Even though I am a recovering alcoholic and I will never forget the day I walked into my Al-Anon meeting and was told that I was doublly blessed. I get to take the best from both programs.
I am the daughter of an alcoholic father who died from his disease at 66 and the daughter of a mother who used food to deal with my father's alcoholism and died at the age of 40 when I was 21.
I have a son who is in recovery waiting for a bed at a six-month treatment center for his drug and alcohol addiction.
Al-Anon has helped me with friends who have relapsed and from those who choose a different lifestyle and not healthy for me to be around. I know a lot of people through the bridge club but they don't invite me to their home parties. My not drinking or smoking makes me a party pooper I guess.
It doesn't matter what section or room of recovery that I go to, I can identify. The substance is but a symptom of my disease. Whether it is alcoholism, addiction, codependency, caretaking, gambling, work, food, etc. the Twelve Steps work for them all. Somethings we stay in denial about a little bit longer. i.e. my computer although it is a lot better than it use to be. I don't have to be on it each day or ever hour of the day!
Not sure if many identify with me or we have a lot in common. I had alternative medicine work done on my migraines by a sponsor who was a Reiki Master along with a friend of hers.
I also had several sponsors. Each one taught me what I needed to learn and then for some reason I moved on. Some fired me and some I separated from by mutual consent. My last sponsor said she didn't feel she had anything to offer me and she felt overwhelmed because she felt I had more of a grasp on the program than she did. To me there is no race, test, or blueprint, we do what we need to do for ourselves in the moment. I was one of the really sick ones. Partly because of my own addiction as a result of the decisions I made due to the dysfunction in my life growing up and in two abusive marriages.
I don't think I would have what I have today if it wasn't for service. I am not as active now due to health issues. Things have been closed down at the Community Job I volunteered for until the new year and it is going to relocate. I will be going back into the jails in the new year as well.
It is ironic, jails have been my focus for 16 years and yet I myself have never been in jail, yet no one was more a prisoner of her own mind, that I was. I didn't need steel bars.
I may suffer from chronic pain but I can't let it rule my life and allow it to stop me from doing what I need to do each day. I did lie down for about 20 minutes with the heat, but didn't sleep.
I was told that living is getting up each morning, ask for help, living each day as it comes, give thanks at night. I never know what my body will allow me to do on any given day but I do try to listen to it. Not listening is self-abuse. I ignored my needs for many years. I shut down and shut off and detached from myself. Thanks to the program, I have been able to turn that around.
I got sober in AA, it was the basis for my recovery because of my denial. NA was for affirmation of my addiction, I always knew I was an addict. Al-Anon helped me to find myself, not just in today, but the root cause of my disease and allowed me to heal all those deep hurts and pain that I had stuffed and forgotten, or didn't allow myself to remember.
Look forward to sharing more with you.
Some of these were posted from another site and added onto or edited in today.
