September is National Recovery Month.
My blogs will focus throughout September on addiction and its life-destroying tendencies. The writings derive from my experiences of battling addiction and living a life of recovery.
These specific writings are focused on the ACTÂ acronym.
ACTÂ leads to sobriety…
A – Acknowledge you have a problem, are powerless over it, and need help.
CÂ – Connect with a power greater than you and people with solutions to help you conquer your problem.
T – Take positive, recovery-oriented action every day.
We focused on the Acknowledge and Connected recovery phases early in the month. Recently, we’ve been looking at what it means to Take positive, recovery-oriented action every day.
Today is a continuation of September 28.
As I mentioned yesterday, my counselor Wendy, minced no words when she challenged me to add works to my faith walk.
My treatment stay at Greene Hall lasted just over five weeks, one week more than the average patient. I was a sick puppy who had a lot of work ahead of him.
The biggest concern they had with me was whether or not I had accepted the fact I was also an alcoholic. They knew if I started drinking, it would lead me back to my drugs of choice. I have to be honest; I struggled with the thought of giving up alcohol for the rest of my life. One thing that was in my favor was that in the past, I started drinking every time I had gotten clean from the drugs, and the alcohol took me right back to my drugs.
A few days before discharge, the powers to be at Greene Hall seriously considered sending me to a halfway house for the next several months. Lori and I had two children, one with special needs and a third on the way, which prompted the discharge team to create a plan that would allow me to live at home.
The day before my discharge, Wendy and the program director sat down and shared my discharge plan. Interestingly enough, Fred from the DEA also gave input to my plan.
My treatment plan:
- Have a daily morning recovery time, which included prayer and readings from books about sober living.
- Get an AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) sponsor or an NA (Narcotics Anonymous) sponsor within the first week of discharge.
- Meet with my sponsor at least twice a week or more for the first 90 days and at least weekly for the first year.
- Attend intensive outpatient counseling twice a week for six months and then weekly for another six months.
- Attend at least one AA meeting daily for the first 90 days after discharge and then three times a week for the rest of the year.
- Drop one routine urine screen weekly, plus any random screens the DEA called for.
- Document all sponsor meetings, counseling sessions, and AA meetings–and have people sign that I attended and mail a copy to Fred from the DEA every week. (BTW…Lori recently found my journals from 1987, 1988, and 1989 that included all of these meetings…I looked through them in a state of gratefully blessed disbelief.)
- I could not work inside a pharmacy until the DEA, and State Board of Pharmacy said so…which could mean–never again.
This seems like a lot of work to a person without an addiction problem. But it really wasn’t compared with how much time and energy I had previously put forth to be high every minute of every waking hour.
Wendy was right–God might save my soul but not my rear end…the only thing that was going to save it was me Taking positive, recovery-oriented action every day.
We will close out Recovery Month tomorrow.
The following scripture became my mantra during the first several years of recovery:
James 2:17, “In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.”
P.E.A.C.E.
Jay@EagleLaunch.com
