Weekly Meeting August 5th - August 11th

[admin]

After you quit drinking and/or using? How long would you say before you began to feel better physically? Emotionally? Mentally? Spiritually?

[admin]

I am thinking I started feeling better physically around a month sober. Emotionally, Mentally and Spiritually I think took a bit longer. I remember around 6 or 7 months being very emotional and it seems after that I started feeling better emotionally. I think it was about the same timing for Spiritually and Mentally. Hmmm do ya think maybe feeling good spiritually has something to do with feeling better emotionally and mentally? Probably. :15:

This was part of something I wrote 11/11/1999 on another message board:

The way I see it our spiritual condition can relate to physical condition. What I mean is we take care of ourselves physically. We all do that in different ways thru what we eat, how we exercise, when we're ill we rest and are quiet and may even seek help for ourselves. I see the same in taking care of ourselves spiritually. As in physically we have our good days and not so good days, we may have the same spiritually. Each day we have to also take care of ourselves spiritually. We need to feed it, exercise it, and sometimes just rest and be quiet, and sometimes seek help with it. We all have our different ways of doing this just as we have different ways physically. But the things that are the same for both physically and spiritually and for us all is to feed both, exercise both, rest and be quiet, and sometimes seek help with both. Our spiritual condition and our physical condition depends upon how we choose to maintain both throughout each and everyday.

This was the reading I shared for that day:
From: Today's gift from Hazelden

Today's thought is:

Create a sense of serenity in your life.

Developing a sustaining sense of serenity requires time.
Time to do the things we need to do without rushing. Time
for meditation. Time for just being with ourselves and
moving quietly from one task to another. In this way, we
develop a deep core of serenity, which sustains us in times
of stress and strain.

The next time you feel yourself getting upset, stop and
connect with the core of serenity within you. Savor the
peace and stillness you felt during quieter times. Remember
that a Higher Power is in charge of your life. Consider the
damage you may do to yourself and others by giving vent
to your distress. Then test how it would feel to let go of the
agitation and replace it with the serenity you have deep
within you.

Take a few moments now to sit quietly and connect with
your abiding sense of serenity. Be at peace.

In today's quiet times, I will create a core of serenity to
draw from in the future.

From: Your Daily Inspirations

Each day is a gift. Make it unfold like a bouquet of flowers and become a thing of beauty.

Sometimes it takes a crisis to see what is important in life. Lord, help me today to recognize and value what is truly important to me.

[janbear]

Physically i only remember a marked change in me at about 6-7 months. Emotionally, Mentally, and Spiritually is difficult to say. It was all so gradual for me. But working the recovery program was vital in those changes. God has had so much to do with all of it.

[docwill]

About ten minutes ago? (he says, being a smarty). Seriously, I was young when I got clean & sober, so physically--it seems like I felt good pretty quickly. As for the others, they have come and gone over the years, depending on me and what I was doing or not doing, and circumstances. I'd say that for the first five years I was pretty crazy, obsessive, manicky and depressed. With the program, psychotherapy, working the steps and so forth, that began to even out between 5 & 10 years. Spiritually? That's a forever process, I believe. My Higher Power and me have had a longstanding relationship, and like any other, it's been marked by joys and sadness, and sometimes quarrels and stupidity (generally on my part!). I believe I am turning into one of those slightly deranged old guys like Tevye the Dairyman who goes around talking and arguing with the guy upstairs all day, in Fiddler on the Roof. But considering the life I've lived, that's not so bad. I'll continue to seek through prayer and meditation for as long as I've got.
great topic!
doc

[Prescott]

Hi, It took me a couple of years to really start feeling noticeably better in all areas of my life. Confusion lasted a long time. I was one sick puppy before I finally surrendered. Literally knocking on deaths door. today 10yrs +9hrs :lol: I feel there maybe a chance for me yet :16::lol::wink:

PS....With my moms passing I feel as though I have steped out of the darkness into the light once again.... a long needed healing has started taking place. :42::195::1:

[free2bunme]

With my moms passing I feel as though I have steped out of the darkness into the light once again.... a long needed healing has started taking place.

:29:praise, hallelujah!!! :42:

[clean42day]

Good topic - physically it took me about 6 months to get normal and about a year to heal. my mental processing cleared up at about 6 months the same time that the obsession was removed from my life and spirit. Emotionally it took a reallllly long time almost two years, to get my feelings to match my thinking.....and I am still a work in progress in that area. I am more in alignment these days than not - but when I am not - it is mostly a deep sadness that comes out of nowhere.

I woudn't trade what I have today for the best cocaine on the planet.....working within, and Trusting the process has been worth every single tiny result I have expereinced. No matter how slow the progress - it is still progress! The promises do come true!:29:

thanks for listening

light and love

gail

[free2bunme]

hmmm ... gail, we seem to be on the same time frame/schedule with respect to healing. i feel like it took me about 6 months to a. start to feel sane b. start to feel like my brain was coming back and c. not to be literally exhausted all the time. until about a year to stop isolating and really join the fellowship. i will have 2 years in a couple of weeks, and i feel like i am just starting to get a handle on the steps .. just starting to get humble enough to do real amends ... and just starting to have something real to pay forward to sponsees. i feel like year 1 was about staying sober. year 2 was learning about boundaries and what constitutes a healthy v. unhealthy relationship. i fee like 3 will be about putting the career and finances back in order, and otherwise continuing to grow in personal health - i.e. diet and excercise. but, like Gail says, we tell God our plans and He laughs! SO I will have to wait and see ....

[dalin]

Dang...
At five years clean I had a stroke...
At first in my recovery it took what it took you.
After the stroke,it has taken a little longer.
I mean ,hell I had to learn to talk,eat,basicly everything again.
But gradualy all things are falling in to place.

[eve3]

mentally seems like its taken for ever,and im coming on 6 but im learning new and old stuff everyday,physically im ok i guess,as i could be worse of crippled in a wheel chair for example and im not so ,i deal with the pain,spiriually pretty darn god from the get goit took me a while to finally feel safe in my own skin and relize i hadda safe my a^^,which ment i hadda raise my hand and let people get to no me and i hadda ask for helpso ill say at least first year -2 yrs,paws.....post acute withdrawl sysdrom upto 7 yrs...something i was taught in the tc the rest will come to me???

[clean42day]

Yes Frannie I think we are parelleled in some ways on the journey - at the end of year two was when I finally started to grasp the steps in action everyday and year 3 was when I began to really "live" them myself in actions. this year has been about alot more practice in that area with different situations, people, places, and things and the steps are really starting to come alive in my life. I don't have to think as hard about what tool to pull out when, it is starting to come naturally now. my 10th steps at the end of the day are alot shorter now too. but hey what do I know - they say I won't even hear the pop of my head coming out of my A$$ till year 5. :lol:

I guess there is hope for me after all. :29:


I can relate to the PAWS Eve.....doesn't matter what kind of schedule of structure I keep - my sleep patterns are still all messed up. Counselor told me cocaine addict PAWS might last 7 or 8 years :eek: nope not something I wanted to hear either, but at least there's healing in site and light at the end of the tunnel.:smile:

[docwill]

From the consensus of opinion it seems that, as the fellow said, "it takes as long as it takes," and that is going to be on Someone Else's timetable, not mine.

[admin]

From the consensus of opinion it seems that, as the fellow said, "it takes as long as it takes," and that is going to be on Someone Else's timetable, not mine.

Which is exactly why I chose this topic because newcomers will sometimes ask how long until you feel better. Hopefully reading these posts they will come to the conclusion you gave above. :42:

[free2bunme]

as the fellow said, "it takes as long as it takes," and that is going to be on Someone Else's timetable, not mine.
__________________
We do recover.

The main point is: We do recover. It works if you work it.

[docwill]

Hopefully reading these posts they will come to the conclusion you gave above. :42:

Sometimes I have such a knack for shooting from the lip. Thanks for the feedback.

[snugsnug]

After you quit drinking and/or using? How long would you say before you began to feel better physically? Emotionally? Mentally? Spiritually?

I guess for me physically it really was not until I quit smoking (ciggs), then I began to feel better. I stopped using two years before I stopped smoking.
Emotionally was a little different. When I did my third step (first time) I really began to feel some feelings, and they were not all bad. I was beginning to identify some feelings that I had always medicated.
Mentally, well the jury is out on that one.
Spiritually I stay prayed up. I try to keep a conscience contact with the God of my own understanding always.