PART 1

Hello everyone, thank you for having me. And thank you for being here because you didn’t have to show up. I get that some of you have some stuff hanging over your head. But still, nobody hogtied and dragged you in here and cuffed you to that chair, and that’s huge in my book.

My name is Jeff. To be honest, I would say that in the past twelve years, if you added up all my little lapses, I’ve been on my drug of choice, alcohol, for about 4 months total. The 12 years before that, I was probably sober for about 4 months total, outside of treatment and jail and supervision—the behind closed doors kind of sober, when nobody is watching.

I say that’s progress, but I am most definitely not perfect.

I am not that guy that can sit here and say that I have twelve years of continuous sobriety for you to clap for. I don’t have a PhD to wow you with, and I haven’t started any special programs or non-profits related to recovery. But I am honest as fuck, and I have learned a thing or two.

Like, the differences between a lapse and a relapse?

There are two main differences: A lapse is a slip; a relapse is reverting, or full-blown going back to the old ways: same amounts, same reasons, same types of people and places. The second difference, in my experience, is Shame.

Shame: is a painful feeling (it registers as pain), a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness (or the awareness) of wrong or foolish behavior.

I used to have a lot of shame when I relapsed. I felt shame before I picked up, during, and after. It would go something like, “I really messed my life up, look at all this dumb shit I’ve done, I can’t stop thinking about all that’s happened to me, I’m so far behind, this is too hard, other people must think I’m a piece of shit,” then to, “fuck it, my nervous system can’t take the pressures, the loads, my thoughts, my emotions, let’s get rid of it the quickest and easiest way I know how, oh shit I’m fucking up again aren’t I” then after, “I messed up again, I lost everyone’s trust, I can’t do it, I lost all that sober time.”

Is that true? Did I really lose sober time? Can you lose sober time, really?  I lost the ability to honestly say I had a specific amount of continuous sober time, but to say I lost all that sober time is really like saying I crashed while skiing down a black diamond hill and now I need to go back to the bunny hill. I crashed my mountain bike and now I need to ride my kids’ bike with the training wheels. A black belt loses a competition and now he needs to where the white belt.

It’s simply not true, but that is often the mindset when it comes to recovery. A mindset full of shame.

Shame was what prolonged my relapses, it was the gasoline I dumped on what was a small fire. But if I knew then what I know now about how we are built, developmental psychology, biological processes, social engineering, and spiritual attacks, things that most people don’t even notice or think about, I would not have been ashamed of it at all, and I would have spent more time learning from it instead of wallowing in a useless emotion.

If I knew then what I know now, I would have been proud just to have survived as long as I did, and I would have realized that my complaints about any-and-everything were petty in comparison to that.  I remember a time when I was thoroughly convinced that I wouldn’t make it past 28, 47 now. Sometimes you just don’t die, no matter how hard you try.

But it doesn’t matter because that “Jeff” has been dead for quite some time now. The old version needed to die to make room for the new. Which is why I say that recovery isn’t really about getting back that which I had lost, or to be restored to a state prior to addiction. I don’t want to go back to how I was prior to my addiction because all those past components contributed to my getting addicted. No, my real goal is metamorphosis, to transform into something entirely new.  A rebirth, if you will.

These places (treatments and meetings) aren’t going to teach what I’ve learned, and they shouldn’t—which I will get into why in a minute. The truth is none of the staff was trained for the many holistic healing practices and effective hacks there are. I did the same schooling as your counselors, it’s not there (at least it wasn’t a decade ago). Any golden nuggets of wisdom they bestow are from their own life experiences and additional, usually unconventional or alternative education.

Actual addiction RECOVERY education, or how to get healthy, is not taught in school. You won’t learn about something like a supplement called Coenzyme Q10, what it does for your mitochondria, what has happened to your mitochondria, or even what your mitochondria are. You won’t be taught about the benefits of amino acids, magnesium, proper rest and sleep, sunlight, real food, fasting, pH level, walking barefoot, Zen meditation, working with your hands, creativity, or anything like the such.

Many will complete this program with little more than an introduction to some introspection, and maybe a higher power; the beginnings of a new life plan, a strategy or two for exiting a danger zone, a certificate; and instructions to take your pills , go to your meetings, and weave yourself back into the social fabric as normalized conventions of industry. Honestly, nothing that you couldn’t pick up by watching some YouTube videos if motivated.

So why are we here?

On the surface, the business side of this place is designed to provide billable services: supervision, access to some resources, check some boxes, facilitate the recovery-related tasks and interactions of the group, and motivate you to see it through. Which, to me, is nothing more than window dressing. But what’s in store?

What all of it really boils down to—what all the brochures, and paperwork, and planning, and billing, and prioritizing, and behavioral recall, and assignments, and attendance are for—Is to give you the space and time to practice one thing, the thing you will need the most when you’re done with this shit. You are here to practice Honesty.

And the truth is, this place, and support groups in general, are almost the only place on this planet where you can be honest, raw, and authentic. You can’t be honest about what you need to be honest about in this phase of healing anywhere else, because nobody else cares.

Nobody wants to believe that. But if you want to test someone, hand them your favorite recovery book, give them a year, see if they get past page 10. It goes the same for us. The ultimate measurement. The number of pages we read about a certain topic reveals our level of how much we care about it. Can’t read? That’s your first goal because that’s where all the cheat codes are.

Honesty is the reason we feel better after a meeting. It’s not that we are simulating the third tier of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Psychological needs, the need for love and belonging. Listening to a group of people work through their misery isn’t what makes us feel better and heal. It’s because we just spent an hour in a space where everyone is being as honest and authentic and raw as they are capable of, and this tunes the room’s vibration to a healing frequency, which is more than I can say about most of the world.

In here, you ask someone how they are doing that day and they will tell you, the good and the bad. Out there, you ask someone how they are doing and it’s almost always . . . “professional”, “great, couldn’t be better, you should want to be me, just look at my Facebook page, I’m awesome.”

That’s why so many people go through all these treatments and sobriety group programs and come out saying it doesn’t work. It’s because they already gave up their favorite substance, but they didn’t give up the most comforting thing most people use—their lies.

Even the drugs we used were a lie, in essence. A chemical that induces a fake reward, a temporary illusion: a complete lie that is drunk, smoked, injected, or whatever.

On the very first page of the How It Works chapter in the AA Big Book, it reads:

“Those who do not recover are those who cannot, or will not completely give themselves to this program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves [the program is honesty: the forgiveness, the promises, all sprout from the honesty. …]      

“They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty… [And it goes on to say that even those] who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders … do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.” Meaning that a mental illness diagnosis is no excuse. Excuses are usually the lies we tell ourselves.

I want to point out, it starts by saying, “honest with ourselves”. But it goes on to say grasping and developing a manner of living which demands (not just any bit of honesty) rigorous honesty. It DEMANDS an embodied honesty, a level of honesty that we become—not just do.

It says it right there, in one of the best books ever conceived on how to heal our affliction, on the first page about how the restoration process actually works. The rest of the program is just different angles and ways to practice and grasp this alien concept.

Hit this link for Part 2 . . .