery. You must practice letting go of your partner’s decision and continue practicing your own recovery.

There are many family dynamics that can become outside distractions to your addiction recovery. You will be required to establish boundaries to maintain sobriety.

Managing outside distractions can be messy. Your success in doing so will be the sum of small steps, repeated day in and day out. When you get out of balance, recalibrate, get back up, and re-balance your priorities. Ignore the temptation to judge yourself by daily results. Pay attention to the seeds of maturity that you are planting. You will become stronger and more resilient in the doing. There’s an old Buddhist proverb that says once you are facing in the right direction, all you have to do is keep walking. When things go wrong just don’t go with them. Make recovery first so that everything you love in life doesn’t have to come last.

Recovery is about living an authentic and meaningful life. You will need to practice the reality that there will be times when your recovery boundaries will disappoint and upset others. Sometimes people you care most about will feel hurt because of your boundaries. It will be important to learn to sit in the reality that some people will reject you and not accept your recovery life and boundaries. It won’t be easy, but it will be essential if you want your life to reflect and fulfill your deepest desires, values, and needs.

Junkie Worm Blues #2 – Managing What Matters

October 4, 2024 by Ken Wells

READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.

“One day of practice is like one day of clean living. It doesn’t do you any good”. – Abe Lemons

One of the crazy experiences about life is that the average experience is so daily. What is average for an addict is the junkie worm blues. Addicts struggle with daydreaming about using. It’s an obsessional fantasy that feels like it never stops. It does but, the tunnel of craving makes it seem never-ending. Most addicts succumb to the junkie worm. We seldom hear about their years of lonely booking dominated by their drug of choice. There are millions of unheard stories of those who pursued their junkie worm blues into oblivion. Each author of an unheard story was an unrepeatable miracle of the universe who simply lost their way into insensibility. Most die that way.

Recovery offers an option. You don’t have to die that way. Addiction is the only prison where the locks are on the inside. Recovery is not a pathway whereby life gets easier and more forgiving. It is a way for you to become stronger and more resilient. Caring for yourself is not self-indulgent. It’s an act of survival. When craving is its strongest it is likened to a bitter cold snap in the winter. Recovery provides the warmth of the summer sun on the inside. It says that no matter how hard the junkie worm pushes against sobriety, there is within you something stronger, pushing right back that buoys you and helps you to maintain center and balance. However, it requires daily practice. Abe Lemons is right, “one day of practice doesn’t do any good”.

Consider daily practicing the following:

1. Practice the basics every day: The other day I heard an addict who was struggling to say to a group of guys who were practicing recovery, “You all speak a foreign language and are impossible to understand. I am not who you are and cannot understand why you do what you do or say what you say”. He’s right, recovering addicts practice a different language and do things far different than when they were practicing addicts. Until you decide to stop acting out and surrender to practicing recovery, the behaviors of recovering addicts won’t make any sense whatsoever.

What are the basics? Doing the 12-steps. Many recovering addicts say they did the steps. But, doing the steps is a lifetime endeavor, not a one-and-done. It doesn’t mean you need to fill out someone’s workbook forever! It does mean that you skillfully assess your life on a daily basis with the 12-steps as a tool for intervention. The 12-steps become a lifestyle, not a goal to complete.

The basics include going to meetings and reaching out to other recovering addicts. Addicts stuck in relapse or who haven’t relapsed but who are stuck in victim posture, fail to reach out. They talk about their phone weighing 500 lbs, and they complain about wherever they are stuck, and don’t go to meetings or connect with others outside the meeting. Eventually, they complain that the 12-step meetings don’t work. Like medicine prescribed by the physician, when you don’t take the med, strangely it doesn’t work and symptoms remain the same!

2. Empower yourself with a deep belief in who you are. It’s not about what you do but who you are. Many addicts believe that they can create successful outcomes and they do! But, doing more never covers up for feeling less. As an addict, you must be willing to go deep down within and face your insecurities, shortcomings, and what you don’t like about yourself. Embrace and believe in who you are. Most addicts deeply believe that if you know what I know about me you would reject me. Ultimately, managing the junkie worm will require that you practice deeply believing in who you are, not what you can do!

3. Anchor yourself with others who believe in you. None of us do recovery in isolation. An early church father, St. John of the Cross, once said “A lone coal outside of the fire soon grows cold”. The fire inside that fuels recovery must be fed by those who believe in who they are. Included are other addicts, loved ones, and those who have gone before you. You must create a grandstand of support from those who deeply believe in who you are. You can access your forefathers, not only those who have passed on who have known you but also those who have inspired you through their writings or lives lived that you have read about. Put all of them in the grandstand of those cheering and believing in who you are.

While practice does not make perfect, it does create the fuel for an addict to progress through the junkie worm blues.

Junkie Worm Blues #1

October 1, 2024 by Ken Wells

READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.

“What’s this thing about the barbershop? And who do you know hangs out there?”
“Addicts do”!
“Really”?
Yeah, and when they hang out too long, they generally get a haircut!”
— Anonymous from one of the guys hanging out at the barbershop

One thing is for sure if you are an addict, you want to do it again and again. It is common for consequences to scare the shit out of you and freeze the junkie worm. But summer always comes and the junkie worm always thaws and pushes to be back in business again. You may run as hard as you can to escape the wolves that chase you through the woods but the junkie worm tells you there’s magic just one more time. So how do you deal with the junkie worm blues?

During the next few blogs, I want to share short vignettes of reflection and suggestions of what I have learned over the past 35 years about managing the junkie worm blues.

1. Yesterday’s addictive actions were an aberration to who you are: You were then and are now an unrepeatable miracle of the universe. Your behaviors are not who you are. It is important to realize that yesterday ended last night. Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.

2. Practice healthy affirmation: It’s a nice thought, but it is usually the last idea you want to consider implementing if you have acted out, again! However, affirming your being, not the addictive behavior, and acting on the affirmation in spite of the critical voice that screams ‘You are a fake, a sham, and a piece of shit’ is the secret to ending addictive behavior for the long term.

3. Embracing your feelings is a paradox. There is a time to sit with your feelings and a time to ignore them and do the next right thing. Recovery wouldn’t be so hard if it wasn’t such a paradox. Addicts struggle to recognize and embrace any feelings. Yet, without being able to sit with feelings, they will never recover. So, once you enroll in kindergarten to identify feelings, you also have to learn that when feelings, like shame and guilt, come up and demand that you wallow in the pig pen of failure, you must learn to ignore those feelings and do the next right thing. It’s a moving dynamic that requires practice, consultation and accountability.

4. Commit to writing out and talking about your feelings every day. In the beginning, for an addict, the conversation about feelings will be short. It is always hard. Stay with them anyway. Your feelings will tell you what need must be met in a healthy way.

5. Practice deep breathing. Your breathing will open or block feelings that come from the heart. It doesn’t take much to breathe deeply from your diaphragm. It will touch your anxiety and break through stress to help you know what you feel which will tell you how to take care of yourself under the duress of every day living.

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