Sunyata's Personal Do's and Dont's for Secular Recovery
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If this helps you, wonderful, if not, then it is not for you:


1)HIT BOTTOM. The pain of continuing has to outweigh the fear of stopping.

2)Decide that you want to be happy! Because recovery is happiness! Crave true, pure happiness like you craved your drink, drug. If drugs and liquor made people happy we would all be on the corner or at the liquor store all day, but they don't make us happy! Drugs and drinking hurt us!

3)TRY AA OR NA!!! Give AA or NA a serious try. They work for many people. Only after you have tried repeatedly, and know in your heart that you cannot stop drinking and drugging in the 12 Step Modality, should you say "this doesn't work for me".

4) Don't associate with people you drank with, used with, especially in the beginning, and even later on. Bars and clubs are not good for recovery or the development of spirituality or insight. They are predicated on escaping from reality, not confronting it, which is what recovery is all about.

4) Substitution: every time you get a craving, engage in a positive or netural behavior, instead of letting the negative seeds in your mind linger. Do something you used to love, and forgot about, even if it feels awkward (which it will, everything is awkward in the beginning, and even later on, heehee)

5)Meditate every morning, using Thich Nhat Hanh's "Miracle of Mindfulness" or any WWW set of meditation instructions (Google Mindfulness of Breathing). Meditation on the Breath is SECULAR, breath is not religious object, breath is natural, we all have it. Start small (five minutes), don't beat yourself up, don't quit.

6) Think the drug, drink through, realize that the drug/drink is a temporary fix to a temporary problem, a problem that will go away of its own accord. THINGS TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES. HAVE FAITH IN THAT PROPOSITION. IT IS TRUE.

7) Develop your spiritual life. If you are an atheist, read Sartre and Einstein and Darwin. if you are a Pagan, read the Upanishads or the Vedas, the Tao Te Ching or Celtic stuff. If you are Buddhist read Dhammapada or whatever. Anything that helps you....READ AND DO!

8)Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results. Converse of above, anything that hurts you....DON'T DO!

9)LOVE YOURSELF! YOU ARE WORTH SAVING! YOUR HUMAN LIFE IS PRECIOUS! DO NOT WASTE IT! Recognize your own divinity and specialness, the wonder that is you! You must recover for yourself, because you want to be happy. Without a real aspiration to get clean and sober, it is impossible to get sober and clean.

10)Learn to fail! Failure can be the greatest blessing, as it teaches us more than success, and without failure, we cannot succeed. THE MORE MISTAKES YOU MAKE THE MORE YOU ARE TRYING TO GROW!

11) Do not hate your "negative emotions" or "bad thoughts". Do not hate "your disease". Don't condemn yourself. Your imperfections and defects are a part of you! You are not Iraq! You are not Vietnam! You are a human being, not a battlefield. You are not Disease vs. God, or God Vs. Devil, or Light Vs. Dark. You are perfectly imperfect, and if you wait to be perfect before you love yourself, you will die miserable.

12)Accept life as it is. This world is not a safe place, and there is much wrong with it, but this does not mean we cannot be happy here!

13)Take responsibility for your own happiness. No one else is responsible for your actions but you. Your happiness and your despair, are in your hands, and your hands alone. Your destiny is your own. We cannot choose the hand we are dealt, but sometimes there is more satisfaction in skillfully playing a horrible hand than playing a good one. No one can save you but yourself, so you have to decide that you are worth saving. It is only when you make this decision that others can help you.

14)Seek out positive people who don't drink, use drugs addictively. (There are tons of them, and the vast majority do not go to 12 Step Fellowships)


15) Never give up! The only failure, in this world, is to quit!




Peace and Courage,
Sunyata