That first drink

I live in the midwest and yesterday was unseasonably warm for the beginning of November. The sun was shining and there was a warm breeze. Most of the leaves have fallen here, but there are still some pops of color here and there. I spent an afternoon hiking with my kids and soaking up every bit of vitamin D that I could get. After hiking I drove home through downtown and noticed a group of people outside of a cafe in town. They were sitting around a table full of drinks, there was laughter and smiling, as music spilled out from the open door of the cafe. All of a sudden I wanted to be sitting there with them. I wanted to be sipping a drink in the sunshine. I wanted to have an afternoon of drinks and funny conversation! I let my mind play back over great times with great friends I have had in the past. So many comical experiences and so many laughs! This ran through my mind for about two minutes. I played with the thought that maybe when my kids are grown and I am in retirement I could start to drink again, and enjoy that freedom once more! 

Suddenly, a phrase came into my head that I have heard thousands of times around the tables. "It's the first drink that gets us drunk." The reality of that statement struck me right in the center of my truth. For people who abuse alcohol, it's that very first drink that gets us in trouble. The ones that follow don't help either, but if I don't take that first drink, I won't get drunk! It's almost too simple. 

So, I had to reframe the picture I had in my mind of the jovial time I could have with friends sitting around the cafe table in the sunshine.  Because the initial vision was not reality. The reality is I would have a good time for a few minutes with my friends. But I wouldn't sip my drink, as they do. I would slam the drink and then at least two more in quick succession to make up for the years of lost time. My focus wouldn't be on the conversation, it would be on how could I order another drink without them thinking poorly of me. I would pretend to have to go in to use the bathroom so I could quickly down a drink inside before anyone missed me. Soon, I would be talking to loudly, getting to emotional, and possible offending people. As my friends would be getting up to go home to their families and responsibilities, I would be blowing mine off and heading to the next place to find companions who drank the same way as me. And God only knows where this would end, or if it ever would end again. Illness would follow, both mental and physical. 

And why would all of this happen? Because I am allergic to alcohol and cannot consume it in ANY level. Not one drink, and not 20 drinks. It's the FIRST drink that gets me in trouble. If I don't pick that drink up, I won't have 20. If I do pick it up, I am toast. 

Can you hear?

Do you trust your Higher Power? Do you hear it? How often do you listen to your inner prompting? Are you attuned to your intuition? 

When we are using alcohol or other drugs that voice gets drowned out. We either can't hear it because we are practically comatose or because endorphins are rushing through our brain and we are moving along a million miles an hour. I used substances so that I wouldn't have to hear that voice at all. Not only did I not want to hear the voice, but I didn't want to catch a glimpse of an inner knowing by looking in the mirror, into my own eyes. I cannot tell you how many people I have heard in recovery groups say the same thing. It's a common thing, a characteristic of addiction. Eventually though, I would come out of my drunken state, and lay awake in my bed in the deep of the night, and I would feel the terror creep over me, the knowledge that I was ignoring my Higher Power, the fear of what was going to happen if I continued to do so. 

After we put down the substances, and our brain heals, and our heart starts to beat again, the voice is still there. We can hear it again, we can feel it again, the inner promptings. 1 Kings 19:11-13 talks about God's voice being a "still small voice". Elijah was standing in the midst of tornado style winds and an earthquake. But it was not in the storm that God was, but in the silence. God used the storm to get my attention, but I had to get quiet to hear his voice. And I believe that is how it works with our Higher Power. 

I wish I knew that answer as to why we ignore that voice. It has pained me my whole life. I have come to some sort of an understanding that for me, it is a rebellious act. However, why I feel like I have to rebel, I don't know! Rebelling against my creator is futile. It's like a Honey Bee refusing to pollinate. The bee starves and the flowers don't produce fruit. Same thing happens when I ignore my Higher Power and rebel against his plan for my life. I starve spiritually, financially, physically, emotionally, and socially. My life bears no fruit. 

The decision to listen to your inner prompting can be scary. But truly, the SAFEST place to be is in God's will. This is why, in my opinion, step three of the 12 steps is a turning point. If you do step three in earnest things will change for you. Suddenly you have tapped into the power supply and you can do things that you haven't been able to do before. You will no longer be able to take shortcuts that you took previously, because God takes the wheel and steers you onto new paths. 

Listen to the still small voice, trust, have faith, take action. Life is too short and too beautiful to not be living your purpose. 

Let's talk about NOW

Nowcovery is a term that I often use instead of "recovery" because it's NOW focused. The word "recovery" is great, and it's a relevant term in that everyone knows what it means to be recovering. We can be recovering from a lot of different things such as surgery, addiction, healing from a bad relationship etc. But what does recovery entail? If you really look at it closely, and break it down to the simplest of actions, it entails the choice you make in the moment, in the right NOW. If I am trying to overcome something, how do I do it? By making a choice NOW. This is how we build long term recovery. The choices we make today are the building blocks for tomorrow. 

Let's take this theory of NOW and put it into the context of recovering from an addiction through actively choosing positive behavior. How am I going to Nowcover? Consider how I begin my day when I wake up. The alarm goes off, and I already have a choice. Hit snooze and sleep a little longer? Or, don't hit snooze and wake up so I have time to do a morning reading and reflection? Honestly, the best option will change from day to day. In other words, the NOW will be different today than it is tomorrow. If I didn't sleep well, the best positive behavior may be to hit the snooze and catch a few more moments of rest. Or maybe I slept great and the urge to be lazy needs to be pushed aside so that reading and reflection can take place.

We can only make choices one moment at a time. That's the only place where we actually are, the only thing we have any control over is THIS moment of NOW. Where we run into trouble is in having the continuity and endurance to make the best choice in each moment of now. We make a few good choices in the now, and somehow for whatever reason, we stop, and we revert back to the old choices for too long and we get way off track. This is why we need support! We need someone to say "Hey! Have you noticed your making old choices again?!".  DENIAL is sneaky in that we don't always know we are in it. We need people to help us with our blind spot.  Counselors can do this for us, good friends can do this for us, and so can a recovery coach. Preferably all three should be utilized for a healthy Nowcovery program. Please don't continue to live in your blind spot, contact Tracy today for coaching.

Action not words

If you want to make a change in  your life you have got to make a change in your life. Lingering in the contemplation or preparation stages of change will not do you any good. If I could have back the time that I spent in contemplating change I would have years. It's really important to do the work that you can do at the time. Reading about solutions, researching resources, and planning are essential components of change. But at some point, you have to step out onto the water. This takes faith. Faith in the solutions, faith in the resources, faith in your plan, and faith in your endurance. I hate it when people say the opposite of faith is fear. That's ridiculous. Faith and fear are often times partners while your go through challenges. "There's no way to do this unafraid" were words I heard frequently from my counselor when I was making huge changes in my life. I wanted to wait until my fear was gone, thinking that there was some crucial step in the planning that I was missing, that once I figured it out fear would go away. I waited for two years while I twisted and turned over my choices and wrestled with my fear. In the end, I did it afraid. Terrified is more like it, but I had faith that it would get better, and it DID.

If you are miserable and clinging to a behavior that you are somehow unwilling to let go off because somewhere in the back of your mind you are terrified to live without it? Take action. Struggling with an addiction to alcohol? Make an appointment to go to a counselor, go to an open AA meeting, make an appointment to see your doctor, tell a trusted friend, research what alcohol does TO you instead of FOR you at Alcohologist.com  . Pick one of these and do it today.  Are you in a bad habit of eating ice cream every night and you are sad because it's showing on your waistline? Take action. Throw away what's in your freezer, join weight watchers, switch to low-fat yogurt, go for a walk, dance to your favorite music for 10 minutes, tell a trusted friend, Pick one of these and do it today! Are you stuck in a relationship that is draining you? Make an appointment to go see a counselor (with or without that person), take an honest inventory of your behaviors, read a book about boundaries, pray for that person. Pick one of these actions and do it! 

Taking bits of action at a time add up to change. Changes may happen slowly or quickly. If you are tired of being stuck, the only way out is through action. And when you take action, you show yourself that you aren't powerless. And that is going to make you feel a whole lot better. God bless!

 Photo by Minervastock, used with permission

Listen to the voice within

Listen to the voice within. It's that voice that is nudging you awake at night with anxiety. It might approach you as a fear of something bad coming for you, but you don't know what it is. It may be a constant underlying feeling of discomfort or discontent. We all have experienced that voice at one time or another in our lives. Each of us has our own ways of trying to quiet that voice or turn it down or off. My favorite way to turn that voice off was alcohol. Sometimes food or shopping. Whatever I tried to use to quiet it never kept it silenced for long. Nowcovery truly begins when you start listening to that voice. You say to yourself "something is wrong, I am not sure what it is. But I am going to find out." That takes courage.

The voice may sound like your own voice. But it's not. It's the voice of your creator. Each of us were created by design. We are not the way we are by accident. We were created to fulfill a particular purpose. And the even more wonderful news is when we are living IN our purpose, or ON purpose we are HAPPY. Even more than that we are fulfilled.

As we begin to make choices in life that take us out of our design our creator starts trying to get our attention. He starts allowing things to happen that are difficult situations for us to handle. Some of these things are painful. They cause us great emotional turmoil. The more we ignore the voice the more difficult the consequences become. This isn't out of hate from our creator, he is not a terrorist. He knows we will truly be our happiest when we are living the life we were created to live. He is redirecting.

So, If you have been having these experiences it means you are being presented with an opportunity. Truly everything that you want is on the other side of two things, Fear and surrender. Are you willing to start considering a possibility of living a different way? If so, you are on the brink of nowcovery. I encourage you to take a deep breath and open up the door to true freedom.

Tracy Kiesler
Freedom 2B