It is when we hit bottom .. that we can begin to look up
Drug Addiction Has No Mercy
Thread Starter
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Milwaukie Oregon
Posts: 875
It is when we hit bottom .. that we can begin to look up
Addicts always require more, more, more of everything that makes em' feel good ... even relationship wise (more of us ... less of themselves) more, more ... more us, less, lesser of them .. and this goes on and on and one day we find ourselves wondering what the hell happened (we've given so much of ourselves over to our addicted loved one) that we have nothing left, but a memory of what we once were and the reality of what we've become is devastating ... We've consistently weakened and yielded living our lives for and around the addict, his/her addiction and the behavior thereof for so long, being caught up in trying to change the addict, save the addict, rescue the addict, sacrificing ourselves for the addict ... the addict, the aDiCt, the ADDICT... morning, noon and night .. day in day out it spent all around and being all about the addict and what he/she is or isn't doing or what she/he has or hasn't done, what they said or didn't say, whether they used or didn't use ... that by the time we actually plop down from sheer exhaustion and try to take a moment to breath or to think ... We are devastated at what not only what our lives have become, but more so what we've become in the process of trying to keep our alcoholic loved one away from and off of drugs ...
then we begin the journey into trying to understand what the hell has and is happening to your life ... At some point we realize that what we've been doing hasn't been working so we begin to look for answers outside ourselves .. only to find that all that time and energy spent "helping" your addicted loved one wasn't help at all, but rather ENABLING .. and all that "I can save him/her" was CODEPENDENCY and then to top things off you find that in order to make things better for you and for the addict you have to let go and Let God (the very thing that we've been resisting all along) .. We don't want to let go and let God because what if God doesn't have the same blueprint as we do? ... then the fear sinks in, "But what if" what if I let go and he/she gets hurt, or something bad happens or worse (our biggest fear)she/he ends up dead. So we try to hold on only to find we've been holding our addicted loved one up and keeping their feet from touching the ground ... in other words (holding up the addict out of fear they will get hurt ... instead of letting go and letting them fall and realizing that the pain from the fall is just what the doctor ordered) Pain can be beneficial .. It can be a motivator, it can speak loud and clear and can be a constant reminder to the addict that things need to change (but first you've got to stop cushioning them from that pain).
Think about it .. what brought you here? Hmmmm? Could it have been the pain in your heart that was so overwhelming and hurt so bad .. that you started to look for other solutions besides the ones you've already tried and retired to the point of exhaustion?
Could it be that you're addicted loved one didn't rescue you, or try to fix you, or kiss and make it all better for you?
Are you making the connection I'm trying to show you here?
There are times when the addict shows us affection and it is those times when we feel like things just might be okay after all (our emotions have been rescued) We feel good (we got our fix) and then BAM .. the addict is back out on a tangent and there we sit with salt on our wounds .. hurting yet again. The addict doesn't ride in, "a knight in shining armor" to rescue us and save us from the pain and destruction that our addiction is causing us (our addiction = them) no .. day after day ...night after night we are hurting because of what our addiction is doing to us. (see what I'm sayin' here?) We are left to feel the pain of our own addiction and when that pain becomes more then too much .. we will do almost anything to escape it.
You are no different then your addict except maybe via drug of choice and minus some of the more outrageous behavior .. they choose a substance .. We choose them .. and if pain can drive us to get clean .. then hey .. it could work for the addict as well ... WE ALL KNOW addicts don't like pain and will do almost anything to make it stop .. and if allowed to suffer consequences of his/her own actions and feel the pain full on .. It could be the very thing that sends your addicted loved one into recovery.
If you find yourself sitting there reading this and you are in pain because of and over your addicted loved one ... let that pain drive you to seek out your recovery, your healing ...
You are not responsible or capable to make it all better for your addicted loved one and above all you do NOT have the power to change things for them or change them for that matter, but you can change YOU. The addict is responsible for their own lives and how they live it ... and if drugs are chosen over all else then the pain, suffering, and consequences that ultimately come with the territory of being an addict belong to the addict and not the loved one of the addict ...
The very pain, consequences, trouble that you are trying to keep from happening to your addict loved one ... Just might be the very thing that would bring them to rock bottom ... SO LET IT HAPPEN. Get out of the way, let em' hit and and Let the process begin
The longer you fight it ... the harder you make your own life ...
Besides you can't get around, over or under it ... You're going to have to walk through it to get to the other side ...
It is usually because we are (or we think we are) at our wits end when we begin to look for answers to help us understand ... we read books, talk to counselors, search the net for answers ... some end up here ... searching, asking questions, trying to understand and make some kind of sense out of their lives ... You read, and read and read, step out and post, read replies, reply yourself and the others that have been down the path before you reach out to try to help you ... to try to take your hand and led you out, but are usually met with resistance, unsurety (should I stay or should I go) What will happen to the addict in my life if I let go to find myself ... Will they lose themselves in booze completely ... so you stay behind because your not quite ready to recovery yourself ... You still feel the need to baby sit your addict ... You watch and watch as things decline as they decline and you fight, argue, yell, cry, beg, plead, rationalize, try logic .. only to find you've been beating your head against a brick wall and now to top things off you've busted open your head and not only is your head bleeding, but so is your heart ... Bleeding and crying out Please God, Make this all stop ... (ya gotta get out of the way so he can reach your alcoholic)
This site is an information booth ... You come in all beat up, weathered from the storm ... you ask for directions ... and are given them, but they are useless UNLESS or UNTIL you follow them ... it takes , trust, faith, strength, courage and a real desire to change NOT THE addict, but yourself ... A "I'm willing to do what ever it takes" kind of attitude.
The addict is going to do what the addict does NO MATTER what you do ... and if you're living paralized waiting for the addict to change before you can be happy or go on with your life .. then you could be waiting a long, long time .. You think you're exhausted now ... it doesn't get any better till you get better ...
The best gift you can give yourself and your addicted loved one is YOUR OWN RECOVERY ... they can't do it for you ... you can't do it for them ... but each can do it for themselves ... and I can say this .. It is easier for the addict to out run you ... so if you plan on tryin to keep up you better put on your marathon sneakers and get ready to be put through more hell then you've ever know before ...
If you are here searching for answers .. then you are the one that is READY for change.
The roller coaster stops ... when you get off the ride.
Passion
then we begin the journey into trying to understand what the hell has and is happening to your life ... At some point we realize that what we've been doing hasn't been working so we begin to look for answers outside ourselves .. only to find that all that time and energy spent "helping" your addicted loved one wasn't help at all, but rather ENABLING .. and all that "I can save him/her" was CODEPENDENCY and then to top things off you find that in order to make things better for you and for the addict you have to let go and Let God (the very thing that we've been resisting all along) .. We don't want to let go and let God because what if God doesn't have the same blueprint as we do? ... then the fear sinks in, "But what if" what if I let go and he/she gets hurt, or something bad happens or worse (our biggest fear)she/he ends up dead. So we try to hold on only to find we've been holding our addicted loved one up and keeping their feet from touching the ground ... in other words (holding up the addict out of fear they will get hurt ... instead of letting go and letting them fall and realizing that the pain from the fall is just what the doctor ordered) Pain can be beneficial .. It can be a motivator, it can speak loud and clear and can be a constant reminder to the addict that things need to change (but first you've got to stop cushioning them from that pain).
Think about it .. what brought you here? Hmmmm? Could it have been the pain in your heart that was so overwhelming and hurt so bad .. that you started to look for other solutions besides the ones you've already tried and retired to the point of exhaustion?
Could it be that you're addicted loved one didn't rescue you, or try to fix you, or kiss and make it all better for you?
Are you making the connection I'm trying to show you here?
There are times when the addict shows us affection and it is those times when we feel like things just might be okay after all (our emotions have been rescued) We feel good (we got our fix) and then BAM .. the addict is back out on a tangent and there we sit with salt on our wounds .. hurting yet again. The addict doesn't ride in, "a knight in shining armor" to rescue us and save us from the pain and destruction that our addiction is causing us (our addiction = them) no .. day after day ...night after night we are hurting because of what our addiction is doing to us. (see what I'm sayin' here?) We are left to feel the pain of our own addiction and when that pain becomes more then too much .. we will do almost anything to escape it.
You are no different then your addict except maybe via drug of choice and minus some of the more outrageous behavior .. they choose a substance .. We choose them .. and if pain can drive us to get clean .. then hey .. it could work for the addict as well ... WE ALL KNOW addicts don't like pain and will do almost anything to make it stop .. and if allowed to suffer consequences of his/her own actions and feel the pain full on .. It could be the very thing that sends your addicted loved one into recovery.
If you find yourself sitting there reading this and you are in pain because of and over your addicted loved one ... let that pain drive you to seek out your recovery, your healing ...
You are not responsible or capable to make it all better for your addicted loved one and above all you do NOT have the power to change things for them or change them for that matter, but you can change YOU. The addict is responsible for their own lives and how they live it ... and if drugs are chosen over all else then the pain, suffering, and consequences that ultimately come with the territory of being an addict belong to the addict and not the loved one of the addict ...
The very pain, consequences, trouble that you are trying to keep from happening to your addict loved one ... Just might be the very thing that would bring them to rock bottom ... SO LET IT HAPPEN. Get out of the way, let em' hit and and Let the process begin
The longer you fight it ... the harder you make your own life ...
Besides you can't get around, over or under it ... You're going to have to walk through it to get to the other side ...
It is usually because we are (or we think we are) at our wits end when we begin to look for answers to help us understand ... we read books, talk to counselors, search the net for answers ... some end up here ... searching, asking questions, trying to understand and make some kind of sense out of their lives ... You read, and read and read, step out and post, read replies, reply yourself and the others that have been down the path before you reach out to try to help you ... to try to take your hand and led you out, but are usually met with resistance, unsurety (should I stay or should I go) What will happen to the addict in my life if I let go to find myself ... Will they lose themselves in booze completely ... so you stay behind because your not quite ready to recovery yourself ... You still feel the need to baby sit your addict ... You watch and watch as things decline as they decline and you fight, argue, yell, cry, beg, plead, rationalize, try logic .. only to find you've been beating your head against a brick wall and now to top things off you've busted open your head and not only is your head bleeding, but so is your heart ... Bleeding and crying out Please God, Make this all stop ... (ya gotta get out of the way so he can reach your alcoholic)
This site is an information booth ... You come in all beat up, weathered from the storm ... you ask for directions ... and are given them, but they are useless UNLESS or UNTIL you follow them ... it takes , trust, faith, strength, courage and a real desire to change NOT THE addict, but yourself ... A "I'm willing to do what ever it takes" kind of attitude.
The addict is going to do what the addict does NO MATTER what you do ... and if you're living paralized waiting for the addict to change before you can be happy or go on with your life .. then you could be waiting a long, long time .. You think you're exhausted now ... it doesn't get any better till you get better ...
The best gift you can give yourself and your addicted loved one is YOUR OWN RECOVERY ... they can't do it for you ... you can't do it for them ... but each can do it for themselves ... and I can say this .. It is easier for the addict to out run you ... so if you plan on tryin to keep up you better put on your marathon sneakers and get ready to be put through more hell then you've ever know before ...
If you are here searching for answers .. then you are the one that is READY for change.
The roller coaster stops ... when you get off the ride.
Passion
A work in progress....
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: FREE!!!! Somewhere in the Tennessee Mountains
Posts: 1,018
Whoa! You just wrote the story of my life here!
Thankfully I found my way out the other side of that dark tunnel (and much of the credit goes to the things I learned after I found SR), but when I came here almost a year (!) ago I was definately looking up at the bottom of what my life had become..
Great post-you nailed it yet again!
Thankfully I found my way out the other side of that dark tunnel (and much of the credit goes to the things I learned after I found SR), but when I came here almost a year (!) ago I was definately looking up at the bottom of what my life had become..
Great post-you nailed it yet again!
Member
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Philadelphia
Posts: 518
Passion- always love your posts.
Laced with such wisdom and insight.
I think that this concept of powerlessness and facing the unmanagability of one's life is something that is a rationale that some people can easily grasp. Not me. I may pride myself on being a smart one up to a certain point- but when it comes to accepting that I cannot DO something- I crash and burn.
I am incredibly thick headed in terms of coming to grips with actually "GETTING IT" that I cannot make him want recovery. Because when I surrender to that- I am forced to look at myself and the inevitable unmanagability of my life. The path back to sanity seems so long and bumpy that sometimes staying stuck in the addict's business is less uncomfortable then the change.
The feeling your described - about the relief we briefly feel- the "fix" when the burden of focusing on ourselves is taken off and for that moment we are convinced things will be okay and that we can believe what they say- is so on point for me at times. You trust someone who is untrustworthy simply because you have lost trust in yourself and your ability to endure this whole thing and to take care of yourself. Then the evitable meltdown comes along. Opening myself up to choices is difficult. It's a double edged sword. It's hard to make them because I've lost the feeling that I can trust myself to make good decisions with ME in mind and also because everytime I make a decision that brings me pain and in retrospect proves to be wrong- I feel even more inadequate to make choices that protect and honor myself. Ah, the tangled web of codependency.
The other night at one of my meetings- a wise longtime Al-Anon member shared on this "disease." One of my biggest problems with all of this is the obsessive rabbit hole I travel down where I can do nothing else but drive myself insane worrying and feeling extreme panic. I lose the ability to take care of myself and completely abandon any self-respect or willpower to keep the focus on me. He outlined this obsessing- the dipping into the other person's "business" and "responsibility" and most importantly their recovery or their disease as a symptom of OUR disease and how it needs to be a red flag to us that we are getting off course and are inviting unmanagability into our lives.
I do wish I was farther along so I could really "get" it. I still try to control- alarmingly, alot of the time it's been so hardwired that I don't even KNOW I'm doing it. Sometimes I get caught up in "taking care of myself" but if I'm ONLY doing this to get a response or reaction out of the addict than it's manipulation.
I go back and forth between understanding this concept (rational thinking) and then the fight-or-flight portion of me that reacts in panic and overrides the small well of rationale inside my mind. I hope that with time, the "realistic" side can take the reins more often.
Laced with such wisdom and insight.
I think that this concept of powerlessness and facing the unmanagability of one's life is something that is a rationale that some people can easily grasp. Not me. I may pride myself on being a smart one up to a certain point- but when it comes to accepting that I cannot DO something- I crash and burn.
I am incredibly thick headed in terms of coming to grips with actually "GETTING IT" that I cannot make him want recovery. Because when I surrender to that- I am forced to look at myself and the inevitable unmanagability of my life. The path back to sanity seems so long and bumpy that sometimes staying stuck in the addict's business is less uncomfortable then the change.
The feeling your described - about the relief we briefly feel- the "fix" when the burden of focusing on ourselves is taken off and for that moment we are convinced things will be okay and that we can believe what they say- is so on point for me at times. You trust someone who is untrustworthy simply because you have lost trust in yourself and your ability to endure this whole thing and to take care of yourself. Then the evitable meltdown comes along. Opening myself up to choices is difficult. It's a double edged sword. It's hard to make them because I've lost the feeling that I can trust myself to make good decisions with ME in mind and also because everytime I make a decision that brings me pain and in retrospect proves to be wrong- I feel even more inadequate to make choices that protect and honor myself. Ah, the tangled web of codependency.
The other night at one of my meetings- a wise longtime Al-Anon member shared on this "disease." One of my biggest problems with all of this is the obsessive rabbit hole I travel down where I can do nothing else but drive myself insane worrying and feeling extreme panic. I lose the ability to take care of myself and completely abandon any self-respect or willpower to keep the focus on me. He outlined this obsessing- the dipping into the other person's "business" and "responsibility" and most importantly their recovery or their disease as a symptom of OUR disease and how it needs to be a red flag to us that we are getting off course and are inviting unmanagability into our lives.
I do wish I was farther along so I could really "get" it. I still try to control- alarmingly, alot of the time it's been so hardwired that I don't even KNOW I'm doing it. Sometimes I get caught up in "taking care of myself" but if I'm ONLY doing this to get a response or reaction out of the addict than it's manipulation.
I go back and forth between understanding this concept (rational thinking) and then the fight-or-flight portion of me that reacts in panic and overrides the small well of rationale inside my mind. I hope that with time, the "realistic" side can take the reins more often.
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