Just about everybody knows someone who is addicted to something, and I am not talking about the soft addictions that limit our connection to our highest self.\u00a0 I am talking about hard core addictions that are affecting the lives of not only the addict, but also many lives around them.\u00a0 Addiction takes no prisoners and it spares no lives. Families are torn apart, friendships are dissolved, businesses go bankrupt and employees lose their jobs. \u00a0Children are left without parents and parents lose children to drug related tragedies.<\/p>\n
Many of us have been asked to help someone who is in need of treatment, only to find that after a few days of sobriety the person has returned to their past behaviors.\u00a0 I know of one person who has spent over $200,000.00 on treatment programs for his son only to have him end up using after all was said and done.<\/p>\n
Addicts are not soulless-bad people who willingly harm others for the sake of doing so.\u00a0 They are suffering with a disease that affects their mind, body and spirit. \u00a0They are doing what they feel they need to do in order to survive and they live in fear of having to change their way of life.\u00a0 They are afraid because the disease of addiction strikes at the center of the brain that operates through our subconscious; the same part of the brain that controls our heart beat and our breathing as well as many other survival functions.<\/p>\n
If you have ever watched the television shows such as; Addicted, Intervention, or even My Strange Addiction, you will see the cold hard truth of what it is like to be under the spell of addiction.\u00a0 You will see, \u201cContinued use, in spite of negative consequences\u201d<\/strong> up close and personal.\u00a0 Still, without having the experience yourself, you can never truly understand what is going on in those persons thoughts. The behavior appears to be completely insane, and it is.<\/p>\n Insanity is defined:\u00a0 Repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.<\/strong>\u00a0 The addict truly thinks that the next drug is going to fix them and they will never need to use again, hence the term \u201cget my fix.\u201d<\/p>\n What I have found in my experience, as well as in the experience of others, is that insanity is temporary. The second step of the Twelve Step programs is; Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.<\/em>\u00a0 So how do we do this? How do we come to believe?\u00a0 How did you come to believe?\u00a0\u00a0 Have you always believed? Do you still not believe?<\/p>\n When I first came to sobriety, and was confronted with this step, I did what many others have done; I went on faith.\u00a0 If it worked for others it could work for me \u2013 unless they were lying!\u00a0 Yes, I didn\u2019t believe yet, but I was willing to give it a try.\u00a0 What I have come to understand over the years of being clean is that to be fully sane, is a lifelong process.<\/em><\/strong> I return to sanity in bits and pieces only to awaken to other areas of insanity.\u00a0 Through the enlightenment of unhelpful behavior patterns exposed in my life, my level of joy and freedom are increased.<\/p>\n To be fully sane, is a lifelong process.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Faith is simply taking someone\u2019s word for something and being willing to give it a try. It doesn\u2019t mean just trust me and don\u2019t question me.\u00a0 Faith is not going blindly on what others say.\u00a0 Faith is temporarily putting aside current beliefs to experience another way of doing things.\u00a0 Faith, with experience, turns to belief.\u00a0 Belief, with experience and awareness, turns to knowing.\u00a0 When you get to a place of knowing something to be true, you have found peace.<\/p>\n So this is what I am here for, to help others to take a leap of faith, and support them through their process of coming to believe, and then walking beside them as they get to know, who they really are and what they wish to do.\u00a0 This is life in recovery.\u00a0 This is the path to peace.<\/p>\n In June we kicked off our first in a series of CWG on recovery retreats. \u00a0A small group of people all shared a life-changing event. \u00a0If you are in recovery and not experiencing great joy and freedom or are still suffering with addictions, please consider giving yourself this experience. \u00a0 Our next retreat will held in San Jose, California, Sept 19 -22nd, 2013. \u00a0On October 24 \u2013 27th, 2013, we will have another retreat in Orlando Florida. \u00a0Click\u00a0here<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0for more information on these life-changing retreats.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (Kevin McCormack, C.A.d ,is a certified addictions professional. He is a recovering addict with 26 years of sobriety. Kevin is a practicing auriculotherapist, life coach, and interventionist specializing in individual and family recovery and also co-facilitates spiritual recovery retreats for the CWG foundation with JR Westen. You can visit his website\u00a0here<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0for more information.<\/i>\u00a0To connect with Kevin, please email him at\u00a0Kevin@TheGlobalConversation.com<\/span><\/a><\/span>)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Just about everybody knows someone who is addicted to something, and I am not talking about the soft addictions that limit our connection to our highest self.\u00a0 I am talking about hard core addictions that are affecting the lives of not only the addict, but also many lives around them.\u00a0 Addiction takes no prisoners and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[159],"tags":[911,196,187,1363,1369,62,1367,1366,1364,195,1365,459,198,1368,1303,718],"class_list":["post-6398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-addiction-and-recovery","tag-12-steps","tag-aa","tag-addictionology","tag-addited","tag-conversations-with-god-on-recovery","tag-cwg","tag-ga","tag-insanity","tag-intervention","tag-kevin-mccormack","tag-my-strange-addiction","tag-na","tag-narcotics-anonymous","tag-oa","tag-path-to-peace","tag-twelve-steps"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6398"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6400,"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6398\/revisions\/6400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theglobalconversation.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}