Old 10-08-2011, 12:03 PM
  # 61 (permalink)  
FT
Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2010
Posts: 3,677
This is AVRT.
Recovery with an attitude.
That statement is ME.

I'm not saying that to puff up my chest or toot my own horn. It's just how I do life.

I'm 60 years old and a senior student at a local university. I will be graduating with honors next June. I was told I wouldn't be able to walk because of my bone on bone arthritis, at the worst of which I couldn't even manage to push the cart through the grocery store. I had double knee replacements in 2009, and now I ride my bike 30 miles at a pop, and I walk probably 10 miles a week on campus and wherever I feel like going. F*ck that sh*t!

If I sound angry, well I'm really not. That stupid ortho surgery, combined with my ignorance of the ability of opiates to hook me, got me addicted to opiates for two years, after 20 years of being free of alcohol, my previous DOC.

Well, I'd been to meetings years ago and they just weren't my gig. I had lots of excuses and great reasons to continue on opiates, which had taken over my life not unlike alcohol had once done.

So, I decided to cop an attitude. I had been looking around me at all the other people who seemed to be able to get through life without opiates. I had to make a decision to take control of my life again, using techniques I had always done with every other thing I've succeeded at. "I AM NOT AN OPIATE ADDICT" became my inner mantra for awhile, followed by a much calmer, this-is-just-me attitude -- "I am a non-opiate user". That simple little phrase is all I need, any time my Beast or Addictive Voice pop up to remind me they are still there.

This was all before I discovered AVRT, but after reading the Crash Course and other AVRT I realized what they were doing was akin to my own personal "program".

So yeah. I've got an attitude. Good.

FT
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