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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.

The Healing Of Oneness

September 27, 2024 by Ken Wells

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“All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind because oneness is the secret of everything”. – Swami Vivekanand

When I was an infant, I was one with everything. I couldn’t think about it that way then, I could only think of the word “Mine”. All infants begin with everything is mine because everything is who they are. Later, we all learn to differentiate. The problem is we get stuck there. Most of us don’t figure out how to link all that is inside of us with all that is outside of us. This breaks down healing. Transformation happens with oneness, not separation.

Think about it. The deepest moments of making love are about the temporary oneness beyond ourselves and with another. There is a natural force of energy that propels the universe. Some reference God, Buddha, Christ, Divine, or just call it universal energy. For me, names are insignificant.

All animals have something to teach if we are willing to learn. The moment you stop seeing yourself as superior to other life forms is the moment you can learn from them. Consider the ant. Despite their size, they work in harmony with the “together” and create a massive colony. When you watch them you see great tenacity, cooperation, and accomplishments, all to the benefit of the colony. A colony of bees represents the same possibility of oneness. Someone once said these insects role model the truth that any goal can be broken down into the smallest, achievable actions. They inspire each of us to achieve in concert with the community of others. We learn from ants and bees the value of oneness.

Profoundly, we have missed the insight in the world of humanity. Is it possible to celebrate the birthday of a child in the U.S. while grieving the tragedy of a starving child in Gaza? Only through Oneness can this be done. And when we connect with Oneness we take a step toward healing in the world.

When you recognize your oneness with all living things, you are able to access the inspired energy that will enable you to achieve your destiny. Of course, our destiny includes returning to the great Oneness that created our existence. Life, death, and resurrection are the common flow of life energy. You were born to this life as was the plant, the insect, the animal, and all other life forms. We have this season of existence to bloom like a rose. In time the Grim Reaper will decide that life is over and we will return to the Earth to be resurrected again into the universe. All religious faiths point to this reality with different emphases. It begins and ends with divine oneness to all things.

A couple of questions to ponder:

1. Where do you feel divided?

2. What do you think will be required for you to be at one with yourself? With another?

Remember, we are the only animal on earth that can reject ourselves. Your challenge is to be at one with yourself—to be the shaman of your own journey. Don’t forget that you are the only artist of your own life. Don Miguel Ruiz has written, “If you don’t like the story you are living, you are the only one who can change it”. Experience the healing that comes from Oneness.

Self Sabotage: The Common Undoing of Every Addict

July 2, 2024 by Ken Wells

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“You know, it’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.”
— James Baldwin

Through the years of working with addiction, self-sabotage offers the most common cause of why recovering addicts relapse. First-step stories are replete with examples of addicts committing blatant behaviors that clearly describe someone desperately wanting to be found out. Self-sabotage comes from what we learn to believe about ourselves. It comes from the thousands of hours of thought introjects that our parents have told us during the young impressionable years of life. These are the beliefs that are formed by our family, our religious beliefs, and the culture that we grew up in. Baldwin is correct that if you are treated by a certain behavior long enough and embrace a lifestyle effective enough, you will begin to do the same things to yourself and others because your worldview and personal beliefs will make it so. What you think about will expand. It’s the very property of thought.

The concept of “stinking thinking” that so characterizes an addict’s thought process around his addiction is developed very early in life. Many addiction specialists contend that the environmental influence experienced by the mother during the period of gestation has a formative influence on “stinking thinking” that later appears in the life of addiction. This pattern of thought is often traced from the deprivation of developmental needs in early childhood to an impending mentality of entitlement in adulthood. While this dynamic is not the only contribution to the development of addiction, its prevalence can be clearly seen with a rationale that fuels addictive behavior.

In recovery, an addict is challenged to confront the “stinking thinking” that sabotages sobriety.

Immediately, changing the way you think, how you see the world, and experience relationships with community transforms your behavior and you begin to accomplish what was thought impossible—-the capacity to live one hour, one day, etc, without addiction dominating as the organizing principle of your life. The euphoria of that moment, experiencing the release and relief from the grips of addiction is remarkable. In recovery, we call it “pink clouding”. The crash on the other side can be devastating when overconfidence produces slippery unchecked behavior that leads to relapse. At this point, I no longer need my parents or the world around me to oppress me. My own addictive thinking becomes my oppressor. I am stuck in my own self-sabotage.

A way out: Self-sabotage behavior is so profound and powerful that addicts need help to get out of their own way. Twelve-step communities have been so liberating for millions over the years, helping so many get out of their way of self-sabotage thinking and behavior. Yet, many more have attended and left unaffected, continuing their self-sabotage and destructive behavior.

Here are some suggestions to help release the grip of sabotage.

1. Be coachable: Though bruising to the ego, surrender control of your recovery to someone who knows the way out. Do whatever that someone tells you to do. Often, that someone is identified as a sponsor. I won’t forget the early days of my recovery when I questioned every step of the way. My sponsor cleared his throat and spoke “Ken, you should shut up and do what you are told”. Though this advice was blunt, once I got over my hurt feelings, I used it to save my life from self-sabotage.

2. Rely upon collective wisdom: While I don’t believe that a 12-step group takes the place of therapy when needed, I have experienced the depth of wisdom that comes from the collection of community wisdom. The way out of self-sabotage requires that you have a consultation community who will tell you straight and confront all forms of self-sabotage thought and behavior. Many maxims express this view but the one I like is “If 8 people tell you that you’ve got a tail, then check your ass in the mirror!” Honest, frank feedback is the deepest form of love to guide an addict out of self-sabotage.

3. Unearth mistaken beliefs that fuel self-sabotage: This is where therapy can be so helpful. Unpacking mistaken beliefs developed in early childhood from neglect, abandonment and all other forms of abuse will help trace the trail of shame that must be exposed if self-sabotage behavior is to be re-wired. You will need to work through tendencies to minimize, defend, and dismiss the impact of parental influence. There is a difference between understanding where self-sabotaging beliefs originate and placing blame. Understanding the origination of mistaken beliefs will create the possibility of letting go of shame and reversing self-sabotage.

4. Cultivate a lifestyle of self-affirmation: Belief is an Anglo-Saxon word that means to “live in accordance with”. Self-sabotage behavior is overcome when an addict carefully composes a vision of living life that is not dominated by an addictive response. Rather, when an addict chooses to live a life that is aligned with the call and vision of inner destiny, self-sabotage thoughts and behavior release their grip. They fall away like in the movie of Forrest Gump when the braces fall away from young Forest as he runs from the bullies whose intention was to dominate and pick on him. Thoreau put it this way, “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.”

This becomes a reality when I bathe myself every day with positive affirmative thoughts that condition toward positive fulfillment and weed out the “stinking thinking” so prevalent in self-sabotage behavior. There is quiet empowerment bestowed on the addict who learns to practice the skill of affirmation. Baldwin is correct. If you create a world in recovery in which you tell yourself what you want to believe and act on long enough and effectively enough, you will begin to make that part of your world free from oppression.

The Unencumbered Being

June 7, 2024 by Ken Wells

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

“So often we make a commitment to change our ways, but stall in the face of old reflexes as new situations arise.” — Mark Nepo

Living in sobriety requires a willingness to make adjustments. We tend to cling to old patterns of living. We are creatures of habit. There is comfort in doing things the same way we have always done them. It’s true for us all. Yet, growth and transition create the need for change. Adaptability is an overlooked quality in recovery. There are common threads that connect all of us in recovery. When we uncover the common threads there is relief and acceptance among those who know addiction. There is safety in routine and predictability that is necessary to create calm from a life of chaos.

Leaving the addictive life behind demands great courage and humility. For many of us, it took many steps forward and backward before we finally turned the page to a new life totally separate from the old ways of addiction. Most of us recall the loneliness, awkwardness, and struggle experienced during the course of making these changes. It took a great deal of effort to leave old digs, watering holes, and other experiences in addictive behavior. Many of us wrestled with euphoric recall and endured painful user dreams about past moments of addiction. The culture of addiction felt like a warm hug, it was so familiar.

Reminiscing the first time you ever stepped across the threshold of a 12-step meeting was so scary and unraveling . . . Who will I see that knows me? What will I have to say? Can’t wait just to get back to the safety of my car after the meeting was over. It took a long time before a 12-step room became a safe place. Even longer to feel like you belonged. There were painful disclosures and humble admission of character flaws. Learning to let go was and is a painful struggle. Over time, the 12-step meeting became a refuge, a place to become emotionally naked with people you once dreaded to face.

In time the recovery culture replaced the neighborhood of addiction. Some old acting-out friends disappeared while other relationships became redefined. Gradually, recovery behavior, relationships, and lifestyle replaced the addictive culture so that today the old life of addiction would be as awkwardly experienced as once was the new life in recovery. Finally, the evolution of recovery had transpired!

Once settled and established, life has a way of underscoring impermanence. Back in the day, Bob Dylan was correct when he wrote and sang “The Times They Are Changin”. In community, relationships change. People move or die. Family configurations require adjustment. An environment that was once predictable experiences the threat of change. Uncertainty is part of the flow of life. The passage of life creates the need for adjustment. We have to practice letting go in new ways about relationship dynamics we mistakenly thought were permanent.

This part of recovery life is difficult. There is resistance to ongoing adjustments and adaptations during life transition. Once you have stretched and strained from the life of an addict and settled in recovery, now considering continual life adjustments can feel overwhelming and too much to ask of yourself. The late M. Scott Peck in his book, The Road Less Traveled, likened life journey to the metaphor of traveling through the desert. Many come to the first oasis in the desert and settle there, deciding to camp for the rest of life and never completing the journey through the desert. The oasis is comfortable, so why continue?

Recovery life beckons to press on toward continued growth with its accompanying need for adjustment and willingness to embrace change. The temptation is to hover around old recovery times and digs that can no longer be sustained because of the impermanence of life. Essentially, nothing remains the same. There is a need to change and move forward. However, change generates fear and anxiety.

Typically, when facing the need for change we want to hold on to what has always been. When there is fear of the unknown, we grip tightly to what we know and have experienced, even if it no longer applies to times we live and might be hurtful. In a parable in the New Testament, Jesus referred to the need for change as being like putting old wine into new wineskins. This metaphor for change emphasizes the idea that the new cloth had not yet shrunk so using a new cloth to patch older clothing would result in a tear as it began to shrink. Similarly, old wineskins had been “stretched to the limit” or become brittle as wine had fermented inside them; using them again therefore risked bursting them. There comes a time for change when what used to be true and applicable needs to be adjusted. When we refuse to adjust we become inflexible and more likely to tear or break. Transitions in life though hard suggest that it is time to move on to new truths, relationships, and understandings about life. Yet we tend to clutch and hold on to what we know when we are fearful ofchanges that usher us into the unknown.

Growth in recovery requires that you let go of preconceptions and expectations that have accumulated from past relationships and experiences. Recovery is a life of continual recreating yourself in spirit. Some have said that life in recovery is about becoming an unencumbered being. It demands that you release and let die the mentality of the past. Do you know the mentality that you need to let die within you? Is it the drive that you have always lived for? Is it your need to control things, people, possessions, power, position, environments, or money? Sobriety brings us to spaces in our lives where we need to change our entire way of life. Dropping the way we have done life will mean that you do this one drop at a time. The drastic changes that occur at the inception of recovery underscore the way we are to live our lives moving forward… whether beginner or old-timer. Soren Kierkegaard wrote that “life is meant to be lived forward but can only be understood backward”. Living forward and looking backward are both difficult. Understanding can be sleuthed through past reflection but will require rigorous openness and honesty. Fear can be an obstacle to living forward. Letting go of what we know and embracing the unknown is a faith proposition that scares the hell out of most of us. Yet, for those who press forward, what emerges is the peace of becoming an unencumbered being.

Dating Protocol Considerations to Avoid Painful Past Patterns

May 24, 2024 by Ken Wells

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

According to the most recent data from the American Psychological Association, the divorce rate in the United States is around 40-50% for first marriages. As you might guess it is higher for second marriages and on up from there. You would think with those kinds of repeat numbers, you would slow the process down so that you don’t repeat the second time around the agony you experienced the first time. But, it doesn’t work that way.

The relief of getting away from the agony of a relationship that hurts and the need to fill the emptiness of being alone, and without the intrigue of a romantic relationship, overpowers perspective and contemplative consideration. Add to all of that the rush of oxytocin, endorphins, and dopamine that comes with the honeymoon feeling of a new relationship, and you have a cocktail kick that blows past rational thought and deliberation. It all contributes to why the likelihood of failure in a second marriage is higher than the first.

Analytically, we can figure it all out. Yet, even after enlightenment we go against what we know and plunge down the same rabbit hole we just escaped.

Why is this? There are many reasons. People carry with them old tapes of mistaken beliefs learned from their family of origin that create relationship sabotage. Why consider something that might spoil the fantasy relationship I think I can have in the here and now? Many people choose to run from what hurts and never want to stop and scrub the wounds that come from betrayal and various forms of intimacy disability. All this makes sense. It’s just that doing the same thing you have always ever done, doesn’t work toward healing a broken heart that comes from a dysfunctional relationship.

So, here are some considerations to think about regarding relationship healing, before engaging the next exclusive romantic relational experience.

1. Take some time to catch your breath. You have been running so hard to fix the hurt of the old relationship in ways that did not work, or you are running as hard as you can to get away from the relational pain. Take a time out and catch your breath. Relationships in distress or pursuit burn a lot of emotional BTUs. How much time do you take? One size doesn’t fit all. Some people need 6 months; others need a year. The time you need is unique to you. After you have calmed the chaos, the amount of time you need to heal before engaging in a serious new relationship will vary. The point is to catch your breath before rushing ahead.

2. You will need time to grieve. How much time? Again, it varies. The rule of thumb is that you will need more time than you are thinking about right now! You will need time to grieve what used to be and no longer is. You will need to grieve what never was that you hoped would have been. You will need to grieve the reality of what is. It’s hard to engage in grieving when the oxytocin, endorphins, and dopamine are rushing through your veins with someone new. Most of us don’t know how to grieve deeply. We cry, feel empty, might get drunk, and on we go to the next relationship. But, there’s the need to go deep and feel the hurt of the sadness of what will never be again. Relationship ties undone with family, the loss of the good times, the hurt of the pain, and the impact on others (kids particularly, friends, relatives, etc) all must be embraced experientially before moving on to something new in a serious relationship. The truth is that you will need to create space in your life to grieve and let go of what used to be periodically for the rest of your life. It isn’t meant to grovel in the pain of an old relationship. Yet, recognizing painful experiences in past relationships and letting go is a part of the pattern of being an adult. The time it takes you to sufficiently grieve will vary and you will be wise to consult with counsel and to live in consultation with support people.

3. Learn to be with yourself. When you end a relationship there is an empty spot. There is a great temptation to fill it in with another relationship, work, travel, and a lot of other activities. Our culture provides so much stimulation that you can just go from one high to the next. But, you won’t heal yourself that way or know who you really are by doing a blitz on stimulants that come from dating and other activities. Embrace the winter of your life and learn from it.

4. Unravel the patterns that sabotage intimacy. If you don’t you will keep doing it and likely blame the other party for your relationship unfulfillment. Some people can date and unravel this self-sabotage behavior at the same time through counseling and group support. Most of us cannot. If you have never been in a riptide current at the beach, you would be wise to stop swimming and learn from those who have experienced and managed the riptide. Ignoring this suggestion is how many people drown in the next relationship doing the same things as before. Unraveling your self-sabotage pattern that contributes to relational failure is difficult. You will need to address unresolved family of origin issues that contribute to the way you do relationships today. Soren Kierkegaard was right when he wrote “Life is meant to be lived forward but can only be understood backward”. To move forward and not self-sabotage you will need to look backward and understand what brought you to where you are today. On the other hand, it’s easier to blame your past partner and keep truckin’ wondering why you keep hooking up with partners who hurt you.

5. Sex is always an issue: If you are stuck in the juggernaut of sexual addiction, sex has become an organizing principle of your life. Any reason is a good reason to be sexual. Most likely your behavior is about objectifying another person. Objectification is a way of using another person to get your needs met without dignity and respect or consideration of others. Non-addicted people can objectify as well. If you use another person’s space to meet your needs without proper scrutiny of that individual’s needs then you are objectifying that person. Some people say no sex for 6 months or 1 year after a breakup! Maybe so or maybe not! It makes sense to discipline your tendency to accelerate physical connection so that with moderate speed you are better able to distinguish the difference between intensity of feeling and true intimacy. All too often with oxytocin, adrenaline, and dopamine in control, people thicken the plot to an unhealthy relationship by mistaking intensity for intimacy. In this equation, addicts can’t get enough of what they don’t need and many non addicts adopt an unspoken mentality that my half plus your half will make us a whole! On the contrary, you take what is and make it less because the other person cannot supply your basic need for self-care, so 1/2 + 1/2 = 1/4, not a whole.

6. Don’t forget the impact on other key relationships: This doesn’t mean you don’t date. It just means that you don’t date lacking sensitivity to the community of people who provide support and who respect and love you. This includes careful considerations about dating others who were once romantically involved with your friends, family, or workmates. Most companies have policies that govern romantic relationships at work. However, not all are the same and many people try to bend the rules to engage in romance. It’s important to be careful and considerate in comprehending the consequences of romance in these situational dynamics. Children need to be carefully considered. Bringing a new person in and out of their lives can be very destructive to them without thoughtful consideration of their care. Each of these impacts requires consultation and accountability with people who are in your support group.

We are all designed to experience connection with others. How we engage romance requires thoughtful preparation and consideration so that the charm that wells up within does not become harm that hurts others.

Things We Need to Talk About But Don’t Touch

February 23, 2024 by Ken Wells

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“We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.” —T.S. Eliot

This is true about recovery. It is such a repetitive cyclical experience in so many ways. There are many portals to explore and understand about addictive behavior. Open one door and it seems to lead to the next. You learned how to end your addictive behavior and stop the out-of-control train going down the track. Desperation opened the door to a belief in a Higher Power that restored you to sanity. Yet, stubborn willfulness blocked the decision to turn your will over to the care of that Higher Power. It brought you back to where you started with your addictive mindset dominating your behavior, and you repeated the same experience as before. Each time you repeat, the pattern becomes an opportunity to know yourself for the first time.

The recovery experience invites you to talk about things that you don’t touch. There are secrets. You are invited to open your deepest darkest hidden experience and expose it to the light of day. You are encouraged to get emotionally naked about reality, often in the presence of people you don’t know that well or for that long.

The exploration doesn’t stop with the addictive behavior. The challenge is to explore all of our behaviors and our relationships. Some 12-step groups insist that you only relate to one identified addiction during your time to share. I have always found this limiting. Recovery is pervasive in its journey of research and examination. It requires that you turn over every stone and inquire, with curiosity, pathways you have not explored. Many in recovery choose not to open doors about intimacy and relationships. They limit their 12-step journey to remaining sober from their addiction. They know a lot about staying sober and less about intimacy and building relationships.

Addicts talk about things with their sponsors and others but often don’t open their hearts to their partners. They become good about sharing vulnerability with those who are distant. They give good advice about how to be emotionally open but remain closed and distant at home. There is so much that needs to be talked about that is never touched at home.

Feelings like stress, anxiety, and fear build on the inside. An addict becomes lonely and seeks escape from discomfort. H/She sits with a craving to escape through their drug of choice. It is powerful because it works for a while. The pain is so great and the relief is so powerful.

Your partner also has anxiety, stress, fear, and loneliness building within. They also want to escape. It could be through their addiction. It often takes the form of a cocktail of other experiences like busyness, electronic games, children’s activities, running errands, or exercise. The emptiness in the relationship builds as both partners avoid what needs to be talked about but is never touched.

An addict may talk about the experience in a 12-step community. Yet, if it is never discussed with your partner, the 12-step group becomes a lifelong partner of triangulation. You can avoid opening your heart to the partner you should be talking with by sharing instead with a third party. The void between you and that person grows as you lament to your 12-step group. This becomes particularly sad when that person is your romantic partner.

To stop the fantasy about your addiction you need to tell on yourself to your partner who, in turn, needs to talk to you about how they try to escape from their discomfort. When partners do this with each other, the void between them shrinks and the feelings of discomfort give way to the richness of emotional intimacy. No third-party relationship has ever been able to replace the richness of intimacy that is created when you touch what needs to be shared with your partner about the truth of who you are. Each time you talk about what you don’t want to touch in a relationship you will arrive where you began and know the place for the first time.

Chronic Relapse

January 30, 2024 by Ken Wells

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

Over time I have observed addicts who have miraculously transformed and changed their lives. The changes have been like night and day. They are the ones who make 12-step meetings seem powerful and therapists look good. When you listen to their recovery program and see their results, you walk away wondering why doesn’t every addict do their program like that.

Then you find some who do a similar program but don’t have the same results. Many times it is obvious that those who fail in their program do not “go to any length” to maintain sobriety and cultivate recovery growth. For those, the issue is whether or not they are willing to up the ante in their program to make it work, do more meetings, do a deep dive with 12-step work, increase therapy to resolve underlying issues of trauma and emotional pain, etc. In this mix, there are those in recovery who mean well and do well, but somehow don’t get the necessary traction to establish long-term sobriety. Essentially, they engage chronic relapse.

Some “chronic relapsers” struggle to maintain 24 hours without their addiction. Others can go a week, month, or several months and not relapse. Some get to the outer limits of time in their sobriety and almost as if an alarm goes off and they tell themselves “It’s time to act out” and relapse occurs. Others can establish long-term sobriety in one addiction, like drugs or alcohol, but experience chronic relapse in other areas like sexual addiction.

In discussing this pattern of relapse in recovery with a pioneer researcher and therapist around sexual addiction, the seasoned veteran stated that while partners of sex addicts demand absolute sobriety from their sexually-addicted partner, seldom does this prove the reality for the addict.

There have been many attempts to address chronic relapse in 12-step programs such as moving the chronic behavioral failure from a bottom-line category of acting out to middle-circle behavior. However, there is no hiding from the problematic behavior, regardless of category placement. The behavior that is against values continues to progress and linger. People who truly shift their value system to include the behavior that was once considered relapse and is now considered high risk, usually are at peace with themselves regarding the behavior. However, if the experience of chronic failure is addiction behavior, it doesn’t matter what category you put the behavior, relapse and destructive behavior will continue to progress and intensify emotional pain. It’s a lot like trying to get a new look in your house by taking the old furniture and rearranging it but in the end, you still have old furniture with a different look.

Coming to terms with failure is an age-old problem for the addicted and non-addicted as well. I don’t have an answer as to why some addicts struggle more than others in establishing long-term sobriety. For sure there are many factors to consider. A key to addressing chronic failure in relapse is to focus on the task of self-care. For an addict, self-care is counterintuitive in the presence of relapse. When you have just acted out and screwed yourself in so many ways, the first thing you need to do is the last thing you are prone to do. Treating yourself with gentleness and being your own best friend seems preposterous when you simply want to scream and beat yourself up. Why? Because you failed. It’s common for some to scream and self-destruct in a cloud of smoke while others more subtly self-sabotage.

In life, people work so hard to avoid facing failure. Yet failure is a part of every aspect of being human. We fear the judgment, the perceived ridicule, and the alienation that happens when we fail. In addiction, what is more important than a continued day count is the capacity to employ resilience when you fail to maintain sobriety. It’s the capacity to bring yourself back to the center of your values when you drift or act out. Knowing your resources and how to bring yourself back to your values is most important. Being able to stem self-criticism and re-focus on the next right thing is invaluable. Many addicts who work a strong program and some who white knuckle their way through the day, hang on without a protocol to bring themselves back to center when they act out. When this happens, they free fall toward oblivion in addiction. It’s been shown that those who free fall in this way have a much greater struggle with re-centering. Repeated failure with sobriety is the result.

Here is a suggested protocol for chronic relapse.

1. Admit your failure, do the next right thing which is always to take yourself out of harm’s way. Simply get away from your addiction. Destroy the substance, get away from the relationship, turn off the computer, etc. If you are sitting in the middle of a busy intersection and you just got run over by a bus, the first thing you need to do is to get out of the intersection. Most likely you will need to reach out to a support person to get this done.

2. As the Buddhists say “put yourself in the cradle of loving kindness.” Addicts live in self-deprivation even when they are sober. It is by grit and determination that many addicts stay sober. So when there is a failure, the energy of grit and determination is funneled into beating the hell out of yourself. Simply, it doesn’t work. It’s like dumping kerosene onto a fire. Yet, somehow addicts and other people who fail who are not addicts, think they have to continue eating the poison. So they abuse themselves with hurtful remarks and treat themselves with ongoing deprivation. They deprive themselves of gentleness, and support from others and covertly become mean to themselves embracing mistaken beliefs that spiral into repeated addictive or other destructive behavior. The slippery slope of relapse becomes black ice when an addict eats the poison and tells themselves they are a failure, a piece of shit who cannot do what others do to maintain sobriety. Depriving yourself of care and kindness leads to entitlement toward acting out in addiction. Sometimes you must take yourself by the nap of your neck and be kind to yourself even while kicking and screaming against it.

3. Affirm yourself. You say well “If I just shit all over myself, it’s pretty hard to tell myself to feel clean.” In 12-step work, there is talk about “fake it till you make it”. Overcoming chronic relapse means that I must treat myself in the way in which I aspire to be. I must act the way in the present that I hope to be in the future. To do this I must not allow feelings to dominate my actions. I affirm myself even when I feel like shit. I act my way into a new way of being. I cannot feel my way into this experience in recovery. When I am discouraged, I can afford the time to feel it but not when I am lying in the middle the intersection of addictive act out. I have to pick myself up, drag myself out of the intersection, and affirm myself when all I feel like doing is giving up. Affirmations are beliefs that must be practiced and conditioned regularly in my life, particularly when faced with failure. They are intended acts of self-care that are conditioned in unspectacular moments, often in the presence of despair and discouragement of chronic relapse.

4. Separate your sense of self from the relapse behavior. When you introduce yourself as an addict to a 12-step group, you are describing your behavior, not your sense of self. In truth, the behavior represents a small part of your life, albeit, a most destructive piece. Relapse is always about behavior and never about who you are. Yet, shame says that relapse is about who you are. Your behavior and your sense of self are the same. Separating behavior from personhood is an art form that can only be curated through conditioning. Experiential therapies can help create breakthrough experiences of release and relief, but you must do the unspectacular conditioning of separating behavior from self. This will require a lifetime commitment and a willingness to fail forward. It demands that you practice affirmations as a regular lifestyle. In all my years of recovery, I don’t know any other way. The benefit is self-acceptance in the presence of human failure. There’s a deep satisfaction of living in your own skin. There is an abiding awareness that I can go down and face failure and come back up. Some identify this experience as unconditional confidence. No matter what the result may be, I can accept and love myself. This requires daily practice not perfection.

Chronic relapse can become a great teacher of spirituality in life. Some have suggested that spirituality is discovered by embracing the wounds in life. Wounds reveal vulnerability, weakness, and the capacity to recognize limitations. Chronic relapse is a wound that deepens authenticity when you accept that the wound contains the same common shared brokenness that everyone else in the world experiences. Self-acceptance in the presence of chronic relapse is the essence of human brilliance.

Talkin’ Trash

December 12, 2023 by Ken Wells

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

“Here I am – Do You See Me.”

—KW

Blown by the wind without notice

Others just like me become my blanket

Gathered in a desolate corner

Invisible until we become so many

Scorned with disgust from others

Would someone please rid me of this filth?

There’s a trash can—put me there

Make me out of sight

Make me invisible like the night

But you can’t, cause I’m here just like you

I’m the reality of your imagination

I’m dog shit

People shit

The wrappers of dreams to make me disappear

Straws for smack and blow to get you to forget

But here I am—

You can’t forget me, you must do something about me

I’m the writer who paints your park benches

Your trains, your overpass bridges

Got stuff you don’t get in carts on permanent loan

Sleep in places that scare the hell out of you and me too

Others just like me—in the heat and cold, moan and groan

Wash away the crust

I’m just like you

Broken family, broken dreams

Close your eyes and listen

It’s all the same—so it seems

Just talkin’ trash

No one wants to be invisible or forgotten. Being unwanted and uncared for is worse than being hungry with nothing to eat. When people are objectified their essential self is invisibilized. People objectify others as sexual body parts to be pursued and conquered or as sources to achieve power, fame, or fortune. People who are takers and not givers reduce relationships to what’s in it for me. Solutions to social dilemmas require a giver mentality. Objectification is about taking. It’s about wanting what you want when you want it. It’s about going through the world seeing only what you want to experience and ignoring the suffering that challenges others.

From Martin Buber’s book, I and Thou, it can be emphasized that when you engage others and the world around you as an “it” you organize and manipulate the world only as you want to see it. Human suffering, social dilemmas, and environmental challenges become obstacles to ignore while material and relational pleasures become objectified. An “it” mentality is a pathway to becoming alienated from the world around you as it is. Buber wrote, “To look away from the world or to stare at it, does not help a man to reach God; but he who sees the world in Him stands in His presence.” There is a sense of spiritual connection that occurs when what you see and experience in the world around you connects with what is in you. It becomes a source for “thou” relationships which holds great respect for others problems and challenges in life.

Everyone needs a safe and trusting community to be seen. Here, vulnerability and trust are serendipitously expressed through our grief, joy, and challenge. I don’t know anyone who exemplifies this truth more than Sally, a client I once had.

Sally had every reason to isolate and avoid the community when she first came to see me in my office. Emotionally, she was fragmented. She suffered horrendous physical, ritual, and sexual abuse from her parents who were involved in a cult. Her parents solicited her to other members of the family and cult. She experienced everything that would make a family unsafe. She fled from this frightful gruesome family to a life on the streets.

While learning plenty of street savvy, she also learned to stuff her sorrows and the sadism she’d experienced throughout her childhood with a cocktail of addictions. When she initially sought professional counsel, she experienced more abuse and betrayal from those who were supposed to be healing and safe. She learned to deaden herself to the world at large and to disconnect from the community. Eventually, she decided to attend our intensive outpatient program, which involves sixty-five hours of therapy in 8 days.

When she began her plunge experience, there was no trust, only desperation. However, as the days unfolded, her barriers began to come down. Maybe it was the intensity of one session after another beginning at 7:00 a.m. and continuing until 8:30 p.m. It could have been the many different approaches that her relentless counselors used. Whatever it was, she reached a watershed point where she decided to open her heart to the possibility of healing. As she progressed throughout the week, she decided that this would be her last attempt to find hope. She decided that she would do whatever it took to get healthy.

As she became committed to healing herself, she committed to integrating her fragmented inner self. She embraced the emotional pain that dominated her life, rather than medicate it with addiction. She resolved to attend 12-Step meetings to address her compulsive behaviors. Though dominated with fear and full of anxiety, slowly she shifted and allowed her 12-Step community to become a touchstone and signpost for reality in her recovery. Sharing her brokenness in the community provided relational safety for Sally.

When there is relational safety in the community, anything and everything can be explored and sifted and sorted through. Pain becomes the fellowship’s touchstone and signpost indicating an imbalance in life. The community provides a sound studio to listen to pain’s message. Common shared brokenness is its draw, not common likeness or interest. Becoming emotionally naked by sharing our deepest feelings and secrets is commonplace and expected. It’s a space where we can fit in and be accepted as we are. It is a sanctuary in which to learn how we can wear our own skin well. It’s a space to accept our own acceptance while staring at imperfection. It is a place to grow ourselves into adult maturity and discover inner brilliance.

Today, after many years of recovery and therapy, Sally has carved out a commitment to a 12-step community based on a shared brokenness that has proven supportive and sustaining. Today, though she continues to work out her emotional brokenness, she has become an inspiration to those who work with her professionally. She has become a leader in her field of expertise. Her husband and children continue to benefit from her resilience and commitment to her healing journey.

Recently, she told me her recovery life has rendered her 1,000 percent improved. She echoed that without a community to share her deepest feelings of brokenness, in concert with therapeutic intervention, her road to recovery would have led to a dead end.

There are thousands of Sally’s in the world around you including the homeless. My wife Eileen and I have chosen to live in a neighborhood where homeless people live all around us. Each morning we walk our dog through our neighborhood streets. We pick up trash and dog poop with our sanitary gloves as we make our way. Along the canal that we walk there is graffiti painted on park benches and backyard walls. There is trash all around including dog and human feces. At first, it was disgusting. Over time, I have learned that the trash has a voice that represents the many unfortunate ones. The trash is their voice to tell me and you that “I am here. Don’t forget me. Please see me!”

Do you know someone you would describe as forgotten? When you drive to work, worship, or play, do you notice the street people in your community? Not knowing what to do with misfortune, many look away from the homeless, choosing to deal with discomfort by distancing themselves from it. What about the person at the grocery store who shuffles by with a blank stare on his face? Do you think of him as invisible?

Today every piece of trash I pick up, I hear the voices of so many on the streets and elsewhere saying please treat me as a “Thou.” Just talkin’ trash!

Step 2: The Step That Creates Humility in the Presence of Willful Self Destruction

December 8, 2023 by Ken Wells

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

“Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

“It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.” Soren Kierkegaard

In 12-step addiction recovery, the phrase “self will run riot” is cataloged and documented in our first step focuses on the out-of-control and unmanaged behavior that dominates our lives. Step 2 is an invitation to step back, take a deep breath, and examine the carnage that you created through the eyes of your spirit.

In recovery, spirituality is a very difficult concept to embrace. It asks of you to consider opposites. So, in order to win it encourages you to lose; to be in control, it asks that you let go, to know is to humbly embrace what you don’t know. At times, it seems like trying to nail jelly to a tree. You talk about your spiritual experience in a support community. At the time, it seems so meaningful and then later it seems so difficult to make sense from what was then helpful. The worthwhile dialogue gets fuzzy in your head. Wisdom and learning can be this way.

Examining what I need to relinquish in order to gain sobriety and serenity requires introspection and deep honesty with self. Letting go of what I cannot control demands courage and integrity to the values that go deeper than the grip of what I am afraid to lose. Embracing what you do not know requires that you be willing to sit with uncertainty and the insecurity that comes from things around you being impermanent. There are no cookbook recipes or formulas that are universal for you or anyone else to do in life. You have to figure it out yourself. Kurtz and Ketcham in their book, The Spirituality of Imperfection, compared spirituality to the mortar that holds a fireplace together. The metaphor invokes that you consider what it is that you are truly counting on to hold your life together. Upon reflection, as a Christian, I knew the appropriate response would be Jesus. Yet, spirituality required me to go deeper with honesty. Careful examination revealed that what I really depended upon when cornered by life’s demands, is that I would work my ass off. Then I would dress it up with religious words. Nothing wrong with working hard. Nonetheless, spirituality beckoned me, to be honest with self. This is the heart of spirituality.

Spirituality can be unnerving. Some identify their spirituality with a relationship with God. Others think it to be Jesus. Some even re-work the steps and put Jesus’ name in many of the steps. Others think spirituality centers around Buddha, Allah, Jehovah, the Great Spirit, Pachamama, Mother Nature, higher power, higher self, unknown creative force, life force energy of the universe, and even the tree in the backyard. Annie Parisse said, “One man’s cult is another man’s religion.” Spirituality wraps around and through all of these concepts. Even, the word itself is limited. It is just a vocabulary word which does rankle some. Atheists do not believe in God and many are bothered by the very word spirituality. Surely, with the thousands of words in our vocabulary, there can be another word to embrace this dynamic. Spirituality does require vulnerability—looking at yourself from the inside/out. It implores you to become emotionally naked to yourself and amazingly expands when you share this with others. Why others? Others mirror back to you your own bullshit. Seeing your own bullshit in others becomes an invite to a deeper, more clear spirituality within.

Spirituality is found in the wound of human failure. Entangled with the wound is the powerful shackle of shame that wraps itself around the spirit like an infectious worm. Defeat and desolation from addictive acts become compost for cultivating humility, a cardinal component of spirituality. It is by fertilizing Step 2 and nourishing your spirit that later in Step 9 we make amends from the compassion for others spawned from Step 2. Spirituality is the ingredient that forms an antibiotic for conceit and arrogance. It combats self-sufficiency, self-centeredness, and the pride that denies need which is the root of all our struggles. In a strange turn of events, the Step 2 process takes the broken condition of addiction and connects it to every other human tribulation. We are all one. Through this epiphany, we look to a greater spiritual dynamic to address the limiting “crack” so common to us all. I have often queried addicts about which part of their destructive behavior is the most difficult to face—the consequences, the realness of a loved one’s painful screams, etc. Once identified, I suggest this to be the place to set up shop and cultivate spirituality—in the wound. It is in the scrubbing of shame (the wound) in this most painful place that spirituality is fostered and nourished.

Spirituality is about oneness and unity. It is about a relationship between equals. It is about recognizing the shared life force within all living things. We are one: Catholic, Jew, Pentecostal, fundamentalist, atheist, animal and plant—we are all one. Differences for sure. Yet, connected with like-kindness so often obscured. Spirituality creates compassion for yourself in the midst of destructive behavior which cultivates compassion for the weakness of others. You become one with every “sinner”. So the victim of destructive addictive behavior is one with the perpetrator because we are all one in common shared weakness. Essentially, we all offend and this common thread of paradox creates spirituality. Spirituality becomes a necessary ingredient for accountability. If we all offend, not just the addict, then it stands to reason that holding each other accountable is necessary to create safety in community. It becomes the glue that holds the parts of recovery together.

Spirituality is a pilgrimage, not a destination. It always encompasses the terrain of personal struggle and failure. Spirituality does not travel the same line that a crow flies. It takes a very circuitous journey. It includes winding, up and down, backtracking, getting lost, criss crossed paths and starting all over. Spirituality looks like a picture of a labyrinth that a kindergartener has scribbled all over. Spirituality finds meaningfulness in the experiences of each day versus the amount of growth or “distance” gained. Joseph Campbell states “When you’re on a journey, and the end keeps getting further and further away, then you realize that the real end is the journey”. In recovery, it is not the days counted as “success” or those experienced as “failure” but rather it is the journey that we take that is underscored as being spiritual, not the desired destination.

Spirituality is about community. St. John of the Cross, a mystic, said that the soul who exists outside of community is like a lone coal away from the fire which soon grows cold. You are a social creature that needs connection for spirituality to thrive. Spirituality helps to adapt and to learn flexibility. You will learn to hold fast to what is in the “now” for you never know where your spirituality might take you. In your recovery life, you will notice that it is not a pilgrimage that marches straight ahead because we always have many twists and turns, ups and downs. Those who seek to do it perfectly either fail miserably or become so wound tight that eventually, they explode. Learning to accept your own recovery failure and get up and keep going is the perspective that anchors spirituality. How far you have come pales in comparison to how far you have yet to go. Spirituality gives birth to hope when you face the unknown in that you know that you are not alone in this struggle or in facing your human failure. Your struggle is exactly what someone else will need to do the next right thing and their failure is exactly what you will need to give you hope in knowing that you are not alone. This is reality spirituality.

In truth, spirituality does not lead to all the answers. It helps to embrace and engage the questions with genuine honesty. It promotes a beginner’s mind and will help you to become teachable. Step 2 fosters spirituality through the embrace of paradox in the contest of everyday common places of life.

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