H.O.W. to Enter Recovery
Oh yay, another Three Letter Acronym (TLA) to add to my life. This one could save it.
There have been a few instances where I have switched companies during my career. One aspect that is consistent across the board is each company thinks they’re unique with their overwhelming amount of TLAs they throw around in conversation (psst: they’re not unique). TLAs make people appear smart, as if they’re speaking a secret code or language that only those on the “in” get to decipher. In all reality, it’s generally just laziness, rubbish and people attempting to feel like a part of a cool club that leads to this plethora of TLAs. You can generally find a good chuckle by asking someone who repeatedly uses a TLA to explain it to you, either by expanding on what the TLA stands for or what it means.
One acronym, though, is unique in the manner that the TLA is used as both the question and answer to THE fundamental question pertaining to recovery. How do I stop drinking and enter recovery? The answer: Honesty, Open-mindedness and Willingness.
Honesty
Reflecting back on my own story and journey to the path of recovery, I was never - not even close - honest with myself or with others. It ties back to the outright rejection of using the word “alcoholic”, of dancing around it with every other term and excuse under the sun to rationalize my drinking behavior. I could never admit to myself that there could be such a deep issue that, if I wanted to live a meaningful life, meant that I had to honestly assess every aspect of my character and subsequent behaviors.
Honesty has also played a pivotal role in my recovery journey as I attempt to live out the vow that I made to myself to do the exact opposite of what I was doing when I created my own version of hell. That vow was to speak and act as close to the truth as I knowingly could in the moment. No more lies, no more tangled web of stories and personas to manage. Just myself and the truth, as best as I knew it in the moment.
I believe there is one key question a potential alcoholic can ask themselves to really allow themselves to be honest about their situation: Has alcohol and my drinking made my life unmanageable in any aspect? If yes, even a hint of a yes, you seriously need to consider that you may not be fully honest with yourself as it pertains to your problem with drinking.
Open-mindedness
While being honest with yourself is the key first step to addressing your alcoholism, or really any aspect of your life that you want to better, honesty alone will not solve the issue. An individual can answer the question above and continue to put bottle to mouth. The disease of alcoholism is strange in that manner.
The next step is one that actually catches people up in an unexpected manner. Open-mindedness in my case manifested in a manner that I will never forget and am forever grateful for having experienced. After going through the initial intake process at rehab, Alyssa departed for the next 28 days. As I sat alone, wondering how it had come to all of this, I made a promise to myself. I decided to stop questioning everything, stop pushing back and asking ‘why’ constantly when it came to my problems with alcohol and instead assume that the activities and the programming that they will have me do in rehab have my own best interest in mind.
In that moment, and with that declaration, I became teachable and open-minded to change my approach to solving the problem of alcohol and I was able to completely re-write my life story. What I had been doing up to that point clearly was not working.
Willingness
The final aspect of this TLA is intensely action oriented. Up to this point you may have found the courage to be honest with yourself, you may have even found the humility to be open and teachable, but this last step is the most important to bring real change into your life. Are you willing to go to any length to do the actions needed to solve your problem with alcoholism? If you’re not ready to do the work, to really dive in and put literal sweat, blood* and tears into your effort, then you risk falling short of The Promises that a life in recovery has to offer.
*Ok, so full stop admission here, I am being a touch dramatic. The blood aspect of what you need to be willing to put in is not accurate. Unless your local AA chapter does some annual blood drive or something like that. While it gets heat for this often, AA is not a cult, so no true blood sacrifices are necessary. I personally have never witnessed a cult that casually lets you come and go, for free, as you wish.
In my story the willingness showed up again sitting in the intake room in terms of what I vowed to myself. In addition to that declaration that I made to myself where I said I had to believe everything they were doing for me was in my best interested, the next part was equally as important (yet I didn’t realize it at the time). That was that I was going to fully participate in every single activity that they gave to us, and not hold back on anything.
Additionally, after leaving rehab I took further action, I went farther with this “find a solution” to alcoholism thing than I ever imagined I would. I sought after care for four weeks which included additional group and individual therapy. I found an AA group I could get to consistently, I found a sponsor and I started working through the steps with them immediately. As difficult as a situation or moment was in working through the steps, I leaned in and was always willing to do the work regardless of how uncomfortable it was to go through.
As I sit here today, I have completely transformed my life by moving through the progression of questions that H.O.W. can provide in aspects even beyond my journey of recovery. If you pause, just for a moment, and ask yourself these questions - Am I being honest with myself about the situation? Am I open-minded enough to hear other perspectives? Am I willing to put in the work to create the change I desire? You’ll be amazed at the results.
That’s all I’ve got.
Kyle
