Okay, since I have only given an outline, so to speak, there you have my experience of entering recovery. Posing the question "Why don't more folks get help?" The only answer I have, just from my experience, is that it is really a huge, life changing event and a hard step to make. Thinking back on what I had to go through to get help and then when I returned home, the aid that I would need most of all was not so easily found.
I truly believe that there should be a better system in place to aid the addict who is seeking help. Lots of the addicts are homeless, penniless and morally and emotional bankrupt. The hardest part was admitting I had a problem, finding out how to get help for said problem and then, there was coming home. No money, no friends, no regular doctor and no job, and some have no family to help. As you can see, there is a huge mental switch going on several times in recovery. And please, this is just my experience and no one else.
There, I feel, needs to be easier ways and means for someone to get the help they need. Of course, this is after they admit to themselves the need for help. It is my experience that there are a vast variety of help and facilities in which to receive this help. I feel that there should be more information on what, how and why for the addicts seeking help. The largest problem that I ran into when I came home was that a lot of things that I was told I needed to do and things that would be taken care of for me, just didn't happen.
Maybe your experience was different, easier when you came out of treatment, but for me, I truly feel that the liaison was ill informed either at the treatment facility or at the outpatient facility. I'm not sure. I do know that it took several months to get my medicines and doctor appointments that I needed. It was a very frustrating time. Don't get me wrong, I did have some help just not all the help or the correct help in certain areas for me entering recovery.
Once the "kinks" got worked out, the road of recovery was laid out in front of me, all I had to do was continue to move forward. Since I have been in recovery I have had health issues addressed, I receive my medicines that I need on a regular basis, and I have a network of people, just like me, that I can talk to about the crazy things we addicts think and do. You see, we have a disease just like someone with diabetes. It can be arrested and help is available. But an addict must do what is required to keep the disease arrested, no matter what, first and most importantly you must NOT use. Even if you are just abstinent, that is better than using. Yet there is so much more out there than just being abstinent.
I would not want my life any different than what it is. I have my family, my daughter, and a multitude of friends. True friends. The kind of friends that will honestly tell you when you are acting extremely stupid. Ones that have a shoulder for you to cry on even if they have no idea why. The ones that at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning say on the other end of the phone line "It will be okay. I'll be there as quick as I can, put a pot of coffee on". Those that don't ask why or how, but can I do anything, what do you need.
Having no idea what it is like for anyone but myself, I hope and pray that anyone that is homeless and in need, that anyone wanting, with every fiber of their being, help with the disease of addiction, will find the correct avenue for themselves that will lead them to the road of recovery. There are lots and lots of places, people that are out there to help. Maybe if they put more information about themselves out there addicts would know where to start. How to get the help they so desperately need and want.
So, if you know someone that wants help, do for them what you would want them to do for you. I truly feel that if people lived by the "Golden Rule" more there would not be so many addicts seeking help and never finding it. You can't "make" anyone want recovery, they must want it for themselves. Not for their wives, their husbands, children, or anyone other than themselves.
As my blog continues, I will be sharing my experiences that I am having in recovery. Maybe someone who is not sure will hear my story, my experiences and know that they too can have recovery. The beginning is not easy and no one will tell you that it is. They will tell you that "you" have to do the footwork to get the benefits of recovery.
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