Introduction

I’ll start simply by saying this is not a replacement for the fellowship and program of the 12 Steps. Instead, it is an augmentation of the capabilities and scope of ways the 12 Steps can be used. The 12 Steps, and the mentors I’ve had within that fellowship, have saved my life time and time again. I have seen some examples of the erroneous practice of this program, which I have personally experienced, limiting the effectiveness of its use. I’d save anyone who needs this to change their life some of the bad experiences I’ve had over the years of trying to perfect my process. I believe the goal of overall wellness should be equanimity of mind, peace of mind, and an overall thriving life filled with joy and happiness.

I'm taking a page out of one of my favorite writer's books as I compile my thoughts. Wayne Dyer has long been an inspiration to me in the journey of self-discovery. When he wrote his immensely popular book, Your Erroneous Zones, he quit his job and wrote the whole book during a stay in a hotel. While I’m not in a hotel, nor have I quit my day job, I've settled in for a long-needed self-care weekend in an Airbnb. I must have manifested this place somehow. Its eclectic style has a charming air of home. Nothing matches, and yet everything fits together perfectly. The reading materials provided by the homeowner could almost be a handpicked library of my making. The decor is American Pickers meets New England. I feel delighted here in this place at this moment. I’m attired in sweatpants, a North Face® orange hat, and my Hogwarts hoodie. The air on my skin is a temperate 68 degrees Fahrenheit. My focus is present-minded, and my worries are nonexistent. You’ll discover this feeling of comfort in my own skin was very hard to win, and therefore I'll do whatever I need to do to keep it. I hit the grocery store for comfort provisions: mini strawberry swirl cheesecake, Tostitos, Doritos, hot bean dip, queso, salsa, sour cream, Mexican blend cheese for nachos, large cooked shrimp cocktail, hot cocktail sauce, three types of Ben and Jerry’s Ice cream, Dunkin Donuts coffee, half and half, and last but certainly not least, Toffee Fiddle Faddle. I’ve prepared for my comfort.

Self-care is neither selfish nor uncaring. It is simply loving myself enough to take care of myself, so I can be there for those who need me. I'll talk more about self-care in upcoming chapters. Plus, mindfulness and those subjects that took me from homelessness, addiction, mental illness, suicidal ideations, and my earnest attempts to achieve the state I presently enjoy. I’ve lived within a thirty-minute ride of the beach my whole life. I considered titling this book, Learning to Surf. That being said, I’m not a surfer. I’ve never learned to surf—as of yet. I use this metaphor based on the enjoyment and lifestyle in tune with nature and laid back I’ve heard so many surfers talk about. Do they wipe out occasionally? Of course, they do. But, they pick up, move on, and don’t let it ruin their day. The same is true for me and the waves of my journey. Life didn’t stop the ocean's waves. It never does. The 12 step program of AA helped me not to drown in addiction. I needed to continue the work because energy cannot be destroyed, and time marches forward.

I simply had to learn to enjoy the waves. I had to learn to surf life. I did that by working on the 12 Steps, and going beyond them while connecting with others.

Life and the enjoyment of it is possible. It’s Beyond Fellowship.

A journal best accompanies this book. There are spaces for writing within the book, but a practice of journaling is ideal for the best results. Regular journaling will get you in the process of gaining insights into your thinking process. You needn’t spend hours a day journaling. A good process and habit can begin in just five or ten minutes a day.

“All the peace, joy, love, and creativity that people could want are closer than we ever imagine. They are our very nature, merely veiled by what we think we know.”

― Andrew Seaton

CHAPTER ONE

The Most Important Question

Who am I and Why am I Writing This Book?

My name is Paul Moore, and names are important. My last name came from the man who legitimized my mother’s pregnancy. I found this out at about 14 years of age. Somehow, I knew what my mother planned to tell me ahead of her actually telling me. Mr. Moore was never a part of my life, nor was my biological father. After long years apart, I have since met and developed a relationship with a half-sister. I grew up first with my mother and was primarily raised by my grandmother shortly after that. We were lower-middle class and the struggle to survive was real. We didn’t always have what I wanted to eat in the house. I like cookies, french fries, ketchup, and other savory and sweet delights. Food was my first source of comfort. Later, I disappeared into reading as a comforting get away from reality. My aunt read to me often and fostered a love of this escape.

What was I escaping, you might ask? Not having all the delectable morsels a chubby child could wish for doesn’t sound half bad. I was a very sensitive and kind of precocious child. I think sensitivity and intellect are closely linked because I easily noticed all the inequities in my life. Not having a father, raised by my grandmother, and my mother’s mental illness was evidence of the haves vs. the have-nots. Bill Wilson said alcoholics are immature, oversensitive, and grandiose in his book, The Twelve Steps and The Twelve Traditions. I believe this is true, and perhaps my interpretation of getting the most out of the twelve steps, which have helped others as they are, is indeed a bit grandiose. I’d rather aim high and miss high than aim low and miss low. I’m not going to divulge too much about my childhood. In their conspiracy of silence, there are those I was raised by who’d rather I didn’t. I'll touch on the dysfunction in a general way that leaves no doubt about what I dealt with.

To put it point-blank, I never felt like I fit in with life on earth. I wasn’t succeeding very well in school and felt stupid, even though my IQ was pretty high. I didn’t know how to fit among my schoolmates, as I was an only child raised primarily around adults. As I've mentioned, I first discovered food, then toys, and eventually reading to escape the feeling of not being loved or wanted. As a child, when we see this occurring, we quickly ask ourselves things like, “What is wrong with me that people keep leaving?” “Why didn’t my father want me?” “Why is everyone so angry all the time?” and “How can I be happy?” These questions turned into blaming myself for the reasons these things occurred. I eventually discovered something that worked better than toys, books, and food to quell my discomfort. I hung out with the local hooligans, and they said, “Here, try drinking this,” and “Try a hit of this joint.” Low and behold, my ship had arrived. I was on a journey; the destination was unknown, and I didn’t care.

I found my solution to all my dilemmas in substances. While substance abuse problems came rather quickly, it was a price I was willing to pay for the comfort it afforded me. The substances didn’t start as a problem, but they came as a solution to my habitual problems in life. Drugs and alcohol didn’t help me become a better student, a better son, a better member of society, better at sports, or anything. I simply didn’t care as long as I had some liquor and marijuana. It should be noted that this took off rather quickly and in a very addictive manner. I remember my uncle leaving his marijuana out with his bong. He told me to help myself. He arrived home from work later and asked, “Where is all the pot?” I told him I smoked it all as he said I should “help myself.” He hid his pot from that time forward. Smoking a quarter ounce should have been a warning sign for me but I was oblivious and mostly still happy to be so.

I continued to seek companions who, like me, enjoyed partaking in substances heavily. We hung out with an older crowd. I was still and would continue to stay emotionally immature throughout my period of substance use. I remember going out with my friend Tommy’s friend Dave. Dave had a car, and we did not. Dave could get liquor, and the babes liked him. He had everything we thought we could ever desire. I remember Dave coming to pick us up. I hurriedly put away my GI Joe figures and hid them under my bed so my friends wouldn’t think I was lame and set out for a night of drunken debauchery. This action illustrates where I was on a level of emotional maturity when I began my substance abuse. I’ve heard, and I believe it's true, that one stays emotionally stunted to where they are when they start abusing substances. My grades were suffering, my interpersonal relationships were terrible, and my family didn’t offer much solid guidance to someone soon to be wrapped in substance abuse. This action was a recipe for disaster.

I somehow graduated from high school, and my substance use took off further and faster with employment. I worked at many restaurants, landscaping, factories, and anything to support the habit. It was the late nineteen eighties, and crack cocaine hit the scene. Not all of my friends hit the same path I did, but a few of us went deep. My best friend and I, along with four other friends, went down to the city searching for some marijuana. It was a dry summer, and not many of our local dealers had pot for us to purchase. It was late at night, and all the purveyors of the finest weed (Mexican brick pack) had retired for the evening. We found some fine young entrepreneurs selling the new improved Crack Cocaine. Of course, we thought it was a capital idea to purchase and give this a go. We didn’t even have the proper equipment to smoke this substance. Crack is cocaine freed from its base, making it smokable in a particular type of pipe. We smoked it in a bowl designed to smoke marijuana. Of the six of us in the car, only Tommy and I actually ingested the cocaine vapor into our lungs. That was lucky for them because Tommy and I were hooked from the very start.

Crack is expensive, comparably so to marijuana and booze. We spent the next couple of years pursuing crack cocaine. Early in my foray into smoking cocaine and having very little money, a dealer got into the car with a few of us. He had a large quantity of crack on him. My drug-addled nineteen-year-old brain came across this thought, “If I hit him over the head with a rock, we could have all his crack to smoke.” I somehow refrained from causing this man bodily damage or death to secure my evening entertainment. It was easy to see that this form of “entertainment” was going no place good. One of the last times I used cocaine, a street person stole my laptop, and I set after him with a large knife. I got into the middle of the street, and something just stopped me and told me to go home. I was headed to kill a man who had stolen a computer. We become different people in survival mode and under the obsession to use a drug.

The best description of the disease I’ve heard is that an addict doesn’t know what will happen after the first drink or drug. Oftentimes, nothing terrible occurred; I’d just zone out and watch television wasted. Other times, I’d wind up in handcuffs, lose control of my bowels, and wreck everyone’s evening with belligerent behavior or other travesties. The worst cases don’t often happen to alcoholics because their drug is legal, socially acceptable, and cheap enough that they could panhandle for enough money to attain their ends. When you are in the grips of addiction, and the choice is between that drug you need and the value you were raised with, it's very easy to say, “Screw the value!”

Good people make terrible choices all the time. When I was training to bring meetings into the local prison, we had to take a class from the corrections officers on how to deal with the inmates. The training officer said most of the people incarcerated there for many years were of the “one bad night/decision” variety. They were living perhaps a precarious existence of materialism, drunkenness, and addiction, often under the influence when they made one bad choice. They now were paying for it—frequently for many, many years. I made many of the same bad choices these men did, but blessedly, I wasn’t caught, or the circumstances weren’t as bad. I needed to try to bring them recovery because they were me.

I eventually stumbled into my journey of going to treatment. I won’t bore you with all the details of every foray into treatment I went through. I stumbled into 12 Steps fellowship through different attempts in these institutions. Did I use this fellowship as intended? The answer is a resounding “No!” Typically, I’d hand out and drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, and usually look down my nose at the people there. I generally thought, “Turning to God to solve their problems, what a bunch of grinning idiots.” I’d compare my story to their stories and sit in judgment of them. I’d never been to prison. I never had a DUI. I’d never beaten a mate. I compared myself right out of the rooms. Eventually, much later on, I learned to identify with the feelings that brought these ladies and gentlemen into the fellowship. Those feelings of dread, isolation, disconnectedness, depression, anxiety, and despair were universally felt. I had felt the same. When I listened to how they felt, I identified with them, but this didn’t happen for a great many years. It turned out it didn’t matter what they were recovering from if I used the formula of identifying instead of comparing. Addictions are myriad, gambling, drugs, pornography, sex, alcohol, co-dependence, etcetera. When I listened to how they felt and stopped sitting in judgment, I started to see patterns.

After several stays in rehab and multiple failures, I eventually put together some sober time. You’ll see that stringing sober days together isn’t the same as recovery as we will delve into in this book. Some things did get better from just putting the substances away. I could hold a job because I wasn’t calling in sick twice a week. I wasn’t getting arrested because I wasn’t breaking the law. I could have a relationship because I wasn’t showing up after the first date drunk on their lawn, declaring my undying love for them. I spared many young ladies the misery of dating drunken Paul by doing so, though. During these eight years of dry in the fellowship, we call them “Dry Drunks,” I thought I just needed to seek the right stuff to attain happiness. A dry drunk is one who stops imbibing substances, but never corrects the behavior for which they needed to use substances in the first place: anger, poor social skills, poor communication, low self-esteem, and fear to name those most prevalent. If I sought the American dream, I’d be good to go. I hung out in meetings for about a year and decided they were not for me because I didn’t want to use drugs or drink. I figured I’d just seek my happiness and make my fortune, and eventually, everything would fall into place. I was wrong again. During this time, I met my wife. Somehow, she is still my wife today. Her name is Graca De Jesus, which is Portuguese for “the grace of Jesus.” This name is indeed fitting as she and her faith eventually led me to change myself. She attained this name, being born as the tenth child in the late pregnancy of her parents. Neither she nor her mother was expected to live. I thank God she did live, as, without her, I don’t know I’d have ever become who I am today.

We married, and I continued to chase those goals that would make me happy and successful. I'm an artist and went to school for it, eventually getting a degree and being accepted into one of the best art colleges in the country. I’m a musician and started playing small venues and recording original music. I went to the gym and got six-pack abs. I had a pretty good, albeit unfulfilling, job and made a decent income. I eventually achieved all those things I worked for, but I was always chasing, and never catching, happiness. Every time I achieved a goal, it felt hollow. If you make a list to fulfill your ego and fulfill it every day, the ego will just make you a longer list each day. I was emotionally immature, just as the big book said. With or without my booze, I was restless, irritable, and discontent. I still had all the problems I had when I discovered substances and without the program, I had none of the tools I needed to solve these problems. I simply switched addictions during this time to more prestigious and sometimes laudable goals and other addictions. I was spending money I didn’t have, rampantly using pornography, exercise, food, and eventually, once again, the one I really wanted—substances that made me feel high.

I was diagnosed with Lyme disease, and it had been so many years since I’d abused substances my doctor thought it’d be okay to give me a light opiate for pain. I didn’t go into this blind, nor did I remind the doctor of my stays at different drug rehabs. I was dying for anything to take me away from being me. The script began my dive back into active addiction for the next 18 years. I’d surface to sober air a few times, but without much success. I became addicted first to prescription pain killers and eventually saw the economic reasoning behind using heroin. The doctors dried up the supply I felt necessary to function. I could purchase these prescription drugs illegally on the streets, but the price was astronomical. For the cost of a four-hour high on illegal oxycontin, I could purchase four days' worth of heroin.

I switched to methadone and Suboxone eventually, I didn’t know I could ever live free of substances, and these allowed me a modicum of normalcy, i.e.: putting dinner on the table, showing up for a job, not disappearing on a weekend drug run. I reasoned this was better as I wasn’t emptying the bank accounts or disappearing from my now growing family. I thought at least my children had their basic needs met: food, clothing, and shelter. I had very poor modeling of what being a father meant. I've realized that the most significant thing I deprived them and myself of was emotional security. I never valued or loved myself, so how could I know depriving them of that was indeed a deprivation?

Through the course of Medically Assisted Treatment (MAT), my mental illness was running rampant. I believe MAT to be an effective tool in treatment if used correctly. I also believe it seldom is used correctly. My ADHD was out of control, and I was taking amphetamines to regulate it, followed by benzodiazepines to fall asleep. I eventually was depressed to the point I stopped proper hygiene and finally had Electro Convulsive Therapy (ECT) to treat it. The main problem was all the drugs I was still taking, prescribed or otherwise. I also suffered from complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and bipolar disorder. Because these diagnoses were made during periods of sobriety greater than six months, so I have no reason to believe they were inaccurate.

Today I take no prescriptions to deal with any of these issues. The titration and elimination were done cautiously, carefully, and under proper medical care. I don’t recommend anyone to simply stop any medication they are taking. I think one needs to become a better advocate for themself and seek proper ethical doctors who will cooperate toward their wellness. I had many healthcare professionals who didn’t fit this bill. They were the experts, and I was the novice, and that was that. I eventually became the expert, as I knew how I felt, and they could only speculate. To be fair, during this time, I was neither honest with myself nor with most of the healthcare professionals. However, I was given much erroneous information on the drugs prescribed, granted they only knew what the incomplete studies told them. I was told there wasn’t any addiction to Suboxone or detox if I wanted to stop taking it. This was an outright lie. I was told that without Lithium, Depakote, or Lamictal, my bipolar disorder would be unmanageable, and I’d probably give in to suicidal ideations. While this is statistically correct, it isn’t a complete assessment. I recently had a physical with my doctor, and the look on his face when I told him I wasn’t taking any psychiatric medications was priceless. There was a lot I had to put into practice to achieve this level of wellness free of drugs. I changed my diet, exercise patterns, social life, thinking, communications, self-care, and more. Luckily, I could do it a little bit at a time, in bite-size chunks, one day at a time—taking it easy, easy does it but do it, and one day at a time. These little maxims AA has on their walls become very deep if you take the time to analyze them.

Between the years 2014 and 2018, my actual demise escalated. I was imprisoned during this time for carrying my prescription drugs unlabeled. I was detained in the Adult Correctional Institute (ACI) for two weeks. While the charges were blessedly dropped, confinement was a harrowing experience. I only knew of prison from what I watched on HBO and other television shows. I'm no tough guy, but I got on without having a fight because I’m intimidating to look at. I also kept my mouth shut and practiced good manners. It was boring and stressful. Plus, the food was awful, and some of the company was downright scary. Intake is not maximum security, but you are in intake if you are on trial. This means there were murderers, rapists, and other violent felons surrounding me. When I was released, many of my prescriptions were cut off because it was found out I had been abusing them once again.

I'd like to say that going to jail was enough for me to clean up my act, but I cannot.

I continued taking my MAT, and by 2017, I was suicidal. Graca had gone to Al-Anon during the years in between my different attempts at sobriety. Her knowledge of enabling received at Al-Anon eventually became a vehicle to exacerbate my eventual change. She did things like not letting me enter my home if I was intoxicated. She’d tell me I could sit in the car in the driveway until I was sober. I’d cause a fight, and say “I’m leaving,” and she’d say if I did, she’d call the police to report me for driving intoxicated. She became the enemy of my self-destruction, and since it was all-encompassing, she was my enemy too.

I rediscovered the joy of using cocaine in 2016, and this was a vehicle for a fast ride to self-destruction, and also exacerbated my need for recovery toward trying once more to become sober. A family friend started taking me to AA meetings every week. I’d get a little bit of semi-sober time and relapse. My home life continued to deteriorate. From the summer of 2017 until May 9, 2018, I was in eight different hospitals. I had my first DUI and an earnest suicide attempt. I struggled and struggled but couldn’t grasp sobriety. The family friend wasn’t judgmental of me still taking the Suboxone, but watching my repeated relapses, said he wasn’t sure I’d get the spiritual nature of the program while still under the influence of this drug. He suggested that I think about getting off someday. I had to admit it didn’t look promising the way things were going. The problem was I had tried to detox from Suboxone during one of my stays in a Rhode Island mental institution, drug rehab, and finally a center for co-occurring disorders in California. The results were that the last doctor called my wife and begged her to allow me to start taking it again as I’d lost all desire to live.

To sum things up, by the time I had gone to an addiction center in Laguna Beach, California, I was a scholar who couldn’t comprehend language. I was a musician who hadn’t played music in ten years. I was a trained artist who made no art. I was devoid and bankrupt in all areas of my life, a few being: mentally, spiritually, emotionally, financially, and physically. I didn’t want to be sober, but my means to get high were methodically and systematically removed until I had no choice but to try sobriety again. I ceased to care for my own hygiene, and one counselor had to inform me I was the “stinky guy” in rehab. I was too low to feel much embarrassment by this time.

I was loaded onto a plane on May 9th, 2018. My wife was told they could humanely detox me from the drugs I’d been taking for a great many years. This wasn’t entirely or even partially true. Granted, they tried to make it painless but failed. It should be noted that I was scheduled to fly out to California on the 8th but was too intoxicated to board the plane. My wife and my son tried cajoling the airline into taking me, but I was far too drunk to travel. I passed out walking down my driveway going back home, and while my son tried his best to catch me, dead weight is hard to support—and I was indeed dead weight.

The California sun was blinding and painful to my semi-intoxicated eyes when I arrived at the airport in Orange County. I was picked up by a man who held the same position I now hold in my current job. His name was Sean, and I believed he was plotting against me from the get-go. I can’t tell you how grateful I became for Sean’s help and honesty throughout my stay. I can’t begin to express the gratitude I feel for being able to sit still in a chair or eat beef jerky today without losing a tooth. Little did I know I wouldn’t stop shaking for several months. Parkinsonism started once I stopped ingesting the drugs. Parkinsonism presents as the symptoms of Parkinson's disease without having the actual condition. It would be almost ten months before I started having a gait that wasn’t shaky. I would experience weeks without any kind of sleep lasting more than minutes, being shipped to another psych facility after a suicide attempt in rehab. I was down to 135lbs at my lowest weight but would balloon up like crazy as my metabolism crashed.

I’m only writing about how bad my detox was because I’m assuming that by the time you can comprehend these words well enough to take action toward your recovery, you will have detoxed too. I don’t tell people newly entering treatment how bad this was because it seems to vary from person to person, and I don’t want my words to lead them toward a worse experience. The power of suggestion is strong. For example, I’ll point out to my clients now, “Remember the feeling you got when the dealer said, ‘Everything is all set, just come get it,’ or when you purchased a bottle, and it sat on the car seat unopened just waiting to drink it? When I did that, I’d start feeling better almost immediately, knowing relief was on its way.” The relief would occur before even ingesting the substance.

This is the power of hope.

This is the power of belief.

This is the power of our minds.

I provided a good amount of work for those treatment advocates in California. I had severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and when I did sleep, I was often found in weird locations. Sometimes I fell asleep under the bed, once in a closet, and once on top of the wardrobe in the room. I also slept with a plastic bag over my head, which got me shipped out and declared 5150, which is the California civil commitment code, and now I knew what that Van Halen album “5150” was talking about. Once again, thank you and kudos to those unsung heroes of the facility who met my insanity with kindness and mercy.

The sleep deprivation eventually led to vivid hallucinations, which were eventually discovered by staff. My delusions were discovered because though women were in their own unit in an all-male facility, I was entertaining a beautiful young lady in my room. I was providing moral support while she spoke with her father, who was half-man, half ceiling vent. Our entanglement was only discovered because at lunch, another client was making the moves on her, and I didn’t like his intentions. I reported this to staff, and they asked when this client dissed my friend and me. I told them this had just occurred at lunch in the dining room. I was informed it was 10 am, and this didn’t happen. The hallucinations might have been discovered earlier had I mentioned the ceiling vent man. Weird that even in hallucinations, we don’t want to mention the wildly bizarre ones when they occur. While sleep was not forthcoming during the rehab stay, and no drugs they could prescribe could alleviate my symptoms, I simply started telling them I had no symptoms. At home, when I couldn’t sleep, I could always rely on Netflix 24 hours a day. The facility turned off its television at 11 pm, and the next eight hours were spent pacing. I figured at least at home I’d be able to watch TV. I was at least honest by my exit assessment at the odds of me actually staying sober. It was a multiple-choice questionnaire, and one was least likely to stay sober, and ten was most likely to stay sober. I completed the questionnaire marking fives for every item down the list. I had been to something like 30 different programs and didn’t hold out much hope for winning the recovery lottery.

It turns out there is no recovery lottery. There is a lot of work, dedication, learning, practice, prayer, meditation, and preparation. If I had known how much work there was to do, I would have declared. “What an order. I can’t go through with it.”

“Sobriety was the best gift I ever gave myself.”

– Rob Lowe

CHAPTER TWO

Why Hacking the 12 Steps is Important

I’m writing this book because I’ve found happiness, joy, and equanimity through life's trials and tribulations. My mood is no longer based on what is happening and when. After years of major depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, ADHD, and major anxiety, I no longer even need any medication to control these disorders. This wasn’t easy, but it was doable—one day at a time.

I had to change everything to experience recovery, and through the years, I failed at succeeding in using the 12 Steps. My failures were, in large part, my own. I have a good intellect, and I believe addicts and alcoholics are generally above average in the IQ department. Having an above-average IQ nestled alongside a disorder such as addiction can be detrimental to getting help. We can argue the case to keep using substances often as well as or better than a famed attorney. I fooled many into believing I needed these substances or convinced them that my use of them was not a problem. I never succeeded in fooling myself, though I tried and tried. Having a high IQ is also a detriment because it allowed me to get by using a small percentage of my brain to function. In active addiction, especially in the beginning, I could put 25% of my mental faculties toward addiction and use the rest to function. I’d work my job or my relationship just good enough to not get fired or dumped. Addiction progressively takes more of our resources until it eventually hoards them all. I applied this get-by

attitude toward my recovery when I started. I can now attribute many of my failures to just getting by. I’d get by until I didn’t—and by didn’t, I mean I drank or got high again, reigniting the fire of my obsession.

There were other factors that didn’t help outside of my own laziness. Poor mentorship (sponsorship) in the fellowship, poor knowledge from those people, giant egos, often called bleeding deacons, and predators. Sadly, predatory behavior is particularly an issue for young women entering the program. Many "gentlemen" wish to offer women in the program a spiritual injection of the cock variety. When I entered the program while I was younger, in great shape, and better looking than I am today, I was prone to have the same mindset. These things can lead us away from this beautiful program. I was led away many times for many of these reasons until I was blessed with a good mentor who was humble enough to teach me what he knew and admit what he did not. I was quite the devil’s advocate and skeptic of this process because of resentment toward what I’d seen religious people do in their hypocrisy.

I didn’t believe for a minute this program would ever work for me. I didn’t even have the most basic requirement for membership which is a desire to stop. I wanted to stay sober only more than I wanted to live on the street and those were my last two options—recovery or imminent demise on the streets. I also wanted to be able to look my now-adult children in the eyes and tell them I honestly did the best I could, and it didn’t work. At least if I failed after exhausting this last option, I had done all I could. They could move on with their lives and just come to whatever acceptance they could about my fate. I also held onto the notion that if recovery through AA didn’t work, I could always choose a more lethal approach to suicide and opt-out that way.

The suicide “solution” became a non-option after about four months sober. I had a loved one who took this route. He was as close to a brother as I had ever known in life, and he chose suicide as his way out. Though we had been estranged for many years, our paths were similar. When I started seeking treatment for my substance abuse, I was told I had to change the people I hung out with as well as the places I hung out. I’d heard it said before, “Change your playgrounds, playmates, and playthings.” Though we had been apart for many years, and I was suffering extreme anhedonia

14 Paul Moore

from prolonged detox, I broke when I heard the news he had passed. Anhedonia is the inability to feel. We often think we use drugs and drink to get numb, yet absolute numbness is not enjoyable. During this numb period of post-acute withdrawal syndrome, I realized it wasn’t the numbness I sought but the euphoria caused by using drugs and alcohol. If I had broken down upon hearing this news in my state of being, I knew those closer to him would never get over this loss. Suddenly it was clear that my idea that my wife and children would get over the suicide solution turned out to be another lie I told myself. Now my hope relied on this program working. If not, life would be a long, long trudge of white knuckle gripping tenuous sobriety until my final demise.

“To thine own self be true” is the mantra printed on the chips they hand out in meetings. I believe we have a still small voice inside us that will not allow us to align ourselves with bullshit. Some call this the conscience. I don’t believe in coincidences. I think we all have a spark of energy in us that is of divine origin. That spark is a spirit, a soul, or the Ka as termed by the Egyptians. If we clear out things like fear, anger, discord, negative thought, and bad childhood programming obscuring this voice, it will tell us what we need to do. I’m sure you have heard the expression, “trust your gut.” I believe we can align to what’s true to our values by cleaning our body, mind, and spirit, and changing our ways to be in alignment with this spark which is sometimes referred to as intuition. A myriad of things kept me out of alignment: selfishness, entitlement, pride, anger, lust, gluttony, etcetera. These are things we will look at further in later chapters on the steps.

This book isn’t written to be done in place of the 12 Steps. I’m writing this to augment the process. There are processes within the 12 Steps that I haven’t seen applied much in the program, but they have all come from its practice. Many skimp on many things laid out and don’t get the full application. I can’t even say I’ve seen the full application of these steps, as they are a daily practice and will continue to improve over a lifetime with practice. This book is merely support to help you navigate what is known as the program and the fellowship. The program is the 12 Steps themselves, while the fellowship is meetings and people sharing their individual experiences, strength, and hope.

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I hope this guide will help you recover as it has done for me.

The program and fellowship gave me hope when I was hopeless, gave me meaning when life was meaningless and made my life what it is today: full, thriving, happy, and filled with joy.

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"Accept failure. Enjoy it even.
Embrace the suck, for the suck is part of the process,"

—AJ Jacobs

CHAPTER THREE Embracing the Suck

I work with a lot of veterans, and one adage I’ve picked up from them is the idea of embracing the suck. To me, embracing the suck means getting through the awful parts to achieve a better end. These men and women go through grueling training and testing to achieve their goals. They are pushed beyond their limits to achieve what they once saw as impossible. Their bodies and minds are tested as they have never been tested before. When they succeed, they become something different from the person they were initially. They become soldiers, Marines, Navy Seals, and Special Forces. They have a sense of pride in their accomplishment, yet most I’ve met still have humility. They credit their instructors, their family, and their country.

I’ve seen a meme on social media that says a lot. It says, “Marriage is hard, divorce is hard, working out is hard, obesity is hard. Choose your hard.” Hard is indeed true for recovery. Early recovery for me was a constant battle with my own mind. I had pervasive thoughts of drinking, suicide, and other intrusive and uncomfortable thoughts. I found out a lot of my depression was caused by these thoughts. When I could look into what I thought while I was depressed, after I had gained a little bit of clarity, I could see this. When depressed, I thought, “Life sucks.” “I’m a loser.” “I failed before; why would I succeed now?” “My wife is going to leave me.” “I’m going to die alone penniless and on the streets or in prison.” I could see why I was so depressed when looking at these thoughts. The thalamus, the part of the brain that addresses sensory input, attaches emotion to every

thought we have, and negative thoughts invite negative emotions.

In the beginning, I had to do whatever I could to make these destructive thoughts go away. Prescription medicine worked for a period, clouded my head, and eventually stopped having any effectiveness. That was when I started to pray. I didn’t know who or what I was praying to; I simply would shout in my head, “Please make this stop!” It wasn’t fun thinking about how great a trip to the liquor store would be if I wasn’t going to do it. If you’re uncomfortable praying to a higher power and it helps you think of prayer as simply a mantra to your subconscious mind, do that. A prayer or mantra is a request that you cooperate with yourself and stop having pervasive thoughts. Talking to other people was also a big help to me. At the beginning of most meetings, they will usually ask for a show of hands of anyone new or coming back. This isn’t to embarrass you. It’s to show the individuals who could use some help. It can be embarrassing to ask, but it's worthwhile to start acquiring some phone numbers of sober people you can turn to for help. As hard as it is to ask another for help, don’t feel like you are being a bother. Helping others in their times of need is part of Step 12, and I get as much if not more out of being there for someone new than they ever do from me. I’ve found it helps to just start out texting some of these individuals to start a little dialogue. This way when my ass is on fire, and I call in the middle of the night because the obsession is in full bloom, I’ve already had some contact. I answer the phone day or night when I know someone needs me. Many times, someone else’s problems come just in time to help me out. Maybe I need to follow the advice I dispense to them, and perhaps I’m sitting around in my own self-pity, thinking nobody cares about poor Paul. Somehow, listening to another person’s problems works to magically make me forget about my own. The paradox of love is that the more I give, the more I receive, the more valued I feel, and the more worthwhile my purpose feels.

Eventually, the obsessive thoughts were removed through replacement with prayers, mantras, health activities, and self-care. Harmful thoughts were replaced with little thoughts of gratitude and thanks. I’d say things like, “I’m living and sleeping indoors today, thank you!” “I’m eating food from a refrigerator and not a rubbish bin, thank you!” “Hey, my legs stopped shaking enough to sit in a chair for an hour, thank you!” “Wow, I can eat a candy apple again without losing a tooth, thank you!” The list of

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gratitude and thanks could go on ad infinitum for me today. If I’m starting to dwell in negativity, I talk/pray my way out of it. I’d do this by saying things like, “The rest of the day is going to get better,” and maybe I throw a please and a thank you to my higher power at this request. These negative thoughts started to wind down as I began to do a little work in the steps. If I was actually reading them or asking questions about them, I felt like I was at the very least doing something.

There is something to be said for being grateful for what you have instead of looking at what is missing from your life. I’ve found this principle can even be applied to terrible situations. Even when something as harrowing as “My wife is divorcing me” can become “Maybe I’ll find someone who loves me more who I love more.” I started thinking, “Why not me? I’m not the stupidest, the least talented, or the ugliest. Why not me?” I started projecting, “My day will be great,” through my mental field, actions, and thoughts. When the woman at the convenience store asked, “How are you?” I’d reply, “Fantastic!” I eventually even started meaning it and feeling fantastic. I fooled myself with my words.

The practice of gratitude should, like everything in your recovery, be as honest as possible. There are things other people may suggest as possible and something you should be grateful for. If you are not grateful for these things, don’t say you are. I might be grateful for having my children, but if they were behaving like spoiled little ingrates all day, I certainly don’t feel grateful for that. Write down things you are really grateful for, even if it’s a minuscule thing or amount. While I wasn’t happy that my wife didn’t let me coast on a chemical cloud unto my death because I didn’t want to be sober at that time, I was grateful that my wife was still willing to support me.

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Take some time to list a few things you are actually grateful for and give thanks.

Take some time to list a few things you are actually grateful for and give thanks.

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Faith Gratitude List

This chapter is based on something I’ve been noticing more recently. It’s reminiscent of the Janet Jackson song, “What have you done for me lately?” It's very easy to return to a negative when I’ve been wronged, treated unjustly, angered, or am experiencing any discomfort. That is just how easy it is to forget just how much my higher power has delivered me through, especially when I’m having a bad day. When I’m in these states of doubt, there are many things I can do to break out of them. Having a list of just what I’ve survived and been delivered from has been helpful to me. I suggest perhaps keeping this list on you. It can be copied to your phone or another device. This survival and deliverance list should not take the place of a daily gratitude list if you are in the habit of making one. This list should come across as a life gratitude list, and I’ll put mine down as an example.

It's off the top of my head and far from a complete listing, but here is a list of things my higher power has delivered me from.

● I’ve been delivered from and survived: a dysfunctional childhood and trauma.
● I’ve been delivered from and survived: constant bullying for many years.
● I’ve been delivered from and survived: countless near misses with death, from overdoses to driving under the influence, to dangerous drug transactions, and more.
● I’ve been delivered from and survived: mental illness.
● I’ve been delivered from and survived: drug addiction.
● I’ve been delivered from and survived: prison.
● I’ve been delivered from and survived: homelessness.
● I’ve been delivered from and survived: my family hating me.
● I’ve been delivered from and survived: poor health.
● I’ve been delivered from and survived: bad jobs.
● I’ve been delivered from and survived: endless depression andmelancholy.
● I’ve been delivered from and survived: attempted suicide.

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I think you are getting the gist of this exercise. Make a list for your own use.

I’ve left space for you.