The Stages Of Recovery

The stages of the focus of recovery as described by someone who has been working on recovery for the past year are great words of wisdom. Listen to learn what they are.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The Addiction Recovery Podcast. It's just a podcast. podcast it's for entertainment and information only so let's keep it in that light all right have a good time learn something and then get the real help that you need from a professional somebody that i know that's been working very hard on his recovery came up with something that I think is just golden. So I thought I'd steal it from him and tell you about it. I'm going to call this the stages of recovery because even though this is not the official stages of recovery, but these were his stages of recovery. And I think it was just absolutely brilliant. So here we go. You ready? Stages of recovery. He put it into four categories. He put it into what you work on as you're working on recovery in the order that you do it. Now, these would apply to people who are in a relationship and have children. So if you don't have that, maybe you can modify what I'm about to say to fit your specific situation. So here we go. So he's got them in the order of what you work on. So this is the stages that you work on in the category. So drinking, then self, then marriage, and then kids. So it's drinking, self, marriage, and kids. And the reason that he put them in this order is because he was struggling with trying to get the work done on the stages because he had them, he felt, out of order because he was trying to work on um he was trying to work on him on drinking he got that part right so you got to stop drinking and he got that part so he he'd stop drinking but then he was working on uh sometimes he would work on his kids and then other times he'd work on his marriage but then he would also then shift over and start working on himself and then self and then kids and then marriage and forget about the other part so he just kept like forgetting or not engaging in in the parts and he couldn't get it right so that's how he came to the conclusion that it was actually drinking self marriage and then kids and so like we talk about um you know in in uh relationships it's your your marriage is first then your kids and then everything else If you are a Christian or a Jew, it's God, then marriage, then kids, then everything else. So the idea that your marriage is first, right? So you're putting your kids after your marriage. Now, seemingly that could be not the way you're supposed to do it. However, if you think about it, your marriage is important, and if your marriage is fractured and destroyed... Your kids are a mess, right? So you can focus on your kids all you want, but if you don't have a good relationship with your spouse, then you're going to have some problems, right? So many times people will get it in the wrong order, particularly drinking. I've had many, many clients who do not put drinking or drug use as their primary focus. They start working on their marriage. There are so many times when I'll get a couple that comes in And one of them is severely addicted to their drug of choice or moderately addicted to their drug of choice. And they come to me for marriage counseling. And it's interesting because the thing that they've not been able to do is extinguish the addiction first. And so then the spouse, it could be the husband or the wife, the one who's not having an addiction problem will drag the other one who has an addiction problem into counseling because the marriage is not working. And the addict can't understand why they're in counseling because everything's fine according to them. And the one that is the sober or clean one in the relationship is just at wit's end because the relationship that's not working because they have a mistress or what's the word you use for somebody who is a female that has a mister? But you have somebody that you're having an extramarital affair with. And in this case, it's a drug.

UNKNOWN 6:00

Right.

SPEAKER_00 6:01

And you can't compete against that. And the one who has the addiction problem can't understand why the other is having so many issues in the relationship. And it's because they're fighting against this person, not a person, this drug that they have who has taken the place of their spouse. And so they do not and will not engage in extinguishing the addiction. and then work on the marriage. So you can't do anything in your marriage. If the destructive force is the enemy of addiction that is attacking your marriage, you must go after the enemy first. So they come in, they start working with me and invariably somebody starts to mention, Hey, you know, there's drugs or alcohol going on. I'm like, okay, well that's a problem. Um, And of course, the addict is in complete denial, saying everything's fine. It's not me. It's you. All the other nonsense that goes on. I mean, and you know, because you're probably either doing that or been subjected to that yourself. And they deny anything. And so you can't really get anywhere. So the marriage counseling ends really quickly in those instances. It usually lasts one or two sessions and the person walks out. And that's the end of the counseling. I give my card to them. And say, look, you know, we've identified a real significant problem in your relationship and it is drugs and alcohol. So let's, let's fix that. And so they agree, then they disagree and everything else that goes on. And nobody wants anything to do with anything because nobody wants to tackle the 800 pound gorilla in the room, the enemy. Addiction. So the first thing that must go is tackling the addiction and extinguishing it. So then you can begin to work on the relationship. Now, in the example of the person that was talking about these wise words, it happened to be alcohol. So they started with drinking. But if you wanted to, you know, if it's drugs, if it's cocaine or heroin or whatever, okay, well, then that's the issue. So it's really not necessarily drinking alcohol. But it's substance abuse, right? And that's number one. So get into residential treatment. Start working on recovery. Stop focusing on everything else instead. You know, fixing a marriage, fixing a problem with a kid, fixing, you know, the problems that you don't like your job or whatever, your location. You can't move away from your problems. You just move away from your location. Because wherever you go, there you are. And everybody has heard that a million times. So the first thing is to work on the addiction. Because that is an identifiable, significant problem. And as an addict... when you're looking at your problems and you're trying to figure out how do I get better? How do I get to a better place? Have some insight, use your, use your insight, what little you may have left, but use that to say, okay, I, I'm destroying everything. Maybe, maybe, you know, if you listen, if you're going to a counselor and that counselor understands addiction, listen to your counselor and the counselor says, Hey, I, This is a problem. Surrender to that. Stop fighting it. I know you've probably heard it, so stop fighting it. So once he began to work on that, and it took him a while. It took him the normal six months, eight months, nine months before he could really start to get a handle on his addiction. And he stopped with the behaviors of addiction. He then was struggling with self-marriage and kids. His work was his work, and so that was not an issue. It didn't negatively impact his work. He was able to still function, and I know some of you perhaps have lost your job because of your substance abuse, and okay, that's an issue. But the working on self... is what in his estimate was the very next thing you do. And I would completely agree with that because I'm actually the one that kind of led him down this path and told him these things. He was just spitting it back to me. But you work on self. And that work on self is not the drinking part, right? Or the drugs. Remember, that was the first thing you tackled. The second thing is self. Meaning... Your trauma, your history, the reasons that your relationships fall apart. Now, if you've addressed your addiction and the stuff that you did as an addict, you've already started to begin the work beyond just extinguishing the bad behavior of the drug usage or alcohol usage. You've already addressed that. But now it moves more towards like, who am I and what have I been acting like? And in that case, you really need to understand what it is you've been doing and in your relationships. So addressing those things, working on self. Maybe your drug usage has made you very fragile. You've lost your teeth. You've got heart problems. You've got liver problems. You've got neuropathy. You've got diabetes. the wet brain, right? And your brain, you can't remember anything. So you got to feed yourself well. You got to exercise. You got to learn how to sleep again. You need to shore up that part of it. When you're offering yourself up to the world, either to friends or family and you, you know, as being in a relationship, physically and mentally healthy people engage in relationships. Those who are not mentally and physically healthy cannot engage in a relationship And if they do, it's not in a healthy way and they are not healthy themselves. So you must engage in that kind of self-help. And it seems... when you're coming into recovery, that that seemingly is a selfish thing to do when in fact it is not. So you engage in those self-help things that are helping others around you, right? So you want to have relationships, start working on those things. I can't tell you how many people that I work with who do not sleep well, they do not eat well, and they never exercise and they're miserable. They're physically a wreck. They are emotionally a wreck. And the idea of becoming more physical. And listen, for me, I tell them, take a walk. Start walking regularly. Just go outside and start walking. Start with that. Begin a process of... active motion in your life. You don't have to join a gym, get a personal trainer and start working out like crazy. You don't start with that. You may go that route, but you don't start with that. But what I'm talking about is just go out and start walking. Go walk around the block. Take your dog for a walk. Take your spouse for a walk. Take your kids for a walk. But just get out and start moving. Movement is important. Once you've done that for a while, you can move on to some structured exercise program where you're either increasing your heart rate, you're breathing, you're sweating, and it could be anything. And it doesn't matter what condition you're in to start with. It doesn't matter what you've done to yourself with your addiction. And most people, especially if it's alcohol, by the time I get them, they have had significant health problems and they don't feel good. It just doesn't feel good. Other drugs can affect you in different ways. Cocaine, crystal meth, you've lost tons of weight. You probably have a lot of muscle wasting. If it's heroin, you're just very apathetic and you don't really want to do anything. You're just so used to just nodding off and zoning out that you're not motivated to do much of anything. But you can do things to improve your health. It's just how are you going to do it. So I don't care what you're doing. I really don't. It doesn't matter. Get out and start walking. Start playing golf, tennis. Start playing, oh my gosh, what's the name of the sport that everybody's, pickleball? Do anything. Archery, go hiking. That's a solo thing. It doesn't cost anything. Just a pair of shoes. Just go out and do something. If you're so inclined to, And you do like I love going to gyms. I've been in gyms all my adult life. I work out all the time. I enjoy that. That's me. But just be outside. Be inside. Start doing something where you're breathing heavy and you're sweating. Right. Get your heart rate up. That's working on self. Start learning how to be social. Many times people lose their socialization skills, especially with addiction, because most addicts that I run into, they are not social. They tend to isolate and cut themselves off from other people because that's how they're engaging in their drug of choice. So start your socialization. And if it's going to meetings, go to church, join some civic group, do something where you're interacting with other people so you can re-engage in society and you can start to learn how to talk to people. Come out of your shell. Usually when people are in recovery, they are embarrassed and upset about what they've done. And they start to hide. And the shame and embarrassment things really takes things away from you. And so you've got to get back in and socialize with people. And, again, I don't care where it is. It's just not with a bunch of actively engaged drug addicts or alcoholics. That's not good. But anything else, join some participation group, right? So people who hike, you know, go to Meetup. In this country, we have a thing called Meetup. It's an online thing. source for finding people who have similar interests and they go to movies or they go hiking or they go play frisbee golf or disc golf sorry or fly fishing or whatever tennis or pickleball or whatever they do they meet up for those things they meet up at museums so like on Thursday or Friday night we're going to meet up and we're going to watch a movie and then we're going to talk about it at a restaurant and we're going to have dinner and talk about the movie something like that. We have that in this country. In other countries, I don't know what you've got, but just engage in socialization activities where you can learn to re-socialize and to work through your own self-stigmatizing thoughts about your addiction. So you got physical, you got social, and then you've got mental. Listen, man, if you've got depression and it's catastrophic depression to you or anxiety, and it's got you having panic attacks, things like that, you need to get into counseling to address that. Don't become a victim of your own self-doing. So engage in things that are helping your emotional well-being, not related to social, but emotional. If you have tremendous mental health issues that are crippling you, And I'm not talking about schizophrenia or something mentally ill. No, but just mental well-being. Get help. Go to counseling. Get a therapist. Start working through that stuff. You can't do that by yourself, and you can't do it with your spouse. Get professional help. It will put you in a place where you can recover. So you've got physical, you've got social, and you've got mental well-being. it's the trifecta. So when you get to that place, you're going to feel much better. Then you begin to work on if, and in this case, his example was marriage. But if you have a relationship, whether you're dating somebody or you're living together because you're married, whatever the situation is, but you have a romantic relationship. And I know Gen Z doesn't have a lot of romantic relationship stuff going on in this country and perhaps in other countries but uh there's a significant lacking of that but if you're in a relationship with somebody especially if you've been dragging them through the addiction you know dragging them through your addiction you you work on that and and you can't do that if you haven't worked on yourself Right? Because you're still a hot mess. So you've got to work on self before you can work on the relationship. But when you enter into working on the relationship, what are you actually working on? What you're actually working on in your relationship is the relationship. It's not the other person. And if you're listening to this and you're the person who has been subjected to the addict and you don't have addiction yourself or you're... and you're codependent or you're not, but you can't be pointing your finger at the other person and expect that you're in counseling together and you're working on your relationship because you're working on the other person. It doesn't work that way. That's not what it is. When you go into couples counseling, the relationship is the client, not the two individuals in it. It's the relationship that's the client. So the two of you are now working with a therapist to help the relationship. That means that what you're doing is you're pointing the finger at yourself instead of the other person and saying, I'm entering this relationship, I'm staying in this relationship, but I'm going to work on myself. And these are the things that I need to work on. It's so easy and we're so conditioned to look at your spouse and say, You're a mess and you need to fix this and ignore your own stuff, right? So you turn that finger that you're pointing at the other person, both of you, and turn it towards yourself and say, I'm going to work on myself. Because even if the relationship doesn't survive. you still have to be a healthier person, right? And the next relationship you get into is going to be a big hot mess as well if you don't do that. So make sure you're doing that. So you're working on yourself and that's how you work on your marriage. You work on self and then you work with a counselor who helps kind of reintroduce you to the spouse because addiction changes you. Recovery also changes you. And so whether you are the person who is the quote-unquote subject of the addiction, you're the addict, or you're the person that is watching the addict self-destruct, that sobriety kicks in, getting clean, getting sober. Well, guess what? You're dealing with a different person. And so you need to work on you as the addict is in recovery. My standard thing that I've said, and I've said this in many of these podcasts, is that when somebody is In recovery, the addict is six to eight, maybe nine months ahead in recovery from the person that was watching the addiction happen. So if I'm the addict and my wife is not an addict, but she's been watching me spiral into addiction, I'm now getting into recovery. Three months in, my wife is not believing anything I'm saying. She's not trusting it and she's not believing it. Six months in, she's starting to see a consistent change, but she's going to still be looking at me with an extremely critical eye. Nine months, she's starting to get it. She's starting to let her guard down a bit. By the time 12 months rolls around, and especially if I've been going to NA or AA meetings, and I'm going to have a one-year chip celebration, guess who's standing next to me? My spouse. She hasn't been in those meetings, but she is there at that one-year chip celebration while she watches me receive my chip for being sober for a year. And it's a big deal, right? She now is going to be understanding that my change is real. And that's probably the first time that there's been a strong indicator that this is an authentic and genuine change. So the marriage, the relationship work that you do, After you've worked on yourself is the foundation for the change. That is the change and the blossoming, if you will, of a new relationship that is different because now I have significantly changed because I've been walking through fire and now I am. done with walking through fire and I am changed. So my spouse has also been changed because there's been so much tragedy that she's been exposed to at the same time in my recovery or in my addiction rather. And now in my recovery, she's seen something. So she's going to change too. And it doesn't matter if it's a husband or wife. I mean, that's just kind of what happens if you're the addict and you're the husband or you're the addict and you're the wife. There is change. So now we go to the last part, which is if you have children, that change that those children are seeing, if they are under the age of 18, they have no choice about where they are. They're just there. And they don't have any choice about what they're exposed to. They are just there. And so if they are experiencing negative stuff, they have no control over it. They need foundational change in the marriage. They need a demonstration of of a solid relationship before you can start to bring them closer to you. Now, children, interestingly, they are easily damaged and they are very resilient at the same time. So while they are damaged, if they're subjected to the experience of having an addict parent, of course, but remember, well, I wouldn't say remember, I've said this before, so that's maybe what I'm saying, remember, All they are concerned about is they want mom and dad in the same house at the same time. They don't know or care what's going on in your head. And the younger they are, the less they care. They just know that they attach themselves to you and their safety depends on you. And if addiction has taken that safety away and made you crazy and erratic and irresponsible, they're hurt by that. They are genuinely hurt by that and traumatized. And many times those people end up in offices like mine talking to therapists like me. And that's just a fact, right? But when you are in recovery, it is important that you establish safety around the relationship with your children. And you've worked on the addiction issue. You've worked on yourself and now you've worked on your marriage. They have something to actually cling to. So they're going to cling to it. They're going to see that the relationship is solid and they can trust it. It may take them a while. They may not believe you, but they do really just want stability and consistency. Take the example of if you have young children or you've had young children in your life as your children. You know that if you are on an erratic schedule of feeding, sleeping, nap time, and activity, they are not going to be doing very well. They like consistent times for naps. They like consistent times for meals because that makes them feel safe. And they do very, very well. And so... If you've been acting erratically, passing out in front of them, not responding, not going to school, not going to school events, not caring for them, not feeding them properly or on a regular schedule, no clean clothes, things like that, they don't do well. in anything else. They're not going to do well in school. They're not going to do well with their friends. They're not going to be sleeping well. They're going to have nightmares. They're going to have, you know, all this insecurity causes instability. So if you present to them all of a sudden now stability in the forms of consistency, they will fall into that pattern very well, quickly, much more than your spouse would. But there's damage that's hidden and that comes out later. So don't think you're going to get away with it Without doing some work with them on them. So the relationship that you change with your children, depending on their age, is one of establishing a sense of safety and consistency in their life. If they are older and they're teenagers and they've been subjected to your craziness that's been escalating over time, it's going to take you much more effort and maybe even family counseling. together with your spouse to work on those relationships and have them be able to work through their anger and resentment, the contempt that they feel because mom or dad or both were inconsistent and crazy and it drove them crazy. And you know what? When you come out of that, it'll be a much better life for them and long-term, you will have a better life with them. So you must do those things to help And you've got to withstand the relationship change with these poor young children who had no choice and got subjected to stuff and are going to be needing to hear the words, you know, I'm sorry and please forgive me for doing these things throughout their lives. It might be something that comes back to you after 10 or 15 or 20 years, you know, comes back up again. But that's okay. Right. Because you're clean and sober and you did things that were wrong or some jackassery that went on. And, you know, you just work through it. So the stages of recovery, drinking, self, marriage and then kids. Very wise words. Very well put. And I think I like the order. I like the subject matter order. order of that and I like the focus on those areas in that order. I think it's a formula for success. So if you're really looking at trying to get into recovery, I think that's it. Drinking, self, marriage, then kids. Well, another one of the episodes of Doc Shock, Your Addiction Lifeguard. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. I know I have. And I hope you learned something from it. You know, the one thing that I like to always tell people is it's not worth ending your life trying to save your addiction. It's the other way around. Get rid of the addiction. Get your life back. And if you need to do that, you can reach out to me through my website, WellspringMindBody.com. And you can ask me questions or make an appointment Talk to me. If you're not going to do that or you're in another country, you can reach out to me too. But go to rehab. Get a counselor. Get some help. Get into recovery. Do it. Meetings, groups, whatever. So that's it for this episode of Doc Shock. You're Dixon Lifeguard. I'm Jacques DeBruker saying see ya.