Something that my sponsor said last week during my 5th step is freaking me out. I told her if I hadn't burned the Rx for 15 fentanyl patches back in October, that I'd have used.

"If you'd used the way you used to use," she said, "you might be dead."

I was just reading NA's How It Works and I realized, she was right, quite literally. I might be dead.

But because I'm so tired of being tired, I want to use so much. Right now. I want to use. I want to use!

The book says it's important to talk about how much we want to use. Not to deny it.

I have to clean the house for four days of company next week, and I'm just so tired. I don't want to clean. I'm also afraid if I don't clean (enough), my hb will get angry when he comes back, the way he did last weekend (and the week before that). I love my hb but I'm afraid of his anger.

I need (I want) to be Superwoman. I want everyone to be Happy with G.

I know: right action leads to right thinking. So I'll clean the house.

But this freaks me out. How could I want to do something that is so bad for me? --G

G ~ What are your needs, now? And now? And now?

Arlene
Free;12-25-02


<center>THERE IS NOTHING SO REMARKABLE AS BEARING WITNESS
TO THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT</center>

I don't know how to answer that, Ar. Needing to keep people happy is so deep in me. My mind believes it is a need. My reality is that it's a need.

Besides, my sister and her hb can't sleep in the room upstairs when it's filled with boxes.

I need to clean the house.

I need to take care of my son.

I also need to rest.

(Was this a trick question? I think I must have made the wrong answer.) --G

No hun'...it was not a trick question.

Is people-pleasing a want or a need?

Is being a super-woman a want or need?

Since your sister & BIL have a desire to sleep in a room without boxes, is it not possible that they will want to help you clean them out?

Sweets...you can't be all things to all people at all times. It ain't f***ing possible.

The desire for caring for a child is very much a need. Children were not put in the care of parents to fend for themselves.

Sooo...in your need to care for your child...it would seem to me that you have a need to stay clean & sober. Focus and keep your eye on the ball.

You've done your 5th which would mean that you've gone quickly onward to your 6th & 7th, yes?

Ask G-d to remove those defects of character which block you from Her and your authentic self.[x2x]

Arlene
Free;12-25-02


<center>THERE IS NOTHING SO REMARKABLE AS BEARING WITNESS
TO THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT</center>

Hun........ hire some one on you hubby's credit card.

All I can say is we can do what we can do right now. If it is that important to hubby he will understand what it takes to get it done.

Damm! Why didn't I think of that?? Best suggestion of the day.

G ~ The reason we are directed to talk about (write about) thoughts of using is to disempower what can become an obsession.

I was taught early on that I have 2 sides; my dark and my light. I have to embrace both...and have them live in harmony. As soon as I pretend that I don't have a dark side (not speaking just about drugs here), then I have given it wings...and the ability to fester and grow unabated.

Make sense, hun'?

Arlene
Free;12-25-02


<center>THERE IS NOTHING SO REMARKABLE AS BEARING WITNESS
TO THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT</center>

Bonita... I've thought of doing that. Money is a big issue right now. I'm not earning a steady paycheck because I'm trying to make a go of being a freelancer. My hb never has believed I could do it, I don't think. I told him I'd take a year to try, and it's coming close to the end of the year, and I only got into detox in September and of course before that I wasn't going at 100 percent. I've been working real hard lately, though. I told him I might need a bit more time, and he has expressed some serious frustration with me. ... Suffice to say, in January I let go the woman who used to come clean the downstairs every two weeks. Maybe I could hire her back a couple times before the year's out, if she has time.

I ain't makin up excuses; I'm just trying to sort it out and get my priorities straight.

If I weren't so tired... The tiredness was always the thing that made me take drugs... It wasn't to get "wasted" and lie around, it was to Do Everything...

My hb is getting real impatient with me. What do you do when your partner asks, "How much longer is it going to take?" (i.e., for you to be normal) I tell him I don't know.

He works so hard himself. He shouldn't have to work as hard as he does: he's 60.

I been going through boxes and what I'm finding is a lot of my dad's stuff that I just put off going through because it hurts too much. Procrastination.

Boy, Bonita, I'm glad you've decided to be with me in all this, from suboxone on out....

Arlene... You're right about the thing about pretending not to have a dark side. I've been trying to fake it till I make it for a long time. This was my therapist's suggestion. My AlAnon sponsor wasn't exactly fond of saying it, but she sometimes suggested it also. I don't think it's working for me now. I wish I could come on here and say every day that I'm doing great, but it just isn't true.

OK, so, the 7th step prayer. Again. ... I wish I could get to a meeting, but I'm alone with my boy. ... thanks for staying with me. --G

Baby girl....listen up for a sec.

The fake 'til you make it (act as if) scenario is a wonderful tool...as opener. Thereafter...it becomes a facade...a sham. Not dissimilar to the sham of living in active addiction.

This thing about faking it can turn on its ear from the positive tool it is to get through acute tough spots to morphing into pretending you're something that you're not.

Its not meant for a chronic state of being.

See how close that looks to active addiction? It bites you in the arse.

Yes...the 7th Step prayer is what I was going for. Its an amazing prayer of humility. G ~ have you gotten down on your knees today and asked to be relieved of the obsession?

Arlene
Free;12-25-02


<center>THERE IS NOTHING SO REMARKABLE AS BEARING WITNESS
TO THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT</center>

This from Recovery 101: The Toolbox:

What I managed to get done while my hb was away:

• Take care of my son and make arrangements for him to play with other kids Friday and Saturday

• Get bids from two furnace guys to replace the broken furnace

• Do my job (never at the top of the list, it seems)

• Get the room upstairs 3/4 cleaned

• Vacuumed the dust out of our bedroom (he's allergic)

But I forgot to eat some food he left for me in the fridge. He asked me if he's going to have to be the one to make sure all the food gets eaten or thrown out. He asked me what he can "reasonably" expect with regard to what I can do.

The canyon I'm in is, I don't know what's "reasonable" anymore. I told him so. I told him one pear that was over the hill and one uneaten stuffed pepper were really low on my list these days. He told me he's lost all faith in any of the intentions I express--that I have "no credibility" with him when it comes to intentions. I told him it was fair enough: that I've lost all faith that he's "sorry" when he gets angry.

Ar, I love your post above because it's so gentle and accepting. But I don't live with acceptance in the house. I am face to face with this fear of not being enough, every day. I told him this morning that my problem is, I can make amends, I can acknowledge something is wrong and try to change my behavior, but that's not enough: I have to MAKE IT OK FOR HIM, TOO. I have to take away his feelings about it all.

I get on my knees and say the 7th step prayer and ask for this fear to be removed. And sometimes it is. But then I look at my hb's face and it all comes roaring back.

Please don't misunderstand me: he's a good man. He's just sick of living with an addict.

--G

why do you have this fear? what is the underlying fear?
Fear is not real. Fear is a thought...nothing more. thoughts feed emotions and emotions feed thought and they both turn in on the body....for you, sick and tired.

no, no you don't....and realistically, you can't. You G, don't have that much power. none of us do. how he feels, what he does, how he reacts...that's on him. How you react to him....well, that's on you.

live NOW. right now, you're doing the best that you can. that's really all any of us can do. I fall short daily....it is what it is.

peace
j

How u feeling today, J? Thinking of you.

The underlying fear... well, not sure about that. I've lived with fear since I was very young. I guess the underlying fear is that I'm not lovable... that if I'm not "enough," I won't be loved. This was my experience when I misbehaved and my mother refused to speak with me for days. (this began when I was very, very young: say, 3 or 4; see my other thread)

When I did wrong things, I learned not that I needed to make things right, but that I MYSELF WAS WRONG.

Not sure if this makes sense... it's so old and deep for me, I hardly can imagine life being any different... Sometimes when I have a major encounter with God (like I did when I discovered I was an addict, and was accepted into AA immediately and with care) I can believe God loves me, and this is amazing. I definitely did not have this experience as a child or young person.

Janice, can you access this experience on a daily basis through prayer & meditation? Is it too much to ask to be able to have this in early recovery? (these are not rhetorical questions: I'm serious)

Lots more thoughts... Also I need to say that it wasn't true, what I said before about "not living with acceptance in the house"... My hb has acceptance by times; but when he gets angry, he REALLY gets angry. And because my character defect is so glaring--it's like his anger is the opiate and my defect is the big empty receptor.

Huh. Never thought of it like that before.

But I did manage to tell him that, the next time he gets angry, I need to just walk out of the room because his anger makes me sick (i.e., activates my own sickness--it doesn't constitute my sickness).

Lots more thoughts but gotta run for now. Thanks, J. --G

Yes...you can access the presence of your Being, of your God...at any moment. yes, on a daily basis.

in early recovery? I'm not sure what that means for you. to me...the journey of spiritual experience was a process of removal...not accumulation. I didn't need to find or get God...God was never lost. What I did need to do was to reveal and remove all the crap that was blocking me from a connection to that Power. That Power (God/HP/Being/Buddha nature...whatever) is in everyone, I have no more Power than that junkie sleeping under the Brooklyn Bridge....its just that I've been able...through a process of removal...to align myself with that Power. live mindful, returning to breath is to return to Being. The very ground of our soul. peace. innate peace.

easy? not always. possible? of course. the process of removal for me started in my 3rd step in the discarding of my old belief systems of what God is and what God isn't. the process continues today...the more crap I can get rid off...the freer I am.

long winded answer for....yes and perhaps.

G ~ I discovered something that I think may resonate with you.

I have a theory. My opiate replacement theory.

I used rather copious amounts of opiates. That's how glaring my defects of character. I think the amount I used was in direct proportion to my spiritual void. The empty receptor.

That being said, its on me to fill & refill those opiate receptors with something else. G-d.

Sooo...that's my personal theory. Not scientific...can't prove it on a graph, no blind studies, no nada with one exception. Its 6 years later and I'm a whole lot better now. My defects only glare once and awhile (usually when someone's blowing smoke up my skirt)...and most times they just twinkle on and off...briefly.

Can you relate?

Arlene
Free;12-25-02


<center>THIS TOO SHALL PASS</center>

J & A... You guys are so supportive and understanding with this weak addict that it makes me weep. (all the lurkers, I thank you too for being here...)

What each of you said has hit the chords in my chest...

Last night I went to my home group (big book study group)... We're on the chapter "To Employers" and one would think that it would be a dull discussion--lots of old-time members said that most newcomers are only interested in chapter 5--but it always helps me to hear others in recovery talk. I mostly just sit and "listen and learn"... Last night someone mentioned Step Zero/The Grace of God--the thing that makes us able to accept any kind of help, the thing that makes us unable to go on killing ourselves. I'd never heard it phrased like that before. I had been thinking of this myself because of Arlene's thread on this forum about what made us take action. It's mysterious. ... there was a lot of laughter in the meeting last night and it felt good.

I heard someone mention the 12 & 12 book. We have one in AlAnon, staple of the literature, my sponsor had me start there when I came to the program, and I don't know why it never occurred to me that AA would have one, but it hadn't. Maybe because most of the meetings I go to don't have much literature, but as X's husband (who also goes to my home group) told me last night, all these books are available in the bookstore.

"Oh, you mean like the recovery bookstore?" There's one in my neighborhood; I bought my hb a silver tea-light holder with the Serenity Prayer engraved on it from that shop for his bd two weeks ago...

"Yeah," X's hb said, "or, like, Barnes & Noble."

Jeez, why didn't I ever think of that? But I'd rather the meetings themselves get the support, so on my way home I stopped at this church that is like AA Central on Sunday nights, and I found a small purse-size copy of the 12 & 12.

This morning I'm reading about myself (from Step Three): "We can further add that a beginning, even the smallest, is all that is needed. Once we have placed the key of willingness in the lock and have the door ever so slightly open, we find that we can always open it some more. Though self-will may slam it shut again [anyone recognize G at this point?--terminally unique here, as always], as it frequently does, it will always respond the moment we again pick up the key of willingness."

While I was cleaning out the room upstairs on Saturday, the night I started this thread in big tears, I found a little bag with two red Christmas-tree balls in it from a holiday gifts of the program meeting from a couple of years ago. Does AA have gifts of the program meetings?--I love these, they're among my favorite meetings, and the one I like best is at my hb's home group, where they shut all the lights off and fill the tables with candles and everyone takes a gift. ... One of the balls still had an unread tag on the hook, folded over. I slid it off and opened it and it said, "Willingness." I've been carrying it around in my pocket to remind me that, no matter how many lapses I have in my self-will, no matter how many times I throw the key away, what saves me (I hope) is my willingness--to pick the key back up, to post on this board, to carry on working the steps. To keep asking questions. I hope this saves me; I hope it's not just self-indulgence.

I couldn't keep posting to my thread on the other board; I feel like I've been done with suboxone for a long time. I feel like, now, my questions are all about keeping myself free from hell. I kind of don't like calling myself "clean" because I don't like the implication that I was "dirty" before. I usually call myself "sober." I also think I can be "unsober" while not taking drugs--equivalent of a dry drunk. Being "free from hell," however, is a phrase I totally relate to...

Sorry to post so long, but this is another passage that helped me (esp with regard to what Janice said above, about clearing away the crap so God can come in): "We had not even prayed rightly. We had always said, 'G

I was told early on....that God is already in. It wasn't until the journey of removal had begun that I was capable of accepting and experiencing the God that is...and always has been...within me.

"Actually we were fooling ourselves, for deep down in every man, woman, and child, is the fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form or other it is there.........We found the Great REality deep down within us. In the last analysis it is only there that He may be found" - BB pg 55.

My sponsor has this great statement..."turn in to turn out". now, I never knew what the hell he meant, cause my old belief system told me that my God was out there. by turning in...to the God/Power/Being within...I can turn out and face life successfully. mindfully. peacefully.

edit: by the way...powerful post g. thanks for sharing your journey. always gives me pause/reflection.