Daily Reading from Recovery Days May 4th by Chris B

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Remember Mindfulness – relax your whole body gradually

Unconditional love

A small pet is often an excellent companion for the sick.
Florence Nightingale.
In our sickness and recovery from addiction, pets
provide a focus outside of ourselves. They give
unconditional love, are non-judgmental and honest
in showing their emotions. They are loyal and
forgiving. The power of example shines bright on
most pets, inspiring us to be better people. To feel
trusted and loved by a pet can be an important
moment in recovery. They say that the newly sober
should learn relationships by first tending a plant,
then a pet and then another human being. Will I
strive to be the person that my pet thinks I am?

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the
truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes,
always perseveres. St Paul, Corinthians. Perhaps I
need to learn how to love. If so, I could do no better
than to reflect on these words of St Paul which are as
fresh as when they were written, nearly two
thousand years ago. Today I ask God to grow in
love, because nothing else matters.

Daily Reading from Recovery Days May 3rd by Chris B

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Remember Mindfulness – review expectations

Step Five

Step Four is known as the Step of courage and Step
Five, where we: Admitted to God, to ourselves and to
another human being the exact nature of our wrongs,
require courage too. Of course, all of the Steps
require courage so it’s a good thing that we’re
generally braver than we believe. The important
thing is to take that first small venture into the
unknown. Our Higher Power will not let us down.
Am I ready to trust in the help of my Higher Power?

He who has courage despises the future. The words of
the Roman Emperor and philosopher Marcus
Aurelius tell us that he who makes the most of the
present has no need to fear the future. We may
procrastinate, we may even say that time itself will
change things but, in reality, the only way to make
change happen is for us to make that change
happen, a day at a time. When we do so, our life will
become like a book where each chapter is an
improvement on the one before. I ask for God’s help
to find the courage to admit my wrongs because
without doing so, I cannot grow in my recovery.

Daily Reading from Recovery Days May 2nd by Chris B

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Remember Mindfulness – enjoy the moment


Head to heart

Think of the worst experience that you can
remember, perhaps something that made you angry
or ashamed. If you could have it cancelled, but on
condition that everything that happened as a result
would also be cancelled – would you do it? How
much did you learn from that negative experience?
The worst experience is often the greatest
opportunity for growth. Change does not happen
through the passing of information alone, but
through the way things make us feel. Willingness to
change means learning from the bad as well as the
good. Am I truly willing to change?


The beauty of the Twelve Steps is that you can keep
growing for the rest of your life. When you hear
someone speaking at a meeting and you think:
That’s what I want, then you are feeling something
as well as hearing it. The message goes from the
head to the heart and that is how spiritual growth
comes about. Today I am grateful to grow in the
Twelve Step programme that never stops giving.

Daily Reading from Recovery Days May 1st by Chris B

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Remember Mindfulness – close eyes briefly

Good life


We are the heroes in the story of our lives. But, like
in a Greek tragedy, the hero is usually the one who
is the problem. Greek tragedy is about rage and grief
and right and wrong and consequences that
inevitably happen. It’s all a bit reminiscent of active
addiction. The Greeks didn’t go in for happy
endings much. They left that sort of thing to the
imagination. They were desperate to explore
morality and responsibility because they believed
the only acceptable life was one lived with integrity,
honour and virtue. We could all benefit from a study
of Greek tragedy. But we can still be heroes. Will I
live as a hero in the story of my life?


Purging the emotions in Greek tragedy was known
as ‘catharsis’. It is followed by a feeling of relief.
Steps Four and Five are cathartic because by
identifying and sharing our character defects, we are
able to let them go. But life doesn’t have to be all
about dramatic catharsis. Zen for example, is a way
of meditation that lets go of feelings through gentle
meditation – a sort of catharsis without the drama.
Some of us prefer it that way. Today I ask God for a
life without too much negative drama.

Daily Reading from Recovery Days April 30th by Chris B

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Rememberr Mindfulness – close eyes briefly

HALT

In April, we looked at courage, honesty, integrity,
giving, helping others and the joy of recovery. These
positive attributes do not just appear, we must work
for them, and we must ask for help. Our main
motivation at first is fear – addiction will kill us
unless we take positive action. Soon other
motivations appear: we don’t want to disappoint our
friends who offered help, we don’t want to lose the
new happiness we are starting to feel, and we do want
to be true to our Higher Power. Later on, the siren
call of our addiction will become so tiny that we don’t
notice it at all but for now, there is still work to be
done. There are no holidays from recovery. Do I
understand that recovery is for life – that, however
good I am feeling, I must remain vigilant?


HALT (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired) are the four
things to avoid in early recovery. We could find
ourselves in any (or all) of those states at any
time. We should have a plan to deal with this – a
person to call or a meeting to attend. Our great
good fortune is that we have worldwide
support. We must ask for help, so we see how to
help others, when the time comes. Today I
remind myself to ask for help.

Daily Reading from Recovery Days April 29th by Chris B

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Remember Mindfulness – send positive thoughts

Filling the void

Addiction and creativity have always been closely
linked. Hardship, pain and frustration are often the
catalysts for great creativity and many great writers
and painters struggled with addiction. But recovery
and the freedom from suffering it brings, can also
produce great work. The AA Big Book, written by
recovering alcoholics for alcoholics, is a prime
example of this. AA co-founder People in recovery
sometimes find an unexpected talent that brings
them great enjoyment. This can ‘fill the void’ and
occupy them beneficially, when they take addiction
out of their lives. Am I ready to explore my potential
for new interests and activities?


Reach out – soothe another’s pain.
Feel the friendship, feel the gain.
See your life begin to blossom.
Little sprigs of hopes forgotten
Growing into big strong trees.
Force the wine witch to her knees. Anon.
Sometimes poems like this, by a newly recovering
alcoholic, help build strength and determination to
stay sober, and a new interest too. Today I ask God
for the motivation to explore new ideas.

Daily Reading from Recovery Days April 28th by Chris B

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Remember Mindfulness – review expectations
Denial
When you decide to quit addictive behaviour and
face up to reality, you are essentially casting off your
denial – the twisted mental process that allowed you
to continue your addiction for so long although you
knew it was wrong. Sobering up means accepting
three essential truths:

  • This is what your behaviour was like
  • This is how it makes others think about you
  • This is how it makes you feel about yourself.
    Facing reality can be painful – nobody likes hearing
    other people’s criticism, however justified. The
    thing that gives us encouragement is that we have a
    plan for putting things right – the Twelve Step
    programme. With this plan and the help of our
    Higher Power, reality does not seem so painful.
    The moment we decide to sober up is a hugely
    important milestone. The road ahead may be
    arduous, but we have a roadmap and a guide. All
    that is left to do is to make the first move. Today I
    thank God I have the needs for my recovery journey.

Daily Reading from Recovery Days April 27th by Chris B

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Remember Mindfulness – close eyes briefly


New ideas


Addiction means giving up everything else for the
sake of having just one thing. Recovery is about
giving up just one thing for the sake of regaining
everything else. It should be so easy to choose
between addiction and recovery, but so many of us
cannot let go. It’s like the old monkey trap story –
the monkey’s hand fits through the hole to pick up
the rice but the hand with the rice can’t fit back out.
For the monkey, like us, it’s a mind problem – not
being able to let go of old ideas. Am I ready to let go
of old attitudes and embrace new ideas?


The difficulty lies not in the new ideas, but
in escaping from the old ones.
Maynard Keynes.
We don’t want to give up our old ways because we
can’t imagine that anything else would work for us.
We can’t imagine life without our drug or behaviour
of choice, and we certainly can’t imagine enjoying
life without it. Today I ask God for the strength of
mind and insight, to be able to let go of the old
attitudes that stop me from embracing the new.

Daily Reading from Recovery Days April 26th by Chris B

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Remember Mindfulness – relax your whole body gradually


Learning life’s lessons

Anyone in recovery who reads Alice in Wonderland
might see it as an allegory about addiction. A young
girl disappears down a rabbit hole into a fantasy
world where she discovers mind and body-altering
substances. It’s also a story about self-discovery:
Who in the world am I? she asks. She
learns too about growing up and making the right
choices. By the end of the book, Alice is behaving
like an adult: It’s no use going back to yesterday,
she says, because I was a different person then.
The book helps us understand the challenges
of growing up, though there is no evidence
that the author had addiction in mind. Am I
open to learning lessons in life from all sources?
We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.
How do you know I’m mad? said Alice.
You must be, said the Cat, or you wouldn’t
have come here. But let me tell you something.
The best people usually are.
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.

Such wise words of acceptance. I’ve heard
similar things at AA meetings. Today I ask God for
the wisdom to know I have an illness that is
mental, physical and spiritual.

Daily Reading from Recovery Days April 25th by Chris B

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Remember Mindfulness – close eyes briefly


Happy recovery


What can we do to make recovery a joyful experience?
For a start, we can shed some burdens:

  1. Make sure that we have addressed the past
    and made amends
  2. We must do Steps Four to Seven
  3. Stop worrying about tomorrow – focus on today
  4. Hand life’s problems over to a Higher Power.
    Having shed these three burdens, we can
    try some new ideas:
  5. Cultivate friendships, perhaps in the fellowships
  6. Explore new interests
  7. Discover the pleasure in helping others.
    We should always remember that happiness comes
    as a result of good actions. Am I ready to build a
    happy recovery, helped by my Twelve Step group?

  8. The American psychologist M Scott Peck, in his
    book The Road Less Travelled, spoke about the
    blessing of alcoholism because it puts people into a
    visible state of crisis for which there is a ready-made
    therapeutic community – an AA group. How
    fortunate we are to have this. I ask God today for the
    enthusiasm to build a contented and meaningful
    recovery.