The Life After Addiction Project

I was thinking about this the other day and thought it must be the regaining of control. Drug Abuse, drug addiction, including alcohol abuse and alcoholism is all about losing control.

I remember sitting in bad places: Jails, stranded, homeless; making plans on what I was going to do about it. The problem with these plans was, as long as I was using, I really didn’t have control over the outcome. Very late in my career as an addict did I associate my circumstances with my addiction. I used to wonder “How did this happen”?

The answer was simple: drug addiction. I didn’t have control over the future event because I was an addict. My first real connecting of the addiction with the situation was made in regards to a physical feeling. The feeling was “I’m to tired to do this anymore”. Addiction had worn me out. Once I made the connection I was able to get free.

We can still get ourselves into ridiculous, miserable, situations in life after addiction but we get to control this. Drugs and alcohol no longer takes over and puts us there: It’s all us. Well, us and some others. But we can avoid those “others” to some degree.

At last we are back in control. We might not be any good at it but we’re there. Now we get to live and learn just like every body else. Got a favorite thing about life after addiction?

As I go along listening, reading and learning about things I run into the faith and gratitude acts. The stand out faith story I guess is the one where Jesus tells the lady her faith has done something. Not I did something because of your faith. Not god did something but just – because of your faith – something.

I always wonder, if this is real and it works then either few have faith in themselves or even know what the whole faith thing involves or – I don’t know.

The other thing I hear is be grateful for the things that have yet to manifest. Like you would see a vision of a better future for yourself and others and although it hasn’t appeared physically you are grateful that it’s a done deal. But – Is it?

I have a really hard time with these concepts. I’m grateful for all the good things I am presented with: breathing, trees, smiles, sounds – But, I can see them. They’re here, they’re real.

I don’t know, I’m just probably going through another metamorphosis. We’ll see what unfolds.

Nobody knows what’s going on here and that’s a fact. If anybody really knew – it wouldn’t be an age old question. What are we doing here and how did we get here and where are we going – don’t get answered. So they are ages old questions and there is no answer to them. Frustrating huh?

Doesn’t seem to make any sense to “all of a sudden” be standing somewhere, not really knowing how we got there or what we’re supposed to do next. No map, no instructions and no real help from the others around who find themselves here just as we did. Now I know there are a lot of stories and a bunch of people who will tell you they know what’s going on – but they don’t.

Why would life be set up this way? I have an idea that might explain it. Here’s how this “Nobody Knows” thing makes sense. And as far as I’ve come thinking about it, it’s the only explanation that comes close to making sense for me.

It has to do again with the idea of the self determined path. Here we are, each of us in our unique situation. Some are born into firefights and some born into crazy comfort. Both are equal in all that’s of consequence. Both have one thing in common, as do all born to earth: they will decide for themselves how to conduct themselves here.

Many will simply go along and follow the advice and direction of others and they will live and die that way. This is easy to so since everywhere we look there are signs telling us what to do. Do this, buy this, act this way, don’t do that, follow us, be like them … It’s inescapable. Doesn’t matter if you are in New York City or a tribe in the jungle somebody is going to start telling you what to do and how to be and their version of what it’s all about before you can even get a clear thought as to why you might give a shit.

In the midst of whatever is going on we will decide for ourselves. Even if we decide to simply follow along – it’s still our decision. So why would one decision or choice be any better than another? What difference does it make?

If we look around we’ll notice a certain amount of adaptive improvement taking place in all animate beings. From flowers to fish to cows everything gets hardier and more capable – we could say they are getting better at life. Even if they don’t realize it, even if there is no capacity for decision making, things adapt and become more than they were or they don’t continue. So, why would it be any different for us?

Now if we as people knew what was going on, why we were here and where we were going we wouldn’t have to make a lot of decisions would we? If everyone knew that we were here to have fun and as long as we wore red shirts we’d go to earth 2 when we died there would be a lot of red shirts getting washed and dried and worn. I’m not talking about another story here, I’m saying if we really knew. Knew as in didn’t need to ask.

The reason I think it makes sense that things are the way they are is it’s the only way for us to make any meaningful decisions. The meaningful decision would be those made solely within ourselves. No outside influence, no stories: to discard everything we’ve heard about the whole life thing and decide for ourselves what we want to do.

In fact this being on our own is the way it is despite appearances. There is no collective decision making. There is the collective result of all decisions made by individuals but all choices are made individually. So we stand on our own in the middle of everything perceived and we decide what we’re going to do. When we decide what we’re going to do not because of what’s going on around us but because it’s what we want – regardless of current affairs or future outcome – then we become our present best.

That’s the self determined path and what we have here on earth is the only condition where this “becoming ourselves” is possible. We cannot know – and grow.

When things don’t go your way

What did you expect? There are a lot of factors that may be involved in things not going our way. In us not getting what we wanted. In our lives ending up – Wrong. We may have wanted to live to a hundred and three and visit foreign lands and explore the planet but instead we were struck by lightning while walking the dog and now we’re sitting someplace thinking – that sucks

There are a lot of things going on in the universe. I’d like to know about and understand every one of them – but I don’t (and I want to). For now, for some evil frustrating reason, this is just the way it is – but I am convinced there is something we can do about getting what we want and influencing the world around us.

There is one thing I’m working on in particular and that’s all I’m here to talk about today. This is the “What did we, or what do we, expect” part of the equation. When I first got on to the self directed path of recovery I expected bad things to befall me – I just knew something was gonna go sideways any second. While on drugs, that’s how it was. I just kept ending up in bad places – my life was unmanageable. I grew to expect it. In a way I accepted it as – just the way things were.

But there was no accepting it once I was sober. So I started to investigate why things went wrong. Why if I wanted something some way did it not happen. I don’t mean why since I wanted everyone to be nice to each other were there still wars – although this is part of the expectation deal too – what I mean is, if all I wanted was to meet cool reasonable people, why was I involved with so much nuttiness?

I ran across this statement early on “Life doesn’t give us what we deserve. Life gives us what we expect”. Don’t ask me where I first read it I don’t remember, but it became a focal point of my existence. If true: can we see the significance in it? I know one thing, it’s not a new idea. It’s been said in different ways by different spiritual teachers since – well, forever. I’ve spent many years now seeing if I could apply the principle in the statement to my life. I guess the principle could be: the law of expectation, or the law of Attraction, or the law activation, or creation; it may be the foundation for life itself.

Setting aside the imponderables for now lets just ask ourselves – What do we expect? Really? Do we really expect to get what we want? Why?

There are a couple of themes that run parallel with this idea. They have to do once again with those discussions concerning duality. At the moment I say the duality that concerns humanity has to do with the sense of separation between the inner and outer worlds. My current understanding is there is no separation – it’s all one in the same.

If true, it means what we expect becomes who and what we are, where and how we live and what we’re surrounded by. What about the child born into poverty and abuse? Don’t know, haven’t got that far yet. It may be that the there are no expectations involved other those of the family or society. I think that most likely. But think about the development of that child’s expectations.

We may do well not to use the word expectation but instead use the word thinking. We may not be able to get a handle on what we expect but if we look and listen we’ll know what the majority of our thinking contains. It’s here we can begin to change our lives. The non-separation of in here and out there will become apparent.

A simple example is – Once we stop hating people we meet fewer hateful people. That’s enough for now – I expect you to have fun with this.