Every day as I talk with other’s just starting out their journey in recovery, I hear; I’m bored or depressed. How do I go on now? I’m not sure how to act with out my drugs or alcohol, it took up so much of my life. Essentially you have now lost your best friend and for me that was so true. Lack of self-esteem surrounded me my whole life and it fueled my desire to use. At a young age I began my journey with alcohol and weed, easy to get a hold of at 12 years old and suffering already from incredible pain by my  alcoholic father.

So how do we fill in those long hours we once spent high or drunk, void of any feeling? Now as life rushes back in on us, those feelings now must be dealt with and we understand why we repressed them all those years. Pain of childhood torment or unyielding loneliness from a parent who barely paid any attention to us, other then screaming for this or that to be done. Parents who as this child grew, used with them, setting even more confusion in the mind of this young adult trying to understand the world.

So now in early recovery we stand wondering what to do with all this pain, guilt, shame, remorse, life turned upside down by years of self-loathing and destruction. How do we fill in those long hours we spent high? My best suggestion I can give besides the obvious of going to meetings, working the steps with a sponsor of the same sex as you. Treat yourself and learn something new, put that money once spent using on something good for your life. Go back to school and retrain yourself in something to move your life in a new direction. Take up fishing or yoga, find a craft or any thing that interests you and stay busy. Sitting and letting your addiction talk you into relapse is what you want to avoid now. Recovery is about new growth in your life. So go out there and search out a better way for you to enjoy Life. Best wishes, Rose