Surrender is the key to recovery. You need to just accept that you are not in control of your life. Hand it over to the God of your understanding daily. Every morning get your lazy ass out of bed and spend a quiet minute asking for the knowledge of your God's will. Ask for the courage and power to understand and perform this higher purpose. My life needs to be dedicated to helping others, not dwelling in my own disease of ego.
Sounds pretty simple but i for one am a creature of habits, not very good ones i'll have you know. I keep finding myself saying "What if...".. wara wara bullshit.. I have made my own bed. I find it easy to reflect and get depressed. I want things my way..THAT is the biggest problem with addiction. Time to let go and let God.
I know a lot of addicts that do not believe in the shining judgmental God. Many of them believe that "God" communicates through people or situations. This works fine. You only need be willing to believe in a higher purpose, even if that purpose is not attached to a specific entity.
This 12 step program works for all addiction. From compulsive eating to crack cocaine. All you need do is demote yourself in your scale of important people. Help another. Anybody will do, you will be given an opportunity daily to be of assistance to something. Grab that opportunity with both hands and run with it. It is within that process that you will find your own salvation..

I made a decision to do the program properly. This was not an easy task, being honest with yourself after a lifetime of self deception is no easy feat. I believe the biggest gift i received from the 12 steps was the gift of honesty, with myself and with others. This was one of the most liberating philosophies i had ever experienced. No more lies, no more deceit, no more bullshit. You cannot imagine how much easier life becomes even if it is a little uncomfortable at times.
When i began to feel overwhelmed by my life circumstances i got up and got busy trying to help somebody else. It is imperative to try and get out of your diseased mind. As my sponsor put it, "The monkey on your back may be gone but the circus is still in town." Another important lesson i had to learn was that to have any sort of spiritual awakening it is usually preceded by a rude awakening.. how true that turned out to be.

Part of the rehab process is for you to tell your peers your life story. From your upbringing, your schooling, the first time you used any sort of mind altering chemical up until your arrival in rehab. I told the group my past and they proceeded to tell me what a failure i was. This did not go down well at all. I was fukin furious.
This anger, more than anything else, forced me to have a long look at my past actions and face my reality  No more sugar coated crap. I had to suck it up and leave all my yesterdays in the past were they belong.

Recovery involves a lot of repetition, the average addict is outright faulty in his mental modus opperandi.
Our very best thinking had resulted in our being in a rehabilitation center. That's not normal.. I was beginning to understand that every choice i had been making was for my own instantaneous gratification
.I had nothing to show for my 44 year visit to this planet..zero. I was deep in debt, no house, my car looked like it had been through an unforgiving hedge.. nothing. All i had left was a wife and children who loved me. I had no more love for myself. I had been brought to my knees. I was a failure in every sense of the word. This is how i felt when i handed my will over to the care of a higher power.. I fell to my knees at last and asked for help.. God help me.

My wife, Kim, came to visit me after a couple of weeks and i chatted to her about the possibility of staying in the rehab and completing the 12 step program. I was concerned she would freak out having our 2 young children to look after. On the contrary she was very supportive and told me to do what i need to do in order to get better. It was a huge relief to have her support and i am forever grateful.
Now that i could concentrate on my recovery without outside stresses, my life became much simpler. It is amazing how many distractions our lives are filled with in this technological day and age. I was not missing my phone at all, it really was a pleasure.
I kept pretty much to myself and observed what the program had to teach. It's amazingly simple..
Let go, let God, help others... That's it.
That's all you have to do. Get out of your diseased, self-important, warped mind and help somebody else for a change.. Come to believe in a higher power, or at least become willing to believe. I could not believe what was being suggested. Could it honestly be that simple. I immediately got to work.. Help others and try and stay away from the sniveling, self important victim i had become.
And just like that..my life changed.

I was given Valium to come off the booze. I started feeling better after a couple of days. The house was filled with talk of recovery.The addicts ranged  from gambling to heroin addicts, eating disorders, psychosis; what a mixture we had. We all suffered from some sort of life warping problems, Men and women alike, black, colored, white, christian, Hindu; the disease of addiction does not discriminate.
I hate the unknown and here i was in a house of about thirty strangers.. the weird thing was that the majority of them seemed happy. I could not fathom how or why. It was apparent that none of them were on drugs, they had "sparkly eye syndrome." Quite unnerving.
My instructions were to do as i was told and listen to my buddy. A buddy is allocated to each newcomer, he is a fellow addict who's job it is to show you the ropes and point you in the right direction when the bell rings... the bell rings a lot. I began to get a jist of how Pavlov's dogs felt.
It takes a bit of time to get into the routine and begin doing the course in earnest. The rehab teaches the 12 steps to recovery developed by Bill and Bob who were themselves raging alcoholics.It is a hell of a lot of written work, making you dig deeper and deeper into your cave of fear and secrets.. not at all pleasant.

After about 2 weeks i was feeling remarkably different. Not only was i sober but my "anxiety monkey" was being kept at bay. Was it possible that this program could work. I had been searching for years to find a cure for my isolated, alone feeling.. could this be the answer i was looking for ? I had to find out, this shit could save my life and change everything. I resolved to stay and find out.

I had once again been thrown out of the house.. i was so drunk i could not string a sentence together. I was at my mothers house once again. This time i had an ultimatum.. go to rehab or say goodbye to your family  I had used all my lifelines up with my wife Kim. She was not going to compromise this time.. i was in the deep shit.
 I have the most beautiful children and the thought of losing them and having them grow up without a father was killing me inside. I was cornered, i had no more options left, i had hit rock bottom. I was a failure as a father, husband and son. It was all over, i dropped everything and checked into rehab.
 I had no idea what to expect but i was scared.. I was told the program took 3 months..!! A quarter of a year.. holly shit. I was adamant i did not need such a severe consequence for my alcoholism. I was going to spend 21 days and not a day more. not one day more.

I started smoking at age 9. By the age of about 14 i was inhaling butane gas, sucking on carbon tetnichloride  and munching pericon tablets. Pericon was a cold and flu remedy that if you took 2 would alleviate the symptoms but if you took 20 you would hallucinate for a good few hours.
 The army was my introduction to marijuana  this particular drug became a firm favorite for the next 25 years.. i was a staunch stoner. Yeh man.
The army found me trying to inhale diesel from the fuel tanks of the trucks, this worked to some extent but left me with a horrendous headache.I ended up on AWOL for about 6 months of my two year mandatory national service.. I hated everything that had to do with conformity.. everything.!
My anarchistic nature is synonymous with people of an addictive nature, it runs thick in our screaming veins.

After the completion of the army i became a fully active addict.. a nightmare i wish i could remember in order to forget, if that makes any sense...
I had been running a familly bar for 20 years often indulging in cocaine, mushrooms, disco buiscuits etc.. anything to escape my reallity, my life. I hated this life, i had been dealt a shit hand and everybody else was to blame...
So 3 children, all girls thank God, and my marriage in tatters i ended up in rehab... fuck

For more years than i care to count i have been searching for spiritual enlightenment. I have read countless self help books, researched various religions, meditated, prayed, cried, spent time with psychologists and at the end of my lonely search almost died.Nothing and no one could arrest my downward depressive spiral.. At the age of 44 i ended up in a rehabilitation center.. my life in ruins..Fuck. I could not comprehend how this had happened, i'm a nice guy, what the hell happened to me ? I'm an angry, resentful and bitter man with nothing to show for my life. My wife was leaving me, but to lose my daughters would crucify me.. i know i would kill myself, no doubt. And so i'm in rehab..WTF

My name is Stephen. I am an addict. I will be posting my story..