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Junkie Worm Blues #2 – Managing What Matters

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“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

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“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.

Recovery Lesson From A House Fly

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“Persistence does not mean banging your head against the wall repeatedly and hoping it shall break one day. That’s just going to break your head. Persistence is about having the common sense to come back with a sledgehammer to break the wall. If that doesn’t work, come back with a bulldozer. If that doesn’t work, use dynamite. If that doesn’t work, look around a little bit to see if there is a hidden door in the wall that you missed! If that doesn’t work, just find another damn wall or stop looking for walls at all.” 
―Anubhav Srivastava,

I was watching a common house fly bang up against the window pane in my living room. When I snuck up on it with my leather fly swatter, it took off into the hinterparts of my house only to return again and again to the light and warmth of the window pane, willing to face seeking escape from the fear of death of my leather fly swatter. The fly was quick and alert and I missed smashing him against the window sill many times. I thought to myself why doesn’t this fly realize that he cannot break through the window sill? Does he not know that sooner or later his options for escape from the swatter will run out? Why not look for a hole in the screen at the back of my house or wait till the door opens and then exit? This predictable pattern repeated itself until even the quick and savvy fly ran out of escapes and fell victim to a swat, becoming unrecognizable, smashed on the window sill. 

As I contemplated the demise of the house fly I thought about what keeps us stuck in behaviors that sabotage our recovery growth or trigger us toward unhealthy, high risk behaviors. Addicts are like house flies,  banging up against the window pane– seeking that which is beyond our reach and control. 

To the fly, freedom looked so clear through the window pane, feeling the warmth of the sun. It just couldn’t figure out that freedom was never going to happen by banging against the pane to avoid death!

I want you to think about what it is that deters and stymies your recovery growth. Why do you keep banging your head against the window pane in your life? Does the warmth of other suns from one more fling tell you that somehow you can break through the window pane once and for all and find your bliss? Does the junkie worm with con and cajole tell you ‘there’s magic just one more time’? Do you tell yourself that there is something richer, deeper than sobriety? Do you tell yourself that no matter what you say about who you are or what you do, you are never understood? Does lonely booking with an ugly shame-over trigger disconnect and make you want to forget the permanence of the window pane? Do you find yourself running as hard as you can with all the mojo you can muster to avoid the fly swatter? With whip and whimper, darkness and defeat, have you discovered that there’s no magic or mojo in your addictive pursuit? With all the meaning of life squeezed out, does emptiness reside with no escape route? 

Then try compassion which is love birthed inside before it makes its way out. Let it grow in the midst of struggle, in the heart that is weary with wrestle and wrangle. Embrace the turmoil of anger and hate and their powers that nag and rag and never let go with the strength of self love. When you face what you fear and embrace what you feel, you transform your insides—the rage and hate—to something that is real. It’s been the only thing I know that provides an effective escape route from the fly swatter.  It transforms a lot of hell into a little bit of heaven called sobriety.

What to Say When the Truth is You Don’t Know

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The discovery of relational betrayal is a shocking experience for everyone connected to the gauntlet of disclosure. The betrayer is challenged to expose hidden secrets that destroy trust. The betrayed waits for words that are daggers to the heart. The end result is a crushing carnage of hurt that cripples and at times is irreparable. 

Couples who try to survive this tsunami of emotional pain experience a roller coaster of devastating feelings that rock their foundation. Stress on the relationship is extreme. Often, the betrayer doesn’t disclose all of the details, and the betrayed is left to wait for the next shoe to fall. The betrayer pulls away from further details of disclosure like someone retreating after touching a hot stove. Heartache and anger are inevitable to the betrayed in the presence of shock and disbelief. The intensity escalates each partner to polarizing positions toward each other. 

Addicts often ask, “What do I say when my partner asks why I betrayed and then did it again? Were you thinking of me before you decided to violate your vows to me?” The question begs for an answer and a salve that will make the pain go away. The dilemma is that no matter what you say there is no fix because you cannot make the pain go away with words. Many addicts panic when asked why because they don’t know the answer and can’t think of a solution.

There are a few things you can do.

1. You can respond by saying it straight. Tell on yourself when you have minimized or omitted hurtful admissions. Clarify your behavior that added a crazy-making environment to your betrayed partner. Surrender to the distrust your partner felt because of your deceit. When asked “Why would you do this to me and your kids?” Be honest. Don’t evade tough questions. If you don’t know, admit it. In time, recovery and treatment will help you know why and you can express your understanding then. However, in the moment be clear and truthful and let go of trying to fix your partner’s anguish. Easier said than done but necessary.

2. Let go of trying to fix your partner’s pain.  When you see your partner in agony, it is normal to want to say or do something to take away the pain. Trying to fix it by saying what you think they want to hear will backfire. Saying you’re sorry and promising to never do the behavior again will not take away the never-ending pain. Betrayers who obsessively try to fix their betrayed partner’s hurt with attempts at solution responses focus on trying to escape not only their partner’s pain but also their own self-contempt. Healing advances for both parties when the hurt from devastation is recognized. The only way to resolve the pain is to go through the heartache and the intense feelings that accompany broken trust.  So, stop repeating “I’m sorry!” Don’t offer any more solutions for the betrayed partner’s pain. Sit with your own disturbed breach of personal values. Let this journey be your path to healing. Allow your partner to have their personal struggle to get through your crippling conduct.

3. You can validate! Replace empty promises and apologies with validating words and behavior. When your partner screams out in pain, simply validate that what they feel makes sense and is as awful as they feel and express. When pain is expressed by those you’ve hurt, save explanations of your behavior and simply validate. Later will be a better time to give the needed explanation. Needed apologies are appropriate after you have painstakingly validated the harm you have done when your partner expresses grief and hurt from your betrayal. 

You will need to validate your own pain. Becoming busy with recovery programs, vocational work, or tending to family activities can become a way of escape and avoidance from your own emotional pain. You will need to validate your pain in order to authentically be present for the pain of your betrayed partner. 

Essentially, betrayal is a traumatization of both the betrayer and the betrayed. You will need to say it straight to yourself and your partner.  You will need to lean into the pain of your hurtful behavior. There are no words that fix it. Healing will require that you validate yourself and the one whose heart is broken by your betrayal behavior. These actions are more healing than the words you choose to explain or attempt to alleviate the pain in the presence of betrayal behavior. 

Taking Time To Learn From Yesterday

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“Life is meant to be lived forward but can only be understood backwards.” —Soren Kierkegaard

Many times people disconnect their past from their present experience. In the addiction recovery world, there is a reference made to walking around the elephant in the living room. It highlights how denial fuels the function of addictive behavior.  In order to survive, an addict learns to live a pretend life by ignoring what is real and embracing what is fictitious.  This dysfunctional way of living paves a pathway toward addiction behavior. People learn to live a disconnected life.

Twenty-five hundred years ago, the Buddha emphasized the importance of the interconnectedness of everything. He said for us to look at a leaf.  It contains the sky, the earth, and the sun in terms of what it needs to grow. He said the birth and death of any phenomenon is related to the birth and death of all other phenomena.  The one contains the many and the many contain the one. Without the one, there cannot be the many and without the many there cannot be the one. 

Life is interconnected. It becomes a tapestry that weaves the healthy experience with the dysfunctional. It connects bitter with sweet. It couples joy with sorrow and success with failure. It is all intersectional.

Important studies suggest that people are biopsychosocial beings. This means that we cannot isolate our physical essence from our mind and we cannot separate the individual from the environment. The history of your environmental background is significant for you to better understand the struggles that you experience around addictive behavior. Studies show that growing up in a family with a lot of stress and relational isolation impacts children’s ability to learn. A child learns to dissociate from stress and anxiety in early childhood. Later the child easily connects the numbing out with addictive behavior.

Studies show that economics matter too. People who are poor face more stress than others. They are more likely to breathe polluted air, have less access to healthcare, and be unable to address preventative health concerns, including emotional concerns because they do not have the resources to do so. They are more likely to become a victim of a system that considers material things more important than connection as human beings. 

All of this suggests it is important to look backward in order to understand your present addictive behavior. Your addiction indicates a desire to escape stress and anxiety, not only present but historical. You will need to unpack childhood stress in order to release its destructive impact. Many parents have done their best while facing impossible circumstances.  Understanding your addiction as not a result of poor choices but as a coping mechanism that evolved from unmet needs or abuse will help you integrate effective treatment so that you can look forward without being dominated by addiction. 

Studies show that you are actually wired for connection, love, and compassion. A supportive 12-step community can have a huge impact on long-term sobriety. Here are some suggestions to help you reconnect your past with your present. 

1. Connect with nature:  Take a walk through the woods. Notice the energy of life all around you. Slow your thoughts and connect your awareness to the plant life, the birds in the air, and the ants on the ground. See yourself as a part of the greater energy of life.

2. Connect with others: Studies show that we have less contact, intimacy, and trust with others than ever before. Call a friend. Take time to listen to what’s important in their life. Take time to share what is important to you.  Be willing to be vulnerable. Share what hurts and longings that are left unmet. Risk trusting that your friend cares about what matters to you. Put yourself out there and show that you care what matters to them.

3. Connect with what is meaningful in your work: Many experience their work as meaningless. There is no vision or passion. As a result, they turn to how they look, the accumulation of things, etc. But, they have no sense of value in what they do at their work. Determine to reconnect with making a difference in what you do for work. It may be something that others will not notice when you do it. You may not be rewarded financially.  Yet, finding meaningfulness in your work will help you reconnect with yourself.

4. Connect with yourself: Most people have had gut feelings that they ignored and wish they hadn’t.  This suggests that some people learn to separate from themselves. Two-year-olds know what they feel in their gut and express it. Gut feelings tell us what is friendly and what is dangerous. They tell us what is true and what is false. Take time to listen to your heart. Pay attention to your feelings. It will help you regain connection with yourself and integrate that connection with the world around you. 

Being connected to yourself, others, and the world around you requires that you embrace the insights from the past while keeping your eyes focused on the present moment. We are biopsychosocial beings that need healthy connections with all living things. 

Sabotage: Feeling Good About Feeling Bad

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“I decry the injustice of my wounds, only to look down and see that I am holding a smoking gun in one hand and a fistful of ammunition in the other.” – Craig D. Lounsbrough

I played one year of football in high school. It was my senior year. It was memorable for all the wrong reasons. We were bad — not just bad but pathetic. If Charlie Brown were playing and Lucy was the coach, you’d want to place your bets with Charlie’s team. We had a 300-pound ex-NFL player for a coach who was not as inflated as were the expectations that year for our football team. I had never played organized football prior to that year. Other guys on the team were not much better. We printed twenty thousand “Go Go 9-0” bumper stickers — one for every person in our small town, signifying a perfect season. 

We accomplished the goal—backasswards! We went 0-9. Our closest game was our first, with a school that was about half our size. From then on, we considered ourselves to have a good game if we stayed within 3 touchdowns of all the rest of the schools we played. We seldom scored. Whoever it was that crossed the goal line, stood there in a trance. There was no dance in the end zone. It was like what am I supposed to do next? Even when we did good things, we would talk ourselves out of it with a series of penalties that sabotaged all reason for hope. 

Self-sabotage is a common undermining experience in recovery from addiction. Most addicts experience thoughts of recovery likened to the experience with football that was just described. Euphoric pink clouding fuels inspiration with motivating beliefs of “I got this!” only to be crushed in debilitating defeat with an addictive binge. Addicts often feel uncomfortable with sobriety. Not using seems too saintly. Leaving old patterns is like leaving old friends. Oddly, it can feel like betrayal! Successful sobriety with accompanying peace and calm begins to feel boring without the chaos of out-of-controlled living. Frequently, I listen to addicts share that it feels familiar, even good to feel bad!

There is a certain companionship and camaraderie with self-destruction. Rock bottom is a surprisingly comfortable place to lay your head. Looking up from the depths of another low often seems a lot safer than wondering when you’ll fall again. Falling feels awful. Addicts can willfully shoot themselves in the foot to protect themselves from confronting their own shortcomings.  Micromanaging others, passive-aggression, chronic lateness, and perfectionism all undermine the stability of sobriety. Some addicts can even argue that these traits are strengths and not weaknesses.  Yet, they prevent the addict from blooming sobriety and serenity. 

Here are a few considerations that can be helpful in working through self-sabotaging behaviors.

1. A zero-sum mentality fuels self-sabotage. Life perspective is damaged when we reduce our vision of people in the world to winners and losers. Mohammad Javad Zarif observed “If you look to the international scene over the past many years, we haven’t been able to resolve many problems and many crises, because we have approached them from a zero-sum perspective. My gain has always been defined as somebody else’s loss, and through that, we never resolve problems.” Self-sabotage is empowered when I adopt this mentality which reduces life to winners and losers. When you define the essence of life as either winning or losing, you set yourself up for self sabotage. When being a winner makes someone else a loser, life becomes “us” versus “them”.  We become like crabs in a bucket, any of which could easily climb out, except that others will claw the one climbing out over and again, securing that none escape. A zero sum mentality will reduce the self-confidence of others who succeed with envy, resentment, and conspiracy. It will sabotage the success of the other. Sobriety is not about comparison or competition. There is enough sobriety for everyone to experience and the depths of serenity have yet to be mined to exhaustion. Only a short-sighted perspective sabotages the reality that each person is an unrepeatable miracle of the universe.

2. Overcoming self-sabotage will require that you love yourself. Shame undermines self-love. When you go against your values and hurt others you sabotage loving yourself. You set in motion the operation of self-sabotage. Hating yourself for hurting others only activates the self-sabotage of continuing the same hurtful behavior toward self and others. It forms a wicked vortex that cripples with self-destruction. This contributes to the reason addicts struggle to tolerate happiness without self-sabotage. They don’t love themselves. Addicts become wired to the attitude that any reason is a good reason to hate yourself. Addictive ruin seals the deal. This is the most difficult challenge for every addict—to LOVE YOURSELF NO MATTER WHAT the outcome or behavior. You don’t beat yourself up to a better place. But, you can love yourself into a new reality about life. The sole factor that determines long-term sobriety and deepening serenity is when an addict learns to love him/herself unconditionally. This is not a black-or-white experience. You practice moving from hating yourself to hating and loving yourself, to loving yourself predominantly by learning to transform self-hatred into self-love. It happens when you give yourself some time, stop wallowing in the mud of misbelief, embrace affirmation and ignore the critical voice that sabotages your destiny. This will require ongoing conditioning. There is no shortcut.

3. Mistaken beliefs will fuel self sabotage. Your shaky sense of self sits on a foundation of mistaken beliefs. You cannot be intimate with yourself when your head is full of crap. You have to stalk your mistaken beliefs. Know them like the back of your hand. Make friends with them. If you learn to respect them, they will teach you how and where to love yourself. Don’t bullshit yourself. When a mistaken belief is activated, listen to what hurts that makes the mistaken belief operational. Then address it with gentleness and affirmative belief about yourself and the situation at hand. Practice reframing the negative cognition into inspirational insight and positive affirmation. The art of reframing the negative into something positive is often overlooked by those in recovery. It helps to take what is and make it work, simply by the way you choose to think about yourself. Most mistaken beliefs do not go away but they can be managed and transformed into empowered belief that overcomes self sabotage.

4. Give up the story line of Victimization. The truth is that we have all been victimized in the world we live. It is not helpful to minimize and ignore this reality nor does it create a resolution to wallow in the throes of resentment, disappointment and holding a grudge toward those who have the power or have persecuted with their agency. Sometimes the victimization is complex and requires an ongoing clarion call toward action and systemic change for healing and transformation. Yet ultimately, overcoming personal/collective injury will require that you give up the storyline of victimization in order to address self sabotage. Giving up the storyline does not mean you pretend that the violation never occurred. Giving up the storyline is accomplished when the injury is recognized, and then you grasp self empowerment to address those who have been injured and demand negotiating wants, needs, and expectations for healing and respect. When this healing is enacted, you are able to take what is and create meaningfulness in living. It does not mean that I accept domination and control from another. Rather, it suggests that I refuse to give my power away to another’s insensitivity, as I power my way into a new reconstruction of reality and transformation with confidence and equanimity. The hegemony of another is overcome by the embrace of your own power changes the storyline from one of victimization to one of recognized empowerment and efficacy. We are bound to feel anxious as we leave behind old notions of our unworthiness. The challenge is not to be fearless but to develop strategies for acknowledging our fears and finding out how we can allay them.

    Sabotage is a common thread experience that ties us all together- People who want to lose weight, get a degree, exercise, run a marathon, make peace with relatives, drain the pain of childhood trauma often wallow in self sabotage. Many people stop short of attainment because they listen to the voice of self-sabotage that tells them they do not deserve the results of successful completion. It can be more familiar and comfortable to sit with victimization than it is to give up the storyline and live life free of addictive demand, resentment, grudge and victimization. Self sabotage can be like going to the candy store to pick out any candy that you would like and walking away with a sack of Horehound candy. It’s bitter and hard but it’s what I am used to. Inner peace will be achieved when you stop looking for something to change on the outside and you create a change in perspective on the inside. 

    The Importance of Resilience on the Road to Recovery

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    “Rock bottom became the solid foundation in which I rebuilt my life.” – J.K. Rowling

    Most of us in recovery have our own description of “rock bottom”.  Some have lost everything while others’ experience of failure led them to a place of spiritual bankruptcy and despair without losing it all. In recovery, without resilience, every lapse or relapse becomes a “rock bottom” experience. Like a helicopter that loses its ability to sit in midair and drops from the sky with a thud, an addict can do the same. Triggered by failure to maintain sobriety, an addict can cyclically wallow with despair and anxiety. This pattern is unsustainable for long-term sobriety. The standard course correction requires an infusion of resilience. The capacity of resilience is defined as the ability to recover quickly from difficulty. It is the elasticity to bounce back from the adversity of failure. Without resilience, long-term recovery is impossible. 

    During my time in recovery, I’ve seen that the folks who do not learn to bounce back when they have screwed up usually wallow with shame in defeat and failure. What usually happens is that they become swamped with shame in their failure, which typically adds fuel to the flame of further relapse. To complicate matters, when the addict’s support system observes the chronic relapse, they may become discouraged and doubt that the addict is taking recovery seriously and think the recovery plan is ineffective. This response has a boomerang impact on the addict who might descend into deeper despair believing that recovery and sobriety are unattainable. Addicts who get caught in this downward spiral can be swept away and quickly re-engage in an old mindset of acting out patterns that have often permanently derailed attempts at recovery. This fragile house of cards of support in recovery can collapse and the chances of bouncing back, getting traction, and moving forward are jeopardized or destroyed.

    There is no addict who is not vulnerable to the possibility of relapse. Regarding sexual addiction, it is common for an addict to relapse. A key question is, will an addict recognize this possibility, address it and purposefully bring himself back to the center of his recovery?

    To do this an addict will need to establish a strong position in keeping the shame of the act out on the behavior and away from his or her sense of being. No easy task.  Acting out is about behavior and not about who you are as a person. As a person, you are an unrepeatable miracle of the universe. The acting out behavior is an aberration to who you are — not who you are. When this perspective can be maintained, it positions the addict to be able to protect his or her own personhood with healthy emotional self-care. It helps the addict to transform the shame of the behavior into compassion and care for the one who was injured as a result of acting out. This balanced focus can only occur through conditioned training of the heart and mind. However, when this skill set is cultivated it empowers a shift from wallowing in despair to solid grounding skills that will help to bring an addict back to center and create long-term recovery. 

    Recovering addicts who have established long-term recovery have learned to bring themselves back to center no matter how much they want to lament or engage in self. Rather than beat themselves up they decidedly move back to center and adopt self-care. This is the difference that I notice between those who have long-term sobriety and those who suffer chronic relapse. 

    Resilience is commonly mentioned as a positive characteristic of recovery but often overlooked as being critical to the development of long-term sobriety in recovery.

    Relationship Rabbit Holes

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    “If you don’t know where you are going any path will get you there, except the path leading to a rabbit hole.” – Anonymous

    Addicts are forever getting hooked on issues that lead to a rabbit hole. A rabbit hole in a relationship looks like an old argument never settled where either party could avoid the front end and go to the back end of the conflict, and just fight endings. Both know the content and are stuck with no solution, ending at the same place where they started. Rabbit holes always bring you back where you began with no change in position. Rabbit hole experiences are strange, confusing, and hard to escape. 

    Motivated by guilt from past affairs, Tom, a sex addict, consented to late-night questions that led to an all too familiar fight with his partner. They never ended or resolved anything. By 3 am Tom was not only exhausted but felt as guilty as he ever did before the fight began. This fight is repeated regularly.  The painful pattern of going down the rabbit hole late at night is common to many addicts and conflicted relationships. Addicts often think going down the rabbit hole with their partner is a form of penance they must pay because of their destructive behavior. 

    Annette, who found out about her sex addict husband’s numerous one-night stands, took the bait and tried to monitor his every move with trackers, cellphone finders, and all sorts of investigative techniques. Her goal was to keep him safe from any possibility of future act-outs. She never really felt safe in the relationship. She learned in the disclosure that he secretly kept a separate phone and used his regular phone as a decoy to cover his tracks. He even parked his car in a place he announced he would be and was picked up by an affair partner for a tryst that lasted about the time he said he would be at the false location. Turned out his wife’s efforts for safety took her down a rabbit hole.

    How many times have partners to addicts listened to empty promises and hollow commitments that led to a rabbit hole? How can you avoid a rabbit hole in your recovery and in your relationships?

    1. Be a spectator when invited to the race: Rabbit holes in relationships resemble a race. Like a race, the environment is familiar. The opponents know each other. But, unlike a race, where the goal is to declare a winner, the intent of a relationship rabbit hole is to create a game more about whiners than declaring a winner in the conversation. So when you find yourself entering a conversation about an old argument, choose to be a spectator and observe rather than going down the rabbit hole thinking you’ll win when ultimately it’s just a time to whine with nothing ever changed.

    2. Detach: Rabbit holes in relationships can be like black ice. Before you realize what’s happened, you have slipped and fallen into a rabbit hole, finding yourself in an old haunted conflict engaging the same old dance with the same results, exhausted with no change. When you realize you have fallen into a rabbit hole, catch yourself in mid-sentence and stop. Detach! Simply stop in your tracks. Take a deep breath and let go of the energy. Refuse to continue. It will be awkward but the pattern interrupt will enable you to get out of the rabbit hole. This tactic can be especially helpful around conflicts that involve political disagreements and global warming conversations as well as crazy-making relationship fights.

    3. Build boundaries that don’t blow others away. Today, with social media, it is popular to be rude and tell people to go to hell or to shut up. Some people identify this as disrespecting boundaries. Yet, boundaries are not designed to control someone else’s behavior with rude remarks. Boundaries are established so that you can manage your own behavior, not others. A great way to avoid a relationship rabbit hole is to establish a boundary and not engage in the verbal vitriol that is promised to ensue from incendiary language. Silence can serve as a great boundary. Rather than go down the rabbit hole that you have engaged in countless times before, simply remain silent. Smile with acknowledgment or say “I hear what you are saying.” When someone pushes you to respond, set a boundary and say no more. You don’t have a boundary without a consequence, not to punish but to take care of yourself. When things get circular so that round and round you go, simply end your part of the conversation. It’s a simple way to avoid or escape the rabbit hole in conversation with a partner or others who want to engage in unhealthy communication.  Boundaries help avoid high-risk addictive behavior. Simply not showing up to a gathering where others are likely to abuse alcohol or drugs or stepping away from conversations that are unhealthy can be effective. There is no need to blow people away with judgmental remarks or accusations. Further, when high risk is unavoidable, a simple “No thank you” can be effective when offered options that trigger addictive behavior. 

    There are many rabbit holes in relationships that addicts must avoid. Tools are simple but require perseverance, practice, and conditioning in order to avoid, escape, and manage the many pitfalls that are present.  In dysfunctional conversations, if you don’t manage the flow of your own energy well, every path you take will end in a rabbit hole.

    No Magic Bullet

    by

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

    “There’s no magic bullet. There’s no pill that you take that makes everything great and makes you happy all the time. I’m letting go of those expectations, and that’s opening me up to moments of transcendent bliss. But I still feel the stress over ‘Am I thin enough? Am I too thin? Is my body the right shape?” — Anne Hathaway

    Isn’t life a bitch, sometimes? Even when you experience breakthrough insights of wisdom that calm your frenetic racing mind, Like a boomerang that circles back and smacks you in the back of the head — fear and obsessive thought return with the least provocation. 

    Healing from addiction is a war of inner turmoil. Like a super speed disclaimer at the end of a radio ad, the inner chatterbox in my head blitzes me with a dump of ragging thoughts of misbelief that can literally drive me insane. The only difference between my chatterbox and the hyperspeed radio disclaimer is that I hear very clearly what my chatterbox is telling me and it ain’t peaceful! It’s full of distress and discomfort. 

    Addicts will do anything to escape from physical pain, emotional discomfort, and personal struggle. We tell ourselves that life would be better if we could just find an instant fix. But, there is no lightning in a bottle. Billions of dollars are spent every year on painkillers in an attempt to break free from physical and emotional pain derived from mental stress and malady. “If I could just find the right drug—the right quick fix therapy to numb the pain, even if it’s temporary — I’ll do it.”

    But when I realize there is no magic cure — the desire for therapy wanes and my monkey brain takes over in search of addictive escape. Even though it is temporary and fleeting, it always delivers what it promises. There is a momentary escape — even though it might be deadly. It is common for addicts to look for the sensational fix — the spectacular! 

    An alternative to a magic bullet is when we embrace life’s struggles, lean into painful experiences big and small, and become open to the significance of uninspired moments—the hours of our everyday existence that are ordinary and simple.

    Transformation and healing occur not in the spectacular moment under a spotlight of attention but rather in nondescript places where no one is watching or paying attention. I often hear stories of recovery that are fought and won in the private portals of one’s mind and heart. It’s a place that no one but you can possibly appreciate because no one is there but you. This counterintuitive approach paradoxically creates fulfillment in life and clarifies meaning and purpose in the presence of pain and discomfort in ways that are missed by those in search of a magic bullet. 

    Recovery from addiction is carved out in common routine everyday experiences. These places are so prevalent in the human condition. Recovery from addiction demands that we “dare to be average” — that we dare to embrace the struggle and discomfort of commonplace experiences and learn to calm the super speed voice of addictive urge. — K.W.

    You can read more insights about the importance of embracing everyday experience in recovery from Ken’s book “Dare to Be Average — Finding Brilliance in the Commonplace” – published by Daily House Publishing and currently on sale through Amazon.com.

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