Ten months and still growing
The truth shall set you free
Thread Starter
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 5,267
Ten months and still growing
Hi all
I am my tenth month in to recovery and I still have those days… At first I tried to hold my tears back… the result… I felt like crap.
Tonight I got touch with feelings from my past that made me cry. Thank you my 12 step program. It works if you work it. This time around, my eyes are open. Imagine getting up in the morning and what you perceive to be reality, in all that you see - in all that you feel. I look in the mirror and I see a person, a person who is full of fear, distrust and emptiness.
I carry around repressed pain, terror, shame, rage, guilt, from my childhood, but as a young adult I do not recognize these feelings. I build walls around me to protect me from the outside world. I don’t want you to discover me, even though, I don’t know who I am. I put on an image and begin to play lets pretend. I create an illusion of self. So now the show must go on.
I live this image, day in and day out. This lie I created, this emotional state, this desire to escape reality, has very painful consequences. As I live in this lie, everything I touch, anything I perceive to be love, people, places and things are false. These choices I made are from my wounded soul. I created a world around me of false self.
I continue living with this false self. Since I was continually attempting to do life according to false beliefs I could never have any inner peace. I judged my self and my life experience, both consciously and unconsciously, out of a my dysfunctional belief system, so that its not possible to stop being at war within. At the core of my being, I felt like I was a defective monster, some kind of shameful, unlovable loser, and I directed this pain toward others.
I created a false self to run away from the pain of childhood. And I substituted one hellish nightmare for another. At seventeen came that first drink. Drinking justified all my wrong doings. Took away all the repressed pain, terror, shame, rage, guilt, I was so desperately running away from. Alcohol reinforced my false self. I spent many years living a lie. Many years abusing substances.
With my addictive, mind / mood altering substance / behavior, the very thing that brought some relief from the internal war and mental anguish - the substance or behavior that gives me feelings of escape, of rising above my life of quiet desperation, of feeling good becomes something that i feel is necessary just to feel normal. Then eventually, normal becomes very low indeed.
In active addiction, I used character defects as a shield against attack. This was my 'survival kit'. I seldom told the truth because I lived in an illusion created and maintained by my lies. Fear and distrust motivated me to build walls to protect me from emotional or physical harm, only to discover that these walls had become my prisons. I used anger and intimidation to keep people away. Fear of people approaching me. I feared that if they got too close they would see through the games I was playing to the hollow inside.
What I realize now - is that I was released from alcoholic hell and found myself in codependent hell. My relationship with my self and with life condemned me to codependent hell - and alcohol and drugs had given me a vacation of sorts from dealing with the fact that I did not have a clue of how to live life in a functional way.
Every time I go through a surrender in my recovery I am letting go of some of the ego definitions that have defined my relationship with myself and life. I have to let go of the attitudes and beliefs that I adapted because of the emotional trauma that I suffered as a child (which are still buried in my subconscious until I became willing to look at them and let them go.)
Today, I understand the disease in a much different light than when I first came through the doors of my first 12 step program 1987.I couldn't grasp the idea that a person who wasn't using, working the program could still be in active addiction through acting on the obsessive and compulsive nature of this disease in other areas of my life.
I thought that clean time equaled recovery. Today, I understand completely that recovery cannot exist without abstinence. However, it took a relapse and 3 years of active addiction for me to understand that before my relapse I was not in recovery simply because I was no longer doing drugs.
I remain in that old addictive pattern of blaming someone or something outside of myself for how I acted and how I felt. From that viewpoint, it seems natural to continue using things outside of me as an excuses for recovery of this disease. And that way of life had to stop.
This way of thinking is at the root of my addiction and I had to surrender if I am to have a chance at true recovery. Recovering is possible only when I work the Steps. For me staying clean and sober is not recovery, working the program is.
Thank you for Listening.
Timebuster
I am my tenth month in to recovery and I still have those days… At first I tried to hold my tears back… the result… I felt like crap.
Tonight I got touch with feelings from my past that made me cry. Thank you my 12 step program. It works if you work it. This time around, my eyes are open. Imagine getting up in the morning and what you perceive to be reality, in all that you see - in all that you feel. I look in the mirror and I see a person, a person who is full of fear, distrust and emptiness.
I carry around repressed pain, terror, shame, rage, guilt, from my childhood, but as a young adult I do not recognize these feelings. I build walls around me to protect me from the outside world. I don’t want you to discover me, even though, I don’t know who I am. I put on an image and begin to play lets pretend. I create an illusion of self. So now the show must go on.
I live this image, day in and day out. This lie I created, this emotional state, this desire to escape reality, has very painful consequences. As I live in this lie, everything I touch, anything I perceive to be love, people, places and things are false. These choices I made are from my wounded soul. I created a world around me of false self.
I continue living with this false self. Since I was continually attempting to do life according to false beliefs I could never have any inner peace. I judged my self and my life experience, both consciously and unconsciously, out of a my dysfunctional belief system, so that its not possible to stop being at war within. At the core of my being, I felt like I was a defective monster, some kind of shameful, unlovable loser, and I directed this pain toward others.
I created a false self to run away from the pain of childhood. And I substituted one hellish nightmare for another. At seventeen came that first drink. Drinking justified all my wrong doings. Took away all the repressed pain, terror, shame, rage, guilt, I was so desperately running away from. Alcohol reinforced my false self. I spent many years living a lie. Many years abusing substances.
With my addictive, mind / mood altering substance / behavior, the very thing that brought some relief from the internal war and mental anguish - the substance or behavior that gives me feelings of escape, of rising above my life of quiet desperation, of feeling good becomes something that i feel is necessary just to feel normal. Then eventually, normal becomes very low indeed.
In active addiction, I used character defects as a shield against attack. This was my 'survival kit'. I seldom told the truth because I lived in an illusion created and maintained by my lies. Fear and distrust motivated me to build walls to protect me from emotional or physical harm, only to discover that these walls had become my prisons. I used anger and intimidation to keep people away. Fear of people approaching me. I feared that if they got too close they would see through the games I was playing to the hollow inside.
What I realize now - is that I was released from alcoholic hell and found myself in codependent hell. My relationship with my self and with life condemned me to codependent hell - and alcohol and drugs had given me a vacation of sorts from dealing with the fact that I did not have a clue of how to live life in a functional way.
Every time I go through a surrender in my recovery I am letting go of some of the ego definitions that have defined my relationship with myself and life. I have to let go of the attitudes and beliefs that I adapted because of the emotional trauma that I suffered as a child (which are still buried in my subconscious until I became willing to look at them and let them go.)
Today, I understand the disease in a much different light than when I first came through the doors of my first 12 step program 1987.I couldn't grasp the idea that a person who wasn't using, working the program could still be in active addiction through acting on the obsessive and compulsive nature of this disease in other areas of my life.
I thought that clean time equaled recovery. Today, I understand completely that recovery cannot exist without abstinence. However, it took a relapse and 3 years of active addiction for me to understand that before my relapse I was not in recovery simply because I was no longer doing drugs.
I remain in that old addictive pattern of blaming someone or something outside of myself for how I acted and how I felt. From that viewpoint, it seems natural to continue using things outside of me as an excuses for recovery of this disease. And that way of life had to stop.
This way of thinking is at the root of my addiction and I had to surrender if I am to have a chance at true recovery. Recovering is possible only when I work the Steps. For me staying clean and sober is not recovery, working the program is.
Thank you for Listening.
Timebuster
Tobi
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Mastic, New York
Posts: 100
Thank you so much for such an indepth personal look into yourself Timebuster, a lot of what I read I swear could have been ripped from my own inner self. That false persona created, and stepped into, and lived for years and years and years, that was me!!! The blaming of everyone and everything, and every situation around me for my own ability to care for myself, also me!!! I am just now starting to work this program and I can honestly say that from your post, I know the mind set I need to be in to gain the full advantage of all NA has to offer!! Thank you so much for sharing!!
Tobi
Tobi
Member
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Encinitas, CA
Posts: 3
Rock on
Thanks! your message helped me alot. I have 8 months and hope I make it to 10 too. I hid my feelings for years behind a false self and lots of rules I learned from people that learned rules from people who learned the wrong ones. When I joined the program, I erased my board and self and started over. I know how to live now, me and my higher power, 12 steps, a sponsor, meetings with people who support me no matter how eeked out I am...life is good - one day at a time. Remembering my last drunk helps me thru the cravings... 
one of many
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Ellisville, FL
Posts: 200
Timebuster,
Thank you for sharing these powerful words my friend. You have a great perspective on your life and the core of change that the program can provide. I'm just a newcomer who's just started recovery within the last year. It never ceases to amaze me what I can learn if I just open up my ears and listen to people. When I was active, I wouldn't listen to anyone, and even if I did I probably forgot about it or didn't understand what people were trying to tell me because I was so high. One thing I've noticed lately is that I'm actually gaining a certain degree of empathy I haven't felt in a long long long time. Anyways, I'm hoping to make it to 10 months one of these days
Chris
Thank you for sharing these powerful words my friend. You have a great perspective on your life and the core of change that the program can provide. I'm just a newcomer who's just started recovery within the last year. It never ceases to amaze me what I can learn if I just open up my ears and listen to people. When I was active, I wouldn't listen to anyone, and even if I did I probably forgot about it or didn't understand what people were trying to tell me because I was so high. One thing I've noticed lately is that I'm actually gaining a certain degree of empathy I haven't felt in a long long long time. Anyways, I'm hoping to make it to 10 months one of these days
Chris
The truth shall set you free
Thread Starter
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 5,267
Retribution, Dan, Nuunuu, Shunkape Thanks
Today I learned that when those feeling of sadness popup to let them out “yes cry” let-them-out. For me they are the same feeling of hopelessness and despair that drove me to addiction. They are the same feelings that I was running away from. The deference today, I have tools and I have choices.
Timebuster
Today I learned that when those feeling of sadness popup to let them out “yes cry” let-them-out. For me they are the same feeling of hopelessness and despair that drove me to addiction. They are the same feelings that I was running away from. The deference today, I have tools and I have choices.
Timebuster
In Memory Of
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Connecticut.
Posts: 3,736
((( Timebuster )))
Wow is all I can say.You are a miracle.Thank-you for sharing your recovery with me.It's really something when the inside start's to match the outside isn't it? Hug's to you and the child.You are dear to me ! Bless,Trish
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