I often have individuals sitting on my office couch who have come to believe that there is no hope for them, they have done too much. Too much addiction, too many sins, too many broken commandments. They have, perhaps, tried many many times to turn things around, but never successfully. But their life has caught up with them, they have been caught, the problems have come out into the open or they have just grown sick and tired of being sick and tired. They know despair. That dark empty place where hope can not survive. They have been overtaken by [...]
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The Family and Addiction…
The Family and Addiction…
This post is written by John…. When I was a drug counselor and worked with addicts it became obvious that it was not just the addict who suffered but their family, friends, employers etc. And once the addict began doing well their were tremendous problems to address. In other words when one gets sick to endure the illness everyone else modifies their behavior to survive, they get sick too. Sometimes the family modification used to avoid dealing with the addict and their behavior becomes the real problem and only enables the addict to continue their usage. The addiction [...]
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Uhh by the way, you will never be normal.
Uhh by the way, you will never be normal.
At some point in the therapeutic recovery process, after sobriety is established and some healing has taken place, I might say to the client, You know, you will never be normal don’t you? They often are confused. I quickly add, You will be able to be happy and successful, you are just never going to do it the way others do. That calms them down enough to begin the process of understanding. We often have funny expectations about recovery. As with all expectations, they can get us in trouble. Some are silly enough to think they can return to using [...]
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Acceptance is the Answer!
Acceptance is the Answer!
A thought from John. Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today (Big Book of AA). In life change is inevitable. Just look at the weather or changes we experience as we age. How we react to that change can give us solace or cause us much discomfort. Steven Covey has been credited with saying “that life is about 10% of what happens to us and 90% about how we react to it.” When we are left to ourselves to react to life we seem to bumble around, when you add the problem of addiction to the experience the [...]
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How did I get here?
How did I get here?
The following “guest blog” is written by my brother, John, ardent advocate of recovery and helping. John, after retiring from his federal probation officer position, worked as an addiction counselor in Alabama. Thank you for the invitation to participate in your blog, as I look back at my own experience with Recovery I wondered what it was that brought me to this most rewarding part of my life. Then it became clear, it was not the path I chose to follow because I would have gone a different way if left to my own devices. It was a gift from [...]
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What Andy can Teach Us
What Andy can Teach Us
Survivors of childhood, physical, emotional or sexual abuse, as well as victims of traumatic events, and the abandoned children (by parents either absent emotionally or not present physically), often resort to medicating their pain through addiction. They find comfort from the emotional pain in their lives. It begins as a coping strategy, which through the conditioning process becomes compulsion and addiction. There is something missing in their emotional development. Their emotional foundation was never completed and they struggle to function. We have great difficulty meeting our needs without that foundation. Maslowe suggested the foundation was built of knowing that we [...]
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What I would tell my kid…The Story of Pinnochio at the Fair
What I would tell my kid…The Story of Pinnochio at the Fair
I recently had occasion to chat with a Stake President from a BYU stake. When he learned that I was an Addiction Counselor and had authored The Waterfall Concept, a blueprint for addiction recovery, the conversation turned to addiction. He was leading an effort in his stake to prevent addiction, especially pornography addiction, from occurring among his stake’s members. I have reflected on that conversation often and tried to articulate in my mind what I might say to a young person about the dangers of the addictive process. I know that education, while not the complete answer, would be a [...]
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Why the LDS Addiction Recovery Program Works
Why the LDS Addiction Recovery Program Works
It has been my privilege to be a participant in the LDS family Services Addiction Recovery Program. I attended at first as a person in recovery trying to find answers and help fighting my demon. I had had the experience of attending several other self help recovery groups that utilized the 12 Steps, I had both obtained a sponser and worked the steps in those groups. I found them to be very helpful in helping establish sobriety and completing the beginning parts of my recovery. One of the things that is accomplished in a 12 Step support group is helping [...]
