The Recovery Sessions 5: Living and Thriving in Recovery

After we’re clean and sober, and no longer have a drinking or drugging problem, we often hear stories of difficulties with living sober. It makes perfect sense. If alcohol (or drugs) is merely a symptom, as Bill W suggests, of course we’d have to face ourselves and life.

That is a central purpose in a Progressive Recovery. Life on life’s terms. And better still, "to continue to grow in understanding and effectiveness,” to quote from Step 10 in AA’s Big Book.

Beyond that is the realm of what we call the launching pad. The proposition that the rooms of recovery, and recovery itself, are not intended to merely be a safe haven, but a foundation on which to move toward a larger and larger life as we find ourselves. Ideally, for us to blossom and thrive.

Season 5 represents the experience, strength and hope of those who have progressed far beyond their starting points, and moved deeply into lives and living that increasingly blossom. It is a mix of deepening exploration, sometimes punctuated with surprising or painful realizations, and remarkable restorations of emotional, psychological and spiritual healing.

Lend an ear now to the stories we tell about greater and greater healing, and practices you can use for your own emotional sobriety.

Al’s Evolution in Practicing the Twelve Steps

In watching someone’s recovery over a long period of time, it becomes clearer and clearer that the nature of recovery can be progressive.

Our perspective changes as time passes and we gain more and more experience in recovery and with the Twelve Steps. The result is that our practice of the steps changes and progresses. We don’t work the same program, because we are not the same person, nor are our life situations the same.

That’s the vantage point that our friend Al brings to this topic that he introduced at a Progressive Recovery online meeting.

Just last year, Al provided two separate content pieces. The first is a good look at how Al’s approach to inventory in the 4th Step has grown over time.

The second was an excellent interview about emotional sobriety. It includes this wonderful contemplation from the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas.

“If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you.

If you do not bring forth what is inside you,

what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

With that context, what follows is Al’s thoughtful discussion of how a progressive approach brings us to different ways of “cracking the steps.” All in the service of increasing our conscious contact, deepening our growth and understanding, and through that, providing greater benefit to others and in our own lives.

Note: Al’s sharing concludes with a several minute meditation, so please continue through some silence.

Cherie - The Fifth Dimension of Recovery

“We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed.”

Alcoholics Anonymous

At the root of twelve-step recovery is the idea of a psychic change, without which many of us appear to be doomed. Some would even say that is the whole design of the Twelve Steps, a program of recovery that catapults us forward.

Through decades of a recovery that began following in the footsteps of her mother, who she memorialized with a biography, Flobird: A Bird’s Eye View, Cherie has continued to deepen her practices and followed many paths. All grounded in her recovery and in the Twelve Steps. Indeed, Cherie says they all keep bringing her back to that same foundation.

In her more recent efforts, Cherie has embraced the idea that there are always further dimensions to explore, which she freely shares here through a meeting she led with a Working Group for Progressive Recovery.

Amy - After Sobriety, a Recovery from Co-Dependency

“If you squeeze an alcoholic or addict hard enough, a co-dependent will probably pop out.” Ben C

Like many of us, Amy arrived in the twelve-step rooms needing to get sober. She took full advantage of all those tried and true techniques including regular meetings, a sponsor, fellowship, service and working with others. Work with the twelve steps followed, and Amy practiced them admirably.

As you will hear in her story that follows, she was unable to shake anxieties that dogged her for years. She struggled with relationships. And while the anxiety and challenges fueled deeper practice of the principles, as well as counseling, some of the benefits remained beyond her grasp.

Finally with introduction to The Next Frontier by Bill W, and it’s proposal for emotional sobriety as well as an increasingly progressive approach to her program of recovery, she got a glimpse of the dependencies she had on others for approval and validation. With that came an awareness of how and why relationships were so challenging.

Finally, after one more failed relationship and several years looking at her limited emotional sobriety, Amy conceded to herself that co-dependency and love addiction had existed long before her alcohol and drug problems. In fact, she has come to see that alcoholism was a symptom of these underlying factors.

With that awareness, Amy’s progress with her recovery has rocketed forward. Not without difficulties and failings, but there is now a greater restoration to sanity that she long needed and desired, The result is a full embrace of deeper practices, as she realizes more and more of the benefits recovery promises.

Note: If you’d like to hear more of Amy’s story, as well as contrasting her perspective now to that from some years ago, under the pseudonym of Julia she spoke with us about personal inventory and the need to truth telling that is central to her recovery. Click here to listen to her from Season 1.

Below is her more recent story as part of Season 5.

Laura - Emotional Sobriety Beyond the Rooms

“I’m like a wild pony, and need a very long tether.” Laura S.

Childhood trauma and dysfunction set the scene for Laura’s trajectory into alcoholism. Yet it was dysfunction in her life that led her to Al-Anon, Adult Children of Alcoholics, and beginning to recover from co-dependency. It was through that and in-patient treatment that she discovered she was alcoholic.

Once Laura found her way into the rooms of recovery, like many of us she benefitted greatly from lots of the standard practices. However it was the structure and path for living in the Twelve Steps that really gave her the foundation she needed. And she began to trust for the first time, opening connection and belonging also for the first time. As she sees it though, that really was the foundation that grew into a springboard for her own customized, progressive approach to recovery.

Here is Laura’s truth today.

Willingness to grow along spiritual lines was an invitation.

From that I found that what we most need will come in many forms.

The result is an opportunity to explore that can ground us in the Steps and in recovery.

Listen now as Laura shares her story, and especially the life-giving and life-affirming explorations and practices that came to her as a result.

Eric's Sojourn and Path of Recovery

A few years ago, Eric arrived at a weekend retreat for Emotional Sobriety and Progressive Recovery looking for solutions he’d been unable to find in his early recovery. Sober, but not yet sufficiently balanced, he brought with him a strong foundation from the Twelve Steps as well as parallel practices from meditation gained through Buddhism, Shambhala and the Heart of Recovery.

During that retreat, Eric realized his path would necessarily lead him more and more deeply into the heart. And assured him he was not alone in his sojourn, that there were others similarly drawn into deeper practices of recovery.

What is remarkable is how an important element for Eric was to create his own foundation. He may not be unique as an alcoholic, yet his path would have to be uniquely fitting for him. Eric wrote his first book, Basic Sobriety, as his own personal exploration and fusion of Shambhala’s basic goodness, and the Twelve Steps.

In this recording, his lead topic for a session of the Working Group for Progressive Recovery, Eric takes on yet one more exploration.

Mottos are central to recovery, just as the equivalent of mantras are to Eastern spirituality. Here Eric provides a fusion between the power of these sayings in the rooms and in Buddhism. His new and currently unpublished book, “Lojong Recovery: The Twelve Steps and Retraining Our Thoughts”, brings forward teachings from more than a thousand years ago, ideas that can add to our recovery practices.

Please note the recording ends with a guided meditation, which we certainly encourage you to experience.

If you’d like to read about the Buddha’s Parable of the Raft that Eric uses, find it by clicking here.

Steven - The Way of Powerlessness in Recovery

In his book, The Way of Powerlessness, author and master teacher Wayne Liquorman (yes that is his real name, and yes he is an alcoholic) suggests that if we could really understand the implications of powerlessness, Step One would be all we needed. The realization alone would break us open and allow us to recover. Whether you agree with that idea or not, his book and its provocative walk through the Twelve Steps has proven to be breakthrough material for some of us.

So it was that when Steven found Liquorman’s book in his early recovery, something did break open within him. A foundation was put into place that has served him well.

Steven’s experience with powerlessness forms the core of his lead topic for the Working Group for Progressive Recovery that follows. He tells the story of his continuing walk through powerlessness and the grounding it provides. Steven also puts forth that there is a real mystery to how these things work, as well as the great value of the humility that results.

Listen now to Steven’s firsthand account of his way of powerlessness.

Sarah - Drop the Rock and Letting Go with Steps Six & Seven

For a step that is so critical to recovery, and essential to a progressive one, there is surprisingly little in AA’s Big Book from which to draw guidance. Of course, many turn to what they can learn from the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions.

Sarah knows this story, because it is her story. Like others, she turned her studies to Drop the Rock, a tool and resource in which so many have found solid ground. As you’ll soon hear, her most recent return to the book was enlightening; in fact, it became clear to her that there was far more ground to be covered, even as she could see how much was already behind her. Like everything else, the letting go in Steps Six and Seven is a progressive proposition - it is the road and journey.

If you’d like more background before listening to Sarah’s experience, consider listening to Nathan in Season 1 talking about the use of these steps to “clear the channel”, or read one of our best finds about surrender from Progressive Content.

Regardless of your choices, we’re sure you’ll love Sarah’s story. Better still, you’ll probably walk away with some great additions to your own recovery. Enjoy!

Maggie's Story - Once Healed, Our Traumas are a Gift

Maggie’s tale of engaging and overcoming traumas is a powerful combination of sobriety, the twelve steps and therapy. It parallels what Bill W. came to say of personal inventory work, that it would move beyond an accounting of bad behavior and personal flaws to exploring “the damages that occurred to us during life and a sincere effort to look at them in a true perspective.” (Letter, 1957)

As Maggie explains from her own life, trauma is not what we imagined. It can be Big Trauma, or little trauma. Regardless, she helps us see how deeply distressing or disturbing events overwhelm our ability and willingness to cope. And that often these factors are at the core of our alcoholism or addiction.

The best part of her story though is how that difficult inner work became a springboard for an increasingly profound recovery. How it turned her from despair to contentment in long-term sobriety.

In the end, Maggie’s story is what many of were seeking all along: a means to put ghosts from the past back in the past. Then in doing so, to finally heal in most powerful ways.

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For more information about trauma and recovery, attached is a chapter from the book Progressive Recovery through the Twelve Steps: Emotionally Sober for Life. In addition, you can find a wealth of resources through the work of Gabor Mate on trauma and addiction.

Ron’s Story - A Never Ending Restoration of Sanity

It was in a series of conversations with Al C. in Atlanta that the idea of progressive Steps 2 and 3 emerged. That appeared when Al proposed that the restoration to sanity is never ending. (Click here to read Roger N’s story of his own experience of this practice.)

What if the restoration to sanity is never ending? That would mean that quitting drinking and drugging is merely the first stage of our recovery. It could then lead us to letting go of other blockages including other addictions and behavioral challenges. Presumably we would see the progression in our emotions, psychology, mental health, physical well-being and eventually in our emotional sobriety.

Yet part of what Ron learned through this part of his recovery exploration was that in order for his sanity to progress, his understanding and connection to a Power Greater Than Himself had to also evolve and progress. As he says it, “I can only get my head around the idea of a Higher Power to the degree I can understand it today. But tomorrow, it can be possible to understand and experience more. In fact, it has to be a Higher and Higher Power. At least to the degree I can let go and allow my awareness and the possibilities to grow.”

In the end, Ron asks us to consider the state of our restoration at any moment in time. And then to examine what stands in the way of still more restoration to sanity.

It’s a remarkable program of recovery, with far more potential and possibility than many of us imagine. Listen now to his story.

Carmel's Recovery - The Gift of Radical Self-Acceptance

Listen very long in the rooms of recovery and it will become quite clear many of us have difficult stories before and during recovery.

There are tales of trauma, some quite horrific, and no small amount of mistakes we have lived through and lived out.

We’ll also hear many, many stories of amends made, and at least a few amends that went awry. Occasionally we’ll hear someone describe their path of inner healing — the amends made with themselves — that then allow them to find the peace and freedom found in the promises of recovery.

A few years ago, our friend Carmel captured some recovery magic in two blogs about radical self-acceptance and still more radical acceptance.

They are so well done, you may want to read them before you listen to her story in the audio that follows. It was these that caused a request from some in the progressive recovery community to hear her story.

Please give Carmel a chance to change your mind about yourself.

It's all quite profound, and good for heart and soul that aches to find our way home to ourselves.

Amy's Story - Living an Amended Life

Amends making seems so straight forward in the beginning. Do what we have to in order to make restitution, or to make things right, or maybe even to change our behavior going forward. This is all valuable work within the context of the 8th and 9th Steps.

It is exactly the path that Amy followed in her own progression through the Twelve Steps.

Yet as her recovery deepened, as she was undergoing the process of being restored through recovery, she found still more to be addressed. Some of these became living amends, those things we do on a continuing basis as we live sober.

Then comes the work of emotional sobriety, yet another layer and level of the practice of the Twelve Steps, where our attention turns to our ways of being and the old ideas and beliefs which drive us. As Amy describes it, this is beyond making amends, rather we are being amended — who we are is being changed, sometimes quite profoundly.

The point of the Twelve Steps and of recovery is not simply improved behavior, but a psychic change that alters us in fundamental ways.

In Amy’s story that follows, she shares her experience with living an amended life. She tells us what it is like for her to be and to live as a different person, one who has been restored at depth, one who lives increasingly an emotionally and spiritually sober life.