I was reviewing my webpage tonight to make sure that all my links were still active. I read through my "About Me" page. It was a great reminder of why I am in this field today and why I want to continue my journey of recovery. There is simply a lot of work to do. If you have the opportunity to watch the Anonymous People, I highly recommend it. It's on Netflix. It perfectly illustrates many of the issues in the addiction/recovery world. We are not a unified movement. Treatment has barely changed in the past several decades. Our outcomes are poor, our models are antiquated and we have no voice.

I wrote a series of blogs about sober dating about a year ago, I think. I had never dated sober before. I had a boyfriend in my first two years of recovery but we had started dating a few years before I got sober, so I didn't have to do all the courtship piece, we were already together. Like most relationships when the addicted one gets sober, the relationship starts to fall on hard times. There are a lot of changes a person goes through. Not to mention, the sober person in the relationship got used to a certain role with the addict. That dynamic changes and relationships begin to struggle. That's not say people won't make it through, there is just a lot of healing that needs to happen. It takes a long time.

Dating sober has really brought to light some interesting things for me. I had talked with some individuals who freak out at the mere mention of addiction. I never hear back from them. If I told them I was cancer-free for 4 years, I doubt there would be the same reaction. Then I have the curious ones....they want to know what every last detail and then proceed to ask me exactly how they should act around me since I am an alcoholic. "Can I do this, can I do that? Can I talk about this? Can I go out with others and have a drink?" I appreciate the idea behind the lines of questions. I really do. They are trying to be sensitive to the needs I might have. In fact, if someone told me they were a gambling addict, I would ask them if there was a problem if I still hit the casino twice a year. However, this approach has been one of the areas of struggle for me with dating. I want them to be who they are. But there is a catch -a catch 22 even. If they drink in front of me, I get kinda pissed. Usually, if we get to the point of actually meeting up, I have shared parts of my stories, etc. Knowing the pain that alcohol has caused me, I get ticked off when they order a drink on the first date. It's hard to please me....it really is.

About 2 years ago, I was asked to challenge myself about my biases in recovery. I wrote a blog about it. I am totally intolerant of normal drinkers. I admit it. I know it. And it is making dating incredibly difficult. The alcoholic's #1 fantasy is the hope and dream that they can drink normally again. Many people including me relapse with this dream in our head. "Maybe this time!" I don't hate alcohol. I love it. I love it a lot. I love it too much. So it's like watching someone have an affair right in front of me on a first date. I still have that powerful of reaction to alcohol in my presence. I am not going to jump across the table and snatch it out of your hands, but I am certainly thinking about how much I would like to be joining you at that moment. Four years of recovery and I am still there. It's tough, but it's also something I have to be hyper-vigilant about because I am looking at my emotional relapse. Only 1 more phase after the emotional relapse and I will be drinking again.

In the recovery world, we refer to people who can use drugs and alcohol without problems "Normies". Normies can drink 2 sips of wine and walk away for 2 years. Normies can take it or leave it. Normies drive us nuts. We love you guys, don't get me wrong, we are just incredibly jealous about your ability to control your use. We also have difficulty communicating to you that we, the addicts, can't stop. You don't understand our compulsions to use, and we don't understand how you can stop. It keeps the addiction of stigma alive because we just stopped talking to each other. Addiction has always been a question of morality and willpower. Despite the tremendous amount of research showing that the addicts brain is different than that of a normie, it is still assumed that my alcoholism is a problem with my ability to institute a moral, strong self-will. You should see what happens when I let my self-will in this house! Alcoholic, depressed, lying, conning, cheating. Pardon me if I tell you that I gave my will over to my Higher Power. Every time my self-will is in the front seat, I drive into the ditch. 

Since I have started working as a counselor, my primary focus has been on outpatient services. Many of clients have been through residential treatment and step down in my services. I held the bias from my own experience for a long time that there is no point to outpatient. People need to get away from their drugs and get into a safe environment in order to get sober. Counselor mistake #1 - assuming my needs in recovery are the same for everyone else. 

For some reason today, I have been carrying around a lot of anxiety. I don't really know why, I don't feel like anything has really changed. In fact, my day at work was pretty good. I was asked at the last minute to run a group and it went really well. 

I was reading an article at work today about inner serenity. It comes out of the health realization movement which is offering another support outside of AA. The premise is dealing with the mind/body connection and seeking empowerment through changing thoughts and behaviors. People tend to not like the "powerlessness" piece of the First Step. I have done a lot of counseling about that first step and the powerlessness has nothing to do with powerlessness in life. We are powerless over our drug of choice. In admitting that powerlessness, we are empowered to change everything about our lives without it. 

Anyway, one of the aspects I was reading about was talking about the willing participant in anxiety, worry and helplessness. It seemed to be just right article at just the right time. My anxiety and worry will become greater if I allow myself to jump in the pool with it. I am empowered to walk away from it for sure. This current anxiety that I am feeling is much more physical - tossing and turning stomach and just a sense of tension. Interesting, I started to dip my feet in the pool, so to speak. I started thinking about anything and everything that I might have done wrong since starting at this job. That starts leading down the path of...."oh no, what bad thing is going to happen". I started realizing what I was doing and managed to talk myself off of the ceiling. There was no reason to be up there in the first place. 

It's just amazing to me that a flip flopping stomach can turn my thought patterns into justifying the feeling and creating something that really isn't there to begin with. If I were to be in trouble at work for some reason, they would have approached me by now. Everyone is talking about the program that I building and wanting to see the curriculum and guidelines I put together for the program. Everything went to press today and people are making phone calls to get some clients in the door. There is no reasonable thing that would indicate that this job is going anything different than fine. In my little anxiety world, I just assume the newest thing is causing the anxiety. In reality, it might be something else from the past or something bigger going on in my life. I am leaning toward the latter. I had myself up in arms about my future in this career. That is probably where the anxiety is coming from. The fear of the unknown. Uncertainty is difficult. 

So, this article was looking at addiction from the standpoint of a really bad habit. I liked that. We all have habits both good and bad. Addicts have certainly reinforced the benefits of using in our brains where it becomes a habit. It becomes the way to deal with, well, everything. Most addicts early in treatment will tell you that impulse to use is really overwhelming. It is because that is all we do and now it's not there. The brain is looking for something/anything to avoid withdrawals or to try and get happy again. Literally, we don't know what to do. Likewise with our thinking. We automatically go to places to that would justify use in our minds. We habitually think of things to worry about and get made about so we can get right back out there and using. Even though the effects of addiction are negative, the brain likes to focus on the positives it once found in drugs. Priorities then shift to the drug rather than other areas of life that might be causing stress or even happiness for that matter because the chemical was so much more powerful than anything else. As the person decreases their insights into the natural joys of the world, the less effective the drugs become and often cause more distress vs. satisfaction.  (adapted from The Serenity Principal - Joseph Bailey). 

I probably tell my clients about 1,000 times during every group that the success through difficult situations and life, for that matter, is looking at the whole thing from a different perspective. Our addict minds love us to be in the position of a pity-party. Our addict minds are ALWAYS looking for a reason to pick up again. So, I remind people that the best way to not give your addict mind a reason to pick up; give it all the reasons why picking up would just make the whole thing worse. 

It my new job I am doing a ton of program development in these first few weeks. I need to do seven weeks of relapse prevention counseling. At first I thought it was going to be difficult to fill that much time. Oh, low and behold, it is not that tough. There is a lot that goes into relapse preventions - mainy every single bit of recovery plus some.

I logged on today to renew my membership for another couple of years. Happy Anniversary to Grateful for Recovery.com! :) One whole year.....I realized  upon logging in that I have not been on here blogging for almost a month now. Wow. Where does the time go?

This month has been another learning experience in the world of recovery. Since getting sober, my career has been all over the place and mainly because of me. I am coming up on 10 years in the nursing field this winter. I have been back and forth, up and down with all sorts of employment throughout those 10 years. While I have been at the same place for over 5 now, I have still had a variety of positions. Nights, days, part-time, full time and now I am working from home. The working from home part has probably been my favorite. I get a lot of work done and I have my own project. No one else's fingers in my pie, so to speak. I just had a meeting with my boss this last week. It was nice to see the old place again. My name tag still hangs on my "former" cube which was probably one of the worst spots in the whole office. Got some hugs and HIs from people I haven't seen in a while.

I entered the LADC world in May and it is turning out to be much like my experience in beginning nursing. Lots of uncertainty plagues my day. I try to remember what it was like in early nursing, but I think those memories of the real trials in the beginning have faded somewhat. I believe that I feel more uncomfortable right now. Maybe because I feel like I should know more or being doing more. Who knows. Like my nursing career, my first position started from another arrangement. When I started my first nursing job, this facility had hired me as a PCA and I was to take over the nursing area for a series of group homes when I was done with school. About 2 months in, I couldn't handle it - I felt too unprepared and had absolutely no answers when people would call the triage line for help. Heck, two weeks before my first call, I was the one calling the triage line for help. I had a great boss who tried to mentor me as much as she had time for. Ultimately, it was not enough for me and we parted ways. 

With my first LADC position, I started as an intern with 2 or 3 clients. No treatment planning, just some groups and a few individual session.. I was hired to be an outpatient counselor and hit the ground running. Before I knew it, I had 12-14 clients, working part-time, feeling extremely overwhelmed. I have to admit my attendance was not great at this position. I became overwhelmed and was struggling with a crisis of confidence. The crisis of confidence was starting to effect my health in pretty bad ways. I was constantly tired, I couldn't get out of bed. I was up all night and needing to sleep during the day. I started relying on fast food as my primary source of nutrition. The weight keeps piling on, I have low energy and my nerves are shot.

I was offered an opportunity to move to a different area. I accepted the transfer. It was a huge mistake. Maybe I wasn't doing so bad in my previous spot. I had to put in my notice and leave under less than ideal circumstances. Again, I had a wonderful boss who was attempting to mentor me the best she could. I think I was too broken there to get back on feet again. I didn't like who I was becoming - enterally negative, self-critical and quite frankly - depressed. There were no medications that could save this situation. For my sake, I made a heart-felt plea to leave and my boss was very gracious to me for a rather untimely and abrupt departure. Ultimately, my physical health was suffering and I can say that my mental health was not doing well either.

I have started working at a new facility now. I am on straight days. I worked really hard to change my sleep schedule the week before I started. Guess what I noticed? A normal sleep pattern does wonders for someone's mental health. I am tired but not exhausted. I can fall asleep without the aid of any sleeping medication. I sleep for 8-9 hours and naturally awake a hour or so before my alarm. I dropped 7 pounds from just bring my lunch and not being bed-ridden all day. I am active and more engaged. I know it has only been a week but what a difference. 

I still carry some of the crisis of confidence with this new position. I wonder if I really do know anything. I know that I do, it's just hard being in a new field. I try to remember back to 2012 when I started the processing of returning to school. What was that all about? What was the passion? What was the desire? It's still there, the passion just needs some dusting off after a very difficult summer. I suspect this time next year, I will be looking back on these struggling entries and tell myself "geez, you just needed to give it some time!"I am hoping to restore some of patience with myself again.

During all this chaos in August and September, it did help me look at a few things in my life and what I want to do. I started writing my book. So far, I have started out with a history of my addiction. I am finding that to be something more therapeutic than a book. It dawned on me last night.....maybe this book should be about all the research I am doing about gastric bypass and the unintended side effect of altered alcohol metabolism - aka people are turning into alcoholics at twice the rate of the general population after gastric bypass. Hmmm.....my TED talk will be for 15 minutes, but maybe there is much more I can do with the wealth of knowledge I am collecting at this point. Not that my story doesn't have value, there is just something more I want to say. There is something more I want to accomplish with a book. I will keep you all posted.

Additionally, I am working on starting my own private practice. It will be a year or more before I have the means to get really started. However, with all the work experience in nursing, etc., I have found that I do best working in an independent setting. When I worked nights with the transplant center, I walked in motivated and always got my work done. I enjoyed solving problems and gaining knowledge. I built that position from the ground up and it was probably one of the best jobs I ever had. My self-motivation has been low since leaving school. Heck, I would say that my self-motivation was lacking for about 6 months prior to that. I got lost somewhere. Starting up my own business, working under my own rules (and the licensing board of course), I feel like I would have the opportunity to do specifically what I want. On my time. On my terms. Build it from the ground up. I am not afraid of hard work. This just seemed like the right direction to move right now. 

In my MIA status, life has been chaos as usual. I have worked hard to see the silver lining in all of this. There is one. It's just difficult to see in the middle of everything. I am seeing the sunshine again. Sleeping at night is always helpful for that one. I just feel more positive and less stressed by life right now. I am tremendously busy - working on the business, working as an LADC, working as an LPN from home, volunteering for two organizations, getting ready for my TED Talk. Ironically, this is the most relaxed I have felt since leaving school. I think I was in a survival mode for the past 4-5 months. I was getting by financially. I was getting by with my work. Just getting by....Just getting by isn't enough. I have never been happy living like that. My drinking days were all about getting by....working enough to afford to drink. Doing the minimum to not get caught. Just skating by. I wanted a different life than that and that started the journey of getting sober. Four years into this new life, I was starting down an old path. While I was drinking, on some levels I really felt like I had started again. Some of the same feelings and the same actions. I would call the last 4 months an emotional relapse. I was thinking about it. The Cons well outweighed the benefits but I was letting my mind wander down that path. "What if...." 

I am no longer there and back in the groove of recovery. Actually, all this program development has been helpful to see all the tools and recovery assets I know and usually employ in my own life. Although I hadn't quite fallen off of the wagon, I feel like I have been hoisted back up in the front seat again. I was starting to look at the ground....it was getting closer and closer....but now I have my eyes back on the road again. God is still driving the wagon though. If I were to take the reigns full I would be in the ditch in no time. :)

When I started going to school for addictions counseling, I had a dream and a desire. Much like when I started nursing, I wanted to help people. Nursing, I did because I saw all the awesome nurses (my Mom included) who took care of my Dad when he was battling cancer. I wanted to be one of those people who sat by a patient's side, helping them get better. 

Once I got into the thick of things with nursing, I was quick to realize that things out in the real world are much more difficult than that romanticized version I was playing out in my head. I walked on the floor to find a 3 hour med pass, 30 patients, detached and disillusioned staff and my dreams of being "that nurse" fading into oblivion. I made a promise to myself, however, no matter how bad things got, I wanted to be a good nurse. I did that, for the most part. 

I think I had the same vision with going into addictions counseling. I wanted to help people get into recovery. Living a life of addiction is so lonely and hard. I wanted to be out there educating about addiction, helping people find resources. Well, I have hit about the 5 month marker in the field and I believe I am having a bit of a "nursing" moment now. I am realizing the reality in the world of addictions counseling. It's a bit of bitter pill to swallow. Fortunately, I made the same commitment to myself in this field as well. No matter what the scenario, I will do the best that I can. 

It's a good thing that I am feeling more steadfast in my beliefs and values than I did when I first started school. In early recovery, I was very much interested in finding out who I really was. The alcoholic Julie was a basketcase on good days and raging mess on bad days. Now that life wasn't like that anymore, who is Julie? Just an alcoholic? Just a nurse? Just a human being without a path? It took a full year of soul searching and reading to figure out that sober Julie is going to be force to be reckoned in all the right ways. I was going to take the addictions world by storm and make a difference. Grad school was the first stop to making this happen. Now what?

For the first time in my paid career, I found that I am at ideological different place than many in the addictions field.  I was a bit naive to think that my ideas and conclusion were that of all other professionals in the field. So, I want to have a frank discussion about the one thing I will not budge on when it comes to the discussion of addiction. Addiction is a disease of the brain. 

I wrote a blog while I was in grad school about the disease model. I really felt that by giving addiction the title of a disease was kind of a cop out. It absolves the addict of responsibility. "I have a disease I can't help it." A few years later, I believe I have solidified this belief 100x over. Yes, you have a disease, but, YES you can do something about it. Why is addiction considered a disease in the first place?

In really basic terms, the brains of addicts process drugs and alcohol different than our friends we all "normies" in addiction-land.  In more complex terms, please follow this link below - gets really nitty gritty on all the science. 

http://science.education.nih.gov/supplements/nih2/addiction/guide/essence.htm

The imaging between addicts and non-addicts shows fundamental changes in the way the brain processes things. The "reward" area of the brain becomes corrupt. The reward center of the brain is a primal part of the brain. If you ever watch Celebrity Rehab, Dr. Drew put it nicely "The brain actually believes it is dying without the drug...." which makes it pretty hard to stop.
 "How Does Addiction Take Hold in the Brain?
The rewarding effects of drugs of abuse come from large and rapid upsurges in dopamine, a neurochemical critical to stimulating feelings of pleasure and to motivating behavior. The rapid dopamine “rush” from drugs of abuse mimics but greatly exceeds in intensity and duration the feelings that occur in response to such pleasurable stimuli as the sight or smell of food, for example. Repeated exposure to large, drug-induced dopamine surges has the insidious consequence of ultimately blunting the response of the dopamine system to everyday stimuli. Thus the drug disturbs a person’s normal hierarchy of needs and desires and substitutes new priorities concerned with procuring and using the drug.

Drug abuse also disrupts the brain circuits involved in memory and control over behavior. Memories of the drug experience can trigger craving as can exposure to people, places, or things associated with former drug use. Stress is also a powerful trigger for craving. Control over behavior is compromised because the affected frontal brain regions are what a person needs to exert inhibitory control over desires and emotions.

That is why addiction is a brain disease. As a person’s reward circuitry becomes increasingly dulled and desensitized by drugs, nothing else can compete with them—food, family, and friends lose their relative value, while the ability to curb the need to seek and use drugs evaporates. Ironically and cruelly, eventually even the drug loses its ability to reward, but the compromised brain leads addicted people to pursue it, anyway; the memory of the drug has become more powerful than the drug itself."
~http://science.education.nih.gov/supplements/nih2/addiction/guide/essence.htm~

I did believe for a short while that calling addiction a disease took away the responsibility. However, it really does not. If I have a bum pancreas or heart, I have a disease right? The doctors are going to give me all sorts of medical, physical and dietary changes to combat my issues. Eat better (healthier, less carbs, less processed food), start exercising more, stop smoking and/or drinking, reduce stress. You want to know the ironic thing? These are all the things we will tell a newly in recovery addict to do. Among other things like support groups. Diabetics have support groups. Cancer has support groups. Not many people make fun of those on TV, just alcoholics. They have "funny" traditions. We ask our addicts to make life changes and just like diabetes and cancer and obesity and organ failure, and, and, and there is a lifestyle change that needs to happen in order for the condition to improve. 

So, I have a lifelong condition that needs daily monitoring. That description could really be any disease. Just recently, I have been in contact with folks who are not interested in having the discussion about addiction as a disease. Not really into the whole "disease"thing. My thought is to present the information we have and let the client decided what they believe. There is always more than one way to view a condition. My questions usually to the non-addiction-as-a-disease crowd - then what it is? Mental illness has been proven over and over to be a chemical imbalance of the brain. That falls under a disease to me. So, if you call addiction and mental illness (which I also believe this too) we are still talking about a disease. With mental illness the same lifestyle changes are request in conjunction with medications. Less stress, eat better, get exercise, be a routine in order to minimize exacerbations of a mental health condition. 

I would hope as a society, we have turned away from addiction as a moral issue. Although, that is probably very wishful thinking on my part. There are still lots of whispers when someone says "I went to rehab...." AA had the hopes of getting people to understand that addiction was not a moral failing. It doesn't affect just one "type" of person. Rich, poor, celebrity, guy under the bridge, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, presidents....anyone can suffer from addiction. I think we are slowly getting there in helping people understand what is going on when someone becomes addicted to drugs and alcohol. Because people addicted to drug engaged in amoral activities, it is easy to assume that there is something "morally" wrong with this person. If you talk to an addict though, they will often say "I never thought I would do something like that. In the moment, I just went with it because I thought it would make me feel better." I had a line in the sand that I was never going to drive drunk. Well, I crossed that barrier 4 years before I stopped drinking. The only time I drove drunk is when I needed more alcohol. The idea of sitting the rest of the evening without liquor versus driving to the liquor store 10 blocks away? Liquor always won. I was a woman under the influence. I made stupid and bad decisions. If you had taken a snapshot of my brain when I was making those decisions, I believe that my "business brain" would have been dark as midnight. I am a moral failure? I sure felt that way the next morning and drank even harder the next night to quash the guilt I felt, only to promise to never do it again. Then when it happened again, I just cycled out of control. 

The shame of thinking I was a moral deviant kept me from getting into treatment. I had this idea that the world was going to hold me back once I admitted I was, indeed, an alcoholic. I was truly shocked when I got into treatment the first time to see this whole list of things that people do when they are addicted. There was an established pattern of behavior associated with addiction. I had done everyone of those, for sure. I was out of control and that was because I was stuck using. Once out of that pattern, I had the opportunity to make different and better choices. I am not a bad person. I am a person with a disease. I choose to follow my brothers and sisters before me to do something different. I manage my disease. I just will not back down on my stance that addiction is a disease. It is one of the many incurable diseases out there.  However, we, as addicts, have a much better chance at living a long and prosperous life. In order to get to that life, we have to understand what brought us down in our addiction. It is not that you are a bad person, or that you are a person with no will power. You are not weak willed or stupid. You are not your addiction. If you keep using and search for no other lifestyle, you will surcumb to your addiction. I was well on my way to drinking myself to death. For those of you who cannot possibly conceive why person would do this? You don't suffer from addiction. The idea of a life without alcohol was so terrifying that I would protect my relationship with it over all other things. 

The journey is not easy, but let me tell you ~~ You have a disease that can be managed. In the past four years, I have done more positive things for my life than the previous 18 years combined. I have released active alcoholic Julie into sober Julie, proud recovering alcoholic with a serious agenda. Before the "normie" get out there and tell us everything is wrong with us, please do your research.

I was giving a lecture this morning and I was talking about a fearless moral inventory that those doing step work do as a part of cleaning house. In the fourth step of AA, "we made a fearless searching inventory". I think one of the many benefits of doing such a step is get all that garbage off our souls so that we can really restart our lives. Many people worry about this step. Lord knows I did. What happens if I start writing down my resentments and I can't ever stop? What I face all my behaviors and find out that I am the absolute worst person the world has ever known? So typical of the alcoholic in me to think that everything about this process is only about me. My clients today were quite fixated on worrying about it, much like I had. 

I was reading something recently and in this little internet blurp, I saw the following statement, "If worrying worked, your friends would advise you to just do that....." Worry is such an interesting phenomenon.  Before I stopped drinking, I worried about EVERYTHING. Worry seems to be an attempt to control an environment. I worried about what other people are thinking about me - mainly because I need to know if they know what's really going on here. I would also worry about the past and the future. I would worry that I wasn't responsible for something in the past and then worry about how not to do the same thing in the future. Worry, worry, worry.

In the first year of sobriety, I would have to say that my level of worry didn't really decrease. I still worried about everything my monitoring program.  I worried what others would think of my addiction. I worried if I was going to be able to make it the rest of my life without drinking. I would worry about about tomorrow and if I would have to provide a UA. I would worry about pretty much every action I took in my job. 

The only thing I can think of that moved me past the bulk of the worry was going through some acceptance. Step 3 was made for worriers. "Made a decision to turn my will and life over to God (as I understand Him)". Most people see this and roll their eyes about the whole "God"-thing. I know I did. In fact, I worried about having to "give it all up". I think it is pretty common with most alcoholics and addicts - we like to control things. We are, by no means, any good at it, but we sure like to try. Back in Step 1, I admitted that I was powerless over alcohol and my life had become unmanageable. I don't think I really understood what Step 1 was after until I got to Step 3. See, I really understood that I was powerless over alcohol. I proved that a million time over. When I got to Step 3, I realized I didn't really believe that my life had become unmanageable. In my powerlessness over alcohol, I still had a job, owned a condo, had income/money, no legal concerns,  a boyfriend. How is that unmanageable? However, I worried about each one of these all the time. I was always on the the brink of losing it all. If I got busted for drinking at work....well, there goes the house, income, money......Get pulled over for drunk driving.....there goes the clean legal record and enter all the issues of likely losing my job over it. 

Once I finally came to acceptance and my life was actually unmanageable, this paved the way for me to look at "turning it over". As a quick note, Step 2 was a pretty quick one. I believe in God. Step 2 - Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. I think I did step 2 before totally getting step 1. I believed in God. God was a way better bet than anything else as far as my recovery was concerned. Anyway, so acceptance came around about Step 1. My therapist in my early recovery used to constantly ask me: "Can you do anything about it?" If the answer was "yes", then let's look at the course of action. If the answer was "no", then it was time to let it go. I ran around after my first inpatient treatment asking everyone "how do I let it go? Please tell me! How do I let it go?" I wanted a one-step movement that would facilitate "letting go". As I worked the steps more, I realized that acceptance was going to be the only key to letting go. In addition, I needed be able to throw that problem somewhere once I accepted it. Thanks, God! He's got this one. 

Let's take a hard example in early recovery. My divorce. I had lots of intense feelings around this event in my life - disappointment, death of a dream, resentment, anger, abandonment, feeling worthless and unlovable, cheated upon, ignored, sad, depressed, anxious, worried about finances, worried about the future.....Hopefully that give you some insight into the complexity of divorced - remember I asked for the divorce. I walked into my second treatment, desperate to let this divorce go. I was 2.5 years post divorce at this point. The sad part is, I never dealt with it, I was just drinking away the pain. I kept asking in class - I want to let go of this, how did I do it? I was instructed to "accept" the divorce and all the associated feelings and let it go. Since I believe in the Steps, I was encouraged to give it all over to God. I was constantly digging a hole with all these feelings. My therapist told me to stop digging. Allowing myself to re-experiencing the same feelings every minute of every day, I will start living there. Getting outside of myself and giving it over stops the process of digging, gives me the best chance of getting to acceptance. It finally happened about a year into recovery. I just let go. I let go of the pain, I let go of the negative feelings. All of a sudden, my whole body and soul relaxed. 

My worry also decreased substantially this time as well. Around a year, I was finally able to start living in the "NOW". In the last 4 years of my drinking, I was living in the past all the time, trying to figure out how I could change it all. In the first year of recovery, I was both living in the past and future. I lived in regret of the past and in total fear of the future. In the past 2 years, I have been working on trying to stay in the present and not get myself worked up about the past or the future. Today, I would have to say I am a little worked up about the future. The things I am working on, however, are things I can take action on and I am doing that. I am still reminding myself to come back and live in the present. It is so true, living in the past or the future just makes me miss all that is going on right here, right now. 

In regards to Step work, I worried the most about Step 8 & 9 - the steps of amends. I was so worried who I was going to have make amends to and how I was going to do that. Was I going to have to go back and say "I'm sorry" to people I don't really feel like saying that too? So, meanwhile, I am worrying about all of this, I am not at all focused on Step 3 - give it over. Just GIVE-IT-OVER. Can I do anything about it? No, not right now. Then just give it over to God. Is there anything I can do about it at some point? Yes and I will seek guidance when that time comes. Even before I started LOOKING at getting sober, I had decided I was too worried about the God aspect of the steps, Step 1 - I didn't want to admit anything and about the amends steps. So, even before I was looking at Step one, I was already concerned with steps 4-9. I don't believe that I am very unique  in my experience. The alcoholic mind will do just about anything to save the alcohol and abandon recovery. Worrying about step 8 when I haven't even considered step 1 is the perfect way to get myself overloaded and overly concerned. Oh, alcoholic mind, you are something else. 

When I talk to people who have relapsed after long periods of sobriety, one of the universal comments I hear attests to the essence of worry. People will talk about not going to meetings (where we are reminded all the time to give it over), taking control back and attempting to control life. When a person starts to take control back, it is so overwhelming. Think of all the little things in life that we can't control. I can't control the stoplights, the person driving in front of me, the weather, the time the mail comes, someone else's decisions......As alcoholics, when we start down the path of relapse, one of the first things we tend to do is try to control all of these things. We get heated about the red light, we are honking and screaming about the driver ahead, cursing God because its raining, acting annoyed at the mailman for coming at a different time and complaining about consistency, offering excessive amount of advice to a friend trying to convince them to change. Instead of letting go and keeping an open mind, the mind turns inward. Instead of looking at life from a worldly position, the mind focuses on how the world is attempting to screw me and only me. Yanking that control back (remember - I commented earlier, addicts and alcoholics are poor at this...) is a recipe for total disaster and leads right back to the bottle. We get a case of the "F-its" and decide that there is not one positive thing left in the world, so I will just drink. When people relapse, that is why the shame and guilt is so overpowering. It's a selfish decision and deep down, when it happens we know that what we are doing is totally selfish. There are 1.5 million other beverage options and all I am doing is focusing on the 1 that I can't have. 

Anyway, I have had some worry in my life recently. I am working diligently to turn it over and make some changes in my life where I can. I am using some of the worry to help continue my motivation to continue to working on some projects that I started a few months ago. When I start to complain in my mind about job related things, I always remind myself - THIS, yes, this I can change if I want to. Not really on the job hunt so to speak, just working on some other angles to help myself. 

Hope all is well out there!
Julie

Dear Mr. Williams,

I have been patiently awaiting for the end of the week this week. In a funny way, I get a lot more excited about this "birthday" than my physical birthday. In general, I just love birthdays. It's a special day, just for that person. It was a day that brought a new life into the world. I have made a very distinct effort to always celebrate my birthday. Now, it appears that I get to celebrate more than just once a year! Not too shabby.

I have been talking with my clients a great deal lately about the positive nature of being an addict or alcoholic. I wrote a blog entry not that long ago in which I was perplexed by this whole idea of the "grateful alcoholic". It seems, however, in the past few months or so, I have really come to embrace this idea. I believe, truly and deeply, that I am a better person for having this problem. I proved to myself that I can overcome difficult situations in life. I am the closest I have ever been to being my true and authentic self. I find myself starting out sentences with "I get" to do things...not "I have" to do things. My perspective on life has truly been shaped and developed for the better in the past 4 years.

The reality, too, is that recovery is hard. This year has been full of some new and additional challenges I haven't faced full on in recovery just yet. My issues with depression have been much more pronounced in the past 12 months. In May of 2013, I had attempted to make a medication change because of cost and it appears to have had long-standing ramifications. The medications have simply not worked the same since then. I have struggled with an undertone of unresolved anger toward a few different people and places. I have achieved great things yet have been unable to feel the sense of accomplishment I had hoped for in the beginning with school, with work, and to a certain degree - life. In addition to my medication change, I ended a 5 year relationship. I still carry some of the "what ifs" around and some lingering doubts as to whether I made the right decision. My work life has been very difficult since I left my full time night job. I find myself pining for the past when it comes to this arena. I find myself thinking that I never should have left even though, in reality, I would have had to change positions anyway. I have been left with a little of the "restless and discontent" feelings that AA warns us about. I interned at three different places in the past year, at each facility wondering if I had just made one of the bigger mistakes in my life. While I still believe I have something big in this field, I grossly underestimated the difficulties I would have right now. All of these things have been testing my sobriety and I will be quite honest, the bottle was getting more and more tempting for a few months. I went from "if I drink I can't work for 2 years in this field - stay away".....to....."If I drink, then I won't have to work in the field for 2 years. I can go back to nursing...." Wow, peeps.....alcoholics call this "stinkin' thinkin'". P-U.

All my sober birthdays have been meaningful to me. #1 - OMG, that was just a miracle. #2 - I decided to up and change my life to serve others suffering from addiction - how exciting! #3 I was feeling pretty good about having achieved what I did. Now, #4 - still definitely all of the above. And, while I have struggled this year, I have still made it. Perfectly? No. Did I make some bad decisions and mistakes? Yep. Am I still sober? Y-U-P. And in the end, that is all that matters. I could have easily made very different and very dramatic choices. I choose to stay the course. I chose to stay THIS course - 12 steps, honesty, integrity, faith, surrender. Had I attempted to yank back all the control and say "I know how I am going to fix this bad mood", I would be in the ditch in no time. Out of job, out of the field for 2 years, back to searching for a job and not finding what I was looking for. 

Growth is painful and hard. I think that is what this year has been. I can't say that all of the unhappiness and anger are because my medications don't work well enough. Medications only really do so much and the rest, then, comes back to me. I have allowed myself to stay in places of self-pity and resentment. I forget how comfortable that place can be sometime. Heck, I spend 15 years in self pity and while it didn't make me happy, it didn't make me feel uncomfortable. In the past few months, it has been become clearer to me about what I need to do going forward. At sober birthday #4, I am finally starting to look at my patterns of thinking and behavior. I am starting to hold myself better accountable. I am reaching out and doing more of what I need to do in order to get back to where I was a few years ago. While I didn't intent to shove myself into such challenges, I need to get to a place of acceptance that it might have been a little too early for me to go down this path (into this career field). Because I have arrived early, I need to be more diligent of what this career field may offer to me as far as personal and professional challenges. No sense in complaining that I started this too soon, I am here now, so what I am going to do about it?

Last week, I struggled with all three of my jobs. I thought I was going to like the new job that I started. There were a couple of odd things that were said and done in my first few days. I tried all week to "give it another shot" and return this week, but I could not. So, only 2 weeks in, I have left this new position and am feeling good with the decision I made to move on. While I struggled there, my current part time position offered me an increase in hours with the hope that I would be able to teach more. I love the teaching part. So that just took care of itself. Then, the nursing job I had planned to leave threw out one last offer to see if they could get me to stay. It worked, I am now working from home - I have my one project and my sanity. As I challenged myself to "back off" and give over my struggles to God....God answered in a big way as He usually does for me. If I get out of my own way, things generally turn out much better.....let me tell you!!!!!!!!!!! Between the two jobs, I am at 38 hours a week - working 3.5 days at the treatment center and 1 day from home. Because the treatment center is so very intense for me right now, I am trying to keep my hours around 30 so that I can gain my confidence and manage my stress effectively. My work from home job is "work as much as you want" which will be between 6-12 hours per week. 

I have made a challenge to myself for the month of August to push out positivity to the world and to start to change my patterns of thinking. I have been doing a lot of imagery and relaxation techniques which have appeared to be quite helpful. I have been praying and asking God to guide me with my career. I thought it was kind of neat that I was imagining myself doing speeches about addiction and traveling around doing education and then I get the notification that I have been accepted to a TEDx Event in Ohio in November. I took a chance and submitted my idea and in the end, the chance paid off and my visions/dreams are coming to fruition. It's kind of crazy actually! So, I am continuing to put out my positive vibes about work (that changed in the past 8 days...so that kinda worked too.....). I am putting out positive vibes about finding a happy relationship. I went out on a few dates with a very nice man who was also in recovery. We had found, however, that recovery (while a big deal) was the only thing that we had in common. He texted me yesterday and cancelled/let me know he was no longer interested. I felt exactly the same way and the universe didn't make it call it off! So weird and neat. Whatever needs to be will be and there is no point in pushing my own agenda. 

So, I am thinking that Sober Birthday #4 for is going to be a "Back to the  Basics" + "Reboot" for me. I started teaching a series of DBT skills to the treatment center I work at. I was thusly reminded that I wasn't using these skills like I used to. So I am back using those skills, sending out positive vibes to the universe around me and slowly finding my way.

I want to make a special shout-out to my Mom who is always my biggest fan and recovery supporter :) Also, a shout out to all my readers, friends and family who have continued to support me on this journey. When you send me your words of encouragement, I feel so honored and humbled. For those of you who have reached out to tell me about your struggles with addiction, I am so extremely humble that you have extended me your trust. I pray for all of you everyday and remain thankful for all that I have in my life. As I sign off, I am thinking that life is taking a turn here at #4, in a really positive direction.

Much love and peace to you all!
Julie