The Twelfth Step

Have you ever had one of those days where things might have started off ok and then suddenly, one thing after another starts going haywire until you find yourself extremely flustered? For people like myself who are in recovery from former addictions, it is days like this that can put us in serious jeopardy with relapsing back into them.

Last week I actually had one of those types of days. While it began just fine, it didn’t stay that way as the day progressed. First my physical pains drastically increased in my body. Then my car developed a problem that the repair shop couldn’t seem to fix after repeated attempts and visits to them on the same day. And finally I was notified in e-mail that the tool I have been using to write this blog and all the archived articles are going to disappear by the end of June. By the time the evening came that day, I can honestly say I wasn’t having the best train of thoughts. In fact, I became the exact opposite of the positive energy I normally try to put forth each and every day. And this is the precise moment when a person in recovery like myself can succumb to the ego’s temptation to go back to an addiction for a little comfort.

Thankfully, my recovery is a lot stronger today to handle days such as this. My relationship with my Higher Power is also much closer and I know that helps me immensely when one thing after another seems to spiral out of control on a day like I had last week. Unfortunately I allowed myself to go a little too far into some dark thoughts that evening and it took prayer, meditation, and some help from my partner to pull me out of them.

I can see why a person might want to go back to their addiction when their day gets completely unraveled like mine did. Addictions are all about numbing oneself and what better way to do that by picking up a drink, a drug, or some other type of addiction. Sadly, the relief one gets from doing so is really just an illusion and only temporary. Those unfortunate situations that arose on that frustrating day all still need to be addressed, as they didn’t go away. What does go away though when a person heads down this path is their sobriety and recovery.

My sobriety and recovery today are the most important things I have in my entire life. Because of them I have that deeper connection to my Higher Power, I have friends, I have a partner, and I have a lot more happiness and joy within my life. Each of these things helped me not to relapse last week when I experienced that domino effect of a day. And I haven’t relapsed on any of the other ones that have happened in previous years either. No one says in recovery that life is always going to be filled with blue skies and sunny days. There may be plenty of them, but there also are going to be days when things might not flow so well. And it’s on those days when we must use the strength in our recovery to make it through them. I’m so thankful I did last week when I had one of those days and I ironically I felt a lot better physically the next day, the repair shop found and fixed the problem with my car, and I developed a plan of action to begin migrating my blog over to a new tool. I’m glad I didn’t relapse, as I know I wouldn’t have seen any of these things happen the next day if I had done so.

So if you are in recovery from an addiction and happen to being having “one of those days” like I had last week, I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and realize that a relapse is gong to do nothing good for you in the long run. Utilize the tools in your recovery, seek your Higher Power through meditation and prayer, and know in doing so, you will be able to navigate through this day and any other one of them when they arise again…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

I spent this past weekend visiting my alma mater, Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). The purpose of my visit there was to meet with my fraternity and provide an hour-long seminar on alcohol and drug education. Given that my chapter is currently on probation for an alcohol-based infraction, I felt it was best to present my story of recovery to them in the hopes it might help prevent any future infractions. While the presentation was a success on every level, I’ve been contemplating the college drinking and drugging issue and realize now why it was so hard for me to see my own addiction issues all those years ago when I was an undergrad.

My path to serious alcoholism and drug addiction truly took off during my college years. In fact, it began as soon as I left home and was no longer under the watchful eye of my parents. During my freshman year at RIT, I was drunk on the very first evening after my mother had dropped me off and headed back home. I had realized that I could let loose and do whatever I wanted and not get in trouble anymore. After my first night of partying, it became a regular ritual to let loose, especially on the weekends.

There always seemed to be a party going on somehow on campus and it was usually not too hard to figure out where they were. Even campuses such as RIT that state they are “dry” are really not; you just have to know where to go. I always found some party to attend, especially when I became a fraternity brother at the end of my freshman year. While I thought I could control my drinking and drugging issues by becoming a member of that fraternity, I soon found out that it only ended up making my disease even worse. There was at least one brother who was always openly willing to party with me on any given night.

Regardless of the fact that I was in a fraternity or not really didn’t matter though as I regularly rationalized that my drinking and drugging behaviors were normal. That’s only because of the fact I saw so many others on campus who were consistently doing the very same thing. My attitude was “If they are doing it, then why can’t I?” Even when I was put on probation on campus for a few incidents I created from my addiction, the punishment I received was quite light and thus taught me nothing other than it was ok to keep drinking and drugging.

Walking around the RIT campus last weekend brought back many of these old memories. Sadly, most of my undergrad years were spent in drunken stupors or off-kilter highs on some type of drug. One of the first places I walked by on campus was an area where I had remembered throwing up. It made me wish for a moment that I could go back in time and enjoy my college years in a different way.

Alas, things happened as they were meant to for me and I’m still extremely grateful to my Higher Power that my college drinking and drugging days are long behind me. It’s a blessing that I was able to find sobriety soon after college ended because for many other undergrads both inside and outside of my fraternity, that day may not come as fast. When four years are spent getting drunk and high more than not, it’s going to become quite difficult to curb the behavior once the college years are over.

The college drinking and drugging issue is truly a severe problem throughout our country. The only way to change this is to start providing much better education surrounding the downfalls of doing it, to bring more people from the recovery world onto campuses to share their addiction journeys, and to find healthier ways to have fun and blow off steam. Until then, people are going to continue following in the same footsteps that I did so long ago when I was just doing what everyone else seemed to be doing around me, which was drinking and drugging to excess.

So if you happen to be an undergrad reading this right now and can relate to any of this, it’s my hope that you may find happiness during your college years and create many wonderful memories. But it’s also my hope that none of them will have to come from using alcohol and drugs. In the long run, they are only going to make you forget one of the most special times of your life that you really only get to do once. So try to make the best of it by staying clean and sober from alcohol and drugs ok?

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson