The Importance of Willingness and Initiative

It takes a very long time to understand the books from the Bible— and— I’m not someone who studies from it very often but there’s a verse from Romans 12:2, it says, 

“Practice makes perfect.  You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.  You can lead the horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”

    There have been numerous occasions where someone crosses my path to teach a lesson.  It happened while working as a barista: someone had taught me the principle of not trusting so many people, to keep my guard up; there was the time where I unknowingly attended my first A.A. meeting: they told me it was good to know of these places at the age of 19; there’s my mother: who tells me to stay away from drugs; there was the Uber driver: who taught me the importance of being earnest, cause you never know when you'll bump into that one person again; and lastly, there were the times I lived life on the streets: where I learned the importance of finding a purpose because no one is going to discover it for me.  

    What it took to lead me where I am today was a slow, arduous process. Initially, I knew it would take a long time and I wasn’t happy about it.  There’s nothing pleasant about being admitted into a residential treatment program because we're under a level of care which requires close supervision.  We aren't allowed to have our phones, so we're disconnected from the world. We are restricted from going out into the real world. We usually get woken up every 20 minutes at night (Behavioral Health Techs are just making sure we are still alive).  There are 6 meetings we have to attend daily, usually regurgitating the same topics over and over (emotional regulation, medication management, relapse prevention, coping skills, learning to set goals).  Typically, it takes 3 weeks to complete residential treatment and it entails being around people with all kinds of character defects.  

    Upon completing residential, it’s suggested we transfer to a partial hospitalization program (PHP) and this is where we continue those daily group meetings while learning how to transition into our daily routine: that means learning to wake up early, making sure we take a shower, learning how to cook our meals, and developing healthy coping skills to help us deal with what triggers us to use so we prevent a relapse.  We still don't have access to the real world.  PHP feels sort of like a safety net from the real world to ensure we continue building our momentum in sobriety.  

    The next level of care would be an Intensive Outpatient Program/Sober Living Program.  IOP is a structured non-residential treatment program where we usually check in for meetings a couple days out of the week.  We still have access to a therapist and a physician so we could manage our medication, but by this point we're usually out on our own.  If we don't have a place to live, case managers from PHP will usually arrange for us to get admitted into a Sober Living Program or what we call a 'halfway-house.'  Sober-Living programs are places where we reside and they’re managed by a house-manager.  They usually hold us accountable by administering routine drug tests, ensure we attend 12-Step Meetings, find a sponsor, and work a 12-Step Program.  Usually, by this time in our sobriety, we're reaching our 90-day milestone of being clean-- a critical point in our recovery.  According to Urban Recovery, the risk for relapse increases by 75%,  people tend to relapse around the 90-day mark as a response to stress from maybe not being able to find a job or maybe they're facing legal or financial issues.

    From experience, I have never been able to make it past the 90-day mark because of those very reasons.  One of my goals are to make sure I continue developing the mechanisms to defend against triggers and prevent a relapse.  Although my drug of choice is marijuana, it usually leads me to pick up cocaine-- and that within itself is a problem.  I'm not only putting myself at risk for a heart attack, but I'm also risking my liberty if I were to get caught in possession of it.  That is a risk I am no longer willing to take.  I've written before how the streets have taken its toll on my body, how my knees are no longer capable of keeping up with the mileage.  I no longer want to live off of food-stamps, and quite frankly-- I just want higher quality of life.

    There's a book I just started re-reading.  I had first picked it up back when I was still living with my mom but I never finished it: Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill-- & in the second chapter he mentions this, 

"There is a difference between WISHING for a thing and being READY to receive it.  No one is ready for a thing until he believes he can acquire it.  The state of mind must be BELIEF, not mere hope or wish.  Open mindedness is essential for belief.  Closed minds do not inspire faith, courage, and belief."

    Keep in mind how this book was written in 1937.  The book of Alcoholics Anonymous was published two years later in 1939.  I realize there's a correlation between these two books because they both mention how we need to have the willingness to be able to accept or believe.  In Think and Grow Rich the author is mentioning the importance of faith to achieve our desires.  We wouldn't have faith if we weren't willing to believe, therefore we wouldn't be able to bring our desires to fruition.  On the other hand, in Alcoholics Anonymous, the second step tells us, 

'We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.' 

    This is basically telling us we're going to be crazy unless we believed otherwise... and not only that, it has to be with a conviction stronger than any other power we could ever believe in.

    Think and Grow Rich is telling us to believe in a power so great that it'll manifest what we desire,  while Alcoholics Anonymous tells us to develop a sense of faith so great, we have a psychic change.  Both books can agree to this, though:

 'Faith without Works is Dead.'  

    In order for me to maintain my sobriety, all I need to do is believe in a higher power greater than myself.  The only reason I was homeless was because I put that energy out into the universe.  At one point, I started losing my mind, started making bad choices, and ended up in jail-- it was that easy.  The desire I had to feel bad for myself only led me to a continued state of pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.

    It wasn't until I was down on my knees begging God to help me change that I developed the desire to do better & it wasn't going to happen over night.  If I mention a desire enough, though, chances are I'm going to attain it.  Right now, the only thing I want most in this world is to maintain my sobriety.  Every time I think about picking up, I play the tape through and remind myself of experiences similar to those mentioned in 2 December 2023, I'll think about how hard it is being in a residential treatment center, I'll think about how long it takes to get clean from drugs so I could be admitted into a sober-living program...

    My desire to stay clean has manifested itself simply because of the belief that I could remain this way.  Now I've developed the desire to actually be more and do more.  The more specific I am about my desire, the more thorough my plans are.  However, I won't be able to achieve any of my goals if I don't keep an open-mind and put in the work required to attain them-- & that's the only way I'll ever be ready for what I desire.