How is recovery at the start?

Everyone has their own journey, naturally. Consequently, recovery can be extremely different.

However, we all have the exact same human condition with the same feelings. Those feelings of, say, happiness are the same whether within someone in Australia and their cousin in England or in you today and in an ancestor of yours from 5,000 years ago.

There are certain physical laws with humans, such as if we walk barefoot on glass we will cut our feet. Likewise, there are certain emotional and spiritual laws – if we focus on negatives for instance we will feel down; if we write gratitude lists we will feel uplifted.

If we steal from someone, we feel bad. If we give to others – we feel good.

All of this is inbuilt for human survival.

How is recovery going to work for me?

There’s one thing I’ve heard repeatedly at the beginning of recovery. That is people are eager to discover how recovery is going to work for them. I recall asking precisely that: how can any of this specifically help me?

But don’t bother about that about now. The vital thing is that you just start to get well, to move into a safe place. Or you’ll stay in a cold, dark and treacherous – possibly fatal – place.

Imagine getting rescued from a runaway train heading full speed towards a wall. You’re trapped by fallen heavy baggage on the carriage and what’s more directly behind the wall is a tank full of explosive gas.

Of course in this scenario no one is going to ask of someone who’s arrived to help them: “Okay, now before you go on, what exactly is the plan to save me here? And are you quite sure that will work for me. I mean, I am dressed differently than anyone else on this train…”

The essential thing is to get off before the explosive crash.

Focus on hope

Focus on the hope that rises when someone appears in order to help you out of the predicament. If they’ve jumped on board quite a few runaway trains, and helped rescue many others before you, just open your ears…

Do as they suggest. Even more so, if they tell you that they were once on that runaway train and know the way off and to a place of safety.

Later I gained an understanding of how all this works. But only because I wanted to out of my own interest.

Yet it was really 15 years into my recovery before I truly started to understand what is at the centre of it all.

I could still have my transformed life of recovery without understanding a bit of how it works. What was and is the most important thing is to know that it works if you work it.

I liken that to going to a swimming pool. If you just stood in the shallow end you could see how to swim and you could see the benefits to those people swimming, putting the action in. But if you just watched and didn’t put the effort in, you’d get out of that pool without any real change.

Recovery in the beginning might seem strange as the emotional mist clears away. There may be many emotions – particularly if the recovery is from a drink or drug addiction that has been numbing feelings.

That is why recovery can never be done alone. It needs guidance from someone who knows the way.

It is never on our own terms either. If we could have fixed the problem, we wouldn’t have a problem.

Slaying your dragon

Recovery is taking the journey inside to understand why we are taking the drugs, drinking  excessively, why we are consumed with anxiety and depression or gambling or a relationship or working to an early lonely grave.

We have to look inside to discover what is causing the dis-ease. Understandably this can seem an extremely terrifying prospect.

It’s a major factor why we talk about needing a rock bottom before recovery is possible for many people. A gift of desperation.

Although recovery is entirely possible before breaking down or hitting rock bottom, it definitely does put some people’s back to the wall. They are finally and, at last, sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

In mythical terms it is when someone realises that the dragon that’s been scorching them and ruthlessly clawing at them every day and swinging them round at will with its powerful tail, is finally going to slay them. They will die – unless they slay the dragon first.

For that immense task to beat these formidable creatures – that really represent our greatest fears – a mentor is needed. That’s someone who has slayed their own dragon and who knows how to do it.

And who also knows how to guide the person to claim their treasure that this dragon has been guarding. The treasure is always there whether the dragon is slayed or not. But it’s only for the person whose dragon it is to slay.

Seven essential traits for recovery 

For successful and enduring recovery someone needs to have these seven vital qualities:

• Honesty. 
• Courage.
• Humility.
• Open-mindedness.
• Desire.
• Self-discipline.
• Dedication.

The fact is that nobody comes dancing with joy into recovery. Most people feel desperate, battered and with no self-esteem.

So it’s not unusual for someone to think they don’t have all or even any of these characteristics. But they always do.

They may be buried deep down. But they are there as part of having this condition of being a human.

Most people coming into recovery will need some encouragement to believe they are there and to find them.

That is all part of this miraculous process.