My Alcoholism recovery Journey

Quick recap…my name is Tony Power and I am the one in serenity. 

Here, I am going to share the story of my recovery from chronic alcohol addiction.

MY EARLY LIFE

Both of my parents were from Waterford in southeast Ireland and my family came over to England in the 50s.

I was told at an early age that I was a Catholic, but I was never really interested enough to question it. Not that choice was ever not an option in my family home, not even the food you ate – you had what your dad was having.

I went through some pretty horrific times as a result of my dad’s drinking. To be clear though, what happened to me in my earlier years had absolutely no influence on me becoming an Alcoholic.

My childhood experiences were merely memories which later manifested in the self-pity of the Alcoholism. Back in those less enlightened times, counselling was a good hiding at home and then the cane at school. Today, I have a clearer understanding of the environments we are all in together.

My alcoholism caused trapped emotions, ones which I never felt in my younger years. Yet when I become sober, sobriety alone was not enough for me. I still had all this human shit to think about and I struggled for years, going through an endless cycle of stopping and starting.

I couldn’t understand how I could be such a tosser. But my knowledge of humility and self-love was scarce back then, so it was always just a case of ‘get on with it, you idiot!’.

MY FIRST AA MEETING

I was 50 when I made my first visit to AA. I hadn’t had a drink for 11 months, but my mental health was suffering. I knew I wouldn’t drink, but my mind was full of poison in the form of niggles which turned it into a place of pure chaos.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from AA. I’d heard all the god bothering stuff, but in reality, I found that AA made you feel welcome and at ease, and I’d recommend it to moderate drinkers. It’s a place where people are not only working to improve their own lives, but also helping others to do the same – which is rare these days.

My good fortune, unbeknown to me, had begun that night at AA in Saint Thomas Church Hall, as I learnt about the higher power. The higher power concept is not an AA invention or religious idea – it’s your own creation, not some miracle or power of imagination.

Detox was not a choice for me. I was so ill that I couldn’t physically pour alcohol into my mouth. I would just lay wherever I’d dropped, for days on end. The reality of a grown man shitting himself because he’s incapable of getting to a toilet sounds gross. However, the way you feel about yourself as a result is even worse – more than disgust, it’s complete self-loathing.

I would often try to crawl to the bathroom, the friction scraping the skin off my toes and burning my flesh. And I did this time and time again.

For me, becoming sober was a direct result of learning how to deal with the nasty physical consequences better than I do with the sobriety itself.

THE HIGHER POWER

There are some methods in NLP and hypnotherapy that can make detox more bearable.

So my first piece of advice from me to you, as a very lucky and grateful man, is that you do not need to do this alone.

Reaching out and welcoming people into your life is the first base in the process. I found this out the hard way and I cried like baby at times during this stage, but I needed to do this – I’d have been a fool not to.

As I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t even drinking when I first attended AA. I felt a bit stupid back then, saying ‘I am not drinking but I am suicidal’, but that was the truth. Reaching out to this group of strangers for the first time really touched me and, whenever I recall that memory, the heart-warming feelings come flooding back.

Going to AA also led me to Buddha Dharma, the Buddhist way. I am not a man with any really religious rigid beliefs, but Buddha touched my heart instantly. It was a seed that demanded my attention.

Recovery is not about believing that something is going to happen to cure you – it’s about human sensibility, a belief in a higher power of your choosing. For me, this was Buddhism. However, as Buddha himself says, ‘you are your own way’. So I guess Buddha was not my choice, or at least not consciously.

So put simply, my higher power essentially remains secret and highly personal.

To feed my curiosity about Buddhism, I went over to my local Buddhist centre and the people there were just as kind as those at AA. And I thought to myself, ‘this is bloody me, it’s okay here, I like this stuff and it can help me to become a better person’.

Buddhism has shown me a path to free choice and given me the freedom to follow my own unique spiritual path. If I had not found Buddhism, who knows what I might have become.

PROCRASTINATION AND GROWING UP

Procrastination is nothing more than a fancy word for the lazy to sit still and admire themselves, whilst thinking how bloody clever they are. And I was one of them – arrogant, lazy, never wrong, ever.

God knows how many times I’ve been told to grow up, however, for a long time I allowed my arrogance to shield me from peoples criticisms. Someone once told me this – a person who cared about me and who knew how much it would hurt. It did, but another bottle sorted it.

However, going to AA opened up a whole new field, of people talking about how they actually felt and taking the responsibility for their faults (mine were mentioned quite a bit).
I can’t say it was a complete lightbulb moment, but slowly I came to the realisation that for this 52 year old adolescent, puberty had finished at last!

The ISM in alcoholism is me. I am responsible for my behaviour good and bad. With the benefit of hindsight and experience, I’m now able to pass this guidance on to other people. And there are people in AA who have the benefit of the same, and sometimes greater, variety of experience.

TENACITY, STRENGTH AND HOPE

TSH stands for Tenacity, Strength and Hope – and it worked for me. Tenacity is a determination which fuels Strength to create effort, and through determined effort, Hope then rises up.

I have a fondness for poetry, or maybe I’ve just been able to appreciate it. I’ve no idea where my love of violin concertos comes from, but they are also fabulous. Anyway, perhaps the following lines might ring true for you as they do for me?

While riding the Horse of virtuous action I will guide it into the path of liberation with reins of determination And through urging this horse onward with the whip of effort With hope and joy I will soon regain freedom.

BEING PRESENT

As well as Buddhism, I’ve studied Mayan ancient culture, and I’ve found it to be much more advanced that modern-day western thinking.

The Mayans didn’t use tenses to describe time – the past, the present and the future. Instead, they used the phrase ‘aspects of time’. To me, this just sounds so much better.

To be ‘in tense’ or INTENSE is very restricting. It leads to us constantly focusing on the past and future but giving little attention to the present.

We live most of our lives in abstract imagination about what has happened and what is about to. But Mayan culture looked at time in a much less specific and detailed way, with the past and future not being seen as less relevant.

The present, to the Mayans, was the link between past and future. To them, life was one linear line, you leave the past in the past and create the future by living in the present using events as aspects of life, not time – all connected in one flow.

This might sound crazy, but it’s really helped me gain a powerful perspective.

STEP ONE OF AA

Admitting you are powerless over alcohol is the first step in AA. It’s the foundation of the steps that give you a stable platform to truly transform your life. However, the unmanageable life we alcoholics lead is a big barrier to changing your old habits.

Despite being nearly a year sober when I started going to AA, I was still constantly fighting the terrors. However, as soon as I read step one, ‘admit you are powerless’, I suddenly had some hope. What I didn’t have was the ability to think rationally though. I needed help.

This has been an experience I could never have predicted. In the darkness of addiction, I have met some truly kind people who’ve shown me support and an abundance of love, and this has helped me to regain my own self-respect.

Without these kind people, I would not be doing this. It wouldn’t have been a conscious thought in my erratic mind that help is necessary, that to help yourself is to get back on your own two feet again, by going out and helping other people.

FEEDING NEGATIVITY

Writing this recovery story is a whole new concept to me, as my stories tend to have me in them even if I was not there. I will hear a story then just pretend I was there…it’s an ego-driven habit.

In this recovery story I am the protagonist, but the story is for you. I have shared it to let you know that if you do not give up you can never be beaten.

AA will help you regain your physiology by focusing on how you feel, not how you think.
Studying my own physiology answered questions for me I didn’t even know I had.

Meditation is another big part of recovery, which Buddhists call ‘going for refuge’. It’s a daily practice which requires just a small break of 20 minutes or so, where you can sit, relax, gather your thoughts and contemplate, rather than think.

I’ve found that when I’m relaxed in the body, I’m very vague in my mind. For me, when you’re vague in your mind, your thoughts don’t stick, they lack the energy to allow a mind to form.

And feeding negative thoughts with energy creates a circle of negative thoughts, where you end up chasing one thought after another, only to end up right back at the start, with the original thought.

So learn to let go of silly little distractions before you get caught in the trap of chasing your own tail. Once you start to observe your thoughts, you will be able to stop them before things get out of hand. Do this on regular a basis and you’ll find that it soon becomes second nature.

It’s okay to have bad days. I have bad days too; they are there to teach us. Thank you, and good luck to you, kind people.

Yours when you need me

Tony

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