110 - The Big Picture of Recovery
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Recovery is not a pill > Recovery is a path.
Recovery is not a quick fix > Recovery is a lifestyle, lived one day at a time.
Recovery allows us to live with a “new set of glasses.”
People in recovery no longer see life through the “tinted glasses” that denial gives them, but they begin to live in clear reality.
A person no longer sees life through the “foggy” glasses of denial, but a person begins to live in reality.
Addiction
enslaves a person emotionally and spiritually
then begins to harm relational-social life
finally, it harms the biological-physiological life
Recovery FROM addiction is freedom from what enslaves a person, so they can get recovery OF who they were meant to be.
Recovery OF one’s self is a return to the emotional and spiritual human being who finds fulfillment through relationship with others and God.
The Process of Recovery
Recovery requires that a person step into a journey they have never been on before. They need a map and guideposts along the path to know if they are going in the “best” direction.
The roadmap for recovery is found in the 12-Steps, a recovery map with guideposts that a person follows with guidance from others. The roadmap can break the “spell” of the continuous circle of addiction repetition.
Addiction repetition is like being on a train in your own personal boxcar. It doesn’t matter how one thinks, what one promises, or fantasizes, the train is going where the tracks are laid. Addiction owns the tracks and the train.
Recovery requires that a person jump off a moving train. Recovery places a person on their own ship and they sail onto the ocean, where there are no tracks, except for desire, dependence and destination. The recovering person is guided by the compass of the 12-Steps and the north star of relationships, especially God.
The “ocean” journey requires daring to risk and a willingness to depend on others and God.
The 12-Steps apply to all addictive processes and they are fundamentally steps that return a person to themselves, others, and God—like a regeneration of the way life was meant to be lived before addiction began to steal and destroy.
The Twelve Steps
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
The 12-Steps into freedom liberate a person to continue growth. Growth is a never-ending process for a healthy and whole person. It takes a lifetime to learn how to live, so recovery returns a person to the path of life, and the fulfillment of relationship with others and God.
Recovery allows a person to become someone who does good, and can open a door way to living fully, loving deeply and leading well a life that leaves treasures for others in their wake.
There are 12-Step meetings for all addiction struggles. They can be found online.
Dr. Chip Dodd
Voice of the Heart Center
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