Action, Belief & Faith
Havent you heard? This is a program of action.
Belief is one of the most important things in recovery. Seeing someone who has recovered cultivates a belief in ourselves. In order to adequately discuss belief, it’s helpful to find out why you believe what you believe now.
Do you believe life can be good without the use of drugs or alcohol?
- If not, understand that you’ve lived a life using drugs and alcohol for quite some time. Every time you didn’t have drugs or alcohol you experienced pain. Therefore, imagining your future without drugs and alcohol = pain.
Do you believe you are capable of change?
-If not, might it be due to your past experiences? Your parent’s negative influence? Your shitty friends who validate your excuses? Could it be due to a negative experience in school? Was an older sibling constantly putting you down? Or is it just because you’ve tried to get sober many times only to fail in the end? And, if that is the case, did you do everything that was suggested of you? Or did you give up in a moment?
What you believe now is conjured by the experiences of your past.
An important lesson from spirituality: you must believe that a power greater than you can restore you to sanity. If you have attempted sobriety before but failed did you fail or did the power you believed in fail? In other words, did you act according to this power – or according to past programming? For me, my higher power exists within me. My higher power exists within all of us. If I have a drink in my hand about to take a drink there is a conflict going on in my mind. A part of me is saying don’t do it, you know the consequences. The other, stronger programmed part of me is saying take the drink, we will deal with the repercussions tomorrow. The more I side with the part of me that knows the right thing to do in nearly every situation – the stronger I build that part [neuroplasticity]. If I choose to give into my old programming, I am turning on a system that is incredibly difficult to turn off again.
Sometimes, when I am feeling rather unspiritual, I like to look at a power greater than myself as a schedule. After all, a schedule is more powerful than me. I struggle to will myself out of bed let alone follow a schedule. Keep in mind, many of us already have definitions of the word ‘spiritual’. Many believe it’s their relationship with God or the philosophical context from which they operate. While neither of these is wrong, the definition of spiritual is “of or relating to the non-material”. This means if you follow rules you live a spiritual life. I want to put this idea forward for those struggling with any concept of spirituality.
Everyone on earth, I assume, believes that if you follow a workout program for a month your health will improve. If you live according to the schedule, your health will improve. If you live according to old programming, your health won’t improve.
Our belief in anything decreases the more we live according to old programming. Our belief increases when we live according to a program that we believe will restore us to sanity. I would argue just exercising will increase your sanity to some degree. If you add in therapy, meditation, sponsorship, and helping others, who knows what kind of belief you can cultivate. Time is the key variable. It takes time for our bodies and our minds to adapt to what we have been exposing it to.
One of my main issues in twelve step groups and treatment is the belief, and reinforcement of ideas that weaken us, and set us up. Such as: if we relapse it will be bad. Now, keep in mind, I don’t want this to add to some belief that you can use or drink without any problem. However, often I hear clients say if they relapse, they will be “gone forever”.
“I may have another drink in me but I damn sure don’t have another recovery in me”
You’ve heard these if you’ve been to any meetings.
I do believe its good to understand that if we drink or use, we will experience problems. I don’t believe it’s good to “set up a plan” subconsciously that utterly fucks us if we ever do use.
Let me elaborate on why I think this is so important and why I do not believe that I am “off to the races” if I use or drink: I used to say shit like this constantly. It sounded good. It tells people how fucked up I was and how far I’ve come. Also, I heard it constantly in the rooms, so I was just parroting what everyone else said and it made me feel a part of.
I believe; however, I was saying this because the only thing I had to show for my sobriety then was a coin or a key tag. Of course, I had changed. I hadn’t changed enough to feel great about it though. I wouldn’t have told you that back then. But now, I know it was true.
The past seven years I’ve built my life into damn near exactly what I want it to be. I’ve built my body into something I’m proud of. I’ve calmed my mind down considerably, I’ve fixed my relationships, I’ve gained a wealth of knowledge, and I’ve contributed value to those around me. In fact, what I’m least proud of is the amount of time I’ve been clean. I’m proud of what my life has become. I’ve invested into myself long enough to see the return and not want to lose it.
We don’t get out of life what we want. We get out of life who we become.
I used to drink and use simply because my life wasn’t good. I didn’t have good relationships. I wasn’t chasing any new knowledge. My mind was so crazy jumping from one thing to another, flooded with accusations, judgments, excuses, and more. I hadn’t been progressing since high school. I wasn’t contributing to anything. In fact, I was taking from everyone around me. I had very little to no purpose whatsoever. This fueled my drug addiction. Who I am today and what I’ve achieved leads me to believe if I ever relapsed, I wouldn’t be fucked.. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still an addict, and I’ll do everything in my power to ensure that doesn’t happen. I used to believe I was doomed, because I’ve taken action, my belief in myself has increased. Because I continue to act in accordance with true beliefs my faith increases as well.
That makes sense right? I had very little faith before I got to treatment. That was simply because I was around a lot of shitty actions and consequences for a significant period of time. That changed after a sustainable time in recovery.
Think about it, if you believed that staying sober and exercising for three months would improve your life drastically would you do it? Most people say yes, but they don’t believe they can do it. Why? Because they’ve never worked out for three months, and they definitely have never stayed sober for three months. They don’t have the experience that gives them the belief it’s possible. The fact is, if they did, they would get results - it’s simply biological. Because of this their belief would increase. Once their belief has increased, they test it to see if they can do more, enhancing their belief and life once again.
We act according to what we believe and that either gives us faith or takes it away.
This is the image caption.
Who do you believe you are?
The reason we need to believe a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity is because that’s the only way we might actually engage with that power. If we don’t believe it’s going to work we’ll never attempt to see if it does. This belief make hold us down while it’s incredibly tough early on. It’s the action we take, however, that ends up increasing belief.
I read a book recently It Takes What it Takes by Trevor Moawad. In the book, Trevor details the importance of belief in one man’s life. I don’t remember the guy’s name or many specifics in the story by the point remains without them. If you are interested, go read it. Anyway, this guy was in high school and took his SAT. He never thought he was very smart, maybe average. This belief led him to not trying very hard. Everything changed the day he got his SAT score back: 1440 placing him in the 97th percentile nationally.
He was blown away. All of the sudden he believed he was one of the smartest kids in the entire country. This shifted the way he thought of himself. Because of this shift, he actually started trying in life. He didn’t want his intellect to go to waste after all. He became incredibly successful. If I remember correctly, he ran a national magazine for years and retired a multimillionaire.
The crazy thing? He ended up getting a letter from auditors years later looking at SAT scores. He never got a 1440. In fact, more like 700 something. He was dumb. Clearly, that didn’t actually matter that much relative to what he believed.
That’s the crazy thing about this whole recovery thing. It’s the reason why AA says: Rarely have we seen a person fail who thoroughly followed our path. I swear, I’ve talked to hundreds of addicts who have relapsed. They don’t relapse in the midst of doing what they know they should do. What happens is more like this: they go to treatment, get thirty days clean. They get out and start going to meetings. They get a job. Work becomes important to them. They invest too much energy into thinking about work and thinking about fixing their life that they begin expecting things to change quickly(transactional imposition of order). Things don’t change according to their clock, and in a moment of weakness they drink or use. They return to treatment to say this happened and that happened.
In reality, “this” happens and “that” happens to all of us. We just don’t drink and use, we continue acting according to the fact that we believe something will restore us to sanity.
Stop thinking, stop planning, stop reminiscing, start acting. The reason we fail is because we don’t act long enough without expectation. Rebuilding takes time. Give yourself time, just don’t let it be down time.
