Wow mate absolutely fantastic achievement. Most people who read this comment will never truly understand what you have been through and how hard it is. I fully understand as I suffer from compulsive behaviour and feel like I will never overcome it. Your storey gives me strength. All the best x

Congratulations on your sobriety God bless you brother and stay strong

I'm excited for you. I can feel the freedom in your words.

Congratulations! You are a success. 🌟

"Bring the body, and the mind will follow". Nobody "thinks" their way sober, rather it's ACTION that changes us. Congratulations on your three years!

Johann Hari wrote that the heart of addiction is disconnection. That really resonated for me. Russell is brilliant and there's still no one like Melody Beattie.

Good job on the 2 years!

@@kayligo 🙏🏻🙏🏻

Amen! 👏🏼👏🏼

How amazing that you are 17 years clean. That's incredible work - Lets make it for life this time!

Great job! It is not easy to come back. Refer to AA PG. 70, "suppose we fall short".. I think it's an incredible view on relapse. 💕

Addict style. That is well stated. I have my own history with codeine. One day recently a good friend who was a child in the war in Bosnia told me that her older sister is an addict. I won't say what brutal trauma she experienced but you can imagine. I kept trying to get her to have her sister 'contact this doctor I know who can help her' (mine) but she refused to accept it. To her it is black and white and her sister should 'take NOTHING'. I know that the more she approaches her sister like that, the more her sister will hide from her and that will just disconnect her even further. It's so important to be able to tell someone the truth and for them to accept you as you are right now before you can move toward changing anything.

💘👑

Relapse is a part of recovery. Don't sell yourself short

hang in there bro whats your poison?

I don't have years of drug misuse but I created an addiction taking my ex-husband's codeine because I was so overwhelmed by everyone around me and their needs and demands on me that I honestly think I almost deliberately created an addiction in order to force myself to seek support. I am very lucky to have great doctors but the real work is the underlying issues/feelings/everything. I thought I was slowly getting at least the start of re-connecting with myself and my own life. One day my mother said: 'You have to do it for you.' I am still stuck there. No drugs but this has been a very bumpy journey and it's really only just begun. Johann Hari wrote that the heart of addiction is disconnection. That basically says it all for me. I need to find a good therapist. I don't think I can get very far just on my own. But you are right, it feels right, if not always great, to know that I am doing something about it. Best to you!

Thats an odd comment 😂

Agreed

How you doing now ?

58000 lol

Same. I have a distraction/entertainment addiction and am eager to surrender and release to live a fuller life. How’s yours going?

Be well to you too! Thanks for reaching out!

Meds???

I wish you the best of luck xx

How’s the app and program treating you 5 months in?

Can you give us your seven month update?

Yes i also have a thinking disease i over think everything which ends up in confusion and a great deal of pain

Hi, have you read Johann Hari? I think the book is Chasing the Scream. Anyway, my mother read it first and sent me a quote. It basically comes down to the heart of addiction is disconnection. A 'thinking disease' is a great way of expressing...what's going on with us. Me too anyway. I have never been a drinker, don't smoke grass and always used herbal medicines. My bad marriage created a situation where one day I took two of my ex-husband's codeine tabs, which he had in a large box for migraines, and for the first time in forever I suddenly felt like I could manage all the competing demands pulling me in every direction. I never used for years but I knew from the start that I didn't take them for any headache! In a way I am fortunate in that I almost think I did this deliberately to force myself to get support and help. I have a great doctor and now take Suboxone. The problem is, the underlying issues are still there. I am slowly learning self-care, regaining my voice and trying to believe in my life again. Russell is brilliant. I bought his book but he is so great to watch and hear directly. Best wishes to you. Keep reaching out and stay connected.

I’d like to undue mayhem. I’m rural not bc I want to be. I’m scraping together so I can move towards my son. Seems that Blackrock has other plans. You seem so solid and articulate I want to listen. I’d really like to know how you bc who you are so interesting and confident yet not so overwhelming the narcissist you claim to be.

I def get that I'm the same way

Good luck from 5 months later. Hope they were good months.

Think most of us are in the same boat!

@@awsomeguy1278 i am sick of it though its not a fact of just being sober or just living a life of sobriety if i relapse it affects every aspect of my life. This cycle has repeatedly manifest in my life over the last 20 years numerous times. I will simply say as Pall did oh wretched me who will save me from this body with its lustful behavior? My the Creator help us to fully awaken and set us free from our lust for pleasure..

Trauma gets stored in the body and it wants to re-live the emotional experience to heal it fully. Figure out where in ur body this trauma is and work on that chakra area (most of us is 2nd/3rd chakra) to relase the emotion or get the energy unstuck. I am speaking from my own wobbly experience and not at all from a place of mastery. Joe dispenza helps with this stuff. Also, maybe sit with yourself and ask why you keep repeating the cycle, what do you gain, how is this helping you, what else can you learn, is this your most divine path? Also, go easy on yourself- you can't get it wrong, you're just learning this whole life thing as a newborn placed in a foreign land... you're doing great, you've made no mistakes!

I felt like this was me speaking every single word. You are not alone✨

How much parents love their children and children love their parents? Have you watched the film “Lorenzo’s oil” starring Nick Nolte and Susan Sarandon as the parents of a child sick with a rare incurable brain disease who research and work incessantly to find a cure to save their son’s life? That never happened with addiction, the so called “family disease”. Not only parents and children of addicts, likewise psychologists, psychiatrists and rest of humanity, didn’t research the affliction, when just reading the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous (which the mainstream of addiction recovery programs are based on) and being honest to want to understand is enough to understand that addiction is the psychology of a liar, but silence the truth that would save their so called “loved ones”. Are you queuing in the crowded comforting lies or alone in the unpleasant truths? Do you believe addiction is an incurable brain disease that affects young healthy criminals that has never been found or detected by any biological or other means? Humanity are dying deceived deceiving living a lie because parents don’t teach their children to be honest because are not honest themselves. The truth is addiction is the tormented psychology of an unforgiving liar, drugs don’t cause addiction and only liars get hooked and only honesty gets freedom. The tragedy of addiction is children who revenge a childhood hurt, or trauma, against their parents learning from example becoming victims of themselves so as to conceal the hatred to hurt others, advertising themselves as victims stealing attention. In life like in psychology events and behaviours happen for a reason. Addiction runs in families because psychologies, behaviours, beliefs and else are transmitted from parents to children, like father like son, because humanity don’t think for oneself, otherwise there would be agreement on the truth. Hate, lie, hurt, ignorance comes from hate, lie, hurt, ignorance and addiction appears in bad families of parents who hurt their children. I am a recovering addict, a fool who knows that is a fool, a wise man. I don’t know much but i know what i know. The truth is stagnated among liars and when the unpublishable truth is published mortality rates would collapse provoking humanity’s addiction recovery, a burst of psychology, guilt, shame that was bottled up, desensitised, ignored in active addiction. The war, nightmare of living a lie would end because would be proven that you are like i impossibility possible miracle God.

AA and NA meetings are Free thank goodness

Yes, my mother is a doctor (retired now) who spent several decades in the ER/Trauma Unit of St Luke's Hospital in Harlem, NYC. Every so often she send me an article that she has read somewhere about people being placed in jail with no help with withdrawal or anything. She gets outraged by the inhumanity of it, the degradation of how people are treated. This idea that addiction, which is really a lot of unmet human need and disconnection, responds to a punishing, judging attitude...I think that attitude is one of our world's most common addictions. It's a perfectionism and a denial of our greatest dread and fear: our own humanity and vulnerability. The fact that you accept your niece and her need for support is ENORMOUS. She is fortunate to have you.

I'm pleased to say my niece recently reached on year sober, AA & NA meetings helped, she was denied by one assessment agency for inpatient & referred to take soboxin, I took her somewhere else and they got her in to treatment. It's not easy, but I feel blessed. Thank you all for your support!!!

one year

It wasn't Jesus, Allah or Buddah that got you clean..It was yourself..

Agree. The book says “for fun and for free”

Same here..never get real drunk and usually no more than 2 beers a day. Less as time goes on. I'm not where I want to be. But thank God I'm not where I used to be.😊

​@@Andrea-HeIsKingThats still 12 beers a week..

@@baldersn4474 not every day. 2-4 / week. But go ahead and think whatever you want. Does not effect me. The 12 step model would have me in a grave,jail or insane,rather than think a person can go from addicted to moderate. It's called " program" for a reason.

How did it go?

ALBERT ALCOHOLIC ( AE ENTERVENTION season 11 finale is my proof of unmanageable) going on 13 years sober and a goof ball not taking 90% of life serious ive finally understood my higher power who Einstein calls entropy , realizing the relapses ive faced is do to me pushing back and placing expectations on a universe that is against order is my doom unless i grasp fast ,he will let you push for awhile but will allways win , like working out you have to spend your majority of time and energy putting things in order and the moment you take a break my God continues doing what it does and it will take twice as much energy and frustration that a addict like me cant cope with unless doing repetitious work that keeps you and mind busy the moment you take a break my god pushes back like entropy does and it gets stronger with the expantion of the universe ( thermodynamics) which isnt slowing down , ever hear old people say there was no divorce in my day obsolutly correct entropy was at a all time low now all time high , on my journey to get a relationship with my higher power it thanks to AA I got the concept and has changed my life finaly i understand god is just doing what was he wasmeant, its how old ideas die new ones merge the visible matter which cant get out of hand would so i let him do the disorder and dont put expectations on the little things that go wrong , help others to raise endorfans and sadly our obsession cant be stopped unless you go to meetings 7 days AA, work and familly one break from trying to place order is all that is needed for my god to make sure the 2nd law of our universe isnt broke he does his job and i thank him on a daily bases for all us that hes not twice as fast you would decay twice as fast and knowing by watching other it gets harder and harder god doesnt mean to do this but he needs you to understand his place so you dont think its just you its happening to , i have data proof ive manage to grapgh the measure of my higher power entropy (others equations )and when overdose death rates matched the data (well enough) , it would take decades to find the right numbers (proper process )and having a(fight club mentality) locking the sickness in , (I worked for my rehabilitation for 5 years the one i graduated from and won't get into politics) thanks to the path AA has provided i was able to understand and have a understanding relationship and finaly felt that HAAAHA moment ive learned from ( Acceptance key) 13 years sober in which my best friend my father and sponser both died wife cheated on me so add divorce , it all made since to me so i didnt die ,marriage cant work its no ones fault , its my higher power putting things in disorder ( I had a mental breakdown for a couple days but thats a healthy response a safty switch thanks to evolution , I didn't injure my brain) ........ oh to top it all off I can't even read a tape measure proof im wired through data side and the amount of time it took to grasp all this like quantum theory and my favorite philosophy was 13 years hints how I kept busy , just today my mom flipped the breaker for the last time to the point of crying even when it was me having to go way outside in snow to fix it and understanding my higher power it let me calmly think of a reason why, so today i jumped up in joy like i won money cause, i got to prove my theory (opinion), the microwave was older it was drawing more power than the new one so after swapping em out it fixed everything so i silently thank my higher power for showing me my place doing so gave me patients to work on my world issues and finally being able to consol a normal person my mom on mother's day who im very grateful for the fact she doesn't have to worry about a disease that will kill her and I was enough to do the trick ONLY THING THAT COMES EASY IS ENTROPY MY NAMES ALBERT (human) and ATHIEST WHOS HIGHER POWER THAT EINSTEIN CHOOSED TO CALL ENTROPE,I LOVE EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU AND REMEMBER " EVERY WAR IS A CIVIL WAR"

Wow. Inspiring and brave. I’m working on that right now. I’ll succeed one day then the next I backslide. But I get back up and remember why I choose to overcome myself.

So gud to no thers a way out of the dark my friend