I have seen the effectiveness of Celebrate Recovery. The discovery of my own late blooming, private labeled spirituality has been the biggest and best surprise I’ve found in sobriety. Faith, no doubt, can be a very powerful tool of recovery but… the complexity of religion can also be a ripe target for an addictive mind to focus on to the detriment of recovery.

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I know I used religion as just one of many excuses why AA wouldn’t work for me, it’s a common tactic. Mine was an issue of doubt and disbelief, but even devoutness can cause problems. Lately I’ve had a few conversations with a chronic relapser that would prefer to ponder the written word rather than concentrating on staying sober. Intent on practicing his beliefs instead of abstinence- he continuously loses focus on the goal of sobriety.

My thoughts on this subject are simple. If you are seeking God, make sure you meet him clean and sober. I have no doubt if there was an eleventh commandment (thank you Mel Brooks), it would be thou shalt stay sober. Practice this first, and the faith and spirituality will surely follow.

This would be a lot funnier if the topics of discussion on “Good Morning Meth” weren’t so eerily similar to those I have seen addicts and alcoholics act out in real life. I have personally heard three of these excuses myself on why people thought it would be a bad idea to quit drinking and drugging. These include weight gain, anxiety, and work related stress (in his case however I think most of the stress was due to a random drug testing policy). Even though in reality it’s definitely not funny, I have also seen people come into the methadone clinic first- on the way to taking someone to the emergency room.

Contributed by our friend Erin over at:

I can honestly say that for the most part, I don’t think about using drugs. There was a time when that was all I thought about but luckily, that’s not the case anymore. That’s not to say that I don’t ever think about it…I do.

What I have found is that I will have urges to use in two scenarios. One is when I’m going to a social function. I still have a mild case of social anxiety. Maybe by calling it social anxiety I am making more out of it than it really is. It takes me a little while to feel comfortable in social settings. It is in the midst of me feeling uncomfortable that I start to think about “the good old days” when I would numb this anxiety with the use of drugs.

The other scenario involves any kind of turmoil or tension between my husband and I. It’s really weird, we’ll have a fight about something, which married couples do from time to time, and my first instinct is to say “I wanna get effed up”. It’s like a knee jerk reaction to me feeling anger towards him. “Ooh, I’ll show him, I’ll get whacked out”. Ya, that will show him alright.

Luckily I have come to recognize these moments for what they are. Yes they are cravings, but it is a direct result of me needing work in certain areas. I need to work on better ways of overcoming my social anxiety. I need to work on better ways of communicating and dealing with my anger towards my husband when the situation arises.

I guess you could say that I need to improve on my coping skills. I’m hoping that by recognizing this in myself, and trying to find a way to improve on this I will have a different knee jerk reaction when presented with these situations. One which doesn’t involve my thought automatically turning towards drugs.

Is that even possible? I honestly can’t tell you one way or the other. I can say that I have my doubts. There is a reason that people are in recovery for the rest of their life right? Maybe that reason is because there is no real changing of addictive thinking, there is only recognition of it.

Right now my only defense against addictive thinking is the certainty that it is there, and that it is what it is. I would really love to hear other people’s thoughts on this. Has anyone gotten past their tendency for addictive thinking?