By Robin, Renascent Alumni

In December of 2020, I was so deep in my addiction. I had no ability to recall my decades of recovery led by Hazelden Minnesota in 1985. I had attended AA meetings for many years and had stayed sober until 2010. I believed at that time I was being brainwashed in AA and made excuses to leave the room to drink and use drugs. Today, I know this was my addict brain patiently waiting to come alive.

I was so alarmed by the thought of falling again down the old ‘rabbit-hole’ and sought therapy. My therapist explained that ‘addiction is not a disease.’ He normalized my cocaine use and I felt assured I was fine. By November of 2020, I told him I couldn’t see him anymore. I was very unhappy.

I find it hard to even believe I worked with this therapist for five years and accepted his well known books, Ted Talks, and the therapy of this mandate. It no longer worked for me. In fact, I could not comprehend I was in full blow addiction. I was convinced I needed an even more extreme therapy somewhere in the world.

That same November my adult kids called me. I had really dreaded this arranged phone call. Instead, the love and understanding they conveyed to me of their own happy and safe memories growing up with a sober Mom in the rooms of AA touched me deeply. Their love for me cracked my heart open to make me realize I needed to ask for help.

In December 2020, I admitted myself to a Renascent. There was no way I could stop using on my own.

I know today it was not ‘I’ who carried myself safely into rehab, through a long and very uncomfortable detox, as well as all the real death dangers I lived through in my active addiction. I fully surrendered as only the dying can do. I surrendered in desperation to the God of my understanding, as well as Step One…I was powerless.

The two words that somehow came to mind when asked what I would like to write about my recent precious medallion are “have faith”. Today, with the grace of my Higher Power, I eagerly put my recovery first, no longer with that desperation but with honesty, openness, and willingness to happily work, and therefore realize this “perfect design for living,” one day at a time.