CHAPTER FIVE

WHAT CAN I DO?

Begin your own program by taking Step One from the previous chapter "How It Works". When we fully concede to our innermost selves that we are powerless over our addiction, we have taken a big step in our recovery. Many of us have had some reservations at this point, so give yourself a break and be as thorough as possible at the start. Go to Step Two, and forth and as you go on you will come to an understanding of the program for yourself. If you are in an institution of any kind, you have gone through complete withdrawal and have stopped using for the present. Now, with a clear mind, try this way of life.

Upon release, continue your daily program and contact a member of N.A. Do this by mail, by phone, or in person. Better yet come to our meetings. Here you will find the answers to some of the things that may be disturbing you now.

If you are not in an institution, the same holds true. Stop using for today. Most of us can do for eight or twelve hours what seems impossible for a longer period of time. If the obsession or compulsion becomes too great, put yourself on a five minute basis of not using. Minutes will grow to hours and hours to days and so you will break the habit and gain some peace of mind. The real miracle happens when you realize that the need for drugs has in some way been lifted from you. You have stopped using and have started to live.

It all begins with that first admission and surrender. From that point, each addict is reminded that a day clean is a day won. At first we can do little more than attend meetings. Probably we cannot remember even a single name, word or thought from our first meeting. What we do remember is the feeling we got. That no matter what we have done or what course our addiction had taken, we can relax and enjoy the love that fills the room at every meeting which follows the Twelve Tradition. Meetings strengthened our grip on recovery.

Having begun attending meetings regularly, we were introduced to the

Twelve Steps. Working the Steps got us out of our old attitudes. When we

admitted that our lives had become unmanageable, we didn't have to argue   

our point of view. We didn't have to be right all of the time. We could relax

and allow others to be wrong. We found a new source of energy to put the

hide our illness no longer seemed worth it; and we were free to open our

minds to new ideas. Destructive behavior could be corrected as soon as we

loosened our grip on our old ways. We found that the fear of change was

replaced by a sense of wonder and adventure. Freedom to change seems to

come mainly after our acceptance of ourselves.

Freedom from our destructiveness covering up the wreckage of the past has been the main stumbling block in relating to others. By recognizing the defects in our characters, and letting go of them spiritually, we were ready to have sanity restored to us. In applying these spiritual principles to our lives, we should keep an open mind. Patience, humility and tolerance are well worth any price that we must pay for them. It would seem that the path to spiritual recovery involves spiritual principles'.  Spiritual indifference will surely lead to relapse.

As we went to meetings regularly, we also learned the basic value of talking to other addicts who shared our problems and goals. As we became responsible for our own recovery, we became responsible for our fellow addicts. We found this responsibility was two-edged. As recovering addicts we must share what we have found with other addicts, because we know how important it is for one addict to talk with another. If sharing the pain we have been through helps but one person, it will have been worth the suffering. The other edge is our own need to preserve our recovery. We found from experience that our own recovery is strengthened when we share it with others, who ask for help. If we keep what we have to share, we lose the meaning. Words mean nothing until we put them into action.  We often miss what we are looking for because it isn't hidden. Most addicts have great insights and abilities that offset their weaknesses.  Gratitude for our assets shouldn't keep us from growing in areas where we are weak. Being grateful begins when we realize that something other than ourselves blessed us with what we have.

Facing problems is a necessary ability to stay clean. If we have had problems in the past, it is unlikely that simple abstinence will eliminate the defense mechanisms and emotional walls that enabled us to live in past day. In searching for the end we often miss the journey.  These old ways have to go if we are to find new lives. We will successfully face the days to come if we take advantage of the help the program of Narcotics Anonymous has to offer. Help from one addict to another; help that says, "I had something like that happen to me and I tried so and so".  Not preaching or judging but sharing the experience, strength, and hope that comes to anyone who accepts our way of life. The willingness to try new ideas and possible solutions will help open the door to our recovery. One discovery leads to another, and soon we are established in a new way of life where people, places and things are kept in proper perspective. The old "all or nothing" point of view will no longer seem a useful idea.

Now we have learned that we can, and must, go to our Higher Power for help in solving problems. Fortunately, many problems can wait. The program doesn't work when we adapt it to our life, we have to adapt our life to the program. When you can feel the program beginning to work, don't freak out. Personality change is a natural progression set in motion by our surrender to the program. The slogans are the sayings that seemed to help us most when we first came to the Fellowship. They apply to the little, dangerous daily situations that seemed so heavy at first. Things go smoother if the newcomer finds a sponsor to confide in, someone whose judgement he can trust. We do not think it weak to put a little faith and trust in a person with

more experience on the program.

We may still, however, feel that we cannot have a happy life without drugs.  We may suffer from the fear of insanity and feel we have no escape from using other than an insane and depressed existence. We may fear the rejection of all our friends if we go cleaning up our act, this is common.  We could be suffering from an overly sensitive ego and many of those things within us that we used drugs to escape from.

Obsession is the fixed idea that takes us back to a particular drug, trying to regain the ease and comfort we once knew. We know that the comfort we once experienced from using can no longer be obtained. When we accepted that we were addicts, we realized that never again could we use successfully. Try not to think about drugs, old friends or old hang outs.  But when the obsession hits us, we improve our conscious contact with our Higher Power through fellowship in N.A.

Just as we went to any length to get drugs, so must we go to any lengths to learn to get clean. This involves the honesty to admit our need for the help of others, who have been where we have been, and have learned to live with out chemicals. The essence of addiction is that it is easier to change our perception of reality than the reality we perceive.  Cash register honesty, honesty in giving a "fair day's work for a fair day's pay", can help us begin. As the benefits of basic honesty in the world begin to roll in, we are ready to consider honesty at a deeper level.  Self-honesty is being in touch with the way we really feel and the way we spend our time.

As we began to learn how to change our perception of reality, we, as newcomers, were encouraged to avoid making any major decisions on our own. The ego of the addict must be busted for him to have a chance at recovery.  "Terminal hipness" and "fatal cool" are symptoms of the addictive personality. We should be very intent and watchful. Old ideas and street practices won't help us stay clean.

After establishing our new desire to live clean in the Fellowship and acquainting ourselves with the tools which have helped other suffering addicts to recover, we can then proceed with the business of living.  At least one meeting a day for ninety days seems to be a good guide for those who are going to any lengths. There is a special calm that settles over a person with our disease when they find out there are many others who share their difficulties, past and present. We should begin to work the Steps in earnest, going over each Step word by word. Reading our literature and talking over the implication of each Step with our new friends and our sponsors and asking God's help improves our understanding of the program. A meeting a day, getting and using phone numbers, and reading literature each day are good forms of insurance for cleanliness. It has been said that no one who has asked their Higher Power for help in the morning and worked the steps has ever gotten loaded that day.  Guilt and worry keep us from living in the here and now. The denial of our disease, or reservations, keep us sick. We lack humility, clinging to old ways. Not from preaching nor from judgement, but from sharing our experience, strength and hope do we recover. Our willingness to try new ideas and possible solutions to problems will help open the doors to recovery.

Let us apply our efforts to the obtainable and let the rest go. As we do the job at hand the balance changes and new opportunities for improvement present themselves. Opportunities now in sight did not even exist until we got the ball rolling. Life then becomes for us what we always wished it to bea constant state of awakening. As soon as we became acquainted with the Fellowship and the basic ideas of the program. We began to put these ideas into action. A good tool to remember is to counter our natural tendency to saddle ourselves with concerns that go beyond the twenty-four hours of each day.

Living clean each day at a time will reveal to us the things that truly come from within and give us better understanding over things that would interrupt our flow.

Recovery will provide for our re-entry into society. We can always find people who have had difficulties similar to our own and do succeed. It is difficult to get rid of the notion that we must be great or do great to be O.K. As we recover we will often find ourselves saying and doing things that suddenly make no sense to us, even if we've been doing them for years.  We literally see our mistakes. This is necessary for our recovery.  Self condemnation has little place here. When we see our errors, we should simply correct them.

As we go about the task of changing our lives, we are confronted with our character defects. Letting go of character defects should be done with love. It is important we think, to be gentle with ourselves when putting our ego to rest.

In our addiction, we feared change because we had lost control of our lives and most changes were for the worst. Clean, we had to learn to face another enemy - boredom. If we allow ourselves to stagnate and cling to our old ways of desperation and fear, our chances of a real and lasting recovery decrease. We had to reach out and to accept the love and understanding the Fellowship had to offer. Clean, we face the world together. No longer do we feel backed into a corner and at the mercy of events and circumstances. We can expect to succeed in many areas of our lives where we have known only failure and despair. Our new friends and the tools for living in the program of Narcotics Anonymous will enable us to experience these changes. Working the Steps will broaden our horizons and practicing the principles will reduce our commitments to some manageable level. Our new friends and awakened spirits will help us. Our common effort is recovery.

Being clean we will eventually have to learn to cope with success. Success scares us because in the past it preceded failure. We could not afford to feel good because we remembered the pain of disappointment. It was better, we concluded, to keep moving on and holding back. Actually this made a great deal of sense when we were using. Now, it makes no sense at all.

In time we may become a trusted servant. We can participate in Twelfth Step work, and try to share the message of recovery, with the addict who still suffers. It has been our experience that personal problems will be resolved when we are willing to accept responsibility for them. It is good form to allow others in the group to help us with them from time to time.  Service will get us out of ourselves, and our concern for others will be reflected in our own ability to accept concern from others. When we find ourselves opening up and facing difficulties that used to have us on the run, we will experience periodic surges of good feeling that can give us the strength to begin seeking God's will for us.

Well before we surrender, we have ceased to feel as if we are participating in the human race. Our tenuous grasp on reality is invaded by fears and self-hatred, which leads to paranoia, and away from the rest of humanity as a whole.

When we finally became desperate enough to seek help, we, once again, sought out the company of our fellow addicts. But, this time, the addicts were clean. The acceptance we found in the Fellowship was amazing to us, since we had known only loneliness. N.A. reawakened old memories of what it felt like to be a member of this human family. Slowly, we opened up, reached out, warmed up, and let ourselves love and be loved. The original desire to be clean leads us to a desire to help others. Touching, sharing, and loving are actual tools of recovery for us.

The only way we keep from continuing a habit is not to take that first fix, pill, drink or toke. People like us know that one is too many and a thousand are never enough. We put great emphasis on this for we know that when we use drugs in any form, we release our addiction all over again or create a new one.

Abstinence is the basis of our program. Any mood or mind-altering chemical, prescription or not, is poison to our bodies. Those who relapse and live to make it back, keep us well informed of the fact that there is nothing so bad that a relapse can't make it a whole lot worse.  If we clean our bodies by daily abstinence we should clean our minds of preconceptions based on past experiences. It is those who stay clean 26 when it seems like it isn't worth it who make it. It means remembering that we are just one fix, pill, drink or toke away from total disaster. It's amazing the power that total abstinence has in changing our life. The bottom line of Narcotics Anonymous is staying clean. When we realize that we can't use drugs in any form and live, we are ready to admit our powerlessness. It takes some of us a while to realize how unmanageable we were and are still. For others this is the only thing that which we can be sure. We as adults are allergic to all drugs, although individual tolerance can play a valuable role. Generally the effects of any amount of usage are immediate and devastating.

Some of the most common excuses for using are loneliness, self-pity, and closed-mindedness. Past thinking patterns, known as "stinkin' thinkin"', have proven lethal. Our experience shows that we do recover from these old games. We simply live each day at a time without drugs. We believe the solution for the problem of having drug-fogged minds, sick bodies and tormented emotions is in a spiritual way of life. This is why the Twelve Steps are used as a program of recovery and ultimately a method of trusting in a Higher Power that we can have faith in.