How do you expect to grow and change as a person if you don’t have anyone telling you when you messing up. (5th step stuff)
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I’m at a WIC appointment and observing all different types of parenting styles and applying the steps to toddlers. I need sleep.
It’s been my experience in dealing with more addicts than I’ve ever wanted to that if there’s not a little bit of bite to it than it’s ineffective. I can’t recall the last time a slap on the wrist ever worked on one of us. Hell jail sometimes doesn’t even have it’s intended affect.
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Half measures avail us nothing. When we leave ourselves an out, we’ll eventually get back to it
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Personally, unless someone actually called me on my bullshit then I would assume it wasn’t bad. That’s why I encourage people to PM on here if they are upset.
Yeah, approaching an addict vs a child is very different. Children cannot just be called out over and over again. It destroys their self esteem. Children need a loving environment with compassion and nurture. Addicts need more of the tough love and hard lines between relationships.
The kids at the WIC appointment were fine. It was some of the other parents lol. The one lady had 3 so I kinda felt bad but she was screaming at her son in front of everyone
Yeah, time and place. But, we have absolutely screamed at our kids. There’s also this issue we have with parents of 1 child. They often feel like their parenting was superior because they were able to raise their child in a certain way, so why shouldnt others. Truth is, they were 2 to 1 in raising that child. We went from 1 to 3. Immediately outnumbered. It becomes an entirely different kind of parenting when you have multiple. It’s not something 1 child parents would understand.
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I think that’s an over simplification. There are many options available to kick addiction and there are also many options for recovery, but the fundamental foundation of recovery is the same.
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I think addiction is unique in it’s treatment in that there’s many ways to recover, but need to put in the work to see results. There’s no medication, or surgery or treatment that will work unless the patient works at it.
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There’s a difference between substance use disorder and people who are just heavy users. People who can’t just stop aren’t addicts in the medical sense. One of the qualifying symptoms of SUD is the inability to stop on their own. I know a guy who uses heroin occasionally but isn’t an addict.
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Maybe you should mute this thread. But you were here alot your first year so I would say that support helped. You’ve done lots of things to work on your recovery whether you want to admit it.
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I also don’t recall saying this is the only way either. This place is mostly hugs and rainbows. A dose of reality is a good counterbalance
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I honestly don’t think “full blown addict” women get sober when pregnant. They either continue to use or they weren’t full blown addicts. OR if they did get sober when pregnant…did they stay sober after birth or did they go back to using. If they went back they were likely white knuckling the whole 9 months knowing that they were going to be able to go back to it afterwards.
I don’t think there is ONE way to get sober but there are lots of proven ways to not get sober. That is what this thread is about. It isn’t saying you have to do it one way or another but it is saying you should benefit from our collective experiences that such and such an activity is NOT going to work.
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Eh…different paths, same destination. Some choose the well-mapped routes, like AA, Rehab, counseling. Others choose less traditional, preferring to “bushwack” their way, blazing their own trail. Dokkodo…the way of walking alone along a path of discipline.
I fall into this latter group. As part of my recovery, I decided to pursue black belts in two martial arts disciplines, simultaneously, the idea being to build discipline, commitment to a goal, and to leave no room in my life for drinking.
I have major accountability: my instructors, and fellow students. Slacking results in extra pain, ie. The easy path leads to a harder life.
I also remain committed to adopting a more tried and traditional approach, should my current plan fail.
Getting elbowed in the head, gut punched, or blasted by a round kick…plenty of truth and tough love here.
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Yeah…equivocating, one-upsmanship, “back in my day…”
This is both very human, and moderately dangerous, because it assumes all variables are equal, except the one in question.
Having watched my mother battle severe mental illness and alcoholism, only gaining ground when her family intervened and placed her in an institution, I am so very thankful that I only had one monkey to shake off (booze) and not two, or three. Does this make me “better”? No. I was fortunate to have chosen a disciplined path early in life. So, when I found myself starting to spiral down, I went with what I knew: Discipline. Set goals. Commit to them. Prioritize. Execute. The body cannot go where the mind has never been.
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The bite of the truth is every ounce of bite needed, IMO. If bite is added on via delivery, it can underline the point but can also distract from it.
When I started here, seeing overheated delivery absolutely distracted me from digesting the truth. It made it feel like I was being intimidated or otherwise manipulated into believing what someone else did, instead of coming to it naturally. It was a great way to make me ignore something I’d otherwise listen to. Only as my emotional growth and my ability to trust the speaker increased, could I cut through it and take the truth for what it was.
I’m saying this about the added “zing”, though. Uncharged straight talk is just plain needed. Most tough love I see on here is the latter.
@anon67035918 I think the tough love thing is orthogonal to the “multiple ways to recover” discussion. I think tough love has an important place in every recovery path, and that approach doesn’t necessarily include “my way or the highway”. Sometimes people are just saying “your way has issues”, and they simply just speak on the alternative way that they actually have experience with.
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The way I see tough love is that it’s a useful source of truth and encouragement to make the hard but important changes that lie between me and a better life. It doesn’t mean I follow everything to the letter, I just look for the base truth in it and figure out what it would look like applying that truth in my recovery.
I’m not speaking on interventions or anything that removes choice from the equation, to be clear. I’m talking about the tough love talk.
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This thread is here for the same reason any other thread is here, hopefully someone reads it and resonates with them, helps them to achieve sobriety and stay sober.
I like this threads message, to me the message is “if you don’t work for your sobriety, and have unrealistic expectations of happiness in sobriety, you won’t maintain it”
I don’t care how you work it, or what you work it with but the white knuckles only hold on for so long.
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Agreed. Tough love is just one method of waking people up to what is happening in their lives. I believe that everyone will need some tough love in their lives. Without it we are coddled and dont grow. I for one have never compared my sobriety to another person’s. I dont do formal meetings, though I have in the past. They were beneficial when I did them. I do work on my sobriety myself though. If someone didnt have to work that hard to be sober, were they truly addicted at all?
I’m sure a pregnant woman addict would have extreme difficulty and withdrawals quitting cold turkey. It’s possible though and it was very difficult. They had to work for that.
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