making changes.....

There are so many different stages…and we’re all different…when and how these things occur in our recovery…or in some cases if they do at all.

I know lots of people in recovery…Many have broken free…many remain in the cycle.

I know there are lots of reasons for that…and if I had the answer to WHY…to WHAT HAPPENED to me…how come I couldn’t stop and I couldn’t stop and I couldn’t stop…
And then…
One day….
I could.
?

It’s a combination of things, I think….that all had to come together.

The thing is…if we keep doing the SAME things day after day after day…then…how can ‘a combination of things’ occur?

If we want change to happen…we have to MAKE some sort of a change.

I’m not saying….if you want to break free you have to do this or that specific thing…I am simply saying….change SOMETHING in your life.

One of the things that we do…almost universally…in this addiction is isolate.

We do it for many reasons….we are ashamed or embarrassed…or we just want to be left the hell alone so that we can gamble…uninterrupted…or…perhaps it’s not even a CONSCIOUS thing…..we just gambled away ever second that we could…and the exclusion of everything and everyone else in our life was gradual….perhaps unintentional…it varies, I suppose….in many ways we are so different….

Many of us are shy…others are gregarious and outgoing.

But once in the cycle….we isolate.

One of the things that I have noticed in the people that I know who continually relapse or who just cannot break free for any considerable length of time…is that they do not come out of their self-imposed isolation.

It is IMPERATIVE that we do.

I often say that ‘we cannot do this alone’.

There’s so much truth in that.

The fact is….many of us can quit without any sort of ‘program’….we can quit WITHOUT a ‘higher power’…we can quit in all different sorts of ways….

But….if I do not begin building a life again….if I don’t do something constructive with my time…if I sit around…lonely…lost in my thoughts….I cannot remain free.

Our thoughts…are a scary place to be…our thoughts KEPT us in the cycle for a long time.

We have to CHANGE the way we are thinking…if we don’t GET OUT there..and START LIVING….our thoughts will return to old patterns.

We don’t have to fill our schedules with things to do (unless that is a good road block for you)…but we have to change SOMETHING.

One little thing…..make a decision to add ONE thing….to your life…the sooner the better…

A class
A support group
An exercise program
Go to gambler’s anonymous
Volunteer at a nursing home or a hospital

Just add ONE thing….maybe ONE HOUR per week…..

a friend of mine always says ‘nothing changes if nothing changes’.


P.S. -a few hours later

Synchronicity -- I just received an email from a friend...in it, he says "Isolation is the sickness, that supports the gambling or name the addiction. In isolation I can make up any "mental world" I want, that keeps me from being confronted with the truth.