Category: Recovery From Addictions

When I was a kid, one day I found myself staring at the stove in my kitchen. One of the four black rings on it were lit up incredibly red. I was so drawn to it. And I mean REALLY drawn to it. The glow was totally beckoning me in. So, for whatever the reason, I decided it would be a good idea to check it out further by putting my hand down on it. I just wanted to see what it felt like. Big mistake of course. I melted the skin on my hand pretty bad that day. But you want to know what’s so ironic about this really painful story from my childhood is how it’s a lot like the life of an addict.

You see addicts love the glow of whatever it is they become eventually become addicted to. It initially lures them in with its beautiful light. Some part of them knows though that it’s going to burn them if they get too close to it. Yet they do it anyway and eventually it burns them severely. A burn that somehow heals just enough at some point in time for them to totally forget about the damage it once caused them. And when that glow shows up in their life again, the memory of the last burn from it is gone leading them to fall straight back into a trance with it, getting burned by it once more, and often even worse that the last time.

I know this sounds like insanity, and it truly is. I knew all the addictions that once gripped me so fiercely were bad for me. They each glowed with intensities in their own way and at varying times, which I repeatedly found myself just having to check each out a little further. And each time I did, I eventually would get so burned by it that I’d recoil in pain that would last a long while. Pain that I always seemed to forget, because the glow of whatever it was would repeatedly beckon me in again at some inevitable point down the road, only to do the same thing again to me.

Truly my life of addictions is almost different as well than being a mosquito that’s drawn to one of those bug zappers typically found outside in the hot days of the summer. As soon as they touch the light they’re zapped dead, which is no different than the number of times I’ve gotten zapped by one eerie glow after another of one addiction after another, never realizing that none of them were good for me.

Thankfully, my recovery life has taught me there’s a better solution though and that was to find my own inner light to be drawn to. That process has taken me more than a decade to find it and now I’ve realized the only glow I’ll ever need to be drawn to lives within me. It’s always lived within me in fact. I just needed to slow down enough to get in touch with it, which is my soul of course. But you want to know what the best part of touching my soul is? It doesn’t burn me whenever I do. Now that’s some food for thought…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

There’s a lot of things that being a sponsor in 12 Step recovery means for me, mentor, guide, teacher, role model, friend, and the like, but there’s also a number of things that being a sponsor definitely doesn’t mean for me, chauffeur, banker, doctor, meal ticket, and most recently, housing authority.

In the past few weeks, I’ve had two newly sober individuals call me separately between the 10pm to 11pm time frame asking if I could put them up in my home for the night or if I knew of any options where they could sleep. When I asked what happened with their former sober living I had met them at, both had excuses why they left. One was due to girlfriend issues he felt the need to attend to. The other was simply tired of the rules that came with sober living. Either way, my answer was swift because I have a boundary in my life that does not entertain the notion of having strangers stay in my house for the night, especially addicts of any variety. I know of some sponsors who have a similar boundary, but instead offer to pay for a night in a local motel. Given my limited funds and given the many stories I’ve heard of addicts taking things in the motel rooms to sell, I simply have made a firm line in the sand surrounding me not being a housing authority for anyone.

While I felt guilty in some sense letting these guys know I didn’t have any option for them for housing, I’ve come to accept that I need to maintain this boundary, especially when it comes to addicts, because most addicts who get an inch will most definitely try to take a mile. In other words, once you open the door to an addict by giving them some form of a handout, in this case housing, they will keep coming back and come to rely more upon you than do the work themselves to change their situation.

While I love being a sponsor, truly I do, what I don’t love as one is fielding countless phone calls from addicts who keep doing nothing more than looking for handouts instead of wanting to do the 12 Step work. As a sponsor, my main objective is solely to teach the 12 Steps to another. And through that objective, it’s my hope and goal to help them find a deeper relationship with their Higher Power. What I’ve come to learn is that the 12 Steps and my relationship with God are the only two things that continue to keep me sober and working on being selfless. But addicts who become newly sober and choose not to focus on the 12 Steps or finding a Higher Power often make terrible decisions that lead to them seeking handouts like housing at a potential sponsor’s home.

The bottom line is that sponsorship isn’t about giving out handouts to addicts. It’s about helping them learn how to do the work and live their life on their own two feet through the 12 Steps and their Higher Power. Trying to offer an addict anything but the 12 Steps and God will typically lead to nothing more than heartache and frustration, and everything but living a life of true recovery from their addiction.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

There is a thing that often occurs with many newcomers to any addiction recovery program and that is dreams about relapsing. Newfound sobriety for many often generates this type of dream as one gets used to being clean and sober from whatever their addiction was. Early on, 27 years ago, I had many of those relapsing dreams. As the years went on though, they became grossly infrequent, until they became non-existent at all, that is until last week, when I had one of them out of the clear blue.

In my dream, I was actually dating a woman of all things and faking my attraction to her. I kept trying to convince myself I could find her attractive if I just tried hard enough and decided that consuming a beer was part of that solution. I ironically did this very thing quite a bit back in my college years to deal with a part of me I wasn’t ready to face then. Regardless, after I consumed that first beer in my drinking dream, that old euphoric sensation returned and I suddenly said to myself, “I remember this awesome feeling!” I basked in that moment in my dream until I started feeling dizzy, something that frequently happened to me back in my drinking and drugging days, and something I most assuredly didn’t like. I then began to wrestle with my ego in the dream, telling myself it wasn’t a relapse, as it had been just one drink. I decided I wouldn’t tell anyone and would just continue on with my long-term sobriety. Guilt consumed me in the dream though, so I went to bed to sleep it off. When I awoke, I didn’t realize I was still asleep, as I was having one of those dreams within a dream, like the movie Inception portrayed. I felt incredibly guilty and realized what I had done and knew I had blown my sobriety, but yet I maintained the notion I just wasn’t going to tell anyone. I then abruptly woke up for real this time, laying in my bed at home, and noticed I was sweating bullets and my heart was racing fastidiously. It was then I quickly realized with much thankfulness it was only a dream.

The relief I felt for the rest of that day was most definitely appreciative, as the notion of relapsing after 27 years made me feel so incredibly sick to my stomach, especially when I saw how fast I returned to chronic lying. The good news though is that I didn’t actually relapse. And the better news is how the drinking dream provided me a beautiful reminder why I stopped drinking and drugging in the first place. That abhorrence was still there even after one drink in my dream, so I know it would still exist in real life as well if I ever gave in to temptation.

Sadly, many newcomers to sobriety and recovery who have these type of relapse dreams, often don’t feel guilty upon waking and wish they could go back into their dream. Some even propel themselves back into their actual addiction all over again after having a dream like this. These types of individuals just weren’t ready for long-term sobriety and recovery unfortunately, which is why I’m so appreciative of having the drinking dream I did.

My life was once filled with an incredible sense of fakery when drinking and drugging and many other things had the best of me, including lying on a regular basis. I’m thankful to say I’m not that guy anymore in my recovering life from addiction. But I’m far more thankful I can say 27 years later I’m still clean and sober and even more dedicated to remaining clean and sober after waking from that drinking dream.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson