Spirituality In Addiction Recovery
Nov 29, 07- (by marie)
- one response
- Mind, Body, Spirit
Take a look at this energizing blog entry from What Winners Do “Stories, Struggles And Success of A Recovering Addict Trying to Do What Winners Do.”
Spirituality In Addiction RecoveryNovember 13, 2007
It has been said that addicts who enter into recovery are actually fortunate for they are forced to take a look at themselves and their spirituality. By self-examination, recovering addicts are able to realize that their lack of spirituality is partly the cause of their distress.
It seems that many people are incapable of tolerating themselves because they have a negative feelings about themselves. They start to have a distorted self image which leads them to go to great lengths to escape or deny their identity as they perceive it. All of these things make discovering spirituality impossible.
I have always called it self-inventory when I take stock of where I am in life and how I feel about where I am. Sadly, years started to pile up where I was avoiding performing self-inventory due to fear and disgust. I had neglected my spirit for so long that I was truly afraid of what I would find if I looked. So I didn’t look.
A very important component of spirituality is self improvement. But, it is impossible to embark on self improvement without knowing where your starting point is. To get a starting point, you need to do a self-inventory and find out what your assets are and in what areas that you need work.
Like I said, for years I hid from myself and refused to perform a self inventory. There for I never made any self improvements and since self improvement is such a huge component of spirituality I was void of spirituality.
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That’s such an interesting take on addiction. Perhaps it’s true that addiction is merely a result of not taking a look at your self or your spirituality. Regardless of how you look at it, I definitely agree that it’s a result of you neglecting your own persona, and I think that it’s definitely linked to humans harboring negative feelings towards themselves. It’s crazy how insane and difficult addiction is. I’ve found that one of my favorite shots is the A&E show called Intervention. It takes an interesting look at all kinds of addictions by convincing the addict that they’re participating in a documentary, and then at the end of the episode, they face the person with a choice. They can either go through intervention therapy and better themselves, or they can choose to continue down their self-destructive path. I think it brings the addiction home, especially to those of us that have experienced it first-hand. Even more so, it paints an interesting picture of the addiction thought process, as well as how to deal with it. Addiction is so tough, and it affects everyone. You should check it out for yourself and tell me your thoughts: http://www.aetv.com/intervention. The new series premiers December 3rd at 9pm. I am working to support this because I think it’s important that we all understand how addiction can effect everyone, and we need to find ways to understand and help those that we’re close to that are having difficulties facing their addiction. How have you dealt with addiction in your life or with your loved ones?