PERSPECTIVE

OUTSIDE THE BOX

If nothing changes nothing changes. How many times have we heard that at meetings? I remember an old-timer telling a newcomer, "The only thing we're going to ask you to do is to change your whole life." Anyone who has been around the recovery process for any appreciable time knows the wisdom of this statement.

This book is all about making substantive life changes at many levels. Most of what will be offered will not seem dramatic or difficult, but I can assure the reader that absorbing and implementing some or all of these insights and recommendations has a high probability of creating very positive changes to the trajectory of one's life.

A key to viewing and implementing what's being offered is the willingness to try things outside our current comfort zone. All of what's offered below are concepts and tools being utilized by numerous people in various recovery communities. Each has shown the potential to assist the individual in achieving a more balanced and serene recovery.

THE NATURE Of ADDICTION

I'd like to clarify something that is largely overlooked or ignored by a substantial segment of the recovery community. Almost all program groups identify themselves as dealing with an addiction to a specific substance or behavior. The meetings are identified as being for an alcoholic, compulsive overeater, love and sex addict, etc. While this is very effective in helping the suffering addict find their way to the program, it tends to overlook a grander reality. The disease of addiction is bigger than any one of its physical or social manifestations. Once the disease is in place, even if the addict shows little tendency to indulge in any other form of addictive or compulsive behavior, the tendency to do so is already in place and will emerge given the opportunity.

Here is a key takeaway. The disease is addiction, not alcoholism or drug addiction or inability to eat rationally. All those addictions and many more are present to a greater or lesser degree in all who have developed addictive disease. Given the right circumstances, any one of them can creep in to replace those that may currently be in remission. True abstinence is not simply removing the compulsion to use our primary substance or behavior. It means having reached a level in the recovery process where we no longer have the need to use any mechanism to escape.

That all in recovery have the tendency to switch addictions is a hard-to-deny reality. How many have found themselves not drinking but now consuming 10 cups of coffee a day, or putting on significant weight by enjoying a pint of ice cream every evening, or ingesting an extra meal at the pancake house with the gang after the meeting? How many compulsive overeaters find it easier to stay on their food plan if they include wine as part of the plan? In my experience, such behaviors are common but not readily identified as problematic or as having switched addictions.

I remember being at an AA meeting in the spring of 1976 when a member of the group made a remarkable statement as to why we hadn't seen him for a while. Hal related that he'd started going to OA as well as AA and replied, "I'm taking my addictions in the order in which they were killing me." At the time I laughed, but over the years I've come to appreciate the deep wisdom of that statement. The many-faceted nature of addictive disease is a tender trap and few in recovery haven't taken the bait.

The purpose of all addictions, be it to a substance or a behavior, is to still unpleasant emotional chatter in the mind. Once the addictive dynamic is firmly in place, unless the addict finds healthy ways to reduce the mental noise, they will either live in a state of emotional discomfort, or will find themselves falling prey to one or more of the other addictive processes in their quest for emotional relief.

It's not necessary to understand the details of how the mind is emotionally wired to understand where the mental noise comes from. Many of us heard in school that the psyche is made up of three main operative elements — the ego that we use to manage day to day experiences, a repressed pure predatory animal element called the id, and an overall modulating element called the super ego or conscience. The ego's primary purpose is survival and over the millennia, it has learned to use pleasure and gain to achieve that goal. The ego has no concept of a Higher Power since it thinks it is totally responsible for its own survival. For the most part, the ego functions very much like a self-centered animal and is rarely content with its circumstances. Like most animals, untamed, it can be not only disruptive, but dangerous.

Bill Wilson, the co-founder of AA, was once asked if he could summarize the AA program process in a few words. His answer: "It's all about deflation of the ego at depth." What Bill was suggesting was that in order to achieve reasonable emotional sobriety the recovering addict needs to find ways of stilling the mental noise that is a dominant feature of the active ego. That is the purpose of the 12 steps and the many adjunctive recovery tools that have been added to the recovery process over the decades.

The ego, at its core, is really just an evolved animal. All animal species from bacteria to humans do not have the capacity to generate their own food. Plants can produce their own nutrients through the process of photosynthesis but animals lack that ability. Therefore, in order to survive they must search out a source of food and find ways of staying safe as they forage. Over the millennia, as animal species evolved, they learned more effective search tools and ways to protect themselves during the search. The most evolved animal species, we humans, still at our emotional core manifest those basic instincts, to find what we feel we need to survive and to stay safe in the process. The amazing complexity of the human body and mind center around these two most basic, core, instinctual drives.

Unfortunately, the evolved ego has somehow gotten its priorities distorted. Despite being surrounded by ample sources of nutrients and all the necessary elements for its survival it still thinks like a primitive animal. Over time its insatiable urge to forage has transitioned from searching for physical food to a need to find or create emotional food. The ego has actually evolved sophisticated mechanisms to create the psychic food it intuits it needs to survive. The unfortunate reality is that the main way it does this is by creating trouble. The evolved ego seeks its food in conflict, chaos, emotionality and all the other mental gyrations we all experience as part of being human. Put succinctly, the ego feeds itself by 'juicing off the day-to-day conflicts and challenges of life. If there isn't a problem to juice off it will do what it can to create one. As one wag said at a meeting, "my ego is a problem-seeking missile." The essence of the recovery process is to tame the unruly ego until it becomes relatively silent revealing the true core of our humanity which is stillness, peace and joy.

CONCEPT Of WELLNESS

For those whose lives have been transformed by the recovery process there is little question that simply stopping the consumption of their drug has been life-changing. There is very little in one's life that an active addiction doesn't impact negatively, so simply becoming abstinent is a real game changer. But as those whose recovery has extended significantly beyond the initial euphoria over getting clean can attest, becoming abstinent is only the first rung on the ladder we must climb to achieve any reasonable quality of living. That is what the journey we call recovery is all about.

What are we talking about when we use the term recovery? Obviously, it's more than being abstinent. Is it now being able to do the things that our addictions made difficult or impossible? Of course, and more. I think the answer is best captured by The Promises on pages 83 and 84 of the "Big Book" of AA. "We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness." You bet. "We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us." Absolutely. "Are these extravagant promises?" Absolutely not. In fact, none of the promises is over-stated, as anyone who has made the recovery process the centerpiece of their lives can attest. As the "Big Book" states, "They are being fulfilled among us - sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them." One thing should be noted when reading The Promises. They are all open-ended statements. They are assertions that suggest that each promise can be realized at ever greater, deeper and more robust levels over time, if one continues to expand their involvement in the recovery process.

I would like to add an observation from my years of medical practice to our discussion of achieving the promises. People came to my practice because they were physically sick or emotionally troubled and were asking for help in finding relief. But over the years very few ever came asking how to structure their lives so as to not get sick, or for help in achieving the fullest measure of wellness. Unfortunately, it's been my experience that a majority of those entering recovery view success in the program in a similar way.

If we step back and recall the discussions we've been part of at most meetings over the years, it would be hard not to conclude the recovery paradigm is based primarily on how to transition from being an active addict to maintaining a life of sustained abstinence. There is no question that achieving abstinence must be the top priority, but what else does the average addict desire to achieve through the recovery process? Although at meetings some attention may be given to what is possible in recovery, it's rare to attend a meeting where substantial attention is paid to what should be the goal for all in recovery: to not only be abstinent but to be truly well in mind, body and spirit.

Let me suggest that any program member with a substantial period of sustained sobriety who doesn't have as their goal, and measure program success as experiencing a steady expansion of The Promises being fulfilled in their lives, is settling for a lot less than what the program has to offer. This book centers around the reality that we are all designed to be well, even the recovering addict. No one who reaches the doors of a 12 Step meeting needs to fail to achieve not only sustained abstinence, but also to experience a life filled with an ever expanding measure of The Promises that are the capstone of the recovery process.

PARADIGMS

A paradigm is a way of looking at things to accomplish something. For example, in the early days of building automobiles the paradigm was to build them one at a time, piece by piece. Then along came Henry Ford who introduced the idea of making them on an assembly line with different people adding specific parts. The assembly line represented a significant paradigm change.

We are surrounded by paradigms such as the familiar patterns of how we communicate, bank, get health care, travel, etc. But think back as far as you can. Are we doing things the same way now as when we were younger? As someone over 80 I can say a resounding, "Heck, no." A great example of an ever-expanding paradigm has been the rapid increase in the ways in which we can communicate. So paradigm changes are occurring all the time.

Do you know someone who doesn't have or refuses to use a cell phone and will only use a land line? One could say they have paradigm allegiance to the old way of doing things. Do you know someone who isn't willing to even look at the newer communication tools and advances available? You might say they have a case of paradigm blindness. The important point here is that we live in a world of expanding paradigms ranging from styles of communication to how kids are taught math in school. We have people who welcome paradigm change and quickly adapt to the new ways and we have people who vigorously resist, and maintain allegiance to the old ways. We also have people who for whatever reason just don't pay attention to what's unfolding as things change all around them.

Why do paradigms change? The obvious intention of any change is to make things better, faster, more efficient, more effective, or to solve a problem. We like to call these changes making progress. But do all newly introduced ways of doing things result is positive change? Think about that question for a while. How many programs introduced by the government just move things around and often actually create unintended consequences that may be more problematic than the original issue? A lot, if not, most. So there are paradigm shifts that really don't move things forward or improve things at all.

Here is a key insight. Paradigm shifts, to be effective, all require new, expanded ways of viewing the problem to be solved. Trying to solve a problem from the same old way of looking at things will only produce similar results. If nothing changes, nothing changes may sound like a silly statement, but unfortunately, we live in a world where paradigm allegiance and paradigm blindness are common. A majority of humanity spends their lifetime searching for solutions to life's conundrums while still using the same tools that created the problems in the first place. No problem can be solved from the paradigm that created it. Solving problems requires finding more effective tools and adopting newer, more expansive ways of thinking.

The recovery paradigm has changed significantly since Bill and Bob met. The history of the program suggests that we have been graced with ever-expanding insights, not only in how to help the sick and suffering addict find abstinence, but also in how those in recovery might achieve a more serene way of living. We need to ask ourselves, 'Have I been guilty of paradigm blindness in ignoring these evolutionary changes? Have I been guilty of paradigm allegiance to the limiting paradigm that suggests that contented sobriety is all that is really possible in recovery? Am I committed to constantly searching for more effective tools to augment my recovery?'

CONTENT VS CONTEXT

A good way of becoming comfortable with embracing positive paradigm shifts is through an understanding of the difference between the concepts of content and context. Let's go back to pre- and post-Henry Ford's introduction of the assembly line. From the time of their invention, making cars at a profit was the desired goal. The intention to make a car was the context or goal, and putting its parts together the content, or processes necessary to achieving the goal. In the early days, people could make them one at a time and make a profit. Along came Henry Ford who had an expansive idea. He reasoned if he could streamline the building process and make it more efficient, he could make more cars for less money and make a greater profit. Under his way of thinking the context was now efficiently making a lot of cars using the new paradigm of assembly line production and the content was now a steady flow of cars. Sure, the cars still have individual parts but there has been a significant shift in the context of how cars were produced. In this example, it is clear that as the paradigm shifted, the big picture or context expanded.

This simple concept of creating a more efficient and productive context for managing the content of life is the eight lane super highway to a progressively more expansive way of being. Our lives should be filled with a zest for finding and introducing a progression of ever expanding and effective paradigms of living. Knowledge alone won't keep us abstinent but having an ever- increasing grasp of the big picture, available through the recovery process, sure helps one find better ways of achieving that goal.