when you refuse to admit your powerlessness, you stand to lose everything. Your ego, bad habits and compulsive behaviour aren’t only life-threatening; these things will also keep you from connecting to true Love.
The instant I surrendered, I slowly became aware of the behaviour that had led to all the wrong choices. Addictive behaviour, bad habits and the illness of addiction were all far stronger than I was. I didn’t have the power to stop myself. I had to surrender everything to make room for a Power greater than my own.
Even though my life was in complete chaos, I knew that, from then on, something much greater and mightier would be the guiding beacon in my life. I no longer had to live in crippling fear of the future. Everything was as God had planned it, and it was done out of love for me. I was okay.
Parents and friends often didn’t understand my recovery process. That’s because it’s hard for the average person to understand the illness of addiction.
People are often appalled by an addict’s behaviour and wants nothing to do with that person. For years, I believed I was bad. That there was something drastically wrong with me.
I had to decide to be strong even though I felt weak, hold my head high, endure the challenges of life and judgements of others in silence, and press on.
Social acceptance isn’t the same as recovery. To reconcile with your family and friends or to hold down a job doesn’t mean that you’re in the recovery phase of your addiction.
Recovery only happens when you change your old thought patterns and accept responsibility for your actions.
Recovery is a lifelong lifestyle. It’s frightening and terrifying but, if you’re like me, there is no other choice. Most parents think: simply place the child into rehabilitation and, ta-dah, he’s fixed and ready to perform. But I had to learn to hope and pray for wisdom in whichever situation I found myself, to distinguish the things I could change from the things over which I had no control.
There was nothing I could do about my family’s dysfunctional behaviour. I was just a child and there definitely were certain things I didn’t deserve. I didn’t deserve the pain. God knows most of my childhood memories are associated with the horrors of powerlessness.
As kids we learned not to be vulnerable, but to be strong. This is what we were taught from an early age. To protect myself from the world, I secretly vowed never to be as defenceless and exposed as I was as a child. I’d hide my pain and fears deep inside myself. That was my defence – my strategy for survival. But ultimately I’d realise that if I really wanted to get better, I had to face these fears to overcome my past.
You have to do some soul-searching to determine the source of your problems: the motivation behind your addictive behaviour. Many addicts never do this, and never experience sustainable sobriety and complete freedom. I had to undergo a change of heart, a complete internal spring-cleaning.
It’s only then that the road to freedom opens up to you and you can bravely take that first step.
Addicts know despair, broken friendships and disappointment. I’ve been pushed to the point of complete hopelessness and despair; I’ve been tested to the limit and have relapsed many times.
Even so, it’s good to reach a point where you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired; that’s when you’re in the right space. When you’re an addict, often you don’t have control over what happens in your life but you do have control over your choices; you have the power to choose what you believe.
Addicts need to believe and hope. Without hope, a little faith in yourself and a loving Power, you won’t have the strength to see in tomorrow’s dawn sober.
The day I admitted and accepted my powerlessness, I made myself receptive to a new idea: the possibility of the existence of a Power greater than me. This Power has a love and kindness strong enough to relieve me of my obsessions and compulsive behaviour.
I now know this: neither I nor any other addict can succeed alone.
1Narcotics Anonymous World Services. 1998. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. Accessed 21 March 2018.www.na.org/admin/include/spaw2/uploads/pdf/handbooks/IGG.pdf
THE TALE OF THE DRUNK HORSE THIEF
A principle that is often used in Twelve Steps meetings or in the NA community is that of the drunk horse thief.
When you’re a drunk horse thief and you stop drinking, you remain a horse thief. Thus, you might as well keep on drinking. If the horse thief doesn’t want to change the core of their being, they’ll never find a new way of life. We call such ‘drunk horse thieves’ dry drunks.
Many people stop using drugs or alcohol, but never advance to the stage where true recovery takes place. It’s a space of true freedom and happiness, where life is truly meaningful and things excite you without the influence of drugs or alcohol. You might become physically sober, but if you don’t change on an emotional, spiritual or psychological level, you’ll continue with your disruptive and dangerous behaviour.
Dry drunks’ deviant and unhealthy patterns of behaviour, for example, cause considerable damage to their relationships. Even when they’ve stopped drinking, they continue to manipulate and emotionally blackmail other people. Their poor self-esteem makes them mistrustful in their relationships.
That’s why many sometimes display attention-seeking behaviour, and they blame everyone and everything for their circumstances. They accept no personal responsibility for their choices. They feel alienated and often lapse into self-pity. They feel like the world owes them something. They’re constantly dissatisfied, bitter and depressed about everything and everyone in their life.
Addiction is an illness that presents itself through obsessive and compulsive patterns of behaviour. Most addicts suffer from a dual diagnosis: depression, bipolar disorders, eating disorders, sex addiction, self-harm and personality disorders, and many more. The illness can be the cause or symptom of the addiction. It’s very complex with no single solution. It is a physical, spiritual, emotional and psychological illness. To recover on all these levels, every problem needs to be addressed on a step-by-step holistic basis.
True recovery is a combination of processes and actions for which the addict is responsible, and which have to be applied proactively for the rest of your life. It demands that you reject your old beliefs in order to build a new foundation on which you will do things in a new way. A total paradigm shift needs to take place; a change of heart, a mental shift, a complete surrender to God.
You’re not alone in this process. Different groups with a variety of programmes can support you during rehabilitation.
My first NA meeting was in a small church hall in Kalk Bay near Cape Town. Everyone introduced themselves as addicts and shared their hopes and experiences.
They admitted that a life controlled by alcohol and drugs is a terrible life, and that their lives had become unliveable. They also attested as to how their lives had made a positive turn. They were saved by the God of love and grace, and their pain and suffering turned into a testimony to victory.
At first, everything sounded like complete nonsense, but only until I heard a man give a talk one Tuesday evening – his story sounded exactly like mine. His tale shocked me to the core; it was the first time I could identify with someone else.
I wasn’t the only one struggling with that kind of anxiety, pain, problems, a dysfunctional family and loneliness. I realised that I wasn’t alone. That there might be a little hope for me, too. That day something inside me changed.
The Twelve Steps to Recovery can help you to change, and think differently. It’s a process that gently removes the layers of denial and false perceptions that we’ve cherished for so many years. Systematically, we discover who we truly are, who God is and our purpose here on Earth.
You can experience complete freedom and lead a full life after rehabilitation. For an addict or alcoholic, this does not sound possible. I