Drug Rehab Options Blog

APA Offers Tips for Attaining Your
New Year's Resolutions January 1 is not only the start of the New Year, but is when many begin their New Year?s Resolutions. Mange stress. Eat healthier. Exercise more. Spend more time with family. Sticking to your resolutions and making changes can be difficult but not impossible. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) would like to offer tips and other resources to help families and individuals keep their resolutions for a healthy mind and healthy life.
?A new year is a great time to think about the changes we want to make in our lives. Being and staying well is a resolution many people make for the New Year, but those resolutions can lead to frustration when we find we have set unrealistic goals,? said Philip R. Muskin, M.D., Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Columbia University and Chair of the APA Council on Psychosomatic Medicine. ?Making a resolution to change one thing that will make us healthier is a priceless gift that only we can give to ourselves.?
Try again. Everyone has made, and broken past resolutions, that does not mean that you won?t succeed this time. Start with a positive approach, including thinking about what has disrupted your good intentions in the past. Don?t discourage yourself with a negative outlook.
Don?t make too many resolutions. Trying to eat better, exercise more, quit smoking, and reduce stress is too much to tackle at once. Pick a realistic, attainable goal with a reasonable time frame.
Choose your own resolution. Make sure this is something that you want to accomplish for yourself and not for friends or family. When you attain the goal they will benefit from your success as well.
Make a plan and write it down. Plan what you?d like to accomplish in three or six months. Achieving small goals over time gives you a sense of accomplishment and motivation to keep going. Writing your goals down is a good way to keep track of your progress.
Involve friends and family. They can support your efforts, and can motivate you to keep going. Setting a personal goal is not a ?promise? which can never be broken. Don?t paint yourself into a corner by overstating what can be a realistic change you plan to make.
Forgive yourself. If you get off track, don?t think that you failed. Review your plan and make adjustments.
Congratulate yourself. Reward yourself when your intermediate goals or resolutions are met.
The most important point to consider when deciding on your resolutions is to decide if you are truly willing to make the change in your life. Deciding to make the change just to have a resolution will not keep you motivated to attain your goal. Many people fail because they are afraid or don?t fully realize how the goal can benefit their every day lives. When you decide on your resolution, make a plan of action and list the ways it will improve your life. When you can see the prize, you are more likely to keep up the fight.




http://www.healthyminds.org/resolutions.cfm

I have been doing so good with that third step stuff... really feeling that peace, you know? And then I started a new shift at work and find myself in the same old alcoholic thinking, trying to control the world around me.

It happens so quickly I only realize it after it's happened and I'm like, err? What happened to me? I don't feel like picking up now but every other feeling is there that surrounds picking up... arrogance, frustration, sadness, that I can't force everyone to do what I want them to.

The weird part, though, is that I'm identifying what's going on. I didn't use to think that it was ridiculous to expect people and situations to bend to my will. I always used to think that my motivations were pure and altruistic so therefore behaving badly was excusable. I don't think I even thought that far, to be honest. It's way more uncomfortable this way! It seems that not only does AA take the fun out of your drinking, but out of being an @sshole as well. Had to stop drinking because of that... guess now I have to stop being an @sshole, too.

"There is a "point" as he calls it, where I am willing, but for some reason unable, to get past a block that prevents me from choosing to be happy and journey on into emotional sobriety. Bill W. aptly called it "a hell of a spot!" He also showed me I was dealing with my unconscious, that great expanse of old recordings which continually plays a lifetime of neglect, frustration, and fear. Locked in this deep hidden part of me are fears and compulsions which he calls "faulty and emotional dependencies upon people, upon AA, indeed, upon any set of circumstances whatever." This was a powerful and revealing statement about my dilemma, my recovery, and the direction I should now go. I was still absolutely dependent for validation and security on people (even my long-dead parents) and circumstances beyond my control. This created a terrible endless spiral of self-condemnation, guilt, and depression. I began to see that my recovery was a process of growth followed by sabotage. These episodes began with a kind of innocence and newness of experience offered to me by my recovery - a pink cloud, if you will. From this new experience, I was allowed to make positive choices and responses, thus creating joy and excitement in my life. As this high peaked out, I felt the need for relief and rest. To find this relief I chose the opposite of the positive and joyous feelings. This was how I nurtured myself; it was all I had ever learned. Of course, this caused decline instead of peace and so my need for relief grew. I added other opposites and experienced more decline. Frustration and doubt began to set in. Soon I slipped into a kind of learned violence against myself for failing in my attempt to grow and nurture myself. From here it was only a short slide to depression, that gray expanse of self-hatred and self-deceit. After periods of depression , the episodes would start over again with some new experience. My absolute dependencies on people and circumstances were sabotaging my recovery with a type of self-abuse. "



Anyone else?

"There is a "point" as he calls it, where I am willing, but for some reason unable, to get past a block that prevents me from choosing to be happy and journey on into emotional sobriety. Bill W. aptly called it "a hell of a spot!" He also showed me I was dealing with my unconscious, that great expanse of old recordings which continually plays a lifetime of neglect, frustration, and fear. Locked in this deep hidden part of me are fears and compulsions which he calls "faulty and emotional dependencies upon people, upon AA, indeed, upon any set of circumstances whatever." This was a powerful and revealing statement about my dilemma, my recovery, and the direction I should now go. I was still absolutely dependent for validation and security on people (even my long-dead parents) and circumstances beyond my control. This created a terrible endless spiral of self-condemnation, guilt, and depression. I began to see that my recovery was a process of growth followed by sabotage. These episodes began with a kind of innocence and newness of experience offered to me by my recovery - a pink cloud, if you will. From this new experience, I was allowed to make positive choices and responses, thus creating joy and excitement in my life. As this high peaked out, I felt the need for relief and rest. To find this relief I chose the opposite of the positive and joyous feelings. This was how I nurtured myself; it was all I had ever learned. Of course, this caused decline instead of peace and so my need for relief grew. I added other opposites and experienced more decline. Frustration and doubt began to set in. Soon I slipped into a kind of learned violence against myself for failing in my attempt to grow and nurture myself. From here it was only a short slide to depression, that gray expanse of self-hatred and self-deceit. After periods of depression , the episodes would start over again with some new experience. My absolute dependencies on people and circumstances were sabotaging my recovery with a type of self-abuse. "



Anyone else?

What I'm dealing with:

My ex is still at my house, sleeping in his son's bedroom. He got out of jail nearly 2 weeks ago. He came over to see his son and he never left. He's not working or making any attempts to find a job. I was trying to be kind and let him stay through his next court date (Dec. 29th) but he?s making it really difficult. I thought he might be able to pitch in and help with a few around the house projects I have ? like caulking the bathrooms ? but he?s really not into it. Twice now, he?s gone out at night, and not come back til the next day.

He?s not using drugs (or so he says, and he doesn?t seem hungover when he gets back) but it?s very disturbing to my son who gets very upset every time his daddy leaves because he is worried that he will never come back. It also really annoys me because I am a fulltime parent and I have yet to catch a break or get an evening out even though his father has come to stay.

At first my son was very concerned everytime his father left the house. He would cry because he didn't think daddy was coming back. So I started telling him that Daddy comes and goes and Daddy is looking for his own house. And his daddy would love him no matter where he lived. And that we would go visit him when he did find his own house. That seems to have quieted his fears a little. And I also think that my son may be catching on to his fathers ways - realizing that his father is totally unreliable. Because , ysterday my son surprised me on the way home from work. He asked if his father would be at home. And then he said "I know momma, he comes and goes."

His father is pretty much a playmate to his son and that's all. I've been very sick so it was helpful to have someone there to entertain my child, but now having him in my house is really starting to annoy me. He lays on the couch and does nothing. He has no initiative. He has this attitude of entitlement and when I ask him what his plans are or I express my frustration to him, he just acts like I?m being a bitch and tells me he?ll find somewhere else to stay. But that?s about it. He hasn't actually made a permanent move to find somewhere else to stay. He just comes and goes when he wants and acts like I?m being a nasty beyatch when I ask him to help out or if he?s going to be around when I get home from work.

He has been hanging with his old "druggie" friends. He says they aren't using anymore. He told his mother that he had to re-acquaint himself with his old friends because I wouldn't let him stay us and he had to find somewhere to live. His mother called and asked me not to argue with him. She's afraid he will go out and use drugs and not come home for a visit after Christmas.

Anyway, sorry to post so long. I need to get this out so I can get a grip and make a move. It's easier to set boundaries and make an action plan when I see how ridiculous the situation looks on paper.

ERGH!

I realize, looking back that I subjected myself to, painful relationships most of my life, and truly believed it was my (addicted/alcoholic) partners causing my "misery".

I see a lot of people obsessing over hurtful partners and I would like to share something...

I read a book called, "Addicted To Misery", by Robert Becker. It scared the crap out of me at first, but the truth of it helped me REALLY change my life. Heres an excerpt I found particularly eye-opening (and helpful).:

"Getting Familiar With Misery:

Co-dependency teaches us many ways of dealing with life. Unfortunately, these ways often create prolonged unhappiness, making us so familiar with misery that we come to feel it is normal. We learn that being unhappy and having things go wrong is to be expected. Whether our codependency expectations come from the families we grew up in or from living with someone who is dependent, we are prepared for a life with many disappointments, frustrations and misery. Getting used to the traumas and unpredictable situations is hard at first, but we do learn, in order to survive. These experiences shape our thinking such that we imagine and experience situation after situation that is never what we want, never the way it should be, never right. This is where our familiarity with misery begins as a co-dependent.

Pre-existing Developmental Impairments

Children growing up in dysfunctional (another new word) families where things are out of control, develop emotional impairments which stay with them for life. These may take the form of not trusting themselves or others, inability to talk about their feelings, and the most hurtful, the inability to feel their feelings. Imagine the frustration of having something that hurts inside your body, yet not being able to point to where the pain is. Additionally, we become rigid and inflexible, we only like things that are either black or white, right or wrong, and we hate situations that leave unclear results. When that happens, we have feelings of nervousness and anxiety that we can't explain but we suffer with them patiently. As adults we see the world this way and cope with it by seeking ways to deal with our distrust, repression of feelings and rigidity. Avoiding boredom, finding excitement and looking for approval and acceptance become our daily tasks.

These conditions set the emotional stage for us to develop co-dependency. They also dictate the direction that many of our adult interpersonal relationships will take. Tragically, we choose persons to have relationships with for all the wrong reasons like:

"He needs me. I can make him better. Who will take care of him if I don't? I know I can make him happier than he has ever been. I don't think I can get anybody else." These reasons show how we feel about ourselves. Woody Allen had a line in his movie, Annie Hall, that fits co-dependents so well. "I would never want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member."

Who would really take us seriously? Our only real value lies in what we can do for others and that is never appreciated. Our self-image is so poor, our way of addressing feelings so inadequate, that we remain hopelessly stuck. We need to understand the origins of these conditions if any meaningful change is to occur in our lives.

Internalizing Feelings And Our Self-Image

Probably the earliest behavior we learn in getting familiar with misery is to internalize or stuff our feelings. Simply put, this means we don't talk about what feels bad, what feels good, what feels sad or what we feel. Instead, we keep the feelings inside and try to make them go away.
Having to push our emotions inside makes us feel that no one cares. For a child, this is devastating. Unresponsive parents, caught up in their own problems, give children inaccurate messages. The distressed mother, struggling with her alcoholic husband, is oftentimes too preoccupied to deal with the emotional needs of her child. I've seen this over and over with many adult children of alcoholics. They say, "I never talked about how I felt. I was too busy trying to help keep the peace. I never felt anyone cared."

Familiar Versus Unfamiliar Experiences

Power and Control

The experiences of a child living in a dysfunctional home, be it alcoholic, abusive, divorced or emotionally dead, certainly teach two things, first, how important it is to gain as much control in life as possible, and second, never to be powerless over anything because being powerless means to lack control and having no control results in misery.

Dysfunctional families give us the terrible feeling of being out of control and the knowledge of how powerless we are. You make a pact with yourself early in life that, as soon as possible, you will gain control and have power over the events of your life. You can see this happen in young children when they begin withdrawing from people. They shy away from others, especially grownups, and want to be left alone. This is the root of shyness or self-centered fear of what others might think about us. Yet we do this as a way to use our power to stop others from controlling us.

Dependent on Feeling Miserable

As the emotional trauma of our dysfunctional family unfolds, teaching us so many wrong realities, our codependency is spawned. Seeing the world as chaotic, out of control and not meaningful, forces us to learn to cope in poor ways. Yet, living with constant stress causes us to use defenses to deal with the real world. We become defended rather than defensive. The psychic numbing, or repression of memory and feelings, starts the misery which begins the dependency. It is what we come to expect. It is what feels normal. It is what we miss when it is absent. We depend on feeling miserable and we find the uncertainty, when that misery subsides, to be frustrating, worrisome and downright uncomfortable.

Attachment and Detachment

Getting familiar with misery teaches us many painful things. The relationships we form become places of great misery, making loneliness and disassociation the only sanctuary for an absence of misery.

Attachment is a process whereby you become emotionally and physically dependent on someone to take care of you. Children attach to parents as a means of survival. The process is appropriate in that case but when adults attach themselves to other adults, relationships are threatened, power and control issues are great and sick dependencies are spawned.

Even though closeness is avoided, misery addicts and co-dependents often become attached to people and relationships that are destructive, uncaring and unsupportive. The attachment provides a false sense of security and belonging. For most ATMs and co-dependents, fear of abandonment is so great that they will do anything to avoid it. This comes from living in families where people were never really there for them emotionally.

The main problem with attachment is the pain and restriction of freedom experienced by being so emotionally connected to someone. The dependency on this attachment makes it impossible to be independent and secure. Until the co-dependent learns to detach, recovery is threatened.

Detachment is a process of letting go of that "I can't live without this person" feeling. To detach, self-confidence must emerge and the person's self-reliance must take over. When I explain this to my clients, sometimes they think I am suggesting that they stop loving or caring about their spouses or partners. As I discussed earlier, taking care of is a very unhealthy process, though caring for is certainly desirable. Detaching is learning to care for, not take care of. It is a process of becoming un-dependent on the effects of others. This prevents us from being controlled by the emotional needs of others, or worse, trying to change them, as a way to feel better.

Anhedonia

Most of the discussion in this chapter has been to explain the process of how we get familiar with misery. It is important to understand this and see what getting familiar with misery does to us emotionally.

Anhedonia is a psychological condition, defined as the inability to be happy, have fun, or experience common sensual pleasures. Becoming familiar with misery results in just these things. We don't consider ourselves emotionally ill but we find it difficult to balance unpleasant experiences with pleasant ones. As experiences accumulate and we are chronically unhappy and scared, we become anhedonic. Another way to view anhedonia is as a state of numbness. So often, as people seek help, they discover how difficult it is to identify any feelings, after such prolonged exposure to these conditions.

This inability to be happy is not symptomatic only of depression. Certainly, a symptom of depression is the loss of interest in common activities, but that disappears after successful intervention with medication or psychotherapy. This symptom, loss of pleasure, remains only until the biochemical elements kick in, in an endogenous depression caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. In a reactive depression there is a direct causal connection to a situation, e.g. in a divorce, once the person has therapeutically worked through the trauma or crisis, he is able to revert to normal functioning and experience pleasure once again.

Not so with ATMs! ATMs who have left the reactive situations which caused loss of pleasure may continue to have the symptom for up to two years. Their anhedonia is connected to their long familiar history of misery and even when life improves, things just don't feel good.

This condition must be identified and worked with as a treatment issue if the addiction to misery is to be dismantled. Due to chronic unhappy experiences, it will take time for the emotional system to respond to things as they really are. During the recovery period, we will have to work very hard at identifying and processing these good feelings until they are familiar.

Laboratory Experiments

1. Try to remember what the rules were in your home when you were growing up. Identify what your family taught you about your feelings, about trusting and talking. Be specific.

2. If stuffing feelings is what you generally do, think back to when this began. Ask yourself why? Work hard at remembering how feelings were dealt with while you were growing up. List specific situations when you remember not being able to express feelings.

3. Explore what you think was familiar for you as a child about trusting others, risking, caring for yourself.

4. Think about how long you have felt miserable and how many times, when things were going well, you somehow found a way to mess them up and get back to the misery.
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I realize, looking back that I have been subjected myself to, painful situations most of my life, and truly believed it was my (addicted/alcoholic) partners causing my "misery".

I see a lot of people obsessing over hurtful partners and I would like to share something...

I read a book called, "Addicted To Misery", by Robert Becker. It scared the crap out of me at first, but the truth of it helped me REALLY change my life. Heres an excerpt I found particularly eye-opening (and helpful).:

"Getting Familiar With Misery:

Co-dependency teaches us many ways of dealing with life. Unfortunately, these ways often create prolonged unhappiness, making us so familiar with misery that we come to feel it is normal. We learn that being unhappy and having things go wrong is to be expected. Whether our codependency expectations come from the families we grew up in or from living with someone who is dependent, we are prepared for a life with many disappointments, frustrations and misery. Getting used to the traumas and unpredictable situations is hard at first, but we do learn, in order to survive. These experiences shape our thinking such that we imagine and experience situation after situation that is never what we want, never the way it should be, never right. This is where our familiarity with misery begins as a co-dependent.

Pre-existing Developmental Impairments

Children growing up in dysfunctional (another new word) families where things are out of control, develop emotional impairments which stay with them for life. These may take the form of not trusting themselves or others, inability to talk about their feelings, and the most hurtful, the inability to feel their feelings. Imagine the frustration of having something that hurts inside your body, yet not being able to point to where the pain is. Additionally, we become rigid and inflexible, we only like things that are either black or white, right or wrong, and we hate situations that leave unclear results. When that happens, we have feelings of nervousness and anxiety that we can't explain but we suffer with them patiently. As adults we see the world this way and cope with it by seeking ways to deal with our distrust, repression of feelings and rigidity. Avoiding boredom, finding excitement and looking for approval and acceptance become our daily tasks.

These conditions set the emotional stage for us to develop co-dependency. They also dictate the direction that many of our adult interpersonal relationships will take. Tragically, we choose persons to have relationships with for all the wrong reasons like:

"He needs me. I can make him better. Who will take care of him if I don't? I know I can make him happier than he has ever been. I don't think I can get anybody else." These reasons show how we feel about ourselves. Woody Allen had a line in his movie, Annie Hall, that fits co-dependents so well. "I would never want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member."

Who would really take us seriously? Our only real value lies in what we can do for others and that is never appreciated. Our self-image is so poor, our way of addressing feelings so inadequate, that we remain hopelessly stuck. We need to understand the origins of these conditions if any meaningful change is to occur in our lives.

Internalizing Feelings And Our Self-Image

Probably the earliest behavior we learn in getting familiar with misery is to internalize or stuff our feelings. Simply put, this means we don't talk about what feels bad, what feels good, what feels sad or what we feel. Instead, we keep the feelings inside and try to make them go away.
Having to push our emotions inside makes us feel that no one cares. For a child, this is devastating. Unresponsive parents, caught up in their own problems, give children inaccurate messages. The distressed mother, struggling with her alcoholic husband, is oftentimes too preoccupied to deal with the emotional needs of her child. I've seen this over and over with many adult children of alcoholics. They say, "I never talked about how I felt. I was too busy trying to help keep the peace. I never felt anyone cared."

Familiar Versus Unfamiliar Experiences

Power and Control

The experiences of a child living in a dysfunctional home, be it alcoholic, abusive, divorced or emotionally dead, certainly teach two things, first, how important it is to gain as much control in life as possible, and second, never to be powerless over anything because being powerless means to lack control and having no control results in misery.

Dysfunctional families give us the terrible feeling of being out of control and the knowledge of how powerless we are. You make a pact with yourself early in life that, as soon as possible, you will gain control and have power over the events of your life. You can see this happen in young children when they begin withdrawing from people. They shy away from others, especially grownups, and want to be left alone. This is the root of shyness or self-centered fear of what others might think about us. Yet we do this as a way to use our power to stop others from controlling us.

Dependent on Feeling Miserable

As the emotional trauma of our dysfunctional family unfolds, teaching us so many wrong realities, our codependency is spawned. Seeing the world as chaotic, out of control and not meaningful, forces us to learn to cope in poor ways. Yet, living with constant stress causes us to use defenses to deal with the real world. We become defended rather than defensive. The psychic numbing, or repression of memory and feelings, starts the misery which begins the dependency. It is what we come to expect. It is what feels normal. It is what we miss when it is absent. We depend on feeling miserable and we find the uncertainty, when that misery subsides, to be frustrating, worrisome and downright uncomfortable.

Attachment and Detachment

Getting familiar with misery teaches us many painful things. The relationships we form become places of great misery, making loneliness and disassociation the only sanctuary for an absence of misery.

Attachment is a process whereby you become emotionally and physically dependent on someone to take care of you. Children attach to parents as a means of survival. The process is appropriate in that case but when adults attach themselves to other adults, relationships are threatened, power and control issues are great and sick dependencies are spawned.

Even though closeness is avoided, misery addicts and co-dependents often become attached to people and relationships that are destructive, uncaring and unsupportive. The attachment provides a false sense of security and belonging. For most ATMs and co-dependents, fear of abandonment is so great that they will do anything to avoid it. This comes from living in families where people were never really there for them emotionally.

The main problem with attachment is the pain and restriction of freedom experienced by being so emotionally connected to someone. The dependency on this attachment makes it impossible to be independent and secure. Until the co-dependent learns to detach, recovery is threatened.

Detachment is a process of letting go of that "I can't live without this person" feeling. To detach, self-confidence must emerge and the person's self-reliance must take over. When I explain this to my clients, sometimes they think I am suggesting that they stop loving or caring about their spouses or partners. As I discussed earlier, taking care of is a very unhealthy process, though caring for is certainly desirable. Detaching is learning to care for, not take care of. It is a process of becoming un-dependent on the effects of others. This prevents us from being controlled by the emotional needs of others, or worse, trying to change them, as a way to feel better.

Anhedonia

Most of the discussion in this chapter has been to explain the process of how we get familiar with misery. It is important to understand this and see what getting familiar with misery does to us emotionally.

Anhedonia is a psychological condition, defined as the inability to be happy, have fun, or experience common sensual pleasures. Becoming familiar with misery results in just these things. We don't consider ourselves emotionally ill but we find it difficult to balance unpleasant experiences with pleasant ones. As experiences accumulate and we are chronically unhappy and scared, we become anhedonic. Another way to view anhedonia is as a state of numbness. So often, as people seek help, they discover how difficult it is to identify any feelings, after such prolonged exposure to these conditions.

This inability to be happy is not symptomatic only of depression. Certainly, a symptom of depression is the loss of interest in common activities, but that disappears after successful intervention with medication or psychotherapy. This symptom, loss of pleasure, remains only until the biochemical elements kick in, in an endogenous depression caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. In a reactive depression there is a direct causal connection to a situation, e.g. in a divorce, once the person has therapeutically worked through the trauma or crisis, he is able to revert to normal functioning and experience pleasure once again.

Not so with ATMs! ATMs who have left the reactive situations which caused loss of pleasure may continue to have the symptom for up to two years. Their anhedonia is connected to their long familiar history of misery and even when life improves, things just don't feel good.

This condition must be identified and worked with as a treatment issue if the addiction to misery is to be dismantled. Due to chronic unhappy experiences, it will take time for the emotional system to respond to things as they really are. During the recovery period, we will have to work very hard at identifying and processing these good feelings until they are familiar.

Laboratory Experiments

1. Try to remember what the rules were in your home when you were growing up. Identify what your family taught you about your feelings, about trusting and talking. Be specific.

2. If stuffing feelings is what you generally do, think back to when this began. Ask yourself why? Work hard at remembering how feelings were dealt with while you were growing up. List specific situations when you remember not being able to express feelings.

3. Explore what you think was familiar for you as a child about trusting others, risking, caring for yourself.

4. Think about how long you have felt miserable and how many times, when things were going well, you somehow found a way to mess them up and get back to the misery.
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At the hospital again!

I need to rant for a minute because my daughter has to deal with this too, and I don't need to add to her frustration.

She's supposed to have oral surgery tomorrow but we were waiting to hear back from them and the results of the CT scan. They said the surgery date may change, or the kind of surgery, maybe the surgeons too.

They just called and asked if she could come in at 1:30 today. The following is a back and forth between me and the caller.

For what?
For surgery.
What surgery, the one scheduled tomorrow?
Surgery is scheduled for today.
Since when?
No one called you?
No and they were supposed to let us know the results of the CT scan.
What scan and has she eaten?
I don't know and don't know if we can make it today. What kind of surgery?
I don't know and I'll have the OR call you.

Whenever whomever calls back, I'll be sure to ask if they did a psych consult for pain meds, like they were supposed to. Odds are of course not because the different departments don't appear to know how to communicate with each other.

This is a nationally known teaching hospital with an incredible reputation. They have top of the line doctors and surgeons, and you couldn't ask for better diagnostics except maybe the Mayo clinic.

While I was typing the plastic surgeon's office called. Surgery is tomorrow again. I asked for the results of the CT scan and she asked what scan?

:c004:

I left a message for the nurse to give me a callback TODAY, because certain things need to be discussed before the surgery. If they don't call back she will not have the surgery.

My daughter asked me to handle the calls because she can't right now. This is a mega CF and fubar, and I'm barely able to navigate it. She did listen to both phone calls and is learning, though.

OK, now that I've ranted I'm going to find some serenity!

This is probably the wrong place to post this- if it is I am sorry.
All replys are welcome, and I'll state up front that a debate is NOT my intention.

I was sober since Sept 21, and I started to drink again this past weekend. Now I'm on a 3 day bender. I'm not sure why- probably boredom, frustration, most likely it's because I'm a drunk.

I've attended AA in the past. I've read the Big Book, and I can identify with some of it. Not all of it. I've also read "Beyond the Influence" and "Above the Influence", and I realize that I do have a disease, despite what I may have said in previous posts.

I need some help. I can't believe everything that I've read in the BB, and I know that I can't keep drinking. Does anyone have any suggestions for someone like me who thinks that a higher power is not a "He" or a "Him"?

Thanks in advance;
BHJ

edit-
I mean can I go back to AA? Will I be accepted even though I don't subscribe to some of the tenets?

I am a born again Christian. By God's grace the Holy Spirit is with me most days. I began my spiritiual journey almost immediately after I committed to living clean (about 8.5 months ago). It was and is a gift beyond my wildest imagination. My life was never the same for the better.

Yet, I need to rebuild my financial base for retirement. I have been taught in my heart that the spirtual gifts far outweigh the material world. Yet I mourn my physcial losses and I don't like it or what it does to my connection with God. So, I must surrender every day, sometimes hourly. I am learning that trusting God is the answer. The more I turn to Him in my fear, uncertainty, frustration, stupidity, selfisness, self centeredness, and despair the more I know He has a plan which is the only way for me to live.

2 Corinthians 4:7-12; 16-18 (NIV)

"But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."