Category: Recovery From Addictions

It’s quite easy to be negative. Sometimes it seems that more and more people are becoming that way all around me. I feel it’s like a virus that slowly creeps upon me, ready to invade all the parts of me trying to stay as positive as I can with what I go through pain-wise everyday.

For most of my life I was a negative person. I saw the sky as always full of clouds regardless if it was a sunny day or not. The slightest thing would turn a great day into a horrible one. And I criticized just about everything in my daily conversations with anyone.

I’ve really worked hard on this, and I do my best today to keep my distance from those who are like I once was. I’ve learned that the more I spend time around those that are highly negative, the more I start to become like them as well. On my recent vacation, I was on a cruise where it was apparent to my partner and I that the ship had an abundance of negativity present. During a massage that I splurged for, the masseuse commented similarly saying that the rest of the spa practictioners were noticing it as well.

It’s hard for me to fathom why there was so much negativity present in the first place. Just being on a ship in the carribean with sunny 80 degree days, having meals served to me in several courses daily, and having a room steward to clean up after me is more than most people will ever experience in their lifetime. My cruise stopped at five different islands in the carribean. At each island, I spent time on some exotic beach while the rest of the people I knew back home were dealing with another 24 inches of snow dropping and freezing cold weather while they went to work.

With the transition I’m going through to become a more God-centered individual, I have tried on every level to remain grateful for what I have in my life. For most of my life prior to the past few years, I was probably like the vast majority of the complainers on the ship I just sailed on. Spending a lot of money on a vacation in the past would raise the bar level for me on what I felt like I deserved. My expectations became higher and at the same time so did my dissastisfactions. It made me wonder if that was what was happening on my cruise. During it,  I noticed that when I spent time talking to people around the ship that were criticizing it or anything else for that matter, that I slipped into my old behaviors and became just as critical.

I’ve had more in my life than what 90 percent of the world’s population may ever see. I’ve been to places most never will be able to afford to go to. I’ve dined out at many four and five star restaurants when so many are starving to death somewhere in the world.  I’ve lived in homes that many homeless people would dream of living in. I’ve owned possessions such as cars or other gadgets that are considered luxuries and unobtainable to most families. And up until a few years ago, I was completely and utterly ungrateful for what I had and what I was still able to do. Over the past year, I’ve prayed to God to become more grateful on every level and in every area of my life. I write every night in a journal at least nine things that I’m grateful for in the day that has just passed. And I thank God verbally each and every moment when I’m experiencing something that I know most people might never be able to see or do or buy or own, in their entire lifetime.

Being on a cruise and having gourmet meals, visiting beautiful islands, and even just being able to take a vacation like that is something I’m extremely grateful to God for today. While the ship may have been full of negative people, there was one who was doing his best to focus on what was good and wonderful, than what was lacking and frustrating. I had my downfalls at moments during my vacation, but all in all, I was more positive than negative than any other time I’ve travelled in the past. I only have God to thank for that. I know the more I strive to be a God-centered individual, the more I will remain grateful in my life for all of what I have and all of what I experience.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

It was very cold today. Extremely cold. With a wind chill near -7 and another 4 to 8 inches of snow dropping on top of the few feet still on the ground, it made a good case to not leave the house at all. The cold weather is extremely difficult for me. As most people probably know, cold contracts and heat expands. That holds true with muscles as well. And for someone like me who deals with muscle and nerve pain quite a bit, cold weather is unbearable. Tonight, the group I call “home” for the center of my recovery here in Massachusetts had an engagement that I was tied to and would in turn have to leave my house for a few hours in the frigidity.

In the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous in Massachusetts, one of the things I find most fascinating is what this engagement was about. It was a commitment. In this state, most groups have a calendar that is maintained by a “bookie” who organizes dates where the members of their group will go to different places to speak about their experience, strength, and hope. It could be other meetings, hospitals, detox centers, halfway houses, or prisons. It’s considered part of a person’s 12th step work where they go out and give back. And each of those engagements on the calendar are called a “commitment”. Tonight, my home group had one out on a place nicknamed “Long Island”. Originally, over a century ago, the island was home to the outcasts of society such as lepers and mental patients. Today it is a center of alcohol and drug addiction recovery with various programs to help people that are dealing with getting clean and sober. The program I was to go to tonight to speak with my group was named Transitions.

About two hours before it was time to be at the building on Long Island for the commitment, I received a phone call from one of my group members who was the only other person able to attend tonight in this crazy weather. He informed me that he would not be able to go and apologized profusely. The circumstances were based around a friend of his that had overdosed and needed help and I completely understood. But it left me with a predicament. Each of these commitments are usually an hour long where the group members trade off speaking for a few minutes at a time. At a worse case scenario with two people, I would speak for 25 to 30 minutes and the other would be the same. With the cancellation, it left me to be the only speaker in front of about 35 to 40 people. I don’t have any problems speaking in front of people today but add in the below freezing temperatures, the snow that had come in earlier, wind gusts still up to 40mph, serious pains in my left leg, and feeling down in the doldrums, my brain was telling me to just stay home.

I’ve learned there are two me’s presently in my life. There is the “brain” me. And there is the “soul” me. My “brain” me is what wants quick fixes. It’s what wants at times to go back out there and live in addictions. It’s what tells me that drugs will make my pain go away. It’s what tells me that I’m never going to get better. And it’s what told me to stay home tonight. The “soul” me, well, that one tells me to keep going. It tells me that I’m going to heal and soon. It tells me that all of this pain is temporary. And it told me to go tonight and be the only speaker as that is what God would want of me. Remember those old cartoons where the angel “poofed” in on one shoulder and the devil “poofed” in on the other and both tried to make the person of whose shoulders they were on do something. That’s a lot like what went on tonight with me. After having no success getting any other group members to join me, the decision rested upon whether I was going to make the track out there alone or not in the freezing cold.

I’m happy to say that I made the decision to go. It’s a testament to where God is at in my life now. A year ago, I  probably would not have gone. I would have used any number of excuses. On my way to the meeting, I prayed to God to give me strength to deal with my pain and to speak from my heart with love and light and that I may be a vessel to inspire those there trying to get help from their addictions. I spoke for about 45 minutes with my story of recovery from the beginning to the end. At the end of the commitment, several came up to me and shook my hand and said it was very inspirational. In the past, I’d soak up all the glory into my ego. Today, I give it all to God. After all, I believe it’s God who motivated me to get in my car and go in these subzero temperatures. I believe it’s God who gave me the strength to speak with passion and love. And I believe it’s God who wanted me there in the first place alone so that I would be able to speak my whole story. It’s my hope that at least one person at Transitions tonight connected to my story enough to find a greater purpose in seeking a path to recovery and God.

I am not all seeing and all knowing, and I don’t really know how my presence tonight at this program out on Long Island made a difference. But what I do know is that my brain fights against my soul way too often. I’m grateful that I went with my soul’s choice as I believe I did God’s will in taking that path. I look forward to the day where my brain and my soul call a truce and work together to bring greater love to God and this planet and peace within me.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Working through addictions can hard, especially depending on what the addiction is. Some are much harder to remove than others. While some are as simple of never consuming or doing again the thing itself one is addicted to, others aren’t that simple.

Drinking alcohol, taking drugs, smoking a cigarette, having a caffeinated beverage, eating chocolate, and gambling all fall under one side of the spectrum in addictions. For me, those were easier to remove the phenomenon of craving that went with each of them. Why? Because I didn’t need any of them to function in this lifetime. None of them were life essential and after removing them from my system and going through withdrawal for each, life went on.

Unfortunately, my addictions transferred to ones that weren’t as simple as to just remove them from my life. What about overeating, codependency, and sex and love? A human being has to eat to sustain life. Unless a human being goes into the wilderness or a monastery to be away from people, being in connection with others is next to impossible to avoid as well. And as for sex and love, I have found this is a part of being human and even with long durations of celibacy and withdrawal from others, the drive never went away.

Codependency for me is something that took an intensive amount of therapy to get to the source of why it was that I ended up in relationships with others that I felt I couldn’t survive without. Ultimately it was the fear of being alone. No matter how bad the relationship was, I seemed to always stay in it because the idea of being alone was worse. Working through this one is an ongoing thing for me. Spending time alone and doing things in life by myself is a big part of my recovery with codependency. I’ve learned I can be happy by myself doing things such as puzzles, watching movies, reading, writing, going to the beach, and even traveling. Making sure I spend time alone and learning to have a healthy relationship with myself has led to me being able to be in healthy independent relationships with others.

Overeating is a little more challenging in that I know starving myself won’t make it go away. Slowing down in my life through meditation and working with a counselor helped to see this addiction and its triggers a little clearer. For me at least, the main reason why I overeat was to feel an endorphin rush that I got from the food itself. I know that might sound crazy but food can make one feel good when eating it. I love pizza for example. When I have a single slice I really enjoy it. It’s when I have a whole pizza in one sitting when it becomes a problem. Economics labels it as the “law of diminishing returns”. With each amount of consumption, less satisfaction happens. Sadly though, an addiction based mentality doesn’t think that way, they think more is better and creates more of that good feeling. Being mindful as I eat is the only way I know how deal with this. I watch my portions. I try to stay away from buffets. And I do my best to eat as healthy as possible. I’d rather overeat carrots and get a little bloated then eat several large fries at McDonalds and feel depressed the next day.

Then there’s sex and love addiction. I put this last because it’s the hardest for me. To be sexual truly is a part of being human for almost every person in this world. To fall in love with someone is many a person’s dream. Even worse, one can’t go anywhere today without seeing sex or love plastered in your face. Billboards and signs, racy commercials, TV shows and movies continuing to take it one step further and push the envelope, and God forbid one mistypes on an internet search tool that might result in over a million pornographic websites returned in the listings.

Unfortunately, my first sexual/love based experience in this life was when I was molested at 12 years old. While I had been attracted and also a friend to this much older adult prior to the incident, I never deserved to be taken advantage of by this person and I was never given any counseling around it after it happened. To make matters worse, my family never helped me to understand my sexuality or my hormones that I was feeling which had preceded even before that tragic event. So I was left to believe that what I experienced was normal. My life pattern became a stream of dominant, abusive men that I allowed to take advantage of me both sexually, monetarily, and emotionally and sadly, I felt excitement around those terrible relationships because it was my “norm”. When someone came into my life that really was a healthy person who could love me for me, I’d run away. True love was foreign. I didn’t experience it as a child. Deep sexual intimacy was also foreign. I had never experienced it from the time I first had a sexual encounter nor in any of the people that followed.

I’ve been working on removing the effects of this addiction for the past nine months. I’ve lived for more than 27 years of my life with that addiction in charge of me. It’s been over nine months now where I’ve not let it be in control. There are many actions I’ve had to take to no longer have it in charge of my life. Cutting ties with those that triggered me was one of the first things I had to do. I had so many people in my life that were either lustrous objects or friends with benefits. All of them are gone now. Staying away from any type of pornographic material was another. Sadly it’s everywhere now. So many magazines are incredibly racy now and like I had already mentioned, it doesn’t take much to find images on the internet. I avoid today the places that triggered me as well like bars, or rave scenes, or house parties. I used to fantasize and daydream sexually a lot in my life as well. I don’t anymore. I don’t allow myself to. All of it perpetuated the downfalls of this addiction.

I am happy to say that I am finding a lot more freedom today from the burdens of this addiction and really an addiction based life. My body is still recovering on every level from living so long in so many addictions. I know it takes time. Snapping my fingers and wishing all of it would just go away hasn’t happened and probably won’t ever happen for me or anyone else. Removing any addiction takes a lot of hard work, prayer, meditation, and focus. It is possible to find freedom from any addiction. From my own experience, the solution was putting God at the center of my attempt to heal from any one of them. When I tried to find healing on my own, it never happened and I just went right back to any number of them. Living in God’s will or as a 12 step program puts it, a Higher Power’s will, has brought me more peace than I ever experienced when I was active in any addiction.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson