Working the steps: #1

[DesertEyes]

This is a little exercise I learned in my program of AA. Whenever I'm up against one of life's obstacles I re-word the steps to fit the obstacle. Then I work the steps just like I do for my addiction.

1- Admited I am powerless over pain, that my life has become unmanageable.

What does "unmanageable" mean to me? It means that I cannot control and direct my life to reach the goals I have chosen.

How is my life unmanageable? I cannot control how my body is going to feel from one day to the next. Last Sunday I had some friends come visit from out of town, but I'd been feeling like ***** for days. I _realy_ like this couple, and I'm not about to let a stupid disease rob me of the pleasure of good company, so I boosted my meds a little and I felt great. Okay, so maybe not great, but certainly good enough to go out for a wonderful lunch and chat. After that I got caught up on some paperwork at home, fixed my transmission, went to a meeting and then out for a date with my girlfriend. What a _great_ Sunday.

Monday I came back to my regular life. No boosting meds. Still had enough in me to make it thru the work day, went out to dinner with my sponsor, picked up a few groceries, and then crashed. Crashed hard. Had to take extra blood pressure meds, pain meds. No more boosting, I can only take those boosters for a little while before the side effects catch up with me. Now it's Tuesday and I left work early, poked around the web a little and slept for 2 hours. Still feel like ******, blood pressure is all over the place.

Manageable would be a life that is _not_ centered around medications. A life where I don't have to figure out every single day how many pills I'm going to need for what level of activity, where having _one_ good day doesn't require booster meds to feel normal, followed by a nasty crash afterwards.

Manageable would be the kind of life healthy people have.

A life I clearly don't have.

So yes, my life is unmanageable by me. Thank God I have all these wonderful meds so at least my life is manageable by my docs.

What about "powerless", what's that all about? Powerless means that I can't force my will to overcome the pain. I can't force it to the ground and beat it out of my life. The pain wins every time. Oh I can do the heavy duty Tai Chi / Yoga thing and focus my mind into an overwhelming display of will power and just tunnel thru the pain like some crazed animal. But that doesn't make the pain go away, it's just a bit of endorphins getting kicked up by force of will. I still hurt like ******, I just overwhelm my mind with my own endorphins and turn into some kind of animal. That's not defeating the pain, it's just moving over to the "dark side" with it. It doesn't last very long either.

I simply don't have the physical power to make the pain go away. I am not stronger than the chemicals flowing thru my body and causing my disease, and pain. If I stick my hand in a fire, my flesh will burn. What I have inside of me is just as much a chemical reaction as a fire, and there's no way I can use my will power against the laws of chemistry.

I am unable to control the chemistry inside my body, and that has made my life unmanageable. As long as I continue to try and control my internal chemistry with nothing more than will power I will continue to have an unmanagable life. If I stay in this condition of unmanageability I will slowly go insane.

Now that I've written all of the above I realize that being powerless over pain is not all that different than being powerless over booze or drugs. The booze wins every time, no matter what I do. The pain wins every time, no matter what I do.

Maybe I should move on to Step 2, this is getting depressing.

Mike

[jazpoppy]

Not sure what to tell you here as for incorporating pain into steps of addiction/alcoholism. Pain is a disease just like alcoholism and drug addiction, but its not a choice we made to start being in pain. Its not a disease that we buy from a liquor store or dealer, or "disease store". We are either born with it, or we develop it over time. Learning to deal with it is not as easy as learning to deal with our physical/mental drug/alcohol addictions. Those can "in time" be put into remission after we find AA or NA or any other type of recovery group that works for us. Pain is ongoing, and need pallative support by a medical doctor, a doctor that listens, doesn't blow us off, knows our fear of being addicted to narcotics and other substances and can help us to achieve pain relief that FITS our life's schedule. Be it a BUSY schedule, MODERATE schedule, or EASY schedule. Sometimes we have to make sacrifices in our life to accomodate our health. Sometimes we have to give up sports, a good high paying vigorous job, or even more degrading, we have to rest more and spend less time doing things we really want to do, things that we're used to doing everyday with no trouble, those things become very hard for us. Be it a mental disorder such as panic and anxiety, depression, bi-polar, or a chronic pain condition resulting from injury, we have to get support (as we would for our addictions) to help us modify our lives to handle our "new" and "scary" feeling that we are now feeling due to our conditions. For example: I used to work full-time as a computer technician (the job entailed running around a college campus, crawling under desks, carrying printers, servers, computers, monitors, setting them up, taking them down, running to each and every person that has a computer crisis (because we did face-2-face technical support), not knowing how dirty I was going to get, how twisted up like a pretzel I was going to have to force my body to contort into to get to 30 year old wiring, fix bad wires, replace them, then all the administrative stress that comes with being the best at what I did in my field and being VERY SPEEDY, and having HIGH QUALITY of service as well as HIGH QUANTITY of work getting done in smaller and smaller amounts of time as cut-backs sent part-time help and Student Interns away. I used to do that, come home, cook dinner, do dishes, go to a 2 hour Kenpo Karate class, then come home, take my shower, give my son a bath, fix my son and my husband's lunches, set BOTH of their clothes out for the next day, then finally go to bed around 11pm, waking up at 5:30am to take my son to school, and get to work to do it all over again. At that time in my life, I THRIVED on being busy. Weekends were a little down time for me, but I still did weight lifting, took care of my family, spent time with my son and husband, did Karate tournaments, did Kickboxing for 3 hours every Thursday, and one time I added teaching at night on Mondays and Wednesdays into the mix. I only cut down on the Kickboxing but still did the rest. I was exhausted, but it felt GOOD to me, a GOOD exhaustion, I felt as if I achieved something! I was a great mom, a great wife, a great technical support specialist, and a great athlete. I'd been doing this "type" of fast living and stressful body abuse (even my doctor told me to slow down, but I blew her off) until I really hurt myself at work, lifting a heavy computer that I thought I could handle, and herniating disks in my lower back, causing a shift in my hip joints, resulting in osteoarthritis, I already had 2 herniated disks in my neck, and yes, I was in PT for years for it before i know what it really was, thought it was tight musles. I also developed ostearthritis of the facet joints (all they way from Lumbar to Cervical spine), I had a birth defect called Spinal Stenosis that made these things feel much worse, I had carpel tunnel syndrome (I got therapy, but it came back, no surgery yet), I fell and broke my right ankle, and broke my left knee-cap, as well as ended up with SEVERE Achilles Tendonitis that has taken over 5 years to start healing, and comes back if I start doing too much. I'm so limited. I can walk for 30 minutes, sometimes 45 minutes but I usually limp home, my hip goes out, my back goes out, and I'm only 31. I had to leave my GREAT job due to health reasons. I have NOT had a job since, and I don't think I'm hireable, because if they ask my last job why I left, then tell them it was medically related, but that I would make a great computer support person from a remote site, like home, or sit in front of a phone and computer all day. I still get turned down for those jobs, because the boss believes I'll be a liablility. I don't even know if I'd qualify for SSDI (Social Security Disability), its a hard thing to get. I am living on NOTHING right now, I am living with my bf who takes care of me, and I'm so ashamed. I wish someone could find a sit-down job for me. I'm so good at troubleshooting the computer, even from home over the phone, I can dial into other computers around the country and fix problems remotely. I am just finding it hard to get started. Well there's my stupid story. I feel very ashamed of myself. I really want to feel GOOD everyday.
If I take my medication EVERYDAY at the same rate, I usually feel OK, but some days I need to "up" my meds just to get through a tough day. Especially a day filled with interviews, or travel, or having to move heavy things (which I usually drag accross the floor). Even laundry is a battle. I get so depressed sometimes I stay in bed for 2 or 3 days at a time, I need a BOOST of extra meds to get out of bed and not ache and hurt all-over, as I just found out I also have (to top it all off) Fibromyalsia from PTSD and Anxiety (I've been through very abusive relationships before I met the man of my dreams whom I'm with now). I still need to air out the dirty laundry and not feel guilty about the way my EX-Boyfriend treated me. He would kick me in the back and then as I was writhing in pain, tell me pain is all in my head and I don't need any medication, that I need to grow up and face pain like a big girl, and LIVE WITH IT! I HATE THOSE PEOPLE THAT TELL US PAIN PATIENTS TO "LIVE WITH IT"! How would they "live with it" if it happened to them, not so well, probably worse than us pain warriors!!! Well I've gone on way too long.

Take Care;

Jaz