I grew up hearing the message from our society to hate my body and to hate myself. It's true that society pushes competition in all things and for the one who doesn't succeed in all things like myself, I learned self contempt and this infernal fear. For those lucky enough to succeed in the eyes of the world, well if one studies said people carefully, no matter how much one may accomplish, it's never enough. So many people go through this life living the former, the latter, or perhaps both, then they die. Surely there is something more. Working the 12 Steps of NA has shown me this, and to in fact to be happy wish what I have NOW. It's as if all the men have been taught the success of one man means that the other cannot be successful. Same with women and all their beauty pagents. One woman's beauty means that the other one can't be.
I was talking to my sponsor the other day telling her about my chronic fatigue and what steps I am taking to do about it. The good news is that I haven't craved any bad foods and I've been eating only healthy foods. Since I believe in addition to the extra weight, the cause of this chronic fatigue is either boderline or full on diabetes, I have concluded the correct treatment is correct diet. Even as a practicing junkie, I ate my beloved cookies, chocolates, and fast food. Of course what enabled me to stay thin and energetic was shooting meth. The energy left however when it was time to come down either because of responsibilities, or finances. I was kind of sad talking to my sponsor saying I couldn't understand why others were successful and I was not.
To clarify, my Mom for example, who was always fat since I can remember from about age 10, the age where girls back then were beginning to be conscientous about weight and beauty. I would look in my Dad's collection of Playboy magazines and wish to be that beautiful one day, and in fact was told by teenage boys or men trying to get me in the sack that I looked way beyond my years with the full on big breasts, period, and pubes already. But, back to my Mom, even though fashion dictation only thin was beautiful, she was nevertheless spared the curse of self hatred, and was in fact beautiful and successful. Drugs gave me the power to at least access my true birthright which was, in fact beauty, and I was once all the fat was gone. As for being financially successful, being a full time junkie only permitted bits and pieces of that.
Still, even when I was thin and beautiful, and when I had money, there was always in the back of my mind the fear of losing it. That in itself caused a state of hell, causing my thinking to be "live it up and enjoy it while I can." My sponsor told me to stop comparing myself with others and to stop worrying about why others are sincerely happy with themselves. I look at Whoopy Goldberg, the epitome of ugly, but she's so funny and appears so kind and gracious that others like myself can't help but like her. Thus, the lesson of NA and spirituality being to love myself in spite of whatever problems I may have, and in order to do that is to have a daily relationship with God. For those people in NA that don't believe in God, they are told that GOD = good orderly direction and it's true.
The reason however I didn't need my sponsor when I first got clean the way others do I observed is for the fact that where I'm weak He/She/It supplies me with strength. I've come to the conclusion also that the reason alot of people aren't successful, myself included is because they don't believe God can or will help them. Now that my thinking has changed, I believe that to be the reason I haven't gone insane with cravings over wanting to eat the wrong foods. The obsession with drugs was merely lifted when I got out of jail, enabling me to succeed, but food I thought impossible because I can't merely quit food and never eat again the way I could quit drugs and never use them again. It feels good to be free of the obsession of vices, and I look forward to the day when the fat is all gone and my natural beauty returns. Still, as NA suggests, I am grateful for what I do have, and the fact that I'm indeed living in the solution gives me some hope, happiness, and takes away the feeling of utter helplessness.
I finally conked out at 3pm yesterday and awoke at 5am, sleeping some 14 hrs. To be fair the chronic fatigue is not entirely to blame, as the fact that I have my days and nights turned around, 4 nights, plus one day shift. I know that eventually continuing with the right diet will eventually ward off the chronic fatigue and shed the extra pounds as well. I'm too tired to for vigourous exercise, save for some aerobics in my room with the music on. As the weight drops, I'll want to move more, just like I used to. Again, I know better now than to look to vices to make me happy, or other people for that matter. The reason that is so is that vices and people are not constant but God is. That's what is meant by looking within for strength and guidance, though as I told my sponsor it's sometimes difficult to do so, remembering back when drugs enabled me to sit in my room for hours requiring nothing but my mind as entertainment, although usually the internet and writing was the real entertainment.
"That was a form of insanity, " my sponsor told me. "Yes, but sometimes insanity felt so goddamned good!," I replied. So I'm doing what I can to tackle my present problems. I always believed before that I shouldn't have any problems and that that was my definition of success. I read in this book called "Light His Fire," that according to these massive amounts of surveys and research that the biggest problem most American families had as compared to other countries is that there shouldn't be any problems. Is that also what our society teaches? I guess some people like Whoopy Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey manage to overcome these obstacles, but amazingly enough people like my Mom never believed those societal values to begin with and she's the only person I know personally that didn't. I should like to be that way myself, to repeat be happy in spite of problems, because being happy in the present means being happy in the future.
That is to this day what I understand to be spiritual goals. God is not like this stern asshole in the sky like society would have me believe, but obeying His will is to be happy because God only wants our happiness. Imagine if the world instead of competing, working against each other, worked WITH each other and how much more we could accomplish! There would be no more lack and limitation, or alot less of it, and more abundance for the highest good for all. As my sponsor pointed out, that's exactly what NA does. We work together. There is no race as to who's better with the most amount of clean time, or who can work the Steps the fastest, it's just people helping each other and she's right. So working my individual program means getting better and helping others.
When I think back to how much at time I resented Dave because he's always had everything handed to him, at the same time I empathize with his crushing depression because I too, lived it. Back in 1993-1995 I took a leave of absence from work as ultimately I had to choose between my massive growing addiction to painkillers or my job. Since it felt like there was no way in hell I could ever go on without drugs, I left my job. I was happy at first, but the longer I was off, the more fearful I was of ever being able to return to work. I didn't believe I could. Had I not been forced out of financial necessity, I would have remained as I was, scared to death and content to remain in my little room of protective shelter watching movies sad that others could succeed and that I would always be nothing more than a loser and a waste of space.
Unlike Dave, I wasn't give liberty to stay in my house and slowly rot, and of course I realize now why. At 31 years of age, Dave knocked up his future wife, so his folks gave he and his wife and stepson the house. Like Dave, I was desparately unhappy and believing there was no way out. In 1994, I passed a church and poured out my fears and tears in prayer to God, that I was in the grip of addiction, there was no way out. My disability had run out and my unemployment would run out in Jan of 95. Sometime after that prayer I had gotten busted for the first time for forging scrips for painkillers. Although I didn't quit the drugs completely, I did in fact cut my habit in half because although I quit forging my own scripts, I did continue Dr. hopping, and eventually cut down to 2 Docs only.
My habit lessened, I went back to work, but I always carried fear with me. I worked for this company for two years, got laid off because after finally getting thin from taking diet pills, and when the diet doc wouldn't give me more, I went to a dealer, then got a night job as a stripper and word got out. I kept the money from unemployment happy as hell to be on speed and get my income as a stripper as well, but long story short, in the end one always runs out of money, work, drugs, when one is an addict. I became desolate and homeless living for a couple months in Dave's garage. He refused to rent out his spare room for whatever reason. Once I was really hooked on drugs, sex was the last fucking thing on my mind and besides I wanted it that way. I always got involved with guys that didn't want me, or if they did I didn't want them. So celibacy was preferred to that painful game.
I was talking to my sponsor the other day telling her about my chronic fatigue and what steps I am taking to do about it. The good news is that I haven't craved any bad foods and I've been eating only healthy foods. Since I believe in addition to the extra weight, the cause of this chronic fatigue is either boderline or full on diabetes, I have concluded the correct treatment is correct diet. Even as a practicing junkie, I ate my beloved cookies, chocolates, and fast food. Of course what enabled me to stay thin and energetic was shooting meth. The energy left however when it was time to come down either because of responsibilities, or finances. I was kind of sad talking to my sponsor saying I couldn't understand why others were successful and I was not.
To clarify, my Mom for example, who was always fat since I can remember from about age 10, the age where girls back then were beginning to be conscientous about weight and beauty. I would look in my Dad's collection of Playboy magazines and wish to be that beautiful one day, and in fact was told by teenage boys or men trying to get me in the sack that I looked way beyond my years with the full on big breasts, period, and pubes already. But, back to my Mom, even though fashion dictation only thin was beautiful, she was nevertheless spared the curse of self hatred, and was in fact beautiful and successful. Drugs gave me the power to at least access my true birthright which was, in fact beauty, and I was once all the fat was gone. As for being financially successful, being a full time junkie only permitted bits and pieces of that.
Still, even when I was thin and beautiful, and when I had money, there was always in the back of my mind the fear of losing it. That in itself caused a state of hell, causing my thinking to be "live it up and enjoy it while I can." My sponsor told me to stop comparing myself with others and to stop worrying about why others are sincerely happy with themselves. I look at Whoopy Goldberg, the epitome of ugly, but she's so funny and appears so kind and gracious that others like myself can't help but like her. Thus, the lesson of NA and spirituality being to love myself in spite of whatever problems I may have, and in order to do that is to have a daily relationship with God. For those people in NA that don't believe in God, they are told that GOD = good orderly direction and it's true.
The reason however I didn't need my sponsor when I first got clean the way others do I observed is for the fact that where I'm weak He/She/It supplies me with strength. I've come to the conclusion also that the reason alot of people aren't successful, myself included is because they don't believe God can or will help them. Now that my thinking has changed, I believe that to be the reason I haven't gone insane with cravings over wanting to eat the wrong foods. The obsession with drugs was merely lifted when I got out of jail, enabling me to succeed, but food I thought impossible because I can't merely quit food and never eat again the way I could quit drugs and never use them again. It feels good to be free of the obsession of vices, and I look forward to the day when the fat is all gone and my natural beauty returns. Still, as NA suggests, I am grateful for what I do have, and the fact that I'm indeed living in the solution gives me some hope, happiness, and takes away the feeling of utter helplessness.
I finally conked out at 3pm yesterday and awoke at 5am, sleeping some 14 hrs. To be fair the chronic fatigue is not entirely to blame, as the fact that I have my days and nights turned around, 4 nights, plus one day shift. I know that eventually continuing with the right diet will eventually ward off the chronic fatigue and shed the extra pounds as well. I'm too tired to for vigourous exercise, save for some aerobics in my room with the music on. As the weight drops, I'll want to move more, just like I used to. Again, I know better now than to look to vices to make me happy, or other people for that matter. The reason that is so is that vices and people are not constant but God is. That's what is meant by looking within for strength and guidance, though as I told my sponsor it's sometimes difficult to do so, remembering back when drugs enabled me to sit in my room for hours requiring nothing but my mind as entertainment, although usually the internet and writing was the real entertainment.
"That was a form of insanity, " my sponsor told me. "Yes, but sometimes insanity felt so goddamned good!," I replied. So I'm doing what I can to tackle my present problems. I always believed before that I shouldn't have any problems and that that was my definition of success. I read in this book called "Light His Fire," that according to these massive amounts of surveys and research that the biggest problem most American families had as compared to other countries is that there shouldn't be any problems. Is that also what our society teaches? I guess some people like Whoopy Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey manage to overcome these obstacles, but amazingly enough people like my Mom never believed those societal values to begin with and she's the only person I know personally that didn't. I should like to be that way myself, to repeat be happy in spite of problems, because being happy in the present means being happy in the future.
That is to this day what I understand to be spiritual goals. God is not like this stern asshole in the sky like society would have me believe, but obeying His will is to be happy because God only wants our happiness. Imagine if the world instead of competing, working against each other, worked WITH each other and how much more we could accomplish! There would be no more lack and limitation, or alot less of it, and more abundance for the highest good for all. As my sponsor pointed out, that's exactly what NA does. We work together. There is no race as to who's better with the most amount of clean time, or who can work the Steps the fastest, it's just people helping each other and she's right. So working my individual program means getting better and helping others.
When I think back to how much at time I resented Dave because he's always had everything handed to him, at the same time I empathize with his crushing depression because I too, lived it. Back in 1993-1995 I took a leave of absence from work as ultimately I had to choose between my massive growing addiction to painkillers or my job. Since it felt like there was no way in hell I could ever go on without drugs, I left my job. I was happy at first, but the longer I was off, the more fearful I was of ever being able to return to work. I didn't believe I could. Had I not been forced out of financial necessity, I would have remained as I was, scared to death and content to remain in my little room of protective shelter watching movies sad that others could succeed and that I would always be nothing more than a loser and a waste of space.
Unlike Dave, I wasn't give liberty to stay in my house and slowly rot, and of course I realize now why. At 31 years of age, Dave knocked up his future wife, so his folks gave he and his wife and stepson the house. Like Dave, I was desparately unhappy and believing there was no way out. In 1994, I passed a church and poured out my fears and tears in prayer to God, that I was in the grip of addiction, there was no way out. My disability had run out and my unemployment would run out in Jan of 95. Sometime after that prayer I had gotten busted for the first time for forging scrips for painkillers. Although I didn't quit the drugs completely, I did in fact cut my habit in half because although I quit forging my own scripts, I did continue Dr. hopping, and eventually cut down to 2 Docs only.
My habit lessened, I went back to work, but I always carried fear with me. I worked for this company for two years, got laid off because after finally getting thin from taking diet pills, and when the diet doc wouldn't give me more, I went to a dealer, then got a night job as a stripper and word got out. I kept the money from unemployment happy as hell to be on speed and get my income as a stripper as well, but long story short, in the end one always runs out of money, work, drugs, when one is an addict. I became desolate and homeless living for a couple months in Dave's garage. He refused to rent out his spare room for whatever reason. Once I was really hooked on drugs, sex was the last fucking thing on my mind and besides I wanted it that way. I always got involved with guys that didn't want me, or if they did I didn't want them. So celibacy was preferred to that painful game.