Why Recover?

I work with people who desire recovery - from either addiction/alcoholism and/or mental illness. Sometimes I run across folks who are on the fence - they desire a better way of living, but aren't yet ready to give up their present way of living. I know how to guide people in recovery. I know the actions to take and the things to avoid. If a person is open, honest, and willing, I can show them the way, because I have been shown the way and walked the path myself. It's a wonderful thing to be able to do that.

I don't know how to get anyone to quit drinking or using drugs. Well, maybe I do, but I wouldn't suggest my path. It involves multiple arrests, multiple incarcerations, multiple marriages, multiple failed attempts at education and jobs, multiple health scares, lots of loss, and, finally, the loss of self.  It's been a really, really long path to get to where I am today, and I can't recommend it to anybody because they might not survive what I have survived.

So, my question to me has been lately, "How much, if any, energy and time do I spend on someone who isn't ready to give up their illness in order to get well?"  Before I was in the human services field, the answer was, "Not much. They'll come when they're ready, if they don't die first." Now that I'm getting paid to do it, the answer is different. And as I wrote that, that brings a bothersome question to mind - do I have to get paid in order to not turn my back on someone? That sucks. I'll deal with that later.

How do I let someone know that if they've had problems with alcohol in the past that changing their environment or changing what they drink or switching to a better drug or finding a better girlfriend/job/church/car probably will not be all that helpful in the long run?

I think right now all I can do is state why I am in recovery (or 
discovery, as I like to think of it): I have been tired of me for a long time. I didn't start drinking and using drugs and searching for things that might make me happy because I was totally happy with myself and with life. I drank and sought other ways to be OK because I wasn't OK. As I have stated innumerable times before, and I'll state again, if any of that stuff I tried to use to make myself happy actually worked, I would not be sitting here right now. I'd be a rich, fat happy drunk living in Utah with 17 wives. Now, one can examine that sentence and see that those words don't even go together. Not gonna happen.

I believe that humans, at least this human, are made up of two things - our soul, which to me is the individuation of Source expressing, and our ego, which is the very limited version of our soul in human form. In other words, we are spiritual beings having a human experience. This is not a new idea, by the way. The challenge with this is that in our human experience we've forgotten who we really are.  It's as if we went to acting school, graduated, and landed the role of Hamlet, and gotten so into the role that we've forgotten that we're not really Hamlet. And long after the play is over, we're still acting like Hamlet, and that causes problems in life. Because it was a play. It wasn't real.

So the challenge I have is that there is a Real Me, and an Earth me, and the Real Me is a much better deal than the Earth me, but the Earth me is much louder and seems more real to me than the Real Me really is. (And now you know just a little bit of what it's like to live in my head!)

Real Me is tucked up inside Earth me somewhere, and my job is to find Real Me. One of the big differences between Earth me and Real Me is that Earth me lives from the outside in, and Real Me lives from the inside out. Earth me needs things like approval and sex and good looks and money and things to be happy. Real Me doesn't need anything. Earth me lives in a fear-based world of scarcity; Real Me is Love and lives in abundance. Earth me doesn't always believe Real Me exists - in fact, it took a really long time for me to even get a glimpse of Real Me, so enmeshed in Earth me that I was. But Real Me is real, and each day I set about re-discovering Real Me and letting him It out on Earth.

The reason drinking, drugging, chasing money, approval, physical love, etc., doesn't work for Earth me is because Earth me can't get enough of anything, and Real Me taps Earth me lightly on the shoulder and lets him know. Bit by bit, day by day, I let Real Me out to play as Earth me fades away.

So why recover? Because the drunk in me is not the Real Me, and it's become really painfully apparent to me. Why get mentally healthy? Because every thought I have about living in lack and limitation is not Real(ly) Me, and having a consciousness that lives in lack and limitation is a really miserable place to live. So, recovery is about discovery of who Real Me is, and in order to allow Real Me to shine, I need to let go of my old actions and my old thinking. It does not happen overnight, and it is very challenging. But the more I continue down the path of discovery, the more rewarding it becomes.

So I suppose what I would say to someone on the fence is that if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten, and if that makes you happy, keep it up. If it doesn't, try a different path, and I'll be happy to walk with you.

Namaste,

Ken