Rational Recovery and trying again
 

I'm just wondering if anyone has tried this or read the book and if anyone has had similar experiences to mine. The first time I cleaned up after a period of being really involved with AA/NA/SMART and constant 'relapses' I bought the Rational Recovery book and it clicked. It seemed straightforward and honest. Basically it asks you to make a lifelong commitment to stay clean. I didn't keep to my lifelong commitment to stay clean that I made then, I did stay clean for a good 5 1/2 years though.

I'm having a lot of trouble making the commitment again, probably why I've come to this place for help. For one I've broken the commitment once and for another I'm having real difficulty finding reasons to stay clean.

When I cleaned up last time I had plenty of reasons. I got into school, eventually got married and had a family. Now I don't have any of these things and I have trouble seeing myself doing it again.

Right now I'm on disability and I'm facing homelessness at the end of this month. I just have a lot of pessimism about my ability to pull myself up again and get back on track. I feel as if I'm very very tired and just want to give in. I don't think about suicide but I don't have much will to live anymore.

Last time I cleaned up I pulled myself off the street, got into school, got a 'normal' life. A lot of people have told me I should be proud of what I accomplished, a lot of street kids never make it out. Of course I'm right back where I started when I was 15 years old now, homeless and addicted to crack.

The main reason I have now to stay sober is that I don't want to become a scumbag, which is pretty much the end of the road for all crackheads. I don't want to be the person that's going to steal off my friends and try to burn everyone around me for a couple bucks. I don't want to become the guy that will do anything for a hoot. Right now my addiction is at the point where I don't think much about it if I don't have money.

If anyone has read Rational Recovery, yes, I can totally see my addictive voice in almost all the statements I've made here :(

(hug)

Sorry Drape..I haven't read it..just heard about it...

I do know that I went back to my drinking (never went back to the drugs for some reason) after a period of sobriety in the 80s and lived in that hell for 8 years....It's hard to believe again once you fall so far off from sobriety...but it can be done.

We are right hear to help you any way we can to find your own path to sobriety.

And I, for one, am glad you found us :grouphug:

Jack Timpey (?) Small Book ?
featuring AVRT (addictive vioce recognition therepy) and the beast within or something like that.
Yes I have read it, and many others searching for relief from crack all to no avail. They/he also used to have a website with some nifty flashcard/bullet point/slide show stuff.
I have also been attended AA NA SOS Recovery Inc and now something not quite related to recovery called Lifequest.
But if you have read my thread(s) you know that.
RR is very similar to REBT (Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy) and CBT (Cognitive Behavorial Therapy) And though I do recognise the approach as a step in the right direction I don't think they dig deep enough. I suggest reading Mental Health Through Will Training by Dr.Abraham Low. It's the "Big Book" for Recovery Inc. It deals with OCD's, but when I look at my behaviors as related to crack, I believe it is a compulsion more than an addiction. That's just me. Good luck.
Regards,
Larrylive

PS If you would care to comment or question any of my behaviors please hit my profile, unless of course the focus is crack addiction then the forums are naturally the right place.

The small book is a different book, Rational Recovery was written later. You find relief from crack by not smoking it. My problem is in finding the strength and motivation to make that commitment as my life has gone down the cra pper recently. I suppose asking people I hardly know about it is kind of useless since it's difficult to help someone find that motivation without knowing them. I've found money and upward mobility to be empty motivations for me. Still would be nice to hear others secular stories of success.

I've read the book and it made a lot of sense to me, but I've read a lot of other recovery books that also made a lot of sense to me. The only thing that turned me off of RR is the for profit motivation behind it. I guess there is nothing really wrong with making a buck off it though. The recovery "industry" is a multi-billion dollar business now.

Personally I've never smoked crack. My understanding is that while not "physically" addictive, it is extremely mentally addictive. IMHO the mental addiciton is the tougher of the two anyway. My DOC was pot and my addiction to it cost me pretty much everything. Never ended up on the streets, but that is only because I had family to fall back on. Lost my marraige, house, job, went bankrupt, stints in the mental ward & rehab, suicide attempts, went through it all. I've been clean for about 10 months now. I'm not really sure what made this attempt to stay clean different from the hundereds of others. I did have something to gain from staying clean, a chance to rebuild a relationship with my son, but I had thrown that opportunity away before just to get high. Though it sounds cliche, I just had to finally reach the point where I wanted to stop for me. The point that I started caring enough about myself to quit and stay quit.

I've been on these boards for years and have gotten alot of support and knowledge here. I found it necessary to "study" the various methods of recovery and use bits and pieces of all of them to stay clean. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this approach, as it took me about 7 years from the time that I actually started trying to where I am now.

I didn't have a "spiritual awakening" or anything like that. One day I just decided I couldn't continue to live like this and really comitted to it. It was years after all the really bad stuff had happened. While I generally consider myself to be agnostic, I have come to have some kind of understanding of god in my life, but I don't find that to be in anyway a part of staying clean. Probably the most helpful tool I have found in all the recovery "research" I have done it the Cost/Benifit Analysis. It makes a lot of sense to me and I can see and touch it.

I wish you all the best and welcome you to SR and the Secular Forum. Stick around, you never know when something will click for you. Take care.