recoveryrob's blog

The “Slipper” Needs Understanding - Page 99 "As Bill Sees It." 

As many of you know, I’ve been around AA for many years and have attended many meetings. I did have a period where I stepped away, as I let personalities get in the way of principles. I still struggle with that aspect of meetings, as I allow myself to be distracted quite easily. In fact, in many meetings I have to remind myself to pay attention to the message of the speaker and not the person near me shifting in his or her seat endlessly or the giggling behind me or even the people texting and playing games on their smart phones. (I still don’t get why people do that!).

To Watch Loneliness Vanish

Almost without exception, alcoholics are tortured by loneliness. Even before our drinking got bad and people began to cut us off, nearly all of us suffered the feeling that we didn't quite belong. Either we were shy, and dared not draw near others, or we were noisy good fellows constantly craving attention and companionship, but rarely getting it. There was always that mysterious barrier we could neither surmount nor understand.

Alcohol and drug addiction recovery for some is strife with relapse. In fact, most recovery addicts tend to at least relapse, or ‘slip’ as some say, at least once before finding their own path to sustained and successful sobriety. Relapse is tricky, not so forth coming and obvious that you can recognize it as you’re in the middle of it. What does that mean? Well, it means that relapse starts long before you pick up that first drink or drug.

Recently, there’s been some news about a drug, Sizzurp. It’s been linked to the recent hospitalization of rapper, Lil’ Wayne this month. The rapper suffered multiple seizures on Tuesday and was rushed to Los Angeles’s Cedars Sinai Hospital, and then shortly after his release he was found unconscious on the floor of his bedroom and was rushed back to the hospital where he was in a coma. The doctors reported he had high levels of codeine in his system. He has been tweeting from his hospital room.

No one has denied his use of Sizzurp.

So, let’s just get it out there from the start of this blog posting. I don’t sponsor as much as I should, probably. But, I do the best I can whenever I can. I’m not perfect, and don’t even try to be. When it comes to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous I ‘take what I need and I need what I take.’ Course that doesn’t mean I don’t sponsor…I do, but I don’t have a lot of sponsees in my life at any one give time.

I think for many of us the word ‘Surrender’ means; ‘giving-up,’ ‘giving-in,’ ‘quitting,’ or something close to that. Fortunately or unfortunately, to find a sobriety we can live with day to day one needs to ‘Surrender,’ and this is where many become tangled. They don’t want to ‘give up’ anything, or even have something ‘taken-away’ from them.

From time to time, I like to mix things up in my alcohol and drug treatment recovery. Sure, I go to meetings. I don’t go as much as I used to, but I make sure I attend meetings – at least once a week. Typically the volume of weekly or monthly meetings invariably reflects the week or month I am having. Yes, I’ve been known to drive myself crazy, and then realized I missed a weekly meeting.

For those who don’t know this already, I also have my own website, Ask Recovery Rob, and I write and post there but not as much as I do here. In some ways, it’s a little bit of a break from Pat Moore Foundation, and I seem to be able to reach others. People often go online looking for addiction advice and invariably it leads to talking them about alcohol and drug treatment advice.