Some 1st step thoughts

[REZ]

Step One: We admitted we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable.

I used a lot of drugs on a daily basis, but I didn't think it was a big deal. All of my friends were doing it. It seemed "normal." Though I didn't want to stop, I did want to try to cut down my use or "control" it. Some serious attempts at control did not work: I always went back to my old pattern. This started to bother me, and made me think I might actually have some kind of problem. But what really made me want to try a different way of life, I think, was that I began to see that my life as a drug user was crappy. I didn't have a lot of fun using anymore. I was going nowhere. I wasn't in a lot of trouble with law or anything like that, but I was just kind of drifting through life. I really started to feel ashamed of myself and the life I was living. This is what ultimately led me to go to my first NA meeting and start the process of recovery. So, for me, both parts of the first step are crucial, powerlessness and unmanageability.

[Phinneas]

Originally Posted by REZ

... But what really made me want to try a different way of life, I think, was that I began to see that my life as a drug user was crappy. I didn't have a lot of fun using anymore.

I can relate to that, REZ.

For me, the big turning point came when I couldn't envision a life WITH drugs, and I couldn't envision a life WITHOUT drugs. It had stopped being "fun" long before this, too.

[mcdo1268]

cant drink, and I cant not drink…that’s a dilemma…lack of power…until I recognize this truth about me, there is no need for a higher power…Once I admit this truth…then i become willing to discover this higher power through the remaining eleven steps. And that power will do for me what I can NOT do for myself…and the work goes on, because I will drink again if I stop…powerless over alcohol..... CANT DO IT ALONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Luckyv2]

REZ I didn't have a lot of fun using anymore.

EXACTLY! What happen to me last time and I never want to forget it is that I had stolen a credit card from someone (well actually the numbers) and ran it up about 5,000 dollars. During that time I was using around 6-8 eight balls of crack a day....but it sucked because all I could think about was using his credit card. I couldn't even get high. I even had to call him when I should have been higher than sh!t and told him what I did. I knew then just as I remember today that the drugs quit working and I had no choice but to find a different way of life.

Through sponsorship, NA, Meetings, The Literature, and not using no matter what I have gone down a different journey than I ever have. I think that I finally surrendered and knew that I couldn't do it alone the ME became WE and we are all going down this road of recovery together hand in hand. Grateful for the choice finally that I have now to NOT USE NO MATTER WHAT!

With Love and Respect

Vic

[SaTiT]

For me ,
"Most of us already know, we didn't have to think twice about it."
I party my ass off and managed it for a long time.
I was already sleeping in my car. I had a house I could
have gone home, but I was getting the heebei jeebie.lol
Yet, i already knew what crytal was doing to me and
the affect of it. Meth bacsially put me right at the
edge of consicious and subconciousness, in other words
phychotic. I read up a lot on medician , drugs, & psychology.
I started hanging around dangerous people
on purpose. I basically didn't want to come back to life.
Life wasn't fun to me oneway or the other.
I tried to commit suicide already. Surviving that gave me
added shame aside from other things I've done.
I was sick and tired of living.I was mad at god for keeping me alive.
Being in a psychotic state was what i wanted.
The drugs stopped working. Drugs and alcohol were
just means to an end. In other words just the symtoms of
my deeper problem...I sabotaged
Underneath all of that was still me inside, I felt that.
I've always had. But I felt empty. I looked god into
his teary eyes and tolded him to go to hell.
I had a hell of a time with step #3.

[Gmoney]

As with many of us, using was fun in the beginning. But long before I ever admitted being powerless, the drugs stopped working. In fact, in the end, I used powerlessness as an excuse to continue to use. It was only after I had exhausted ever attempt to control my addiction on my own that I admitted to being beaten. This wasn't easy for a strong-willed, self-reliant guy like myself. Yet, faced with the reality of the depths I had sunk to, it wasn't too hard to see the destruction, chaos and damage my addiction caused. The evidence was overwhelming and humbling.

Through desperation I came to NA completely defeated. By following suggestions I learned that not only am I powerless over drugs, but I'm powerless over my addiction as well. Through the initial self-assessment of the 1st Step I learned that drugs were just a symptom of my disease and that my life had been unmanageable for quite some time. By making the dual admissions of the 1st Step, and accepting that I cannot recover alone, I opened the door to recovery and began the process of living life on it's own terms without the use of drugs.

[REZ]

For quite a while, using we just my means of getting through the day. It was what I did. I still had some fun, but the fun did not last very long, and a lot of time was finding ways to get more drugs, planning my life around using, coming down off drugs, etc. Drugs really were the center of my life.

[SaTiT]

And it wasn't like I wanted to stop using just becuase i found NA.
I don't know what is the correct way of working step #1
My sponsor just told me to make a desperation list.
That's how he worked his and he passed it on to me.
It dosen't mentions about being unmanageable.

The closest i can discribe my experince when i was using is ...
I was in pergurtory. I couldn't deal with life on life's term.
I didn't want to live & i didn't want to go to hell.
I wasn't afraid of dying. I just wanted the pain and sufferning to end.
Getting numb and wacked out of my mind kept me in that alter state.
Getting wasted , a waste of time, a waste of life.
It's was just grace for me. i have no other explinations for it.
Anything could of happened in those moments, all it had took was
just a single moment for things to be differnent, and i wouldn't be here.

It was through drugs and alcohol that I wanted to destroy me.
It's through NA that I learned how to live.

And half of the time I don't work my program and don't really
want to carry on, even now.
So...whats holding me up in these moments.
The moments between the meetings, between me applying my program.
The moments of grace...I guess.

I'm not religious, but i guess if there was a lesson to learned
it that I'm not god. I didn't have right to take my life.
that why I had a problem with step #3. Talk about getting humble at the core.

[Luckyv2]

Originally Posted by SaTiT

I couldn't deal with life on life's term.
I didn't want to live & i didn't want to go to hell.
I wasn't afraid of dying.

I didn't have a problem with not going to hell for I was living it. I knew that I was in hell, the constant thoughts of ending my life, the heartache of knowing that I was destroying my life and didn't want to do anything but die. I never was afraid of dying, I was fearful of living without my dope. It isn't until I started to learn how to live clean and working the steps that the fear of living without dope started to leave. And once it started to leave is when the obsession and compulsion soon left also.

One thing for me was that eventually I didn't have a desire to stop using but my desire turned around to the desire to stay clean. I know today that I have that desire to stay clean...some days are not easy but I must still have enough desire there for this has been working for a few 24's now and for that I am eternally grateful.

With Love and Respect

Vic

[Gmoney]

Looking back, in those early years when I thought I was having fun, powerlessness and unmanageability was everywhere but I wasn't trying to see it. I was lucky to get a high-paying job straight out of high school and ended up getting fired after 3 years because I suffered from "Friday-Monday Syndrome." I'd go out drinking and drugging on Thursdays and Sundays and couldn't make it to work on time (if at all) on Fridays and Mondays. Oh yeah, let me not forget to mention how I fell asleep behind the wheel on the way home from a Christmas party - dead drunk and total-loss of the car. It was a miracle I walked away from that crash with only a bump on my forehead.

Acquiring credit and making major purchases meant I had bills to pay, but consistently missing days from work because I was hung-over or getting high equaled short paychecks and unhappy co-workers who had to cover for me. Robbing Peter to pay Paul was certainly a sign of financial unmanageability, but I kept chaulking it up to being young. Hey...I was only 20 years old...I had the rest of my life to get serious. Obviously, I knew nothing about addiction or progression...ya think?

Losing that good job meant virtually nothing because my family connections allowed me the opportunity to get a better one. I took the same attitude and behaviors with me- only difference was I became more cunning and manipulative. I had bosses I could trick into believing almost anything I told them and I learned how to work the system. I continued to use for the next 20 years before my addiction took total control. I obsessed about using daily and once I got started, I couldn't stop. All of the things I had accomplished and the things I placed high value on meant very little. And when I lost that job I felt as if I had lost my identity - I cared nothing about dying or living. I just didn't want to feel.

Obsession, compulsion and self-centeredness (the 3 components of addiction) became multiplied. Powerlessness and unmanageability could no longer be denied because I did things I swore I'd never do. Morals and values were abandoned and I was reduced to an animal. I wanted to stop but I didn't know how. It was grace that kept me alive, but it was desperation that brought me to NA. And my sponsors have all stressed that without admitting powerlessness we have no choice but to become unmanageable. Control is the illusion that sets me up for pain. If I don't get the 1st Step right, none of the rest will work.

[IO Storm]

For me it was a confusing mixture of robbing one area of one sobriety

program and paying another...I had 8 ( to me) sober years in AA while

using amphetamines, so I wasn't truly sober. It was a little confusing

when I would be in an NA meeting and some would say say they were

clean but enjoyed their beer...but I really knew better.. you see, the

BIG one was already comin' on. Relapsed with a nuclear. I drank on

and off from Feb. 17 2005 -Feb 8 2006. Speedballed for an entire year.

Put the plug in the jug 15 months ago....for the last time.

And doubled up on speed. How could I do a step 1? I was using!

Speeding more than ever, running from the added wreckage, gambling

my ass off. I heard the train but could not outrun that thing.

The mental progression and demoralization of the disease still amazes

me today. I began to forge checks from Mom's account when I had

stayed 3 days at the bright lights and had won then ost all. It wasn't

stealing , just borrowing until payday. I did things I would never have

done. I taught all my children to be of good character and to never

take what did not belong to them. I was nearly raped by two men who

drove me to the bank early one morning as there was no gas in my car.

My eldest daughter threw me out of Mom's on May 17 2006.

Still, I used until the last pill was gone. Slow detox. Last one June

8-2006.

I went to a medical doctor on that date, actually collapsed into his

arms, and said "I am an alcoholic and a drug addict, this is my first

day clean and sober, but I used today, I'm very sick, and I think I might

be crazy." "But, doctor, I think you and God might help me."

He did, He does.

Since then, Step 1 has worked me. For the first time I know what it feels

like to be sober AND clean for the first in 25 years.

Love,

:

Sherry

[IO Storm]

And BTGOG:

The gambling?

Slowly...went...with the rest......

[Gmoney]

"It was a little confusing when I'd try NA and some would say say they were clean but drank...but..I knew better.."

Wow...

When I was new, I would hear stories about AA members who claimed to be sober but still smoked pot. I also knew something had to be wrong with that picture. Then...at around 10 months clean, a lady I thought had good recovery shared on her 3 year anniversary that she didn't think it was wrong to drink a wine cooler "every now and then." If I'm not mistaken, she was under the influence THAT day!! Needless to say, the oldtimers shared with her (in no uncertain terms) that a drug is a drug and being "clean" covers everything. We later found out that she had been using since her 1 year anniversary. Honesty is the antidote to our diseased thinking.

[IO Storm]

"A drug is a drug is a drug".

[IO Storm]

That goes for Near beer as well.

[REZ]

When I got clean in NA 22 years ago, people did not endorse drinking or smoking pot, but there was definitely an attitude among some people in NA then that if you only had a problem with pot and booze, you weren't really an addict. True addicts shot dope. This attitude made me feel inferior, since I never shot dope. But I realized that a drug is a drug. It doesn't matter what you used or how much you used...addiction is all about lack of control and unmanageability...

[SaTiT]

Most of the elders see right throught it. They knew they couldn't
changed us but they love us anyways. Unconditional love.
love, patient, and tolerance.

there's drugs mention all over the place in the AA bb.
Even in the first 154 pages.
" alcohol is a drug" is mention in the beginning of the readings
in most if not all NA meetings...
and the 12 steps of NA was borrowed from AA...you know, NA's predecessors

We see what we want to see. We recover when we want to recover.

The only people the have problems with this issuse are the people
thats still getting wack out of their mind.

The only requirment is a desire to stop drinking/using.
Fake it tell you make it....i guess....that would include taking a cake and still drinking/using for some people.lol

[dalin]

if it changes my thinker...
and screws with my reality.......
...why do you think they call it dope anyway homeslice?

[mrthirdeyeching]

The first step, for me of course, was and is about being honest with myself first and foremost. I knew I had a problem long before I took the first step. I knew I was powerless and my life was unmanageable, yet I didn't know another way. I'm grateful for the 12 steps and all the people in the meetings who share my struggles. That was the main thing for me. Knowing that I wasn't alone.

The first step for me had to be taken. I had to write about my truth and where I was an how I got where I am now. The first step was not only crucial, but necessary for me to move on to step two. Not just talking about it, but writing it down. Writing helps me sort through the bullshit and get to the root of things.

The steps are in order for a reason. I keep hearing that. I'm now working step two and it's hard to really look at myself, but it's becoming easier the more I practice it.

My former sponsor taught me a lot about step one. I can't control people, places, or things. The principles of step one: honesty, open-mindedness, willingness, humility and acceptance... they take practice just like anything else.

I practice this program for spiritual recovery first, everything else is details.

[mrthirdeyeching]

windysan... I don't think that's sharing on the first step.... sorry man... I don't think it's cool to condone any kind of using here.

Alchohol is a drug.