Recovery from Addiction is a Journey, not an Event

This is an amazingly large collection of audios of several speakers talking about the many aspects of alcoholism, from first drink to recovery. Each speaker speaks for only about five minutes, but each has a profound a story to tell. Why would someone intentionally try to kill themselves over and over again?  It’s counter-intuitive! Who does that? Addiction?! What is an addiction? Where does it come from?

Addiction – when nothing is enough, constantly seeking that first high.

The disillusion that the way this mind-altering substance makes you feel is what makes you “accepted or normal enough to be a part of”. Understanding that drug and alcohol addiction is a fatal and progressive disease which could potentially kill you or drive you mad was crucial to my journey to recovery from alcoholism. It was an important education for me. Tom J talks about recovery and understanding the disease. It is true, one needs to be “Ready” for recovery. If you are not – then don’t bother!  Because you’ll just relapse and keep relapsing until you either die or decide that you are ready to accept you need treatment.  Working in a treatment center – usually, the person who brought the client in for treatment, a parent or in some cases the children of a parent needing treatment, they would ask me – “Is treatment voluntary or involuntary?” I’d say, it could be either, depending on the circumstances – may be the client has become violent and needs to be removed from the home environment or similar scenario, but….. in order for the client to take anything useful away from treatment, the client first had to be “Ready to receive it.”

There are no guarantees. The First Step – Acceptance… without accepting the fundamental fact that actually, your situation is completely hopeless and your life is unmanageable – treatment is useless! Personally, I was ready. Ready in the sense that I knew I needed help, I knew that without help, I’d lose my kids, I knew it was selfish and wrong, but without help, I would not be able to stop and it was not a matter of choice but if I continued, the ultimate result would be my death. I decided to live and I’m here today because of AA’s Twelve Steps.

Listen to Daily AA Speakers – 5 Minutes of Recovery Every Morning and more self-improvement audio programs on Audiojoy — download free on iOS or Android.

 

Content Review by Catrin Valenzuela