Rekindle Your Light
No matter if you have been living clean and sober for six months or six years, at some point everybody faces the point where the excitement of recovery seems to fade. Groups and meetings seem to lose some of their color, their miracle and their magnetism. Calling your sponsor seems more like a chore than a daily high and might easily get postponed or forgotten. The reality of life sets in and other things start to take priority. This is an important stage in our recovery and sober life. Each of us should be well-equipped with tools and mindfulness to realize what is going on. We don’t want that to happen! Don’t worry, because it doesn’t have to happen!
Boredom with the program is very common after a while. We lose our enthusiasm for our sobriety and turn toward our regular life. More hours are spent at work and less hours in meetings. But it is important not to cut off your mooring lines or your ship will drift away completely. It is time to check the anchors and make sure that we are in a safe harbor. Your mooring lines are safety tools that you have learned such as a relapse prevention plan or calls with your sponsor, therapist or sober friends. It may be daily contacts by phone or in person with other addicts or alcoholics in recovery, your meetings, your fellowship in your home group or your contact with staff or other alumni from your treatment center. It may be alumni networking via social media, reading your Big Book or your daily meditation or prayer. If you have cut too many of those out of your life, it’s time to put some back in place. And don’t join the “Procrastinators Unite…Tomorrow” club. It doesn’t hurt to join a fellowship, but it does hurt to relapse!
If you are bored with your meetings lately, find new ones! If you are tired of hearing the same stories from the same people over and over, try a new location, meet new people and listen to new stories. I know how much we hate change. But by now we should know that it’s good for us, right? Change your chair you sit in at the meeting room. If you see each meeting from the same perspective, it will get boring. Start chairing meetings and pick some nice topics that you are interested in that maybe haven’t been covered before. Others might appreciate this change as much as you do.
If you work the program and go to meetings, you have heard that your purpose now is “to stay sober and help other addicts or alcoholics to achieve sobriety.” If you still only work the first part of this, put more effort into the second part. It not only helps others but it helps us too. It is a wonderful feeling to see somebody else get sober! It is so delightful to see others absorbing the hope we can give. If you have more than a year of being clean and sober, you can check if you have a local corrections committee with your 12-step program. They always need volunteers to go to jails to share their stories and bring meetings to prisoners. I do that, and it is a wonderful way of giving back, helping others, staying sober and never losing the spark of recovery itself. If you go there, each time you will remember why recovery is so important for you. The prisoners want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it. And we don’t want to go back to where they are. We can help each other!
Let us talk about conventions. Have you been to a good one? They can be an excellent way to rekindle your excitement for recovery. What a feeling it is to share a hotel with hundreds of other people in recovery. Finally, that feeling of “fitting in” is more present than ever. We have a common denominator and the same goal in life. We speak the same language and know the same people. Love is in the air! If you are tired of meetings or the program, pick a nice convention and go! The registration may not be too much and maybe you could find one nearby to avoid high travel costs. Please go. It’s worth it. The passion that you feel in the message may be the fire that you need to get ignited again.
It is important never to let the fire of recovery completely get cold. The addiction devil is waiting for us and ready to hit us full force when we least expect it. We have to be aware of our disease and have to keep our guards up. If that becomes “work” instead of “fun” and “routine” instead of “passionate,” it may make your life more miserable than it needs to be. If you are around happy people, you have a higher chance of being happy and content yourself. If you surround yourself by negative people who hate the world and everything in it, it will affect you negatively. Choose your friends and your way of life wisely. Be mindful and ask yourself how you would like to live and move toward this goal. If somebody around me acts and speaks in a way I don’t like to be around, I walk a different path. If people around me don’t like their recovery, I search until I find a group that is happy in their recovery and stay with them.
If this is too theoretical for you, then plan action! Sobriety and recovery depend on you. The time to manipulate others into doing things for you is over. We must get active ourselves. If we want action, we must plan action. I just recently had a blast on a sober vacation going snowmobiling, boat fishing and ice fishing. I did it all sober, as did the people with me. It’s not a question of what you do. It’s a question of who you do it with. You could get a sober bowling evening set up or organize a group of sober people going horseback riding on a nice day. Unite and have fun! Any kind of sport or activity is great anyway because it can get your body in a healthy state and get your endorphins flowing for natural happiness. We do not need mind-altering substances to get a high in our new life. You love you to hike? Print out a sheet of paper that says, “Who is interested in a hiking trip?” Add some detailed information about location ideas and place it on the board of your meeting room or send it to sober friends and plan a day trip for a nice sober Sunday. Think about games you can play along with the hike and find a spot for a lunch break, and you may spark the fire in your fellow recovering addicts. Do not isolate yourself and do not let others isolate themselves. You and only you can decide how your recovery takes place. It is in your hands. Set your goal about what you want to get out of your recovery and put energy and effort into reaching it.
I would suggest making a list of activities that you personally would like to do and let the list go around within your circle of sober friends. They can put their names beside the activity that they would like to join you on. That can be a pretty quick way to find groups of interest and have everybody meet new people and enjoy the chance for new friendships. Try to get people from different meetings and you may get a nice exchange there. It works if you work it! Do it today, not tomorrow.
Yours,
Susanne Johnson
Lead Advocate
Heroes in Recovery