So we have the twelve step groups..
positives is that they have meetings that are dopamine factories and this is why we addicts usually walk out feeling really good from a meeting. We give ourselves mad credit with self applause and clean time (dopamine) the sense of belonging to a group (dopamine), meditation or prayer for those still suffering ( dopamine), the "high achieved from public speaking (dopamine and adrenalin), successfully working through our problems (dopamine), also the way meeting are its kinda like CBT a bit, as it is so common for people in a meeting to talk about an experience they had and then share how they were thinking about that experience in a negtive way so it was driving them mad or making them depressed and then people share how their sponsor or another person said why are you looking at this in this way when this is a far better way fro you to apraoce this or think about it... that combined with all the NA/AA worldwide approved catch phrases on how to alter your thought >
Best wisdom or advice on staying clean you have heard at a recovery meeting??< and in result change your perception provide a pretty good cognitive behavior therapy formulated by aditx for addicts.. cognattive behavirail therapy has reslts as good or better than medication with SSRI's. And dpression is often the result of and main promoter of depression ( and yeah i said that correct).. this is why you see some of our most popular and most posted in threads are
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Today I am thankful for... ver. 2: thankful for all the darksiders!<
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hare something POSITIVE from your day!<
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Managing Depressive Thinking<
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Good things about being off drugs/getting sober<
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CONTROLLING DEPRESSIVE THINKING SCHOLARLY<
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Becoming Aware of Your Depressive Thoughts<
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DEPRESSION AND MENTAL CONTROL<
Then we have the steps..
Some of the important things they do is well the powerless thing, yeah people get all messed up on this one and i did to.. completelly awful way of wording there.. the addictive drive comes from our subconscious and it crazy but the part of brain that we do not follow its thought is much older and much more powerful that our conscious.. So basically this step tries to take us around the illusion that our conscious mind is in control and will be able to keep that promise of never using on will power alone. It also reminds us that there is and never will be a way for us as addicts to use responsible and still be happy. Sure a bunch of us came up with some cocimany way to use in moderation after the first 100 million grand ideas we had failed in less time than it would take to write the nonsense down, but we just dont seem to get much from moderate use and it causes cravings and suck IMO.
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the idea of the elephant and the rider<
Also the steps tell us to turn our will and life over to god.. but since he already gave that to us, for some unknow reason that had nothing to do with avoiding problems for us IMHO
.. So i just choose to follow my heart and listen to it and belive in it.. both these may sound a little crazy and mystical but they actually have a profound psychological benefit, especially for addicts. If you have read through the definition of addiction that is posted in the beginning of this thread >
Addiction Guide < and then tie it in with the addiction cycle a little later in that thread, emotions are probably the biggest drive in addiction and relapse. We as clean and using addicts have untrue and insanely unnaturally high emotional response.. emotions are how the subconscious manipulates the conscious mind to do its bidding.. and it would not suprise me at all if some of this heighten emotion is due to the hypothalamus ramping up the strength of its emotional response to try to return to base line its effectiveness even with the drug we were addicted to still in our system and damping that response.
The brain likes the brain.. how the brain likes it brain
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")
and the more we manipulate it the more it adjusts to include our manipulations and return to its baseline functioning.. good examples of this are the phenomena of tolerance and withdrawal.. because the brain constantly adjusts to incorporate the substances that are constantly used.. and when we take that substance out of the tolerance adjusted system it will swing out of adjustment for awhile and this is one of the reasons for all the negative symptoms.. also if you look at a possibility of how the computing system in the brain works, it could be something like problem that needs addressing is tagged with an emotion to alert, to drive and correlate this new problem with similar problems. In a normal unmanipulated brain the problem is logged as solved with a release of dopamine and the disappearance of that emotion. The problem with us addicts is that we circumvent this system by introducing our own dopamine witch hasn't come from a successful resolution.. Therefore I think it a really good bet that all these emotions we have logged as solved, but never dealt with and on top of that logged a deadly solution of use of a drug that causes tolerance, are still there and can be brought back by thinking related thoughts and thus exposed as problems again.
So we need to go back into the system and deal with all these problems. we also need to design a life that is really high in positive emotions and as low as possible in negative emotions. By turning our will and lives over to a higher power or by following our hearts we will issue the correct path for us, not what our parent say, not what the universities say, not what society is always saying is the correct way.. but instead we will do what is right in our eye's or a higher powers eyes and that means we will be doing the next right thing and avoiding guilt, shame, self loathing, etc, and promoting pride, self respect, peace, etc. when we follow the path that is correct for us we avoid resentments, anger, hopelessness, frustration.. and promote satisfaction, happiness, peace, a good sense of accomplishment.. etc.
So back to all the emotions we never dealt with.. we need to go back and deal with them and this is allot of what steps
4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of
ourselves.
5. We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another
human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these
defects of character.
7. We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Its a big clean of the system.. and i know that counseling is amazing but it will take a long long long time and allot of money to get to all those circumvented problems so as confession is so powerful that it has been attributed to god for many years and it free and readily avialble i would seriously consider this option.
8. We made a list of all persons we had harmed, and
became willing to make amends to them all.
9. We made direct amends to such people wherever
possible, except when to do so would injure them
or others.
this is making thing right when yo can and dealing with those issues so the emotions will also diapers or fade and be replaced with positive ones instead..
10. We continued to take personal inventory and when we
were wrong promptly admitted it.
A big part of this is keeping or system clean in the future.
So I did this for a couple of reasons nit the least of is so your son may know a little bit about the reasons for doing that crazily worded list and some of the benefits he will revive.
I f the whole god thing is a big deal breaker here is an alternate set of steps.. >
Alternate version of the twelve steps<
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Welcome to BL.. I feel better now than I probably have in my whole life.. I abused and was addicted to drugs for over two decades.. coke, opiates, and booze were the big ones.. give yourself more time.. and So many people struggle with the wording on those steps... here is a good way to look at the the powerless thing, the addiction come from the unconscious, the unconscious is a much older more powerful portion of the brain that will win in a struggle with the conscious given any amount of time at all.. also it just reminds us that even if we are able to come up with a plan that works for normal use we wont ever be happy with it and that may be something we are powerless over.. also there are other things out there besides the fellowships but I would really do the steps as they work here is a post that I put up in another thread hope it can help you out.. check out the links provided in it..
