Helping

Helping others and accepting help seems to be the theme of my meditation books today.

There is no sin in asking for and accepting help with our recovery, or anything else for that matter. We did NOT do it alone. We had many people help us in recovery. Often we were provided with food, shelter, etc. when a lot of us went to treatment. Most of us had to accept emotional and spiritual help from a drug counselor or two. For some addicts/alcoholics it is too much to have to "step down" from the high horse of grandiosity to accept spiritual help from a drug counselor or a recovering addict. Our egos tend to get huge and stretched very thin when we are actively using substances.

Oh, yes, and grandiosity is something too, that a lot of us needed help with.

We have each other too. We often need help from other addicts. Using addicts usually have "more important" things to do (like getting high) to help us out. But often we can count on recovering addicts and alcoholics. If we get cravings we can call someone in the program.

If we have tragedy happen, we can call someone in the program to help us out with our possibly overwhelming emotions.

We don't need to feel trusting to accept help. We can still be suspicious of others motives, and still accept help! We can go to a meeting in spite of how nervous or suspicious we are. We can think what we want or do.... As long as those feelings and thoughts don't get in the way of recovery. Thoughts and feelings won't kill us, but it is likely that abusing drugs and alcohol will. We all need help getting rid of drugs. We often need medical help with withdrawals. And, it seems, a lot of us have some kind of mental illness that may have provoked our self-medication in the first place that needs treatment.

For me, help with my mind was the hardest to accept. I have a good mind, but I have chemical imbalances in my brain. I'm still not that forthcoming with thoughts a lot of the time. I did not reach out to a psychiatrist for my depression. I figured it was all situational. I thought my mental/emotional condition would eventually straighten itself out. It evolved (or rather, devolved) into schizophrenia..... And while I was psychotic -- I still didn't want help. I wanted to fix it myself. There is no such thing as being smart enough to fix the chemical imbalances of the brain. One cannot outsmart a real illness! Eventually though, things got so bad that I HAD to accept help from someone. I had no choice. I was practically kicking and screaming in protest however.

I'm a good one for pretending everything is okay a lot of the time. And now that I'm in recovery, I don't have to pretend -- everything often is okay for real.

Part of recovery is the twelfth step work we do (after we've done the eleven other steps -- of course). We must reach out to help others. We share our experience, strength and hope and hope that it helps someone else. We encourage others to stay in recovery. People need people to find serenity. Now, I'm not talking about codependent neediness, but we do need people in our lives to stay recovered and content. We often provide rides to meetings, we sponsor each other, we are available to answer the phone and the door to other recovering people.

We reach out to those who are still suffering. We let them know that we are not their doormat, but we are willing to help them find a better way of life....

God/dess wants us to appreciate each other for our special talents and abilities so God/dess lets us lean on one another. To help others and accept help in our spiritual growth is a higher path.... No wo/man is an island and knows everything there is to know. God/dess meant it to be this way.