Reconstructing Rick

I’m Rick and I’m an addict

A while ago I had New Years predictions for the coming year. It was based on more logic then anything else. Now I simply cannot even guess what my next year will be like. This is the first time in my history that I cannot even figure out what may or may not happen.

Reflecting back, it was this time last year when all hell broke loose and it was also this time last year when I got very sick. A whole year has gone by and to be honest, this has been a very hard year for me. I do have some things I am very happy to have survived but all and all, I cannot say that my life has been dramatically improved to the point where I would say I am overjoyed at where I am today.

What sticks out the most is that I am different today than I was a year ago. I think a better person and definitely more appreciative of the friends I have today than the ones from the past. I can say that I look back at the past and amaze myself at how far gone I was mentally.

I think the thing that stands out is that recovery does not equal greatness. It allows you to pull away from the madness of your life and your wild thoughts. It replaces it with clarity. Having a clear mind does have a price because it gives you new emotions and thoughts.

The other day at a meeting I was listening to someone share about how different their life is being 3 months clean. How they are learning to do things new, as if they never knew what it was like to do things normally in the past. I get that. This last year has been all about learning things new. How to have friends and be a friend. How to think responsibly. How to interact with people in a healthy way.

This does not mean that the insanity has stopped. I still do insane things. Some of my thoughts bother me to this day. The fact that I still have using thoughts proves to me that I am an addict. The fact that I know if I stop trying to help myself, I will be one little step away from total disaster. NA does not need me. I need NA.

This coming year can go a number of ways. It will be interesting to see if I am still blogging a year from now. It will be interesting to see if I can get to a whole year clean… thats in 4 months!  Some of the people who have had some clean time built up and lost it all this year to a relapse worries me because a few of them we’re my role models. I don’t think I would have the same courage to come back to NA if I relapsed. They did but I’m more of a coward.

I will wrap up this year with a “who knows”. I also wrap up this year with some gratitude. I hope that I can replace fear with more trust in my higher power. I hope that I can replace some of my character defects with positive traits I have yet to discover. I hope that I make it. I remember at a meeting some 8 months ago when I relapsed I said at a meeting that I was not “one of those people who makes it. I am one of those people who fails”. I hope 2009 proves me wrong.

Im Rick, and I’m an addict.

I’m in a real bad mental place right now. I am trying very hard to write this post because I am hoping that somehow, someway, it will help me. I really don’t think it will but I am going to try.

It was this time last year that everything went downhill fast. I don’t think I ever talked about that situation much and I am not so sure it would help discussing it now. Suffice to say that not only was my health in very bad shape, my using at an all time high and I totally messed up my career once more. I had lost all my friends, my belongings, my money, and my sanity. I was trying to deal with problems I was involved in, which today I cannot imagine I would ever do, but also horrors that go beyond imagination. This was a dark time and so many people hurt me and I hurt them.

Today I look at other people and realize how different I am from them. I know this is not a good thing because I know that when I look at my life as unique, I am doing nothing more than adding to the pre-lapse of my using.

I never wanted to look at myself as a horrible person. Back then people like Hitler and Charles Manson were the horrible people. Now the bar has been lowered to the point where I am included in that crowd. I feel when I am around people that the majority of them are normal nice people and I am the outcast. I have joined a select group of people who simply are not good.

There are places for people like the person I used to be. I feel I have been punished and will continue to be punished for what I have done in the past. There is so many people to atone to and so many situations where I have caused great harm. I have also harmed myself in so many ways.

I would love to blame my addiction on my past but I think my addiction is just part of the reason for my actions of the past. The fact is that no matter how successful I was in business there was some serious issues in my head starting from when I was just a boy (if you read my older posts you will know what I mean), that I didn’t have a clear line about what was right or wrong. I also did not understand how to live a normal regular life like everyone else because my life has been filled with so much weird stuff that normal for me is considered extremely abnormal for others.

One of the gifts NA has given me is that I am now starting to think like a normal person. I am starting to have emotions that I cannot mask by one of my addictions. Removing those things has caused me to reflect more passionately on my past and my defects. It has also caused me a great deal of anxiety. When will I be ready to deal with the past? Why, when I am doing so much better now in my recovery do I feel worse than ever before?

This is causing me not to rest. It is causing me to worry. It is causing me great pains in my soul. I know that all NA promises is relief from active addiction but that it is the cure for all the problems. I still have to deal with them but it is suppose to help me really deal with them. So I have to look at my lessons in the past and explore what I have learned.

NA has taught me to ask this question: What options do I have? I think I have the option to be honest today. I think I am doing that. I also have the option to ask for help. This I can do. I have the option to ask my Higher Power to help me. I have done that a lot. I have the option to talk about these issues with my sponsor. I need to do this. I need to talk about this in the meetings but I simply don’t know where to start. I have to keep remembering my options.

NA has taught me that I do not have to use, no matter what. Oh this is a hard one because right now I seek relief from these feelings and I want to drink and I want to use and I want to run. As an addict said to me the other day who is still using that it is not going to make it better, only worse because the problems are still there and I am now masking them.

NA has taught me the serenity prayer (here is the full original version)

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.

NA has taught me that I am never alone in the world, because no matter where i go or what happens to me, there are recovering addicts there to offer support and love.

Although I am not in the best mental place right now, all I ask my Higher Power to do is to be gentle with me right now. While others are enjoying and celebrating the holidays,  I am hurting badly and right now I need a friend who understands and will just let me know that everything will be alright. I will not be alone. I will not be hated and looked at as someone not worthy of compassion. That someday I just may be worthy of being loved again from my actions being clean.

So my prayer for today is…  God, although there is a lot I have wronged people and hurt events in my life, including myself, I have also distanced myself from you in the past. Forgive me. The pain and weight upon my soul feels too much to bear. Now, as I try to reconstruct my life, find peace, bring joy and do your will, I pray that you will be gentle and loving with me as you help others with their lives from my actions. I pray you give me hope that I too can know what it means to do the right thing in life always and from my current life show how your grace and forgiveness has blessed me. May those who judge me be understanding. May the example of my life give hope to others.

I’m Rick and I’m an addict.

The first admission must be made before I ever recover. This is the fact that I am an addict. Sounds simple huh? We’ll for you non-addicts, I want you to know what it is like to think like an addict. I want you to know how my brain works. Once you understand what an addict is, you can deal with one. Some of you (and now, according to the stats there is 2000 of you each week reading this blog), know someone who is an addict and you don’t know what to do or what to say.

Probably the most significant thing is that as people, we are just like you. We look like you and for the most part act like you. You are probably use to addicts looking like homeless penniless people who havent washed in weeks. Truth is, I was once that person. That is not me today. Today, I look just like anyone else walking through the mall buying stuff. I blend in.

Blending in the part of who I am. I like to please people and at time will not draw a line to stop pleasing people. Because of this, I will tell you what you want to hear, act the way I think will work for the situation, and party with the best of them. I will go out of my way to make whatever situation a little better if it means that I will be noticed or loved.

I am good with pets and children and when given a chance at work, typically do a good job and get promoted easily. Sounds like a lot of you doesn’t it?

Inside, not in open discussion, I will think to myself a lot. I will be in my head more than normal. I will seek approval more than the normal person does. As a matter of fact, I will think about a number of things to the point where my brain is full and I need a rest. The only rest I know works is drugs or booze. This stops the thinking and starts the impulses.

I love impulses. As an addict I act on my impulse and I really dont care much about you unless you seem to get in the way of me acting on my impulse. When I want to do something impulsive, I do it obsessively. This means I will take a stupid little thought or a bad plan and it will roll around in my head non-stop, until I do something about it. I won’t stop thinking about whatever it is until either I block it out of my mind (drugs) or I do it.

I take whatever emotion to the highest level inside but do not show it all the time outside. Meaning if I dislike you, really I hate you, and by hate I mean I wish you harm, and by wish you harm I mean that nothing would make me happier then to hear that some misfortune has hurt you. This gives me great joy.

Additionally, when I love that means that I must love you to the fullest extent of loving someone. I cannot just cherish you, I must own you. If you turn me on, I have to stare and if I stare too long then I want you and then we get back into the action mode of my addiction. Sex is incredible with me (modest I know) because I am a people pleaser but you know the best lovers I have had in my life have all been addicts?

They say that addicts know that “one is too many and a thousand is never enough”. This is true. Not just for drugs, but also for other actions. I won’t eat one cookie, I’ll eat the box. I won’t just push you, I’ll punch you till I have nothing left to punch. I won’t have a little wine, I’ll have the whole case. I love pleasure. I love to make myself feel good at the expense of others. You should know that one of my dreams, and I never did this, was to have sex with someone while we were both on ecstacy. See, that is the other side of addiction… addicts love addicts (or at least a lot of them love each other).

Can we be trusted? I think as much as any other person using or not. Is your children safe around us? Sure. Why not. Again, we are normal people it’s just we want everthing, we want it now, we want it the method we dream it to be delivered to us, and we feel we are owed it because of all the shit that has happened in our lives. When we don’t get it, we usually have to hurt someone. Almost without exception the person we hurt is ourselves.

My buddy Frank blogs from his heart. I so connect with his thoughts. One day we will probably meet or at least I hope we do. I am sure we look nothing alike. I can bet on that one. But I bet that soul to soul, he is just like me. He is an addict and an honest guy. He shares from his gut. He has courage to bear it all to us. He is a warrior on the drug battlefield. Sounds like he gets hit sometimes and sometimes sounds like he takes the hill. For a dude so much younger than myself, I am actually proud of him and I am learning from his blogs. Frank is an example of a RECOVERING addict… see the difference?

With all I said, I hope you can see the contrast. An addict can be dangerous. Down right deadly. A recovering addict can be inspirational. A leader. A force of life so powerful that given the chance, they can change the world. At least a few addicts are changing mine.

Just for today I will be unafraid. My thoughts will be on my new associations. People who are not using and have found a new way of life. So long as I follow this way I have nothing to fear.

Not even ourselves.