self-improvement

The Secret Life of Long-Term Sobriety, Part 1

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For many in recovery sobriety is a mystery.  A 12-step group usually starts with a prayer and often ends with clasped hands in a circle repeating in unison “It works if you work it and you’re worth it”. Over the years I have heard many addicts testify that in those same meetings, after all the good-declared intention, they acted out before they got home and sometimes even before they left the parking lot.

There is a great divide in reality at 12-step meetings. There are the haves and have-nots. Those who have sobriety and those who don’t. For many, sobriety is elusive. At times, after working hard to achieve sobriety, it can slip through the fingers in the blink of an eye, or so it seems. How are some able to achieve and maintain long-term sobriety while others cannot?

Over the next two blogs, I want to propose 11 keys that are vital to creating long-term sobriety:

1. A decision to stop no matter what it takes. This, like the ten other keys, seems like a no-brainer. Yet, through observance of the meetings I attend and the addicts I counsel, this key is often missing. I ask many addicts who come to do work at PCS if they are done with their addiction. I often get the reply “I’m here, aren’t I?” It’s almost as if somehow showing up to the PCS building would be magical and that the building and all the therapists will transform him or her from a raging addict to zen-like sobriety. Addicts can make a great therapist look inept or an average therapist into a rockstar. It all depends upon the attitude that he or she chooses. I recall my wife Eileen and I saying to each other that “we would hock our socks” to get healthy. That was about the reality that we had no funds for treatment. The decision was to do whatever it takes. Many addicts come to a 12-step meeting without a “white hot” intensity to transform their lives. They look for someone to give them something or to take care of them. It is common for some addicts to show up with an attitude of entitlement. Long-term sobriety requires something very simple: You must want to stop more than anything else in the world.

2. Be humble. You would think that an addict’s life of frustration and failure would result in humility. Yet, often this is not the case. Addicts present most frequently with arrogance. Some are full of conceit and presumption while others seem demure on the surface, but underneath are full of disdain and hubris. The truth is that practicing humility is a lifelong challenge. It requires charting a recovery course that includes holding your attitude and spirit accountable to group members. It demands that you put people in your life who role model humility. It is common for addicts in recovery to assume they won’t need to practice humility and lose their hunger for it. Often, addicts fall into a trap that they have done this work for so long that they do not need to embrace this fundamental component of recovery. This is where you fall into lapse or relapse behavior. You might not act out but for sure you will stop growing deep without humility.

3. Be coachable. I will never forget my earliest days in 12-step recovery. I would question the purpose of each step and present as cynical of the overall process. My sponsor, Chip, who was for the most part mild-mannered, cleared his throat and said “Ken, I think it would be in your best interest to shut up and just do what you were told to do”. This admonition hurt my feelings and was used to save my own life. It is rare to find an addict who is hungry to take guidance. Most of us think we can do this by ourselves. You can be inspired by others who testify about reaching out, but most of us don’t do this very well. This is true even though your best thoughts and actions got you into the addict-behavior mess you are in. With stubborn inflexibility, many addicts refuse to listen or take action from what they hear in a 12-step meeting. The doctor can write the prescription, but you have to take the medicine.

4. Live your recovery in consultation with accountability. There is an oft-repeated saying around 12-step groups, “If 8 or 9 people tell you that you have a tail . . .check your ass in the mirror!” Though humorous, there is important recovery wisdom here. Addicts don’t want anyone telling them what to do. They bristle with direct feedback. Yet there is no other way to establish long-term sobriety. It requires a shift in spirit and attitude. The reason a sponsor tells a sponsee to call them every day is to create the habit of living in consultation. Most addicts won’t do this. It contributes to shortsighted relapse. There is a difference between consultation and dependence. Recovery becomes a paradox. You are taught to consult, and in the end, every action you take in your life is about your choice and decision. Be accountable. Live in consultation with others. It cements long-term sobriety.

5. Don’t just do the steps. Learn to live them in commonplace experience. Addicts get overwhelmed trying to do the steps. Perfectionism is a contributing reason why some addicts stop before completing all the steps. Step 4 is particularly difficult. More addicts get stuck in Step 4 than any other step. Addicts think they have to do this monumental undertaking. It’s as if you must walk through burning coals and stay there until your sponsor permits you to step out. Step 4 is difficult. We don’t have to make it harder than it is. A thorough Step 4 is never complete. So, address a character flaw, even a few. Sit with it. Learn what you can in the moment of focus and then move on. It is important in recovery to understand we don’t do the 12 steps but we learn to embrace and apply them in the common places of everyday living. 

Embracing Sacred Moments—Learning to Be in the Life You Already Have

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When I was a little kid, I used to always want to be somewhere else than where I was. When I sat in school in the third grade I could hear bulldozers and carpenters pounding nails outdoors and wished I could be one of them—anywhere but in school.  When I sat through long hours at church I daydreamed about playing baseball to avoid the boredom and drudgery. During the summertime as a teenager, I would hoe beans and detassel corn. While walking the rows I would fantasize about swimming in a favorite swimming hole.

Looking back as an adult, some of those places don’t seem quite as bad as I once thought they were. I even have fond memories of grade school and summer jobs. However, as an adult, I have been in places where I wanted to be anywhere other than where I was. 

Addicts and entrepreneurs have the same experience. Dread and craving trigger an addict to avoid what is real. Driven dreams powered by doing more to keep from being less, push many entrepreneurs toward the next enterprise. People tend to want to build a road to someplace other than where they are. Many find it scary and stressful to be present in the now moments of life and struggle to be comfortable in their own skin. So they keep moving from one project to the next or from one high to the next hit as an addict.

Recovery includes a voice that calls each of us to listen to the insights and wisdom that come from the heart. It won’t scream at you like busyness and chaos often do. In your darkest moment when you face total exhaustion, it will speak to you with clarity and resonance.  Rather than look outside yourself for fulfillment you find the realization inside as you sit with your own personal brilliance, not to be utilized to do something great but to understand that you are something great just as you are.

Here are a few keys to cultivating sacred moments in the here and now:

#1: Take a deep breath and be where you are. In the presence of disgruntled living and the tumultuous commotion to create something new, inhabit the life you are given. There is nothing wrong with improving your outer circumstances. Yet, going someplace means nothing if you cannot appreciate and become present in what is real right now! Eckart Tolle wrote “As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you act out the present moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love–-even the most simple action.” Make the present space you are in a sacred moment.

#2: Slow your compulsive thinking about tomorrow. Understand that this present moment with its trial and tribulation is interconnected to all that exists. Troublesome times augment for inner choice. First, accept whatever situation that you are in with its accompanying feelings. Then change the circumstances by improving your attitude or leaving the unacceptable condition. Wallowing with negative feelings of complaint and derision will disconnect you from a possible sacred moment. Your present day struggle is a significant element to your future success because it is now which is the only time you will ever experience. Let the feelings that lie underneath the compulsive thought teach you what you need at the moment to care for yourself and mark that moment as a sacred experience. 

#3: Don’t forget “Yesterday ended last night.”  Lamenting about what could have been, should have been, or used to be is a common human response to life circumstances. Sports fans often reminisce about lost championships or glory days past. Addicts struggle to let go of missed or failed opportunities. Entrepreneurs sometimes languish in agony about what might be a reality if they just pulled the trigger on a particular investment or idea. Some become bitter with resentment toward others they blame for their missed opportunity.  What is missing is acceptance. Working with what is reality in the present moment requires that you work with the results of past actions and not wallow in what could have been. Even, yesterday’s successes must be treated like yesterday’s newspaper. Saying yes to today’s results is a recognition that yesterday’s negative or positive results do not determine your experience in the present moment. Aaron Rogers, the great NFL quarterback once said “I have been to the top and I have been to the bottom and peace comes from some other place.” He’s right and that peace comes from the sacred moment of embracing the here and now regardless of yesterday’s results or the feelings you experience in the here and now. 

A Worn Road Less Traveled

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“Two Roads diverged in a wood,

I took the one less traveled, 

And that has made all the difference.”

– Robert Frost

An addict contemplating recovery sees only two options. It is either use or die with craving. Addicts don’t usually die with cravings but they habitually succumb to acting out. In the beginning days of recovery, addicts are poor at creating options. They come from an either/or, black/white world. They either use or obsess about using until the craving has subsided. 

People live with shame and pain. They live disconnected from their inner self. Most of us long for connection. Mindlessly, we listen to the radio or to a podcast when driving. Aimlessly, we scroll texts, emails, and a host of social media platforms disengaged and lost in the spectacle of it all. For an addict, any reason is a good reason to use. In recovery, creating options to using requires that you take the road less traveled. There are no shortcuts. There is no room for perfection. It requires a willingness to endure painful moments, relentless perseverance, and a commitment to being a little better today than you were yesterday. 

Along the road, there will be a dawning that you are a spiritual being having a human experience. This will transform your struggle into sacred meaningfulness. This awareness is hallowed throughout 12-step rooms across the world. Carl Jung once concluded that what chronic addicts needed was a spiritual experience and ongoing communal support. 

Most addicts in recovery settle for sobriety. Certainly, it beats the hell out of wallowing in the pain and distortion from a life lived in the agony of addictive behavior. Yet, few engage the worn road less traveled. Once you have put the cork in the bottle, what is next? Are you willing to go deeper? Are you willing to explore what is missing? Are you curious to understand why the addiction? Why the pain? Do you want to address that feeling in your gut that you are not good enough? These questions and more represent the gateway to a worn road less traveled. To those who have committed to sobriety and who are no longer content to rotate the object of addiction, I offer the following road markers on the worn road less traveled.

1. Adopt a mindset for recovery: Practice brainstorming more than one option for every challenge you face. Breakthrough the either/or mentality. Change your language about how you see yourself and the world around you. Dare to dream about creating the kind of person you want to be.  Figure out what your song is and sing it. The expedition in recovery truly begins when you earnestly are willing to truly change your mindset about addiction, yourself, and the world around you.

2. Become a Sponge: What has helped me to be successful in my world of endeavor is that I became a sponge to learn everything I could to be the best I could be. I was a minister in a church for over 25 years. During the beginning days of my training, I worked for three years for free, with whom I thought was the very best.  I asked so many questions that the lead pastor asked me to stop asking so many questions. Today I am proud that I learned to be a sponge in ministry and as a professional counselor. That said, it saved my life in recovery. Early in recovery, I adopted the mindset of learning everything I could about recovery. It is one of the fundamentals that has projected my personal growth during the past 33 years in recovery. Be a sponge!

3. Learn to fail forward: People who embrace a healthy recovery mindset create a paradigm shift in their thinking about failed behavior. They make it exciting. They realize that within their failure are lessons to learn that will help them become a little better today than they were yesterday. Rather than wallow in the mud of shame and negative thinking, they practice conditioning themselves to pursue a better way to live. They learn to transform the word excitement from a necessary feeling to a committed action of exploring what went wrong and doing something different. 

4. Practice Playback: This road marker is related to the previous one. When an addict relapses, it is common to admit the destructive behavior and then get back on the horse and try again. It is often brushed off with the idea that “I’m an addict” and what needs to happen is that I just need to bear down with my recovery skills. Sometimes, they commit to going to 90 meetings in 90 days or start again doing the 12 steps. What often is overlooked is the importance of playback. When addicts admit their failure to their support community, what is left out is why they relapsed and what happened. What often is overlooked is the importance of playback. It is crucial to go back and unpack what happened and where the breakdown was. A golfer will learn to improve his/her swing by watching videos of past swings. A basketball player will learn where they were out of position and how to correct other mistakes by watching past videos of performances. A recovering addict needs to do the same. Go back and fastidiously review triggers, build-up behaviors, and mistaken beliefs that dominated and then practice over and again replacement behavior that corrects what broke down. We never become perfect. But playback will help you become incrementally better than before. So, practice playback and pay it forward with an incremental positive change that over time will make a profound difference. 

5. Protect your imagination and get outside your comfort zone: It is counterintuitive for an addict to embrace discomfort. Running from emotional and physical pain is at the root of why addiction grows in the first place. Though contraindicated, in recovery an addict learns to lean into the pain and sit with it. Recovery requires that you get outside your comfort zone. Only when you do this, are you able to give birth to the person that your destiny is pulling you toward. The worn road less traveled demands that you live outside your comfort zone. This is where the problem is. Once sober from the hectic helter-skelter life of addiction and within the warm and friendly confines of a 12-step community, an addict is asked to push toward living outside of his/her comfort zone. It requires sensitivity to the support of the community while pushing forward to dream and realize your destiny. In doing so you must protect your imagination from the negative messages of “you can’t” or “who do you think you are.”  You must protect your imagination from the impact of your personal failures or others who subtly want to pull you back into an old mindset. It is a road less traveled for those who live outside their comfort zone. Laying it on the line and pushing the boundaries of your comfort zone will require a commitment to being the best person you can be one day at a time. Sometimes you will take 2 steps forward and then 3 steps backward. Everyone slips even as they soar. Overcome your setbacks by doing the next right thing regardless of how you feel. You won’t think your way into acting differently. You will act your way into a different way of thinking. Don’t abandon your quest to fulfill your imagination. Stop flogging yourself with negative messages. Every positive thought and action will move you closer to your desired transformation. The worn road less traveled requires that you protect your imagination and live outside your comfort zone. 

6. Choose your support community carefully and elevate those around you: One of the biggest challenges for an addict is to create an environment that fosters sobriety and personal growth. Most addicts have not surrendered to recovery behavior and hang around old friends who either influence them to return to addictive behavior or who thwart their vision of fulfilling their destiny. Like the old saying, “Hang around the barbershop long enough and you will get a haircut”, many addicts can testify to the reality of this powerful truth! The worn road less traveled in recovery will require that you weed out those who bring you down. You will need to distance yourself from the dream crushers around you. Don’t let them rent premium space in your mind. Foster a web of influence that will inspire you to achieve and transform yourself and hold you accountable to your imagination. Build an environment where half-assed efforts are unacceptable. Cultivate your brilliance by choosing a support community that expects greatness within. Create a support system that you can solicit counsel from those who will inspire you. Always know that on the worn road less traveled, life transformation is a team sport. 

When I wrote the book Dare to Be Average, Cultivating Brilliance in the Commonplace the emphasis was the opposite of half-hearted living. Rather, it is about taking the worn road less traveled and embracing the common everyday moment—even those that provide emotional discomfort—and mining meaningfulness from each one. This pursuit of meaningfulness is required in recovery for those who choose the worn road less traveled.