One way to distinguish how much of a problem alcohol is in your life, is to take a look at your decisions lately.

How have they turned out? Be honest.

Is your life a swirling mess of outcomes, leaving you breathless and hung over?

Or, do you take your time over events when they happen, keep your own counsel, then take action once you’ve thought things through?

Decisions, and their outcomes, are one of the fastest yardsticks to measure the chaos, and likelihood of spiralling addiction, as your daily life unfolds.

Do you make one too many decisions for a night out on the spur of the moment, then remember nothing in the morning?

What’s Motivating Your Decisions

Look closer to uncover – what are the underlying motivators behind the decisions you make?

Is it your *real* intention to forget your friends, take it to excess, and end up sleeping at a bus stop?

In which case, you will quickly run out of friends.

Look at where your intention is.

Comparing To The Past

As you contrast your decisions you’ve been making lately, with those from a non-alcohol-fuelled chapter of your life, what’s different?

Do your decisions nowadays seem more like excuses, compared to before? Do you commit to events that will only assist you in drinking to oblivion? Or are they balance and with holistic intentions at heart?

The Flipside – Inability To Make Decisions

When initially starting out on the sober journey, many find themselves unexpectedly in a place of total inability to make decisions at all.

More often than not, this is indicative of underlying self-esteem issues that may need resolved, or that didn’t surface to be addressed during treatment.

Ask yourself:
What could be the possible negative outcome of making the decision?

What was it that happened the last time you made a decision, and how did you cope with that?

Questions like these will lead you to the underlying issues.

Our issues like these will remain, even during stellar periods of unwavering sobriety, until we conquer them.

Usually this means, facing them head on, little by little, with help, if needed.

What Are The Decisions Trying To Get For You?

My friend went through the entire program at The Hygrove alcohol rehab in Gloucester, and came out ok.

She was challenged to look at her decision-making – it consistently came up as an issue when intoxicated, and it led her to piece together the threads – the commonalities of the experiences that the alcoholic in her, was trying to achieve, by making these decisions.

When she understood the desired outcome, and what it was achieving for her, the rest of her recovery plan fell into place.

If you can piece together the common threads in your decision making, it can shed enormous light on areas of your recovery, you’d never have realised, consciously.

Think – “what’s the fight I’m trying to win, by making decisions like this, consistently?”

Summary

Alcohol and drug addiction will challenge us, relentlessly. Even after detox, treatment and throughout our ongoing sobriety.

We should expect this.

But by doing the inner work required, you can get out in front of your own decisions, and make sure they’re in the best interests of all you, and your recovery, and not just the old addiction patterns controlling the outcome for negative motives.

Post Contributed by The Hygrove.

The Hygrove
Main Rd
Minsterworth
Gloucester GL2 8JG
01452 222480
51.860402,-2.312120.
VM6Q+55 Highnam, Gloucester

The opposite of addiction is…what’s your initial reaction here?

In many circles, the opposite of addiction is widely considered to be….Connection.

e.g. When an individual’s needs are met, they’re connecting with others to help them in work, love, housing, family life, etc, when basics in life are fulfilled, like living situation, food to eat, family to love, etc – then it becomes much harder to maintain addiction, as there are fewer dysfunctional conclusions being made, or feelings to run away from.

But…there’s much less talk about – how do we get there?

The Missing Piece

Speaking about connection, and getting needs met, and understanding the connection between addiction and connection is great – but how do we make the leap;

FROM

Dysfunctional addict hopelessly caught in a cycle of using alcohol or drugs to cope with the issues of everyday life, then when problems inevitably arise from this abuse, turning back to the coping mechanism again to cope with the fallout…and round and round we go…

TO

Functional, independent human being with self-sustaining work, well adapted living situation, useful interactions with others (non-dependent), healthy relationships and financial sustenance?

The answer is…(are you ready?)

….responsibility.

Quite simply, a huge and yet often unspoken element of the addiction recovery journey is the stark, and unappealing truth of taking responsibility for one’s own life.

Certainly, the principles are there, underpinning most addiction recovery philosophies – 12 steps, SMART, alcohol rehab treatment, etc, all espouse, accepting one’s part in your own addiction, owning up to it, and making up for it, in some way.

Responsibility .v. Fault

But more useful in this context for those us still recovering is, making the distinction between responsibility, and fault.

We’ve come across many who have unsuccessfully attempted to get well from alcoholism, using the dysfunction of the addiction as an excuse. “I can’t attend meetings on time because I’m an alcoholic”.

Or, “It’s not my fault I’m an alcoholic because x, y, z, trauma happened to me”.

Whilst it’s true that trauma does not pick its victims selectively, it is not your (our) *fault* that trauma happened, but it *is* your responsibility to get better from it – it is your life after all, no-one else’s.

i.e. you’re not *to blame* for what happened, but you *are* responsible for overcoming it.

That’s just the nature of life.

And it’s one of the hardest things to accept, especially when active in addiction. Sheeesh, the whole existence of addiction is built around the idea that “I’m not responsible.”

No-One Enters Rehab Or Recovery 100% Willing

And the truth is, no-one really enters alcohol recovery fully – 100% – willing. No-one really enters a journey of getting better, whilst *fully* embracing these concepts. We’re just not at that stage, at that point in time.

It’s enough to accept, only that “I don’t know the answer” and “the answer must lie outside me” since, if it didn’t, I would have already fixed things by now.

Consider those in very long term recovery. The old timers in AA meetings the world over, known to everyone, and always keen to lend a hand.

How did they do it? It wasn’t by blaming others, that’s for sure. It wasn’t by using their alcoholism as an excuse for anything.

It was by a process of acceptance. First of themselves and their behaviours and actions, and second of their responsibility in all of this.

And third, of their own responsibility for all their actions from this moment forward, in sobriety.

So, the doorway to move from addiction toward connection, and a longer term satisfaction with life in recovery, is in fact, embracing responsibility.

Hope it helps.

This Post Brought To You By:

Edinburgh Rehab Centre
64a Cumberland Street
Edinburgh
EH3 6RE
UK
Tel:0131 510 3327
edinburghrehab.co.uk
info@edinburghrehab.co.uk
9C7RXQ5W+8X
55.9582863,-3.2025344

The truth is… that no alcoholic in the world is ever really 100% ready to enter treatment.

Since a huge part of the psyche is pre-occupied with alcohol as a coping mechanism, it’s availability, it’s effects upon the emotional issues of the addiction, there is no alcoholic who has ever thrown their hands in the air, and surrendered unconditionally to enter treatment.

It just doesn’t happen.

But, whether dealing with alcoholism yourself or for a loved one….do you see enough of the *real* person, to know that they’re ready?

An alcohol addict will always have *moments* of clarity, *moments* of admission, *moments* of taking responsibility, and realising, that help is needed.

Are You Convinced?

But do you witness enough of these moments, over time, to be telling enough, that if they did undergo treatment at an alcohol rehab clinic, their clarity would return, and with the right help, they would begin to address the real underlying issues behind the alcoholism?

The short version: do they have good intentions behind the promises?

We can never be fully convinced, but if there’s enough of these lucid thinking moments, and enough pain in continuing the addiction, the combination can be enough of an incentive to reach out and take action.

What else would convince someone to get help?

Usually, it’s pushing themselves over the pain threshold by some other means – a crisis, a hospital admission, an accident, or similar. Only when enough of a pain threshold is crossed, will the alcoholic finally realise that seeking help and admitting they are powerless over alcohol, is the only thing left less painful than….death itself.

These are powerful realisations, not to be taken lightly. Realisations that can only be reached by the individual themselves, no matter how much co-ercion or force others try to apply.

Family and friends are always well-meaning. But do they really understand addiction? It’s strength?

It’s so easy, to unwittingly enable the alcoholic, without meaning to. “They’ll get it together”….”I’ll help them out this one last time….”  “He’ll know that *this time* it’s time to get help”.

Sound familiar?

“Why Can’t (S)he Just Stop?”

Beyond the obvious physical risks associated with ceasing alcohol intake, an alcoholic will be emotionally re-triggered…eventually.

Despite the best of intentions, and every positive promise to stop, somehow the addiction continues. It is the emotional addiction that keeps the individual coming back.

An event may happen in the outside world, that triggers an internal belief, a previous trauma, a fear from the past, and the only means to feel better, is to turn to the alcohol once more.

It’s only once gotten help to understand the *real* underlying issues- what alcohol help us feel – that we begin to unearth the real truth – what it’s doing for us, what supposed “benefits” it helps us get or achieve, etc. Once these are understood, alcohol loses it’s power over us. We know that the issues are not the substance itself, but what we think the substance represents.

Then…..recovery begins 🙂

More soon.

When we try to recover from addiction and can’t.

When we want to stop and are unable.

When we’ve tried to figure out the underlying emotional problems. And aren’t any further forward.

What’s next?

There are those among us who say the right things, and have all the conscious-level enthusiasm about alcoholism recovery, but are never able to fully resolve it.

I’m speaking here of those of us who’ve tried 90 meetings in 90 days, who’ve been detoxed via local services…..some who’ve even been in specialist clinics, and feel no further forward.

I’m talking here about things far beyond the physical or chemical treatment for alcoholism.

Is it me? Is it a lifestyle thing? Is it enabling? Is it social peers?

Usually, it’s all of the above.

While listening to 100 people tell 100 stories can shed *some* light on our alcoholic patterns, does it really help us actively address them?

Bring to light the full pattern of dysfunction that’s been fuelling the addiction?

Listen, how to help an alcoholic is difficult. Let’s be honest.

In some ways, this is “emotional surgery” we’re speaking about.

Being able to pinpoint the precise mechanisms of addiction, the reasons why, the reasons peculiar and specific to us, as individuals. Specific to our past, our history, our traumatic events, our upbringing. It’s difficult. Especially if undergoing alcohol withdrawal symptoms in the uk.

But this is a lifelong commitment. It’s a lifelong process. We have to accept this. It’s understanding that as alcoholics, we’re ok, even though there is much, much work left to do still.

But we can do that more easily, with the understanding and support of our peers. We can find our path toward self-acceptance, that much more easily, with their insight, patience, and understanding.

It’s cliché, but it IS a journey.

When we’ve been along the road many times, it can be disheartening.

When we’ve tried to understand the patterns, and – seemingly – failed – it can feel hopeless. When we’ve had multiple bites at the alcoholic cherry.

But normally there’s an element we’ve not yet uncovered. An aspect of alcoholism that has been doing something for us – helping us achieve something – enabling us to cope with something, or some feeling, that we’ve believed we can’t achieve by any other means.

Of course, that belief is wrong, and it’s only developed since we had a few “positive” experiences with alcohol.

Part of us believes there is the way to cope without alcohol but we’ve already had enough experiences to conclude, ‘this is the way to cope’.

If you can find your way to these aspects – these reasons why – this is where the gold is buried.

Bringing it out into the light, is then so much easier. And the light reveals the truth -about you, about the pattern, and the keys to undoing it all.

Speak soon.