There is No Quick Fix in Recovery

If you are thinking of getting into a recovery program, I can tell you a few things about yourself, without knowing you personally! Not because I'm a genious. I'm just your "average bear." But I've been around recovery for a long time...and I plan on being around it a lot longer. Because there is no quick fix in recovery. It's a life time process.

What do I know about you?

Something is very wrong in your life. You feel stuck, bogged down, broken. You feel anxious and you think no one knows what you are going through. That your experience is one that others would never understand! You are afraid of the feelings you do feel, and you've managed to pretty well freeze the really bad ones. Except, some thawing occurs now and again and you feel some pinches. Pinches that are getting more difficult to ignore...like a toothache that won't go away.

The medicine you've used to get the pinching to go away is no longer effective: whether it is drugs, alcohol, a relationship, gambling, food, love, sex...you used it for comfort and pleasure, and are now haunted by it!

Whatever you have become addicted to was once a source of some happiness for you. It is now the cause of your unhappiness. Rather than your problems going away so you could live happily ever after, your problems have multiplied! Isn't that the way just about everything goes for you?

You wonder why everyone else's life seems to go so smoothly, and yours is a total wreck! Maybe somebody "upstairs" has it in for you! Maybe you're being punished. You're not worthy because of that little secret from your life...that experience you don't want to talk about.

Sound familiar?

If so, and you're sick and tired of being sick and tired, you're ready for recovery.

But the one mistake I've seen time and again around the tables is the person who comes in, races through the Twelve Steps, reads the literature until her eyes cross from her efforts, grabs the first person who comes along to be her sponsor, and then burns out. She feels good for a few days or a few weeks, but then another of life's little problems rears its ugly head and she says, Huh! Nothing has changed! My life is the same mess it always was!

Well, bless that mess!

Because if you keep coming around the tables long enough, you'll come to realize that life isn't going to change. What will change is your attitude.

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