“I was ingrained in CCAR to show the positive side of recovery, putting a face on recovery, allowing people to see that recovery was possible. A reality that people in many walks of life would able to get their life together again.
Michael Askew is Manager of the Bridgeport Community Recovery Center, under the auspices of CCAR. Formerly known as Dark Shadow, he has been in recovery from 1989 after being in and out of prison for years (seven visits).
Here’s an article from SMART Recovery President Tom Horvath which appeared in the Huffington Post recently.
‘Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and other 12-step groups are the leading U.S. approach to addiction recovery. Millions have attended these meetings and “worked the steps.” Popular media include countless references to AA-oriented recovery. Many scientific studies show that attending these meetings is associated with recovery.
However, many individuals will not attend these meetings, or will not attend them long enough to solidify change. Their reasons include not wanting to accept the labels “addict” or “alcoholic,” not wanting to attend groups of any kind, not wanting to consider oneself powerless, not thinking of oneself as having a disease, or not wanting an approach that encourages lifelong attendance.
Here’s the second of our Moment of Clarity series, taken from Brad’s Recovery Story.
‘At this time, I thought willpower is what I needed to stop drinking, but I soon found out that this wasn’t the case. I was lacking a true willingness and desire to get well. I daydreamed and dreamt about stopping drinking, but I think that’s all it was at that stage. There was no real consideration of the work that would be involved in stopping.
Anyway, I decided I needed a break from the booze. I retired to bed and began going through the terror of a full-blown rattle, something I hope I never have to go through again. Five days later, I was physically dry. I then decided to see how long I could abstain from alcohol. After six weeks of no alcohol, I still wanted a drink. In fact, my desire for alcohol was worse than ever.
This excellent blog was written three years ago to the day on Wired In To Recovery.
“I was like a tornado causing as much devastation as I possibly could in my family. But the problem was, I couldn’t even see it because all I cared about was me. I was caught up, obsessed with finding ways and means to get my next drink. When I didn’t have it, I was a nightmare to live with.
My mother felt so helpless, slowly watching her son kill himself through drink and drugs and not knowing whether she was coming or going half the time. It’s through that feeling of helplessness and frustration that the anger started to rear it’s ugly head.
Hello, as this is my first entry I’ll (try to) keep it short. I am two and a half years into my recovery. I’d love to say that it’s all plain sailing, but in fact has been the darkest and most confusing time of my life up to now.
“I always knew I was different”… Well it’s true, I did. Always felt apart, weird, somehow isolated from even my closest friends. I had a rough childhood, no doubt about it, and when I found drink and drugs it was like I was liberated.
My first round of addiction (to cannabis, from age 14 – 15) saw me walking round school in a virtual coma. In retrospect, it must’ve looked like there was something severely wrong with me. There was, I know now. As a nine year old, I was molested by a family ‘friend’. It was reported to the police but stopped there. Lack of evidence.
“Just because you got the monkey off your back, doesn’t mean the circus has left town” George Carlin, comedian and author.
Getting sober and drug-free is hard enough for most of us, but staying that way is a challenge. The evidence is that many people coming out of abstinence-oriented treatment will relapse in the first year and most of them in the first few weeks. Recovery initiation, the start of the journey, is just that: a beginning. In the past, we’ve treated it like the main event and had little thought for what happens next.
The circus may not have left town, but there are ways to avoid ending up in a ringside seat and having that pesky monkey trouble you again. These things are the tools of recovery. There are plenty of them and we need to find the ones that work for us. Some however are more reliable than others according to the evidence we have. Here are my own top five tools:
Life got a bit easier for me in early recovery when I let go of my need-to-know-and-understand-everything mentality.
My background and training before I came to work in addiction treatment was scientific. I had to break the world down into understandable components and had a fairly rigid and cognitive world view. In many ways I was trapped in my head. Science can explain everything and if it can’t be explained, I’m not interested.
Well, science didn’t help me particularly with my addiction when it arrived and I certainly tried to understand it. Do you know there are over 40 theories of addiction? It’s likely when there are so many that we won’t really ever agree completely on what’s going on. The funny thing is that I’m okay with that today.
I first met ‘Natalie’ over 12 years ago when I lived in South Wales. I will never forget how she emphasised the importance of providing online support for people with substance use problems. She had been desperate to find helpful online information when she trying to overcome her drug problem.
Natalie has always been such an inspiration to people around her. Mind you, many people had to first get over the shock of finding that such a lovely lady had once been a heroin addict.
Here’s a summary of a piece of research that Lucie James and I conducted some years ago. I am very proud of this piece of work and it certainly opened my eyes to the importance of gaining a sense of belonging in the recovery journey.
‘To understand how treatment helps people overcome substance use problems, it is essential to understand the elements that operate in the treatment process, and how they might interact to facilitate behavioural change and a person’s path to recovery from addiction.
Lucie James and I set out to gain initial insights into these issues by using a qualitative analysis of the views and experiences of clients on the RAPt treatment programme in one male and one female prison in the UK.
My Journey: From Brain Chemicals to Human Connection
Experiences, reflections and the people who have inspired me on my 48-year journey.
Stories of people recovering from a serious substance use problem are an important tool for understanding the processes involved in recovery, showing people with a problem that recovery is possible via a multitude of different pathways, and helping communities create empathic environments in which recovery can flourish.
More about the book >>
Available now as a downloadable eBook
Connection uses ‘faces’ and ‘voices’ of the past to take you into a world where Aboriginal children rise above great adversity to create beautiful landscape drawings that are acclaimed on both sides of the world. Connection is a story of trauma, and the overcoming of trauma. A story that resonates in today’s world of the oppressed and their oppressors. A story of Hope, Heart and Healing.
‘… the book is nothing short of incredible.’
Carlie Atkinson, CEO, We Al-li Programs
Stories of people recovering from a serious substance use problem are an important tool for understanding the processes involved in recovery, showing people with a problem that recovery is possible via a multitude of different pathways, and helping communities create empathic environments in which recovery can flourish.
More about the book >>
