You Can’t Recover Unless You Know What You’re Recovering From.
Why do so many of us agree to be locked up for a year of recovery? And why is it that so many of us relapse afterwards? And how many of us have to keep losing loved ones because rehab isn’t working? Not everyone has to agree with me or my logic, on recovery, but it may be helpful to listen to what I have to say about it. I have overcome heroin, opioids, pills, GHB and Cocaine addiction Afterall! Consider being open to what it is I am saying about recovery, because I have not just overcome addiction. I live an organic, healthy, happy, and clean lifestyle after recovery. I have discovered the key to unlock the door to “letting go of bad habits”! Do you know how? Well, not by getting locked up in rehab for a year or going to meetings every week for the rest of my life, and I am definitely not on medications that make me feel foggy, that is for sure! NO!!!
I uncovered the reasoning behind my addiction! Just because I have a completely different belief system, that may or may not contradict some of the things that they teach or do in their facilities, does not necessarily mean I am “wrong”! I am eager to share my method, because I want them to look at recovery completely different. There can be a new approach in how we treat some people in recovery it doesn’t mean they have gotten it wrong all these years, just because I am bringing a different approach to the community. Not at all! But it does mean that maybe we need to realize there is no “one size fits all” where “recovery” is concerned! In fact, when professionals close the door and stop listening to people who have overcome addiction without medications, it is not only ignorant, but also the reason so many people relapse. When these facilities are closed minded and don’t listen, it causes people to overdose after they have left rehab and relapsed. Let me start off by saying, in recovery and in life, there is no “ONE SIZE FITS ALL!” And I am tired of watching a system fail year after year, because books a degree overrides a person with actual experience!
I never went to rehab, and I found their system flawed, I remember cleaning one summer at a rehab center and I could always tell which ones would make out alive, which ones would be back, and which ones wouldn’t make it past the program doors. First, I found a few things to be odd in the program. One was that in the first phase of the program they keep you from family and friends and they expect you to disassociate your past life with your now present life, which is being locked up and isolated from everyone you love and care about. Basically, this is to help you focus on yourself and loss your old life so you can start a new one. And I get all that! Changing of the surroundings to have a renewing of the mind. Yes, I get it! It’s biblical and it appears to be common sense. But the reason this doesn’t work is because after a year, they throw you back into the jungle without any real tools, boundaries, or knowledge on how to avoid returning back to old habits. They assume you’ve rehabilitated based on the new atmosphere and routines they gave you. While you were locked up and needed permission to do everything!
But how does that work? The bottom line is you haven’t recovered because you haven’t answered the one question of what you’re recovering from! Sit and ask yourself, WHY do you do the things you do in the first place? There is so many other factors to focus on rather than the substance itself. Which by the way, has just become a “bad habit”. Children pick up habits for different reasons. For comfort when they’re parents don’t show validation or show them love. (Keep in mind we all have a different love language). Some people have had childhood trauma or complex trauma, which turned into codependency or even narcissism. And we all know codependency is used all the time in recovery, As is Bipolar and other labels, we use to describe a person with substance abuse issues. See, things that we experience from childhood into adulthood has major impact on a person’s reality. The things that have happened to an individual in the past matters and when they have not been addressed properly, they find soothing mechanisms that are detrimental. These come in different forms. We can call it addictions, obsessions, compulsive behaviors, escape, or any other word that describes temporary pleasure with a negative result.
What Lenz Are You Looking Through??
So, when we don’t take the space and time to fully understand what we’re recovering from, we don’t have the clarity to see ourselves through our own Lenz, and we can’t fully recover because it is unclear what we are recovering from. Putting a band-aid on a femur bleed will kill a patient, it will never help them fully use that extremity to its full potential. We have to stop putting band-aids on our pain to solve trauma that is happening beneath the surface. I can tell you this, your addiction does not come from the substances you’ve chosen to use or the things you have made a habit in doing. As long as you keep focusing on “recovering from the substance” you’re avoiding the actual cause and reasoning of why you picked up this “habit” in the first place. So, remember when I said most rehabs won’t like what I have to say? Well, that’s because I don’t believe in labeling “addiction or recovery”. In fact, I hate labels period! Furthermore, I never understood why they medicate people who are supposedly addicted to substances. They don’t push meds on those addicted to gambling, electronics, video games, social media, sex, serial dating, money, or other “bad habits” that can be considered “addictions”.
Truth is your addiction is just a bad habit, and when you go back to your old environment that habit along with all the people who joined you, blamed you, hated you, and pushed you to the edge, will be right there waiting for you. When will rehab centers realize all the people and things, they prevent you from seeing in the first phase of rehab, are right there when you get out? Ask yourself these 12 questions if you are looking into rehab or considering going back to rehab for a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th time.
- What happens when you leave?
- Have you built enough boundaries?
- Did you build the confidence in yourself that you will need?
- Are you still codependent?
- Do you have narcissistic thoughts, behaviors and patterns?
- When you leave how will you feel as an induvial soul?
- Have you recovered from the pain that caused your addiction?
- How will you react when faced with that pain or other adversities in life?
- Are you different now and are you really prepared to go back to your old life as someone different?
- Do you have plans to live in different environment with likeminded individuals?
- How do you change a bad habit when the habit is your own actions?
- Did you learn how you will cope with curtain people, or circumstances that you’re going to face when you get out?
All questions relevant to the person in recovery because that is rehabilitating after all right? To “restore (someone) to health or normal life by training and therapy after imprisonment, addiction, or illness”
You have to be transformed and confident in who you have become, because you carry yourself around with you everywhere you go. Including into your future outside of rehab centers and AA/ NA/ or any kind of “A” Meetings. In rehab the key is to rehabilitate and become someone different, but how can you become someone different when you’re not given the opportunity to find or define your own true essence. People tell us how we should think, feel and live, but they have never actually walked in our shoes. So who are they to say what will work or not work? After you’ve been locked up for a year, doing what they tell you, under their “controlled environment” your expected to be rehabilitated and be able to cope with life after you leave. Real life is not controlled or predictable. Real life happens! Yes, we can choose the to live a happy, healthy, life, but if we have never experienced a happy, healthy life, what are we comparing it to? The rehab centers interpretation?
Truth is that most people going through rehabilitation have mixed emotions when leaving the center on their last day. What are they leaving and what life are they going into? Some are scared on their last day to go “home” while others are excited, and some believe they have all the skills they need to survive real life. Until reality hits them across the head once again! They’re dating relationship fails, a door shuts in their face on a job they’ve been wanting, death, trauma, financial struggles, parenting or coparenting, all the things that cause hardship. The adversities of life that send people in fight or flight, cause people in “recovery” to relapse! Being in recovery does not necessarily mean you’ve changed. When you plan to go to meetings every week and collect your yearly coin and keep a label around you that says you are a “recovering addict”, you remain in recovery. That means you’re not rehabilitated. You will always live victim to your bad habit, and nothing changes. You will continue to fight the battle to stay clean by going to meetings which continue to remind you of your addictions, your illness, and your inability to live a normal happy life. And that my friend, keeps you in recovery for years! And you will always be in recovery with that mentality. But if you can change your mindset, your awareness, and your environment completely, and then turn your addiction into a bad habit instead, you can overcome it and you begin to heal almost immediately!
To me addiction is just a bad habit and if you can learn to have a habit you can unlearn that habit as well. The question should be how did the habit start? Where did we learn the habit? And WHY did we turn to this particular habit? If we don’t know WHY we’re doing something we can’t learn how to stop it or prevent it from happening again.
I Recovered from My Addictions, Because I Knew What I Was Recovering From!
Most people relapse because they are too focused on quitting the “addiction/bad habit” instead of realizing they have not actually addressed the thing that is causing them to have the “addiction/bad habit” in the first place.
Most rehab centers are not open to hear my philosophy on recovery because it goes outside the scholarly books. But I believe that every person has a different experience during recovery. I don’t believe there is a “One size fits all” in treatment. In fact, I don’t think there is a “one size fits all’ in anyone’s individual journey. Why we treat different people, with different experiences, different health issues, different cultures, and different addictions, the same way, I will never understand! That did not work for me, and I know it’s not working for others, because I’ve lost so many loved ones to their so called ‘addictions”. (Can we just call them Bad habits that cause unhealthy lifestyles)?
Our Addictions Are Bad Habits Picked UP From Our Past Experiences
The adversities that I’ve overcome, only happened when I listened to my own inner voice. I call this my innate being! My soul or “God inside me”. Only you know your life journey. You know the struggles, passions and adversity you’ve had to face. And you know the struggles and actions that you will have to make moving forward. The adversity in our life is what keeps us in our bad habits! Not the bad habit itself.
Do you even know what you’re recovering from?
Five things you need to do if you ever want to really recover from any addictions ..
1. Understand why you do what you do
2. Become someone completely different
3. Change your mindset and be around new likeminded people (not people still recovering)
4. Stop talking about the things your addicted to as if it still controls you.
5. Realize you have a bad habit and you can Break your bad habit.
Most people stay in recovery forever because they keep rewarding the addiction. I never understood the coin that symbolizes a time lapse not using. Get it…”time lapse – relapse” Stop and think about that for a second
You break your addictions when you realize it’s just a bad habit that you picked up at a certain time in your life. And When you go back and learn WHY you started in the first place; you can begin to understand HOW you can overcome. Without the worry of relapsing or staying in recovery because you took some of that time and space to understand your own thoughts, emotions, and your reactions to those thoughts and emotions.
I know this is not the traditional way of treating addictions, but this is how I did it. And like I say so often, there is no one size fits all in our human existence.
If you have relapsed, know someone who has relapsed, or interested in learning my method of recovery, let’s talk. I may be able to help you.
