I have tried for over a decade to recover on my own. Only in the past two years have I started to daily incorporate working with others and it has made all the difference.
At a training a few years back with leaders in a local church I was sharing this concept and the main leader asked me: “I have a guy who is desperate to find sobriety. But he doesn’t want to attend meetings and is too timid to reach out, what else can I offer him?”
I don’t think he liked my answer, “Wait until the pain of the solution is less than the pain of the problem.” Old timers in AA have shared that they often had a $5 or $10 bill with them in their pocket for the guy at meetings who was still seeking rock bottom. Give them the money and send them back to the bar for another dose of what doesn’t work longer term. While certainly I don’t like to see people suffer in silence, I have yet to figure out how to help them move into the light before they are ready. So I surrender that and stand by for when they are ready, provide love and support as I can but resist the temptation to become codependent or try to do it for them.
I have spent the past many years trying to understand why the concept of reaching out is so hard to practice for many and why it is so successful when it is implemented. The best I can figure is that acting out in addiction is self-medicating and selfish by nature with a large blanket of supposed secrecy. And reaching out and being truthful and vulnerable is the complete opposite of those selfish and secretive actions.
When deep in my addiction I recall well my association with two scriptures, the first is in Revelations, 6:16 (NLT): “And they cried to the mountains and the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of the one who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb’.”
The second is Luke 12:3 (NLT): “Whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be shouted from the housetops for all to hear!”
I never wanted my deepest secrets to be known and I’d rather a mountain fall on me than to have my past known by all!!! I’d spent so much energy trying to bury and hide my mistakes there was no way I was willing to be open and honest because it hurt too much.
Recovery is the polar opposite of both of these scriptures – especially when I work with others who share with me their story of the worst days of their lives without shame. Often I’ve seen that they are showing me their scars, that the pain and the rawness of something so intimate, personal, embarrassing, and full of shame is now talked about with ease and shared in praising God for His goodness, mercy, Love, and healing.
When I worked with my first sponsor in 2015, I had six weeks off of work and was at home all day, every day, driving my wife nuts. I shared this with my sponsor at that time and how hurt I was that my wife didn’t want to spend all day every day with me. He laughed and asked how many guy friends I had. I said, “my dad, a few guys at work.” He said, “No, if you were in jail in Mexico, who would you call?” I had no one.
He assigned me this homework: Find about a dozen guys, half working on recovery , the other half just guys you can hang out with. Be patient, take your time.
It was very scary. I had a lot of false starts. I had a lot of rejection. But eventually I started to find guys who were willing to battle for my heart and I was willing to battle for theirs. At first, I would only reach out in dire situations, usually AFTER acting out. Then I sometimes was better at reaching out in the moment of being tempted. Now I’ve found that proactively reaching out on good days and bad days puts my heart right, puts God at my center, and heals my abandonment, codependency, and other wounds before they have time to fester.
