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What’s The Worst That Can Happen?

A friend keeps telling me about big fears he has of not getting the mortgage paid and being homeless. There’s no danger of that happening. But OCD and reality rarely see eye to eye.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/agl2IgiFl9o

He wrote:

My Biggest Fear is that we will lose our house because we will get too far behind in our mortgage and we will end up homeless. 

I even wrote a script that details how it all happens as recommended in my group therapy. The more you read it, the less scared you are supposed to become. So far not working too well.

Ah, yes. The script. I remember doing those. Mine were different, though.

Instead of financial ruin, I focused on what would happen if I got on a plane and the plane went down, or what would happen if I didn’t do a perfect job on a work project, and what would happen if my wife was arguing with me and I actually argued back.

Each script ended pretty much the same: The worst would happen: I’d be vaporized in the plane crash, fired from the job and divorced from the wife.

At some point I stopped. I know that’s the part you want to know about, old friend. Where was the point when I learned to stop thinking in terrifying absolutes?

You want me to help you write a script around that, where only the best of outcomes happen.

But I can’t do that for you.

The uncomfortable fact is that at some critical moments when I could have engaged in the same old behavior, I went a different way. I can’t pinpoint the moments, but I know that all the weekly therapy sessions and careful adjustments of my medication slowly brought me to a point where I could formulate different outcomes.

One day at my then-job, I was asked to do something I didn’t agree with. Exhausted from the people-pleasing game, I just said fuck it and pushed back. You know what happened? The boss made me do it anyway. It was nothing major. The disagreement was over how a story should be angled. But the boss didn’t fire me. And so I pushed back more often.

The more I pushed back, the more comfortable it became for me. I started enjoying my work a lot more.

Arguing with my wife was harder. It still is. I don’t like to push back because I’m afraid I’ll push too hard and knock my marriage over the cliff. But I argue back a lot more than I used to, and you know what? We’re better for it. She didn’t leave, and the danger was never there. If anything, I risked the marriage more by avoiding the difficult conversations at all costs.

As for the planes, I ride them all the time now without incident.

The uncomfortable fact is this: There’s no playbook for facing your fears. At some point, you have the moments of truth and you have to rise to the occasion. And when you do, you won’t realize you’re doing it.

The only way out of hell is through it, the old saying goes. It’s the truth.

If you fear financial ruin, the only way out is through it. That means you have to take a more active role in the family finances and relieve your spouse of some of the tough decisions. If your wife is like mine back when I was at my worst, she sees you as another of her children right now. She has to make all the tough calls because you can’t.

If that’s not a sign to you that you have to get more involved in the decisions, nothing will ever convince you.

But I know you. You’re more of a realist than that. You know you have to face your fears head on. That scares the shit out of you. But once you get started, the fear will get smaller.

Not what you wanted to hear? Oh, well. That’s all I got for you. Nothing is more terrifying. But nothing is more worth it. It doesn’t make sense to hear it, but that’s where I’ve been.

Here’s a tip to get you started. When you’re facing a fear, picture yourself flipping it off, with your fist on fire. Just like this:

It’s better than picturing the fear in front of you in its underwear.

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I Miss The Beer Bottle Collection Under The Patio

In my opinion there’s no better way to release anger and frustration than prayer. But let’s be honest: Sometimes it helps to break things.

Mood music: 

http://youtu.be/Vi37iGjfGsM

When I lived in the house on Revere Beach, there was a storage room beneath the concrete patio where I collected all the empty beer bottles from the numerous parties we had in the basement apartment.

I spent a lot of time in that room. I’d blast my old stereo, with sounds of The Ramones or Black Sabbath wafting through the air. I’d sneak cigarettes, read and write a lot of bad poetry.

And, when life became too much to take, which was often, I’d line those bottles against the wall and smash them. I’d throw the old, decaying books that belonged to my great-grandmother, left behind from when she was living in the basement apartment. I’d throw other bottles. I’d throw just about anything, enchanted by the different sounds you got from using different objects.

To an angry 19 year old with a softball-sized chip on his shoulder, it was the most satisfying release I could get without being drunk or stoned — though I was still drunk and stoned a fair amount of the time. And it was better than hitting people, not that I was ever a good shot when real people were in front of me.

Sometimes I miss the beer bottle collection under the patio. It made for such a quick, easy release of anger.

I guess you have to find a better way when you’re closing in on your middle ages.

Breaking bottles around the kids wouldn’t exactly be model parenting.

I guess that’s why, in my 30s, I would break myself repeatedly with vicious food binges. If I couldn’t make bottles go boom, I could at least make my gut go boom.

But that’s problematic, too. The belly doesn’t go boom under those conditions. It just gets bigger and bouncier.

Today, with the binge eating in remission and nothing but a keyboard in front of me, I just pound the shit out of the keys, writing, writing, writing.

You know what? It’s almost as good as smashing beer bottles.

But I still miss it some days.

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This Is No Place To Make Amends

After running the post “Bully’s Remorse” a few days ago, it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, writing it was a mistake. Or maybe it simply didn’t go far enough.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:5rpRzNcJZqKQXk9PIjreB6]

Like many topics in this blog, I wrote it to yank another skeleton out of the closet and acknowledge that as a teenager, while I was getting bullied and should have related to others who were bullied, I just turned around and kicked around someone I thought was weaker than me.

It’s not the first regret that I’ve mentioned here. In another post, “One of my Biggest Regrets,” I wrote about a New Hampshire reporter from my Eagle-Tribune days who I was terrible to. I called her early one morning to chew her out over a story that didn’t get done, knowing full well her husband was due to have heart surgery that very morning.

It’s a recurring theme here. I tell you about someone I was a awful to, and it’s like I’m making an amends to that person.

But I’m not, really. Amends can only be made face-to-face. In that regard, I’m stuck in neutral.

This all occurred to me after a friend with her own experience in being bullied sent me this message:

—

I remember being picked on from as early on as 2nd grade all the way through senior year of high school (alternative school, you know “short bus”, “the troubled kids”) I got there by trying to kill myself. I still remember what one of the intake workers said about my overdose: “Hey, you know that could get ya killed…hahaha”… trying to relate to the poor depressed girl. I replied, “Yeah, that’s the point.

Being tormented by my peers in one of the hardest things I have tried to let go of in my life. There is a pile of abuse material, neglect, alcohol and drug addiction (of my family), homelessness, being a foster child, being locked up in psyche…etc., that I could talk about…but, somehow being alienated by the people ( your peers), perhaps even those that could of helped you in that situation, hurt, and still does.

If you remember me from “around the neighborhood”, Bill, its probably because I was the scapegoat for a lot of other kids’ nastiness, including my own sister. So, am I crying in my tea (sorry, I don’t drink), here? I hope not. I’m doing the best to let you know how your “friend” probably felt: useless, self-hating, desperate, and alone.

I hope he was stronger than I was, I hope for you that he is doing well, and can laugh it all off.

My personal opinion is that you are making amends to make yourself feel better. If you want this person to know how you feel, that you are sorry, that you wish you had not done the things you did…..don’t write a blog about it, don’t say: ” hey if you happen to see so and so let him know I wrote a blog about him, cuz I’m so fucking cool … hire your own private detective, find the guy, meet him face to face, and make your amends. That’s being a man. Abuse creates monsters, and what children do to each other while growing up is abuse, sometimes with fatal consequences. I wonder if Columbine would of even happened if adults had a “no tolerance” reaction to any abuse, because they know, and they let it happen all the time.

—

The line that really cut me to the core was the suggestion that I wrote that post to make myself feel better.

Because in hindsight, it’s true.

Coming clean here is an important step. But I’m really not making my amends unless I’m doing it directly to the person who needs to hear it.

It’s time for me to put the process in motion.

There are many people I need to make peace with.

regret

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41 Years

Some people get depressed on their birthday. Not me. The fact that I turn 41 today is a freak of nature. But a year into my forties, I know I have more cleaning up to do.

Mood music:

Item: When I was sick with the Crohn’s Disease as a kid, I lost a lot of blood and developed several side ailments. I’m told by my parents that the doctor’s were going to remove the colon more than once. It didn’t happen. They tell me I was closing in on death more than once. I doubt it was ever that serious. Either way, here I am.

Item: When the OCD was burning out of control, I often felt I’d die young. I was never suicidal, but I had a fatalistic view of things. I just assumed I wasn’t long for this world and I didn’t care. I certainly did a lot to slowly help the dying process along. That’s what addicts do. We feed the addiction compulsively knowing full well what the consequences will be.

When I was a prisoner to fear and anxiety, I really didn’t want to live long. I isolated myself. Fortunately, I never had the guts to do anything about it. And like I said, suicide was never an option.

I spent much of my 30s on the couch with a shattered back, and escaped with the TV. I was breathing, but I was also as good as dead some of the time.

I’ve watched others go before me at a young age. Michael. Sean. Even Peter. Lose the young people in your life often enough and you’ll start assuming you’re next.

When you live for yourself and don’t put faith in God, you’re not really living. When it’s all about you, there no room to let all the other life in. So the soul shrivels and hardens. I’ve been there.

I also had a strange fear of current events and was convinced at one point that the world would burn in a nuclear holocaust before I hit 30. That hasn’t happened yet.

So here I am at 41, and it’s almost comical that I’m still here.

I’m more grateful than you could imagine for the turn of events my life has taken in the last six years.

I’ve learned to stop over-thinking and manage the OCD. When you learn to stop over-thinking, a lot of things that used to be daunting become a lot easier. You also find yourself in a lot of precious moments that were always there. But you didn’t notice them because you were sick with worry.

I notice them now, and I am Blessed far beyond what I probably deserve.

I have a career that I love.

I have the best wife on Earth and two boys that teach me something new every day.

I have many, many friends who have helped me along in more ways than they’ll ever know.

I have my 12-Step program and I’m not giving in to the worst of my addictions.

Most importantly, I have God in my life. When you put your faith in Him, there’s a lot less to be afraid of. Aging is one of the first things you stop worrying about.

So here I am at 41. feeling a lot better about myself than I did at 31. In fact, 31 was one of the low points.

But I’d be in denial if I told you everything was perfect beyond perfect. I wouldn’t tell you that anyway, because I’ve always thought that perfection was a bullshit concept. That makes it all the more ironic and comical that OCD would be the life-long thorn in my side.

I just recently quit smoking, and I’m still missing the hell out of that vice. I haven’t gone on a food binge in nearly three years, but there are still days where I’m not sure I’ve made the best choices; those days where my skin feels just a little too loose and flabby.

I still go to my meetings, but there are many days where I’d rather do anything but go to a meeting. I go because I have to, but I don’t always want to.

And while I have God in my life, I still manage to be an asshole to Him a lot of the time.

At 41, I’m still very much the work in progress. The scars are merely the scaffolding and newly inserted steel beams propping me up.

I don’t know what comes next, but I have much less fear about the unknown.

And so I think WILL have a happy birthday.

OCD Diaries

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A Call From My Mother

It’s Wednesday morning. I’m working from home, face behind the computer. My kids and two neighborhood kids are tearing though the house, overturning everything in sight. Then the phone rings.

Mood music:

“It’s been five years,” the voice on the other end says. “Can’t we fix this?”

It’s my mother. I saw her at my cousin’s wedding two weeks ago but we largely avoided contact. We’re six years into an estrangement that I think is the result of shared mental illness.

Can we fix this?

I really don’t know.

I want to. I’ve never been happy about what happened, though I felt and still feel that the split was necessary.

Some folks think this stuff is simple. Life’s too short not to get along, they say. But life is far more complex than that. Relationships with a history of abuse? That’s one of the most complex and confusing beasts of all.

I’ve had a lot of love and blessings in my life in the last few years. I’ve come far in overcoming addictions and mental illness. Even the family discord has served a purpose. Somewhere along the way, I’ve found myself.

It would be nice if I could mend some more relationships. But I have to be careful.

At the wedding, my Uncle Bobby, the last of the siblings that included my grandmother, took me aside at one point and said life is too short to hate.

He is absolutely right.

But hate has nothing to do with it.

Mistrust, hurt feelings and deep disagreements over right and wrong? Absolutely. But not hate.

If it were about hate, all this would be cut, dry and easy.

I’ll have to do some hard thinking over this one.

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You Can’t Be Everyone’s Friend

I once wrote about an obsession with the Facebook friend count. I worried about offending people who de-friended me. Lately I realize it’s ok if I can’t be everyone’s friend. I’m even warming to the idea.

Mood music:

I’ve always had this stupid idea that I needed to be everyone’s friend. Even when I was bullying someone, I’d turn around and try to be their friend. I always wanted everyone in my family to like me, even when I was busy hating them.

I’ve carried that into adulthood and got obsessed about it with things like Facebook. This morning I glanced at my friend count and it was 1,713. I could have sworn it was 1,715 a few days ago. So I started looking around to see who might have gotten mad at me. I noticed that three relatives had disconnected from me. A year ago that would have bothered me a lot more than it did this morning.

“At least my ‘friends’ seem to be sticking around,” I thought to myself.

Sarcasm aside, I do think I’m turning a corner with this whole like-dislike thing. Slowly, it’s sinking in that I need to do a better job at listening to my own words. At the beginning of this blog is a post called “Being a People Pleaser is Dumb.” I wrote about how I wanted to be the golden boy at work more than anything back in the day, until I realized it was absolutely impossible to please everyone all the time. In fact, some people are unworthy of the effort.

I’ve had to learn that lesson all over again in the social networking world.

When people walk away from me online, I figure it’s because they don’t particularly enjoy this blog. So be it.

You can’t be everyone’s friend. You shouldn’t be everyone’s friend.

I’m slowly warming to the idea that if some people don’t like you it’s because you have the stones to take a stand on the things you believe in.

You either like me or you don’t. It’s all good.

I’m connected to a lot of people I’m not particularly fond of these days. It’s nothing personal. I just find find the whiny, woe-is-me status updates grating. Facebook is full of that stuff, along with all the self-righteous, pre-manufactured statements people wrap their arms around.

But it’s your profile.

Do what you want with it, and I’ll do what I want with mine.

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Cold Turkey Has Got Me On The Run

More than a week after I quit smoking cold turkey, I’m pissed off.

It pisses me off that other people can enjoy a drink or two, the occasional cigar or feast without letting it take over everything else in their lives.

Mood music from the debut EP of Pull Trouble From The Fire:

[soundcloud url=”http://soundcloud.com/pulltroublefromthefire/06-dead-wait”]

It pisses me off that I have to learn to behave and pretend I don’t wish I had some of what everyone around me has.

It pisses me off that I have to keep explaining to people why I can’t eat flour or sugar — ever — why I can’t have a glass of wine or a beer — ever — and why I can’t just have a cigar on the weekends and be done with it.

When I wrote about the smoking last week, a friend asked me the following question, with a comment mixed in:

“Just out of curiousity, how many cigars do you smoke? One or more/day? Do you opt for a toro (6 or 7? cigar) or a robusto? If you’re having a robusto a couple times each week (or even a toro every day), isn’t that moderation?

“While I’ve never tried them, I’ve seen how cigarettes can pull you in and you can go from one cig to a pack/day in a short time. Not that I’m condoning it, but I think an occasional cigar is like a good scotch. It a treat more than a habit.

“I’ve found that you need to pick the vices your going to ween off carefully, or it will be at everyone’s peril. Wouldn’t it be better to set boundaries so you can enjoy a vice while preventing overindulgence? Doesn’t forced moderation ultimately help strengthen the psyche (I don’t know, just asking)?

“I guess what I’m asking is whether you’re being too hard on yourself at the expense of others? As you say, you can’t do anything in moderation, but it seems you may not be able to implement a fix in moderation either. Kick the cigs. Save the cigars. Don’t be a miserable bastard!”

It’s a fair question, and he’s right that a person who is cold turkey will make others miserable. That’s why people like us are at our nastiest as human beings after we first clean up.

He is wrong when he asks: “Doesn’t forced moderation ultimately help strengthen the psyche?”

I can see where he’s going with this. Even in sobriety people like me live to an extreme. But in our world, moderation doesn’t exist.

That’s the core problem of our disease: The part of the brain that regulates moderate behavior was obliterated somewhere along the way. Therefore, it has to be all or nothing.

In the AA Big Book on which the 12 Steps of Recovery is built, the opening chapter is called “The Doctor’s Opinion.” In it, Dr. William D. Silkworth outlines the physical defects of the disease and how it impacts our behavior. He literally describes it as an allergy. Once we take a drink or engage in a food binge, a demonic craving kicks in that shuts off the sanity switches in our heads.

“We believe, and so suggested a few years ago, that the action of alcohol on these chronic alcoholics is a manifestation of an allergy; that the phenomenon of craving is limited to this class and never occurs in the average temperate drinker. These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all; and once having formed the habit and found they cannot break it, once having lost their self-confidence, their reliance upon things human, their problems pile up on them and become astonishingly difficult to solve.

“Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks—drinks which they see others taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery.”

The doctor uses alcohol as the example, but the same applies for all addictive behavior.

To those who think it’s weird when a man or woman can’t enjoy something in moderation, I get your skepticism. The problem — or the blessing in your case — is that your brain doesn’t work like mine. You have a gift a lot of us would kill for: The ability to realize when you’ve had enough of something.

My wife can buy a six-pack of beer and make it last two months. I wouldn’t be able to last two hours without downing it all. Then I would need more. The difference between us is one of brain chemistry.

Weening off the comfort substances was not an option for me for the simple reason that I have to have it all. Trying to have smaller amounts of something each day or week won’t work in that environment.

So I’ve had to go cold turkey.

It’s hell the first week. The second week, which is where I’m at, is one of more muted irritability.

From there, it gets easier, and we get better. Much better.

I’ll be glad when I get there after this latest round of cold turkey.

[soundcloud url=”http://soundcloud.com/pulltroublefromthefire/05-trainwrecks”]

OCD Diaries

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I Pet My Peeves Until They Become Triggers

I really hate all those pre-written, self-righteous Facebook posts. I told Erin I was going to write a post flaming all those stupid sayings.

Mood music:

“Tell me what that has to do with OCD?” she asked, giving me that stare she gives me when she’s certain that I’m full of shit.

“It’s a trigger,” I said, not really meaning it.

“It’s not a trigger. It’s a peeve. You going to go pet it now?” she asks, still giving me that stare.

She’s on to something, though.

Before I go further, let me share some of the Facebook blurbs that set me off this morning. Hold your nose and read on:

“I was RAISED, I didn’t just grow up. I was taught to speak when I enter a room, say Please & Thank you, to have Respect for my elders, lend a helping hand to those in need, hold the door for the person behind me, say Excuse me when it’s needed, & to Love people for who they are, not for what you can get from them! I was also taught to treat people the way I want to be treated! If you were raised this way too, please re-post this…sadly, many won’t, because they weren’t, and it shows~Thank you”

Then there’s this little chestnut:

I may not be the most beautiful girl or the sexiest girl nor do I have a perfect body. I might not be everyone’s first choice, but I’m a great choice. I do not pretend to be someone I’m not, because I’m good at being me. I might not be proud of some of the things in my past, but I’m proud of who I am today. So take me as I am, or watch me as I walk away! ? 

OK. I’m walking away now.

When people post this stuff, it’s like they’re telling the rest of us that we don’t respect our elders and don’t love the right people.

OK. I pet the peeve. On to Erin’s point.

I do sometimes obsess about peeves until they become OCD triggers. I think a lot of people do, but since this blog is about my own blemishes, it seemed like a good idea to put this one in the archives of insanity.

Have a nice day.

http://youtu.be/_7EQlfprV9E

OCD Diaries

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I Need A Lot Of Gum. And Maybe A Gun

It’s been one week since I have smoked a cigarette or a cigar. The itch is gone but the crankiness is not.

Mood music:

I’m finding some relief in gum. But now I’m starting to think crazy thoughts about it. Behold:

I find myself wondering if there are websites that sell exotic types of gum. I’m sure there are, though I haven’t looked yet.

Beer-flavored gum?

Cigar-flavored gum?

Rum-flavored gum?

The crazy thinking goes something like this: If I can no longer have any of my vices, I can chew gum that at least tastes like all my vices.

But here’s what would happen:

–I’d become obsessed with stockpiling all the gum I could find. I would find a way to spend hundreds of dollars a pop.

–I would chew a flavor and eventually decide it’s just not as good as the real thing.

–I’d start obsessing about the real thing.

From there, the danger is obvious.

That’s how the mind of an addict works.

I’ll just have to stick with the garden-variety, minty fresh gum until I get past this.

OCD Diaries

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No Faith, No Recovery. Period

Some of my readers don’t like to talk about religion. It’s something where most of us simply can’t find common ground. But I often write about my Faith anyway, because it’s essential to my recovery. If some find it uncool, so be it.

Third in a series about the 12 Steps of Recovery and how they apply to me.

Step 2 – Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

This is where people get all confused about the 12 steps. They see Step 2 and think they’ve stumbled upon some bat-shit crazy religious cult. At best, people get the mistaken impression that this is some fringe religious denomination or cult.

That’s how I felt the first time I walked into an Overeater’s Anonymous meeting. And I’ve always believed in God.

In reality, Step 2 is simply about realizing you can’t kill your demons without help from a higher power. Maybe that higher power is rooted in Buddhism. Or that higher power could be rooted in Wiccan beliefs. It’s literally a higher power as you understand him-her-it to be.

For me, the higher power is Jesus.

It’s not hard for me to write about OCD, binge eating and pills. These are a part of life for people across political and religious divides. Depression and anxiety will hit you whether you’re Catholic, Baptist or agnostic.

But I walk a delicate path between friends and family who are all over the map when it comes to Faith. So I wasn’t going to touch it in this blog.

Eventually, I realized I had no choice. To write about my experiences with OCD and addiction without mentioning my Faith is impossible. It’s too much a part of who I am and how I got here.

In April 2006 I was Baptized a Catholic after going through the RCIA program. This, after more than a decade in the religious wilderness. I was born into a Jewish family but we observed it in a mostly secular manner. By the time I reached my 20s, there was nothing keeping me there.

My first taste of the Catholic Faith was when I met my wife. She grew up going to church every Sunday and going to the same parochial school our boys go to today.

Erin never forced her faith on me, and our marriage certainly wasn’t built on the condition that I convert. I slowly inched toward my Faith over time, and my battle with OCD marked a turning point.

Among my friends and family are people who don’t believe in God and don’t want to hear others talk about it. Then there are those who believe in a higher power but are too angry over perceived wrongdoings in the Church. A lot of that anger is justified, especially when observed through the prism of the Priest Sex Abuse Scandal and atrocities that have happened in God’s name at the hands of misguided people over the centuries.

To the right are those who follow their Faith with a sometimes blinding passion. Bring up things about the organized church you disagree with and they’ll shut the conversation down with a few terse words. On this side of the court, to disagree with what the Pope or Bishops say is to be a fake Catholic or worse.

My misgivings, mainly the intolerance that often abounds in the church, are summed up pretty nicely by this West Wing clip, when President Bartlet, a devout Catholic, rips apart a TV pundit who claims to be an authority on the Word of God:

I also get a big kick out of movies that lampoon religion when it’s handled well. A special favorite is this one:

http://youtu.be/HE7tTT8khf0

But all that aside, I believe in the central teachings of the Catholic Faith — that through the death and resurrection of Jesus, sinful humans can be reconciled to God and be offered salvation and the promise of eternal life.  (Wikipedia’s definition, but it’s essentially what I believe).

A big part of my conversion involved my battle with OCD. Part of the mental disorder involved relentless self criticism and loathing. Self-hatred is not too strong a description. I was so convinced that I was flawed beyond repair that I simply plowed along with my self-destructive behavior. I couldn’t get out of my own way.

Catholic conversion entered the picture because, as I was peeling back layer after layer in the struggle to find myself, I found that I simply couldn’t get there without help from a higher power.

I could have been drawn to one of the Protestant denominations or something like Unitarianism. But for me, the Catholic Faith resonated above all others. As I studied the Faith and applied it to my own history, I started to understand that I was not sinful beyond hope. I learned that it’s never too late for any of us, and so I found the strength to move forward and get better. It’s a journey that will continue to my dying breath.

I cherish Mass each week, along with all the Sacraments. My favorite is the Sacrament of Reconciliation — Confession. By spilling out the junk on a regular basis, I feel lighter, less burdened and able to deal with the lingering byproducts of my condition.

The community aspect has also been a tremendous source of strength. I’ve made some dear friends along the way, some of whom don’t share my skepticism of the Church as a governing entity. But we’re able to put those things aside. After all, we’re in full agreement on the central aspect of the Faith.

This is how my faith in a higher power evolved.

It’s not for everyone, but it IS for me, and that’s all that matters.

Without this element in my life, recovery from addiction and mental illness would simply not be possible for me.