Why Admitting Powerlessness Is So Important

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In case you are not familiar with the steps yet, or if you haven’t worked the first step yet, you might not realize how important the first step is.

Step One “We admitted that we were powerless over … — that our lives had become unmanageable.”

If we don’t admit that we have a problem, how are we planning to ever change our situation? Admission of a problem is half the solution!

When we realize how sick and defenseless we are at least in one area of our life, we can become ready for the work necessary to accept the help we need.

Choices, Choices!

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Have you ever thought about it? We have choices in life, we just need to think about what our choices are and then it becomes easy to weigh between the two options.

Choice A) A New way of Living.
Choice B) Death emotionally, spiritually, and even physically.

Think about it, what would you choose?

Hmm. Not even a question! Of course life.

So the question becomes why do addicts keep on choosing death instead of life?

Is it because we don’t think? Or is it because the way the world, and our disease protrays the choice of that to us?

Whatever the reason might be, it seems simple that thinking about our choices and honestly answer ourselves if we want to choose life or death will bring us to a better place.

Recovery is a Process not an Event

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A stonecutter may strike a rock ninety nine times with no apparent effect, not even a crack on the surface.  Yet with the hundreth blow, the rock splits in two.  It was not the final blow that did the trick, but all that had gone before.

When we work on ourselves to change who we are, we sometimes get discouraged because we can’t see anything happening, everything still looks the same as yesterday. We have to remember that recovery is a process not an event and every time we do the next right thing we are affecting change inside ourselves even when it still looks the same on the outside.

Then all of a sudden at one moment we will be able to look back and say wow “this is a different rock” there was change here, but its not that final blow that did it, its the constant perseverance in recovery despite our falls and slips that does it.

Working Step Zero

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My sponsor instructed me this morning to stop doing stepwork for the next 30 days and instead focus on Step Zero.

What?

What is Step Zero?

Step Zero is participating in the fellowship, calling people talking to people before and after meetings, going out with people one on one. It’s building up the network in order to be able to stay sober and get out of isolation which is driving us back to the addiction.

We cannot stay sober alone, and we cannot progress in our recoveries by ourselves and that’s why we need other people.

HALT – Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired

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One of the slogans in 12 step fellowships is HALT!

HALT stands for don’t get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired. At first thought one might question what’s the connection between any of those and acting out?

However, as we stay sober and become more aware of our feelings, we realize the wisdom behind these slogans. All four of these states put us in an altered state of mind, and our rational brain stops working, instead we start thinking of our old behaviors, and they look “glorified” and as a possible solution to whatever our problem might be.

When we stay in our spiritual balance and in fit “spiritual condition” we make sure to take care of ourselves, to eat right, sleep right, keep our emotions in check and not get angry and resentful (resentment is the number one killer of addicts), loneliness is another killer as addiction is a disease of loneliness and isolation, and of course last but not least tiredness, when we are tired our brains don’t function properly and we can’t make rational choices.

So the next time you start thinking crazy, think HALT! And ask yourself am I in any states of HALT?

Addiction is a Spiritual Deficiency

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When a person is sick physically they usually go see a doctor, who takes blood work to find out what their problems are. If the person has a deficiency in certain nutrients the doctor then prescribes those nutrients that the body is lacking. If Iron is too low, they will prescribe Iron to counter the deficiency, if Vitamin A is low, they will prescribe that.

Addiction is a disease of Spiritual Deficiency our spirituality is deficiant and lacking and we feel sick, of course we have all tried to fill it up with the wrong things to fill that deficiency, some of us have tried alcohol, sex, drugs, food, gambling, internet gaming. It doesn’t really matter what we tried, whatever we tried we were looking to fill up that “void”, and nothing can fill that up until we fill it with the nutrients that were missing.

What we are really looking for is that spirituality, that can make us feel so much better than whatever else we tried, and that really works because just as in a physical illness the solution is always to give the body the nutrient that is lacking, the same is true for our soul sickness we need to feed it the nutrients it’s missing and that is Spirituality.