relationships. That is not the kind of recovery I seek. I want a quality recovery. Marty Mann, one of the first women to recover in Alcoholics Anonymous, and a close friend of Bill Wilson, is credited with first expressing the notion that it’s the quality of your recovery that counts, not the length of it.
TWIGS * FOR CHAPTER ONE:
Stages of Recovery
• What is your image for the stages of your recovery? A quilt? Map? Ladder? Tree? Can you draw, paint, or collage it?
• Divide your recovery into five-year blocks. Name each one as if it were a movie or a song.
• Write in your journal about something you “knew for sure” in your first few years. Is that still true? What changed and what hasn’t?
*One of the definitions of twig is to comprehend the meaning of; so in keeping with the woods analogy, I thought I would offer these twigs to help you further understand what I shared in the chapter.
Chapter Two
The doctor did an examination, and then he had me walk and move and sit and stand up and sit down again while he watched. He had me try some stretches to test my flexibility. And he made notes. He did a few adjustments and then we sat and talked. He talked to me about how I sat and stood and moved. We talked about my writing and reading and my sleeping habits, and how I drove my car.
He explained that I had not hurt my back overnight. The injury had been a slow process of incremental habits building up to cause weakness in some areas of my body and overcompensation of certain other muscles, and to my impatient dismay, my healing would follow the same course: I would have to incorporate new habits over a long period of time.
The doctor told me I would need to change my desk and my chair and also my steering wheel and my pillow—all of which would feel uncomfortable at first because I was used to the unhealthy habits. I would have to learn new ways of sitting, standing, and driving, and by doing that—and doing it over time—my weak muscles would get stronger and my misused muscles would realign.
We start with the physical. Our addiction has almost always caused physical damage—whether it is from drinking, smoking, eating, sex, or other behavioral/process aspects of our disease like television or technology; there is almost always injury to our physical health.
He explained that my back would recover as I learned these new movement patterns, and that I would have to practice them until they became second nature. The repair and healing would come from small, incremental changes over time.
It was much like my recovery from my addiction.
Addiction is a three-part illness (body, mind, and spirit), and it requires a three-part recovery. We start with the physical. Our addiction has almost always caused physical damage—whether it is from drinking, smoking, eating, sex, or other behavioral/process aspects of our disease like television or technology—there is almost always injury to our physical health.
So our recovery began with the physical too. We stopped using, drinking, hurting ourselves with food or work or cigarettes or worry. Then as our recovery progressed, we learned to continue with our physical care. We stopped smoking, lost weight, started to exercise, took yoga classes, or learned to dance. We went to healthcare practitioners (and we followed their advice) and we stopped procrastinating about the dentist, the gym, and learned to eat better.
If we were to take a look in the medicine cabinets of women with more than ten years of recovery, we can see there’s no “one-right-way.” Yes, again, the colorful, messy stage.
One recovering woman may have a bare medicine cabinet with only Band-Aids and aspirin. Another recovering woman looks like she’s got the local pharmacy in her cabinet, although a closer look reveals nonnarcotic and nonalcoholic cough medicine, anti-inflammatories, antidepressants, and tubes of different antibiotic salves. For this woman, these medicines are health remedies and they are used strictly according to directions. In yet another recovering woman’s medicine cabinet you’ll find Chinese herbs, vitamins A to Z, St. John’s Wort, arnica cream, and Bach Flower remedies; for her it’s all about natural choices. And still others may feel that even an herbal remedy is off limits for their recovery.
LOOKING GOOD AND FEELING GOOD
At some point in recovery most women begin to take better care of their bodies. It’s a natural progression. Maybe dieting didn’t work before because we were drinking half of our daily calorie allotment, as well as eating. Or maybe we had to stop jogging in early recovery because our exercise compulsion was out of control. But at some point in our double-digit years we’ll begin to look at diet, exercise, and our overall health.
We also find that as our life gets better we want to have more energy to enjoy that life and enjoy it longer. That too will lead us to pay attention to nutrition, fitness, and preventative healthcare. We know that becoming physically strong can increase our psychological strength as well. Most of us have seen the articles and news reports that detail the research showing that regular exercise can help us to manage stress. Women in recovery—who may have a variety of additional stressors—can benefit especially.
MEDICATION USE
An important part of taking care of our bodies is being mindful of medications. This is always a tricky area for people in recovery, and as people in long-time recovery we have to be especially aware. It’s possible that the longer we are in recovery, the more comfortable we become, and the more “normal” we may feel, especially with issues around healthcare and medicines.
It’s also true that the longer we are in recovery, the older we are, and that simple fact of aging means additional health-related issues. Now, I’m not a doctor and even the doctors we meet as comrades in recovery are not experts on medications for recovering people. We need to turn to true experts—our own physicians who know about our history of addiction, or doctors who specialize in addiction medicine.
For example, most of us avoid the class of medicines called benzodiazepines (or benzos, in slang parlance). Benzos include Valium, Xanax, Ativan, Klonopin, Librium, etc., and are often prescribed for anxiety or depression. Any usage should be only at need, and then strictly supervised by a doctor who knows us and knows of our addiction.
Also to be avoided are prescription painkillers and other opioid-based drugs: morphine, methadone, Vicodin, Oxycontin, Percocet, Dilaudid, Lortab, etc. A trip to the dentist can lead to disaster for a person in recovery who takes these, even as directed, unless strict precautions are taken.
Aging bodies can lead to new hips, new knees, and back surgeries. And those often come with the need for temporary use of serious pain medications.