Recovery Life Skills

My experience is living a life of dual diagnosis. Treating has a much lower probability of success than other addiction cases, so my program that I live on a daily basis has to go all in. The standard approaches are worth trying first; the program that has kept me sober is intense and a much harder path. It has required reserving about 2 hours a day indefinitely, until beginning the sponsorship process.

• I had friends and family clean every inch of alcohol, bottles, cans, glasses, alcohol related trash, and any other sign of my drinking from my house and cars. Even my wine glasses were given away.
• More to come...

• My depressive episodes are now worse
• My manic episodes are now worse
• I have to take more medications
• My side effects are much worse
• More to come...

• We may not get our spouse back
• We may not get our kids back
• We may not have our liver cirrhosis healed
• More to come...

See My Program for a list of approaches that I have tried.

• I still have a chance to make a difference tomorrow?
• Did I take a drink?
• More to come...

I have seen and helped people make this approach work if they do not have direct dependents

• 90 Days in Rehab
• 90 Days in Sober Living
• 90 Meetings in 90 Days

1. Admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable. — Romans 7:15–19; 2 Corinthians 12:9–10
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. — Philippians 2:13; 2 Timothy 1:7
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. — Proverbs 3:5–6; Matthew 6:10
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. — Lamentations 3:40; Psalm 139:23–24
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. — James 5:16; 1 John 1:9
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. — Ezekiel 36:26; Romans 12:2
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. — Psalm 51:10; 1 Peter 5:6
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. — Luke 6:31; Luke 19:8
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. — Matthew 5:23–24; Romans 12:18
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. — Proverbs 28:13; 1 Corinthians 11:28
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. — Philippians 4:6–7; Psalm 46:10
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. — Galatians 6:1–2; Matthew 28:19–20