Tonight’s Recovery Topic is Dealing With Loss in Recovery
Mark is joined with Guest Hosts Joe and Russ, both members of Canton Candlelight, Mark’s home group. Russ is Mark’s sponsor.
Joe is 27 years old and has 3 years sobriety. Mark and Russ both remember Joe coming into the fellowship and they both remember that Joe was “all in” and had a real willingness to work the program. Even though Joe was suffering from both loss and anger, he was able to put those things into perspective and used the fellowship, the program, and the steps as a means of comfort rather than to use drink.
Joe shared that early in the program he watched the long timers and focused on what they did and did what they did. Joe also shared that early in sobriety he was just going through the motions of recovery and the thought of drinking returned. At this moment, Joe received a phone call asking Joe to take him to a meeting. Joe promptly put the obsession to drink aside and started to give back to the program through the service work of driving members to meetings. Joe thought this was a coincidence. Russ commented that coincidence is just God’s way of remaining anonymous.
60 days before Joe came into the fellowship, Joe’s mom passed away and he became angry and suffered all the more by drinking more. So when Joe first came in, steps 2 and 3 was difficult because he was angry with God. Joe shared that going to meetings and relying on the fellowship allowed him to heal over time. Joe also heard other peoples story about how they got throug difficult times without drinking. This was an inspiration to Joe. Joe learned that you don’t have to drink if you dn’t want to and you don’t have to drink when you do want to drink
Russ first came into the program in 1974 and it stuck in 1979 and he was 30 at that time. Russ shared that in 2001 both his parents died and it devastated him. But the fellowship carried him through this difficult time by going to alot of meetings and to step up service work. Russ is now going through the process of loss because his father in law just decided to go into hospice and will likely leave this world soon. Mark shared that Russ’ example on how to deal with loss inspired him to emulate Russ’ action and thereby was able to handle the loss of his father.
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