For addicts or for people in general who struggle with the concept of spirituality, accepting that they are powerless over addiction or that they are in such great emotional pain that it is impossible to make good decisions, it is imperative that they look for a power source outside themselves to help guide them in…
You don’t have to know anything about twelve-step recovery to use this tool; it applies to everyone. When you are faced with a choice, take the hard choice, and ninety-nine out of one hundred times it will be both the sober choice and the healthy choice. When it comes to addiction, what comes naturally for…
Set aside a morning quiet time. This is probably the most crucial of the daily tools. It means getting up early enough each morning to sit down and consciously say to yourself, “This is my quiet time and a commitment to my recovery today.” Remember, if you take the action, the feelings will follow. Then—if…
Humility is a term not frequently heard early in the addiction recovery process. Seeing the reality of how we view ourselves from a self-esteem standpoint is often difficult. Humility—allowing ourselves to be just one among others—means not only letting go of an increased ego, but also learning to believe that you are just as deserving…
To admit one’s disease, his or her addiction, and to look clearly at the devastation it has caused, is also to feel long-repressed emotional pain. Surrendering to one’s addiction is always a painful process. It means addressing the emotional pain of the disease. In effect, the addict has been medicating his or her feelings for…
Recovery from addiction—with or without chronic pain as a co-occurring disorder—is the process of sustaining abstinence and learning and practicing the awareness and skills necessary to live a whole, healthy, and healed life. These two elements reinforce one another: sustained abstinence creates the opportunities to learn and practice the skills that facilitate growth and healing,…
Contrary to popular misconception, relapse doesn’t begin with a return to using; using is the culmination of the relapse process, a process that usually starts long before the resumption of the actual use of substances or other manifestations of addiction. The seeds for a return to using are sown during a gradual return to the…
Character defects, as ominous and malignant as the term may sound, are merely personality traits—attributes, reactions, and attitudes—that create problems for us in coping with life as it is. They tend to emerge and become more prominent in response to stress, and emotional and physical pain. It may be more helpful to view them as…
If translating awareness into action means learning the approaches and techniques that work, and then practicing them with persistence and dedication (and it does), consistency and repetition are key. Through daily repetition, multimodal recovery practice deepens the conscious and unconscious memory tracks that guide me further in the direction of health, healing, and wholeness. Neural…
The process of changing patterns of living requires conscious (a.k.a. mindful) and conscientious awareness, along with extraordinary patience and persistent practice. This applies to moving from a life in active addiction and chronic pain to one in recovery from both. It also ties in to one’s evolution from the need to be right to remaining…