Into Action – Where to Start:
You found a bottom – one where the pain of your drinking & using has become greater than the fear of what change will take. This is a beautiful place, retrospectively speaking. From this place, you’ll tap into the 3 ingredients that will be the spark to ignite your recovery. Each of them building on the other, and each necessary for you to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and begin.
Willingness – the key to your lock:
It’s said the willingness is born from desperation, and desperation is born from hitting rock bottom. For some of you, this could be something that’s happened more than once. Each time you find a new low, one worse the previous. I’m also one of these people. I had to go check a few “yets” off my list before my bottom was truly rock bottom. What are “yets”? They’re the things you use as excuses for why you’re not a problem drinker. Examples:
- I haven’t lost my job
- I’m not living on the street corner
- I pay all my bills
- I have custody of my kids
- I haven’t been in trouble with the law
So now you’ve scratched some “yets” off your list, albeit in disbelief. This is typically the time desperation comes in, and fear. This is what that spark of willingness is born from. It’s the beginning of opening up to change, to recovery.
Honesty – a true look in the mirror:
From willingness comes honesty, and I mean real honesty about the exact nature of your drinking, its impact on others, and the complete wreckage your life has become… For me, this was the scariest bit. I didn’t like what was reflected back to me, and I shuddered to think what everyone around me thought too. But seeing yourself through the lens of honesty allows you to feel the pain of what living in active addiction has become. This is a really beautiful and scary thing. If you’re seeing yourself in this light, and have all the swirly, panicked thoughts about stopping, then you’re in the perfect place to begin anew.
Openness – you don’t have the answers, but someone else does
When we piece together willingness & honesty, the last ingredient to begin on our recovery path is openness. Openness was the first time I acknowledged that I had no clue how to stay sober and that I didn’t have any of the answers. What I did know was that I wanted to reach out for a lifeline. I wanted to ask for help, because my old ways of thinking and acting got me to this very point, and they certainly weren’t going to get me out of it. I was finally open enough to wave my white flag of surrender and reach my hand out for someone else’s. The hand that received me was that of an old friend I knew to be sober. She helped me get in touch with the people that could help me safely detox, get treatment, and begin in the 12 step fellowship. If you’re at this point too or know someone that is Mile High Recovery Center is here to receive that call. You don’t have to live another day like this, and you do not have to do it alone. If you have willingness, honesty, and openness… you’re ready, and we can help.
