Tooshabby

Hmmm. Slightly tangential, but I've often thought thank God I live in a country where it's impossible to import prescription drugs without there being a 95% chance of being caught out by customs (you can trust my figures they're based on a lot of personal research). Had to laugh at the 'keeping an eye peeled for a stray prescription pad'. It's an interesting discussion. Maybe it's a reciprocal relationship? Bad habits and misguided thinking foster addiction and vice versa. I do believe that the experience of addictive behaviour over many years.....oh god, I don't know. I give up. Thanks for the thought provoking thread though :-)

oak

I love the feeling of surrender. For me, it is about accepting the current circumstances, and being very present. Accepting that what will be, will be. (Not a helpless acceptance of bad situations. I think I can do more from a place of acceptance and surrender.) I see surrender as a deeply spiritual place. My best experiences of surrender come from meditation and aikido and other martial arts.

Currently, I go in and out of surrender. But this thread is a reminder for me to surrender more.

I don't equate it to defeat or losing, but of course that is a valid definition.

I don't know if I surrendered when I got sober. I do like the idea of surrendering into sobriety.

Tooshabby

That's beautiful. I've been neglecting my spirituality. Thanks for that reminder ;-)

Delfin

Beautiful post, oak. I hear what you're saying.

I can definitely understand why people don't like the word surrender. It has the connotation of losing a battle, whereas I feel like I've definitely won by surrendering in my case. I guess it's all in what you are surrendering, or what you are surrendering to. In my case, I surrendered to the solution I fought for two years: total sobriety. But that moment of surrender was a moment of peace rather than loss. As oak stated beautifully, it is a "deeply spiritual place". At least for me it was. I have had very few moments of surrender in my life, which is funny because I often tell people to let go and let God. I should probably listen to my own advice.

Delfin

Dee74

don't you agree tho that the measure of recovery lies not in never having crazy flights of fancy, but in our rational and responsible response to those knee jerk feelings, Courage?

D

BackToSquareOne

I think there was a measure of acceptance and surrender in the decision to part ways with mood altering substances. I drank mostly out of boredom, depression, anxiety or any other uncomfortable mental states. The true truth was that life will always send you a mix of states of mind and trying to drown out all the bad ones was an exercise in futility.

What started out as social drinking led me to believe I could just drown out all the bad feelings in an ocean of alcohol. It seemed so easy and logical, just sedate my brain and the bad feelings got put on hold for a little while. Everyone who has tried this experiment discovers that it rarely ends well.

So yes you do have to learn to deal with the good, bad and ugly aspects of life without trying to drown any of it out. At what point does alcohol switch from being an aid for the good times to a one size fits all solution for all of lifes problems? I think that the switch over can be subtle and you may not even see it comming until it's in a fairly advanced state. Learning to roll with the flow often requires acceptance and surrender to weave your way through the matrix of life.

dox

There are many meanings, connotations, inferences and implications to both acceptance and surrender.
Both can be very emotive words.
Both can be construed positively or negatively, depending on context and mood.

What say you to the proposition that, in some sense of each word, both are required for recovery?

For the twelve steppers reading this: Would you consider that each step may require both surrender and acceptance? (bearing in mind the multiplicity of meanings for both words.)

Before you disagree, please take a look at the poem that this discussion inspired.
Just to warn you: It is a 12 stanza poem:

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...surrender.html

Bird615

I see nothing I can disagree with in that poem.
Absolutely both surrender and acceptance are required for my recovery. And to be clear, they are things I need to practice all the time, because if I don't, I end up sliding back into old behaviours, like trying to force those people, places and things to be the way "I" think they should be. The frustration of living like that is enough to drive me back to drink.

This doesn't make me a passive doormat, it frees me to be able to take care of the things I can take care of rather than wasting my time beating my head against the brick wall of the things I can't change.

courage2

Yes. But I wish my default mode weren't "ass". I don't want to be an ass but it's a daily reprieve, especially for some reason, lately.

ScottFromWI

I lean towards the acceptance side of the fence on this issue. It's a simple concept really but it took me many years to really adopt and live it.

Basically, I accept the following truths about me.

1. There is something different about my brain/being that does not allow me to drink alcohol in a controlled or safe manner. If I choose to drink, I will ALWAYS return to every day binge drinking eventually.

2. I accept that I will never be able to change myself to correct #1. There is no pill,book, surgery, or technique that can make me able to drink responsibly again - ever.

3. I cannot explain why I am this way, and I will never be able to. It just IS. And it will always be that way.

Aellyce

There is nothing wrong with feeling irritated, angry and restless sometimes, I think. I also think it's much worse to bottle it up and turn all of it against ourselves rather than channeling it out into the external world and constructive action. Hmm this latter thought reminds me of Robby... one of the features I admired in him was his ability to use anger constructively and productively, instead of destructively. I really wish he had been with us longer in good health so that I could have discussed this with him further... had some wonderful (and extremely helpful) exchanges with him about this in private and it was just cut short when he fell ill.

My own default problem with this was actually the opposite: that I had habitually tended to repress or otherwise modify my frustration and anger, feeling that it's not okay to be angry and express it. This certainly earned me lots of positive remarks from people about my "peacefulness", but I learned with time, and got into it truly deeply only in the past year or so, that this is not genuine mental peace at all. My therapist called it "premature buddhahood", which I think is a very accurate description (I mentioned this before here on SR). It's a form of self-defense, which does not always serve me well at all. So I have been trying to work on this recently and when I succeed, the result feels so liberating! Again, the "trick" is to find ways to channel it without using it destructively. One major thing I've been doing is using that said therapy experience for it as a learning curve about how to express anger and when. It is very uncomfortable at times, but I'm doing it because this will serve me better than any of my characteristic defenses or drinking alcohol.

There are also other things I like very much to "act out" frustration and anger in the moment, which is some form of artistic expression, for those that are so inclined. Or some vigorous (perhaps competitive) exercise. The challenge with these, of course, is that if we did not have the habit, we need to learn and establish them, which is always quite hard work for adults I think.

Anyway I am just free associating here, courage. In any case, I don't think that having these feelings in the first place and being aware of them is a problem, more the opposite. I more agree with Dee that it's how we react.

ArtFriend

I am very passive aggressive and it has not served me well. As a coping mechanism, I sublimated my emotions as a child (as much as possible). I felt that it was better to clam up and be stoic in a chaotic environment then to add fuel to the fire. So, these coping skills are still in force and half the time I don't even know what I am feeling. Then, at inappropriate times, my anger spills out and I create a mess. I want to work on this in therapy along with a lot of other things.

courage2

Thanks, ArtFriend. I appreciate your honesty and the honesty of everyone else here.

Whatever you call it -- surrendering, accepting, shedding your baggage -- it's hard while you're doing it, no? I expect there's relief after, but who knew that almost 3 years since I first quit I'd be spending so many mornings in tears over ...nothing. I have no problems. Just me.

silentrun

Awwwah Snarky, I remember when I figured out I was the ass. You can use your ass powers for good too. I read a great DBT workbook last night. It helped me but I am on my phone and can't link. If you are interested I will hook you up after work.

ArtFriend

(((courage)))

I cry for no apparent reasons too... but there is stuff going on under the surface obviously.

fini

just thinking of the difference between: surrender something and surrender to something.
i wouldn't have used the word surrender when i quit drinking, could only see it as a negative resignation and defeat-spewing concept when what i felt the moment i quit was such relief at knowing i was done with it. what blessed peace in that.
later, i spent some time with the word and concept, what it means to me now to say 'surrender'. a stopping of battle. laying down arms. gaining cease (i'm making that a noun for this second)and peace. a letting be.
today and every day...i try to surrender the ego-driven "must be my way!" and surrender to what silent run put as going with the flow.

Dee74

Ass is not a word I would use in relation to you, so either you're *really* good at hiding it, or you have a fault in your self perception software

D

courage2

I believe we've diagnosed that in me before LOL. I'm buggy. Where's my mood-swing emoticon when I need it?

Hevyn

I agree - our Courage is anything but an Ass.

youbetcha

I surrender my life and my will to God on a daily basis. In early sobriety I surrendered quite a few other things as well, my drinking and "party" friends and that lifestyle, my ego, what I "thought" I wanted, what I "thought" was best for me etc. I surrendered lots of people along the way as well, family members, relationships etc. Some have come back to me or remained, but in a different way than before, some haven't. For me, I really had to surrender everything, and I still try to live that way. I'm not running the show, at this point that's pretty much a Truth for me. I highly recommend surrendering, letting go etc.