Struggle

So, as a dear friend of mine says, I opened the door and got off the wagon, on Christmas after 2.5 years of sobriety in a 12 step program. I am struggling, I have all this programming about the "disease" and I notice it rearing it's head more so lately. Guilt, guilt, guilt. I have a 3 year old and I mostly feel guilty about me as a parent. There is nothing in my present behavior that is bad for my son. I know how I used to be though. I need to believe in myself more. I'll go days without drinking and then I'll drink and feel really guilty afterward. You know the pattern. I feel like it's programmed in to me. I enjoy myself while I'm drinking, I don't get drunk or black out but I still feel guilty afterward. The guilt perpetuates the cycle. How do I break the guilt?

I have consulted with several astrologers, I should mention that I want to be a certified astrologer, and one of them said that I am different than I was before and that I won't go back to my old ways because when I was 26 Saturn crossed over my ascendent and I started to form a whole new personality, I got sober and Max was born while I was 26 years old. I am also in my Saturn Return. I have 5 planets in Scorpio, Moon Libra and Gemini Rising. I need to focus my energy in a creative manner because of all the Scorpio, in the 6th house I might add, so I need to be involved in some sort of service to humanity or I'll suffer.

I don't want to go back to where I came from and I don't want to tell my self that I am different than other people anymore.

4th Step and Beyond

Okay, so I haven't written in a while, mostly because I don't want to talk about the steps. Not because I didn't have a good experience with them or because I avoided them while participating in AA, but because I just don't feel passionately about them anymore like I used to.

I did my first 4th Step when I was 6 months sober. It was 15 pages long. I wrote down EVERYTHING. Honestly, it was easy for me. I had the overwhelming relief of Step 4 when I made the decision to get sober, I felt like all the guilt associated with Step 4 had been taken away when I decided to do something about my self destructive behavior. My second and third 4th Steps were much more revealing than the first and much, much shorter. I was diving into some of the good stuff finally. The stuff that makes me tick. To my surprise, I am not the untrustworthy, manipulative, insane person that a lot of "us" are assumed to be. I think the 4th Step has always helped me to see that it's all in my head and that I need to start respecting myself. Believing in myself.

Telling my dirty laundry in Step 5 was also easy for me. I actually have a little bit of a problem keeping my mouth shut when it comes to talking with people about my problems. I have actually had recent life lessons in keeping my mouth shut about all the crazy negativity in my head. Sometimes, when you talk about these things, it feeds them and then they grow. I have seen this happen over and over again in my own life.

Steps 6 and 7 have always confused me a little. I feel like, "of course I'm ready to have God remove all my defects of character," who wouldn't be ready for that? I did these steps while I was reading the Big Book. While your reading, he walks you right through it. I remember asking myself if that was it, did I just do Steps 6 and 7? Some would tell me yes and some would tell me no. My 3rd sponsor told me that we have individual defects revealed to us when we are ready and then we work on those resulting in asking God to remove them. I can buy into this. I also like the idea that when you say the 7th step prayer, it's done. I think I have overcomplicated these steps for myself, always looking for that next character defect to be revealed.

When it comes to Steps 8 and 9, I felt like I had a lot of the amends happen as living amends. Getting sober was amends enough in most of the relationships that mattered. I wasn't going to call up my old drug dealer and apologize to her for ripping her off and some people I wrote to never responded, they were people who weren't that close to me but, that I had cared about at one time and that my drug abuse definitely effected.

I think Step 10 is probably my favorite Step. Let's review the day. How could we have done things differently and if we know we did something wrong, what can we do to fix it? I use this step a lot, it helps to keep me on track and easily forgive myself for imperfection.

Step 11, to me, is all about Spiritual practice. I love Spiritual practice. Prayer and meditation can take on many forms. I use a lot of ritual and do daily devotion at an altar. This is definitely a Step that you continue to use, I know that all of them are, but this one counts for me whether I am in the program or not.

Step 12 to me is "Help Others."

I felt like I had to write about the Steps although I'm not really into it. I can't wait to right my next blog!

The First Three...

Powerless-ness. I know what powerless-ness is. Day after day doing something you don't want to do because you feel like you have to. In my case, it was usually that I would become physically ill if I didn't.

When I heard people talk of powerlessness in AA, I knew what they were talking about. One of my favorite AA women used to talk about going to the store to get milk and bread for her 3 starving kids and buying a six pack of beer instead. Although my drug of choice was different, I too had experienced what she was talking about.

The second part of Step One, the unmanagability, well, stealing pills from a little old lady and getting addicted is slightly unmanagable. I had no question that I was powerless and that my life was unmanagable. Just read my previous blogs, it's all there. Unmanagability at it's best!

I quickly, with a sponsor, moved onto Step 2. I came to believe. I had been praying for months for help. I saw angels regularly and they were the ones who guided me to AA. I have always believed in a power greater than myself. I have also always had a great deal of faith in this power greater than me. I knew "God" could restore my sanity. God was capable of anything. I had no problem with this concept and I still don't. As you can imagine, I quickly moved onto Step 3.

Turn it over. Let go and let God. Tell me, why can't any person use this kind of thinking reguardless of their circumstances? I had turned my life over to something other than my crazy thinking as soon as I had made that call for help to my best friend. The angels, God, whatever you want to call it. I want to say that I don't believe that the 3rd Step is conditional. When you turn your life over, that's it. Have faith and trust in your "Higher Power" no matter what!

I had heard it described as the archway to freedom, the first three steps. Step 3 is the keystone. I still believe this today, how do you define freedom?

The rest of the steps, when I return....

Just a Little More History

I find myself raiding medicine cabinets and realize rather quickly where this is going to lead me. I wean myself off after several weeks of using pain medicine. I feel confident with my ability to do that and for several months everything is fine. When my son was about 4 months old, I was asked to help an elderly woman who was blind and hard of hearing with her letter/card writing. I agreed. The elderly woman was the mother-in-law of the daughter of our landlords at the llama farm. She lived right next door. The older woman lived in an apt. in the basement of the daughter's house. I went over to help out like I had agreed. I was writing out cards for the woman and we needed an address book that was in a drawer in her kitchen. She directed me to the drawer and I opened it. To my surprise, not only was the address book there, but a rather large bottle of Oxycontin. 350 pills a month. Evidently the woman had severe pain due to her Osteoporosis. She was blind for God's sake. I took a few for fun and thought how great this would be that I could occasionally take a few pills and with such a large prescription no one would notice. Well, before long I was taking her pain pills every day. She had Methadone as well, and I was taking these, too. I was strung out on someone else's pain medicine for about 5 months. My son was 9 months old when I got sober. I finally broke down after months of trying to wean myself off of her medications. I had stolen a fentanyl patch and was using a heating pad to try and get "well." I had my 9 month old with me and freaked out, called my best friend and told her that I needed help. I couldn't stop and wanted to. I went to her house for a few days and started the withdrawal process. She has a young family of her own and I couldn't stay for very long. I returned home and couldn't keep myself away from the drugs next door. This time I knew it was going to be noticed. It was a miracle it hadn't been noticed up to this point. The packaging on the pills was different, it was in sheets, much easier to see how many were there at a glance. I knew my employers/landlords noticed something was fishy. They actually thought it was one of the old lady's nurses. I went over to my landlord's house and told them everything. I told them that I wanted to stop and that I needed help. They wanted me to go to AA. At first, I pretended to go. I felt so much guilt and remorse for lying about going but, it was the pattern I was accustomed to. Finally, one day when I was at my best friend's house, the one I had called originally, she suggested that I go to AA so that I wouldn't have to lie. What a concept! So, I went and felt relief for the first time in years. What I heard in the rooms spoke to me in such a deep way. I had been so lost. So broken. So desperate. This was the answer I had been searching for all of my life....or was it?

Just a Little History...Pt. 4

Being pregnant changed everything. It was a godsend and definitely an answer to prayers. Although, a lot of the people we knew in Seattle thought that I was crazy. Some were even mad at us for even considerng that we would keep the baby because of our lifestyle. Luckily we had a few friends that were actual friends, who were willing to help us. I knew that I wanted to move back to Virginia where my family and childhood friends were. I called my mom, who I never talked to because of the way I had been living, and she said she would help us. She paid for our plane tickets and let us stay with her until we got on our feet. My life changed so rapidly and in such an amazing way. I had so much gratitude, and this is before AA exposure. When we arrived back in VA, it turned out that 3 of my other close childhood girlfriends were pregnant as well. Things were so good. I had family, friends and support. We lived with my mother for a few months and then we found a place to live on a llama farm where we could live rent free in exchange for room and board. We moved into this perfect little cabin, surrounded by llamas and waited for the birth of our son. Things were awesome. My husband had a full time job and worked on the farm. While I had been staying with my mother, she insisted that I have an evaluation done because of my drug history. Although I was completely clean during my pregnancy and felt fine, I went for her. After 2 hours of questions and discussion with this woman about my drug history and my feelings now, she told me that I was fine, that she did not feel that I needed drug treatment of any kind and that I might possibly benefit from a relapse prevention group and gave me the number. I never called.

I just want to say that I believe in messages coming in from Spirit to us all the time. I have always felt that our relationships with animals are extremely important and very symbolic. Llamas represent sure-footedness and I found this very comforting when we moved to the farm.

My labor started on a Tuesday night at around 9 pm. On Wednesday night around 10pm my doctor said the dreaded word "C-section," I had been laboring drug free until around 8 pm on Wednesday, when they said they were going to give me Petocin to speed up my labor. I knew that the Petocin would make my labor extremely uncomfortable and it was too late for an epidural so I let them give my Demerol. My doctor knew about my drug history and after the C-section was performed they gave me a very strong drug that is in the Motrin family instead of Morphine. Things seemed like they were going well but, after my IV fell through (let me tell you , it was hell getting an IV in me, I had NO veins) they started giving me Percocet. I also had a Percocet prescription that I was sent home with. I wish I had known what the Percocet was going to cause in me, but I thought I could handle it. Little did I know that it was going to start a chain reaction and I was going to find myself addicted to opiates once more.....

Just a Little History...Pt. 3

I am stealing again, even though I don't have to. My boyfriend and I are on methadone from a state funded program but, I am doing speed regularly and stealing for fun and to pay for my speed habit. We are constantly failing urine tests at the methadone clinic. Me for methamphetamines and my boyfriend for drinking. We are staying with some friends outside of the city and they are on methadone, too. I had been stealing tons of stuff for Christmas presents, it was the holiday season of 2003. There was a mountain of presents under the Christmas tree where we were staying and I had stolen all of them. I was regularly filling the shopping cart up at a local grocery store and rolling right out the door. I was completely nuts! Oh, and high on speed and methadone! December 23rd, we get arrested in a stolen car coming back from the methadone clinic. I have warrants, he doesn't. They let him go. They keep me. I was hysterical! I was going to miss Christmas! Luckily, I was in the King County Jail so I was able to still get my methadone. I finally got to court on Christmas Day and was released. I was supposed to be let out by 5 p.m. but, when 5 rolled around they didn't call me. I could hear them calling other girls. I finally asked what was going on and there was a hold on me. I had a warrant from another county. I wasn't going anywhere and in the next county, they weren't going to give me my methadone. I was in jail for 35 days. I kicked methadone and my boyfriend happened to be kicking it at the same time. For the first time in a little over 2 years, when I got out of jail, we were both clean. It was a fucking miracle. I was free from Heroin! I couldn't believe it. We could actually leave Seattle if we wanted! I had been a prisoner there, literally. The next several months would involve a lot of struggles and realizations. We would sleep on so called friends' couches and dable with drugs. April 1st I took a pregnancy test, I hadn't had my period in a little over a month. I was pregnant. This, would be the mark of a major turning part in my life.

More to come...