Jabberwocky
Frumious Bandersnatch
This post deserves its own sticky. What are some of your meeting DOs & DON'Ts?
Great point! Addicts are master manipulators as we have to be in order function and feed the addiction. I have some personal rules for dealing with other addicts that I will share with you, though I'm not saying to adopt them for yourself, just things to be aware of.
1. Always be on alert with other people in recovery, they may relapse and their relapse shouldn't become your relapse.
2. Do NOT get romantically involved while you're in early recovery, do NOT get romantically involved with someone else who is in early recovery (less than a year, ideally two years)...see rule one. Some sexual predators troll meetings looking for targets - they don't even have addiction issues but know that people in early recovery don't always have the best clarity or foresight.
3. Do not bring people from meetings to your house or let them know precisely where you live (this was more personal because I was financially stable and a homeowner and didn't want to be a target or try to have someone move in because I had spare bedroom etc).
4. Be very careful who you let in your car as they could be carrying drugs and you don't want their charges to be your charges.
5. Do not loan out anything of value, including money that you want to be repaid or your vehicle.
6. Treat everyone in meetings as if they have alterior motives, addicts are very self interested by nature. While many do genuinely have big hearts and are good people in bad circumstances, many are not good people and will manipulate and take advantage.
7. Their drama is not your drama...if someone is calling you in a relapse keep your distance, do not get sucked in, you're life (sobriety) is at stake. You don't need phone calls at all hours of the night, nor do you need to be the keep of someone else's court, baby, friend, spouse drama. Feel free to meet and discuss their issues at a reasonable time of day over coffee for an hour but no emergency meetings, no late night meetings, etc. If domestic violence is involved give them the number to the hotline, by you getting involved you could become a target yourself.
8. If somebody is actively using do not spend any time with them. Adopt a no tolerance policy. NA is one of the best places to make connections to get substances. Dealers are not very obvious when they are networking a meeting, they put out benign feelers.
I have others but those are the main ones. I know I sound very cold but I didn't randomly pick these out of thin air, they unfortunately came from experience. Your goal in early recovery is to minimize any and all drama in your life and unfortunately, many addicts have a lot of drama that follows them in early recovery. My life's experience has taught me to plan for the worst but hope for the best, and to do damage control before it's needed. I no longer put myself at risk.