The first 7 to 14 days of sobriety can be rough for most individuals, again depending on what substance was used. The second aspect to sobriety is learning to live with the past. This is where the most important aspect of your nature needs to become strongest: DESIRE. The desire to never use or abuse, the desire to be sober, the DESIRE TO RECOVER at all costs. This needs to be your strongest drive over all else. Without it there may never be a future without use and abuse. Actually there can be no future without use or abuse.
Desire as defined by the dictionary as a verb is to crave, want, express a wish to obtain and as a noun a request, expressed wish, craving, wanting. A few synonyms are covet, fancy, hunger, and thirst. Desire is the strong need to have something, to obtain, in some cases to obsession. Your desire for the drugs, alcohol, food, gambling, sex, or any other behavior or substance drove you to obtain it at all costs. No matter who you hurt or walked over, you had to have “IT.”
The same drive that saw you through those years of use, abuse, and torment will carry you through the moments accumulated in recovery. First you must have the strongest desire to remain abstinent, to obtain sobriety, then a greater desire for RECOVERY. There is a difference between becoming sober and recovering. Anyone can remain sober for a length of time, some for years. The quality of sobriety is a matter of not using and healing.
There are rough days ahead for you, memories, nightmares, guilt, shame, and craving, the need to medicate. For that is what we as addicts, alcoholics, gamblers, over eaters, etc. are doing, medicating, hiding behind a much sought after euphoria. Chasing that first high, never to be seen again. Yet the DESIRE to continue to search it out continues, use more, change substances, keep after it because it is there. In the process damage and pain accumulate, shame and guilt, behaviors you swore to never do have been done. The war will never end until you face your enemy square on. Not sure who the enemy is? Take the time to learn. Some will tell you that you are the enemy, I beg to differ. The only enemy we need face is the days long past, the old life style. Once informed to choose to return, then we are enemy. Until then those who taught us who still whisper in our mind, those messages well delivered, driven home, that is our enemy. This is the enemy that DESIRE will defeat.
DESIRE must be consuming for recovery as it was for disease, the old way of living is a disease. Fuel your desire, learn about your afflictions, the cause and effect, the withdrawal and healing. Arm your self with information, educate your self on the options available to you to aid you in recovery. Find out about the 12-step meetings, greet and meet, get to know your fellow travelers and build the tools that will take you from where you are to where you wish to be.
Know this: There is no affliction for which there is no cure. Every affliction has a cure.
The road is tedious, boring, frightening, exhausting, frustrating, and seems never ending. Do not give up, do not surrender to the old way of life. You can take a break, laugh, play, work, recover. Learn…
I send you blessings and healing. There is no obstacle too great to overcome, no enemy who will not meet with defeat. The decision is yours, build the DESIRE and hold fast.
Thank you for sharing the journey with me. If you desire a guide, I am available. Check me out on my contact page.
Connie S Owens/Kirkpatrick is an ordained minister and a Kundalini/Practical Reiki Master. Connie holds a masters degree in psychology, has 20 years experience working with women and men in early recovery of substance abuse.
Connie resides in Southern California in a small rural community near the border of Mexico. She spends her time researching the latest in alternative healing, spending time with her pets, walking and communing with the world around her.
Connie believes in human rights, we are equal, and have the right to be treated with dignity and fairness. Connie signs and promotes petitions and other activist campaigns that further this belief.
Priestess Connie is her title. One she choose with pride. A priestess is a female version of a priest, one who is authorized to perform ceremonies such as weddings, funerals, baptisms, and other sacred ceremonies.
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