Earnie Larsen - Stage II Recovery: Life Beyond Addiction

To my mother
and all the heroes and heroines who dont
have things their way, but continue to carry on

To Father Harvey Egan,
a gentle warrior who makes a difference

Contents

1
RECOVERY IS THE GOAL

Here must all distrust be left behind; all cowardice must be ended.

Dante

They knew they were pilgrims ... so they committed themselves to the will of God and resolved to proceed.

William Bradford

I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day.

Albert Camus

As you read these words, imagine how many Twelve Step meetings are in progress. In your own town, how many friends of Bill W. are gathering around the Big Book, fellowship, and the Twelve Steps to bring order out of the chaos of their lives? And Im not just talking about Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.). How many Al-Anon groups are meeting right now? How many groups of any of the other 200 Twelve Step programslike Overeaters Anonymous or Gamblers Anonymousare gathering at this moment? After all, addiction to alcohol is only one of the many ways people lose control of their lives.

Let your mind fly to all those meetings in church basements, homes, clubs, hotel suites, motels, restaurants, or treatment centers. Smell the coffee. See the Twelve Steps hanging on banners. Read the slogans on the placards. Hear the opening words, Welcome, we are a fellowship.

Look into the faces at those meetings. See the craggy faces of those who have traveled rough roads, the smooth faces of the very young, the faces of the affluent and the penniless. Some of these people are still toying with their problems and therefore with recovery from those problems. Some are brand new. They have arrived with the same soul-searing questions that you, perhaps, first brought to your program. They have the same doubts, feel the same hurts, and suffer the same near despair that so many others have experienced. Notice the old-timers. They have chaired countless meetings, perhaps know much of the Big Book by heart, and for certain know the Twelve Steps forward and backward.

Listen to the age-old comments:

• I cant stop gambling and its ruining my life.
• I am as addicted to food as any drug addict is to a chemical. I cant stop, yet I hate myself whenever I go on an eating binge.
• If I dont stop smoking, it will finish me off. Its already making me sick, but I just cant stop for good.
• My emotions are out of control. I cant go to the store to buy five things because Im afraid Ill get the wrong five. I just sit home worrying that someone will find me.
• Hi, Im George. Im a sex addict. Ive tried to kill myself a dozen times. Life isnt worth living like this hiding, running, in terrible fear all the time that they might find out. This is my last stop for help. If this cant do it, I give up.

Millions of our brothers and sisters are meeting in big groups and in small ones, in fancy places and in dingy rooms, in well-established orderly meetings and in catch-as-catch-can meetings.

Whats more, for every meeting of the afflicted there are perhaps three meetings of the affected the loved ones of the dependent person. These people have come to believe (or are coming to believe) that living in close association with a dependent person leaves its own scars and produces its own dysfunctional living patterns. Listen in. They, too, like their loved ones, have tales of desperation to tell:

• I know I am as crazy as he is. Driving around at four in the morning checking out bar parking lots. Thats crazy.
• Somehow, I dont know how, I always end up taking the blame and feeling responsible for her insane behavior. I am so full of guilt, I dont even want to go out of the house anymore.
• I keep doing things to help him, but it seems like the more I do, the worse I feel and the more thats expected of me.
• Im past caring. Id kill the son of a bitch if I could. Thats how out of control my life is.
• All I do is sit home and cry. I dont even know what about anymore. I just cry.

Countless meetings. Untold hopes and sorrows. Words so real, coming from people pushed to the very edge of existence. Some come in desperation, some in hope, some just lose and are looking for morebut all the afflicted and the affectedmeet in the name of one great cause: recovery.

Recovery

What is recovery? What is the goal or destination this army of seekers is marching toward? What is happening at all these meetings?

Breaking any addictionto a drug, a destructive relationship, overeating, smoking, gambling, or any-thing elseis enormously difficult. Breaking that primary addictiongetting soberis what I call Stage I Recovery. The struggle is the stuff of heroism.

If you ask me what Stage II Recovery means, I would say, What happens after sobriety? Is sobriety the same thing as full recovery? Many people find themselves on the other side of their addictive behaviors, better off, to be sure, but certainly not enjoying the happiness they hoped for. Their victory didnt pay off the way they thought it would.

As a counselor, I have dealt with addicted people and chemically dependent/co-dependent relationships for nearly twenty years. And for nearly that long I have been a faithful practitioner of a Twelve Step program myself. For the past eight years or so, Ive been hearing more and more comments like these:

• Im clean as a whistle and miserable as hell.
• Ive been sober for seventeen years. That isnt the problem anymore. My question is, When do I get happy?
• I swear to God my wife has a black belt in Al- Anon. I hate it when she tells me Im on a dry drunk. Im not even sure I know what a dry drunk is. If it means not doing very well and hating it, I guess I am.
• Im a closet white-knuckler. I go to all the meetings, but I just never got over looking back and thinking about the good times I gave up. I know many recovering people who seem to be happy and have it together. I dont want to seem like a cloud over their parade, so I never tell them how I feel. But its truesometimes I get real thirsty.
• I thought everything would be great when my husband stopped drinking. The truth is, we seem farther apart now than ever. Hes dry, but thats about it. If this is the quality of sobriety were going to have in our home, I dont think it was worth the wait/

The more I heard those comments, the more I began to realize how often abstinence is mistaken for recovery, But abstinence from a mood-altering chemical, binge eating, smoking, or a specific behavior like gambling is still just abstinence. As time goes on, especially since the dynamic advent of the Adult Children of Alcoholics movement, people are becoming more aware that the real root of malfunction is buried deeper. And that it is acted out on the stage of relationships.

A primary result of all addictions is the loss of self-esteem and integrity. As we come to accept that fact, we also come to accept that we are not our own sunshine. So what do we do if we believe that but are still afraid of the dark? What option do we have but to look for light in another person? Enter problems with relationships.

If we are not truly skilled in making relationships work, we spin a thousand complex webs, suffer delusions, and make demands on others that cannot possibly be met. If we are not actively working to improve our relationship skills, we start learning to hide the truth from ourselves. If we arent capable of getting the real stuff, we get what we can, which is usually far less than we had hoped forall because we have not dealt with the underlying living problems that limit our ability to function in successful relationships.