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Points to consider: 1. First person narrative seems to work best for recovery stories; it is also the easiest to use. 2. Consider the entire picture. Upbringing, family life, history of substance abuse or other disorder in the family. 3. Other circumstances that defined you as a person. Were you a minority in your school, an outcast, or were you the student council president? 4. How paganism found you. What images, sensations, or other memories you associate with your earliest awareness of a divinity beyond you. 5. Your first experiences with your Disorder, however you define it. Your first drink, hit, or incident that led to a diagnosis of a mental disorder. 6. If you've been to or are a regular member of a 12 step group, what were your experiences (remembering to preserve the anonymity of the group members) 7. Did you reveal your pagan beliefs to the group, and what was the reaction, positive or negative? 8. How your pagan beliefs became your higher power. 9. What has your life been like after finding recovery? 10. No bashing of religions or other 12-step programs; however, individuals (mis)representing same are fair game (and remember to preserve the anonymity of anyone in a 12 step program) 11. A length of 30,000 words or less
I was born September 11, 1960. I was unwanted and unplanned. I was number three. My daddy didn't have the right to visit us, so we moved around a whole lot. Both my step-father and my uncle were deacons in their respective churches, both Christian. My mother never had any time for me, because of my older brother and sister and because we moved all the time so my dad couldn't find us. So I never spent a whole year at one school. And I learned to be alone, because when you're the new kid, nobody wants to have anything to do with you; they make fun of you, they pick on you. . . so I learned how to be quiet and sit in the corner and not say anything unless I knew I was right. And I learned to be right. And I learned to be self-sufficient and independent, because I didn't have anybody to turn to. I didn't have anybody to talk to. My mom married 17 times while I was growing up, and we were whatever religion her current husband was. When I was eight years old I was baptized in the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, Utah, and that was pretty cool. I'm glad I have that memory. Two weeks after that, my step dad (a deacon in the church) molested me. When I was 11 my mom decided she didn't want me anymore, and she sent me to live with my aunt, here in Tulsa. So I became an Episcopalian. Then my uncle molested me. So I started running away from home. I started doing drugs, and drinking. I was looking for somebody to love me. If I had drugs, you liked me. If I could get drugs, you liked me. If I slept with you, you liked me. I started skipping school and going to the mall to steal things. One of the things I stole was the Satanic Bible. I read it, and thought it was pretty cool that they considered heaven to be your existence right now. But I didn't like any of the rest of it - it seemed to me that anyone could do magic, and didn't have to worship a devil to do it. Later on I proved this theory to myself by willing a girl to fall up the stairs at school. It would be too much coincidence to make her fall down the stairs - that could be an accident. But to fall up the stairs just exactly when I wanted her to…that was magic. I did it, and it scared me, so I left it alone, and didn't try any more magic. I had proven to myself that a person didn't have to worship Satan to do magic, and that was all I wanted to know. I grew up, I fucked up, and the court eventually sent me to Whitaker, which was a children's prison, because I was "incorrigible." I was there for a total of four years, and got visited twice. That was a pretty bad place. One night when I was in there the housekeepers woke me up with flashlights in my eyes so I couldn't see who it was and they started accusing me of a bunch of shit that I didn't do and they wouldn't believe me, so I ended up in solitary confinement, within this children's prison. And that was hell. I was all alone. God didn't love me or why would I be in this room all by myself? With a mattress on the floor, a steel toilet, no windows, and one dim light bulb way up high on the ceiling to read by, and the only thing they would let me read was the bible. And we all know how I felt about that. I went crazy in there. I lost all faith in mankind. I lost all faith in any sort of god because I was 15 and nobody loved me, nobody wanted me, and nobody gave a shit about me. I developed an attitude - you didn't like me? Well, I'm not going to like you first! If I don't like you first, you won't get the chance to not like me. I became tough, and I built up a wall so I couldn't be hurt. I didn't like being hurt. The hell with love. My uncle "loved" me. My step dad "loved" me. My mother "loved" me and she didn't do shit. After I got out of Whitaker I moved in with a dope dealer that I had known from the past. We dealt pounds of pot, and I became a pot connoisseur. And I got pregnant, even though I was on birth control. And I knew then that my life was fucked; if I had an abortion, this guy would leave me and I'd be on my own, with just a high school education and work experience. If I didn't have an abortion I was going to have this kid for the rest of my life. Oh, my god, what am I going to do? Well, I had the kid, and I am so glad that I did. I had two children by this man, and they are the most wonderful children in the world! I love my kids with all my heart. This man ended up breaking my nose, my finger, and my ribs. He would do stuff like pour beer on my head and leave me out in the country to walk home. This was "love." I still didn't find anybody to love me. And then, when we got divorced, he got custody, because I was young and stupid and they had just changed the law that the mother didn't have to be found unfit to lose custody and my attorney didn't know this. I was one of the first women in Oklahoma (if not the first) to not get custody without being found unfit. That's when I really started getting into drugs and alcohol. This guy moved to Arizona with my children. I would send airplane tickets for them to come visit and he would make me send an additional one- or two-hundred dollars or he would not put them on the plane. He was a real jerk. He still is, but that's his problem, not mine. I tried to commit suicide. It didn't work, obviously. I tried a couple of times. I fought for custody for my kids for eight years, and finally won. I had been reading The Grandmother of Time by Szuzanna Budapest (a book I had purchased just because it had a cool cover and was about women's celebrations), and decided to try one of the spells listed. I got a black candle, wrote my ex-husband's name on it with a rose thorn, pissed on it, and then burned it, chanting that he couldn't hurt me anymore. The next time I went to Arkansas to pick my kids up for their weekend visit, I stopped and threw the remains of the black candle in the river. Three days after that, my ex-husband gave up the fight, and I won custody of my boys! Then the kids were almost teenagers they moved in with me and my second husband, but by then I was already in the grip of my disease. It had stopped being fun to get high and had become a necessity. We got into crank, Demerol, valiums, whatever… And then one day I caught my oldest son in the garage, putting the drill bits in order by length and diameter and I knew I wasn't hiding my stash good enough. Then he got busted at school for selling valiums. I knew I hadn't been eating that many damned valiums! Well, he got all strung out, and he doesn't remember this, but one night he was standing in the doorway in the kitchen (and I'm sure he was tweaking) with a big knife in his hand, and he told his little brother he was going to cut him up into little bitty pieces. There was a big fight and my husband physically subdued him and I called the cops. They took him to the children's psych ward at Saint John's overnight. And I started taking him to therapy. He was supposed to be taking Prozac, but would spit it out after I'd thought he had swallowed it. Things came to a head one night when he wanted to do laundry after bedtime one night and I wouldn't let him. I had forgotten that he was to perform at Holland Hall's grand, end-of-the-season performance the next day. I told him that he was going to have to follow the rules of the house, and take his Prozac or find another place to live. It was the worst thing I ever did. After fighting for custody for so long I had not provided a good home for my boys - I was too strung out on alcohol, crank and valiums to be the good mom I had though I could be. If I hadn't been doing drugs, he wouldn't have been doing drugs. He was learning from my bad example, but I didn't realize it at the time. I basically kicked him out. And I tried to commit suicide again. This time I was serious. I drank a fifth of brandy and ate a hundred lot of valiums that we had for sale. I woke up in Hillcrest, strapped to a bed, and though: "oh, shit, it didn't work. What the fuck kind of life is this -what kind of hell am I in that I can't even end it!?!" They kept me in detox for a week, and I was going to quit. But when I got out I didn't get a sponsor and I didn't work the steps, and my husband was still using and all my friends were still using, so I was clean for two months and went right back out there. Drugs and alcohol eventually ruined my second marriage - I was married for 10 years. I didn't love anything physically because I had learned to be self-sufficient; I was a woman who could take care of herself. I had gotten my education and I got a job that paid good money and I bought my house and I got everything material, but I was still looking for somebody to love me. When I bought my house, I picked it because it was affordable, in the right school district for my youngest son, and it was within walking distance of the liquor store and Little Stevie's bar. Just in case I got too drunk, I could walk home from the bar. So I had a bunch of boyfriends, all of whom I met at the bar, and one night after my son had graduated from high school he came home at about 3:00 in the morning as my "boyfriend" was leaving and we had just done a big ole shot of dope. He got disgusted with me because of all the drinking and drugs and strange men in the house, and he moved out. So I was alone again. That's when I realized that I needed some help, but I didn't get it yet. It took my getting into a bar fight over a quarter paper and then hearing the disappointment and disgust in my older son's voice when I called him the next morning after tweaking and drinking all that night, before I started saving my money to go to treatment. It scared me to quit. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to stop using for the rest of my life. I had tried to stop for a day or two and just couldn't do it. How am I going to do this for the rest of my life? But then in treatment they told me it only has to be one day at a time. One minute at a time, if that's what it takes. I used magic again while I was in detox. I had brought a rudimentary altar with me, and every morning I prayed for healing of my mind, body and spirit. I wrote down a prayer and made a chant out of it, which I repeated 33 times each morning. I had a little trouble with the religion thing while I was in treatment. They confused me when they said that they were teaching a spiritual program and then closed each meeting with the Lord's prayer, which is obviously religious. I began walking out of the meetings before the prayer was said, and got in trouble for it. My counselor threatened to write me up for it, so I told her to go ahead, and I would sue. So they let me leave the meetings early. And I made it through 30 days and went home, and my boyfriend was still using, and cooking, so I called my good friend that I was in treatment with, and she came over to my house and helped me kick him out. That was hard! And he made off with a lot of my shit. I still, a year and a half later, will go out into the garage to look for something and realize that he stole it. But I found some serenity then. I started going to meetings every day. At first I went to AA meetings because I thought you had to be a heroin or opium addict to go to NA, and I had never done any bona fide "narcotics." But I had a real problem with the Lord's prayer again. I tried to talk to my sponsor about it, and she understood, but said it wasn't worth the trouble to fight about, and I should just let it go. I am not one to just let things go, or at least I wasn't at the time. I began talking about my higher powers in meetings, and began to get ostracized. It was very discouraging. Then I saw a flyer on the wall at 12 & 12 about this pagan recovery meeting, and decided to check it out. The first one I went to there were only 3 of us there; I believe it was just the second meeting to be held. I started attending regularly, and now consider it my "home group." I started making friends - real friends. Friends that will come give my car a jump in the rain and not expect a quarter paper in return! That's cool. And I also learned how to help people. I learned that I'm not the one in control, and never was. And that's okay today. I've learned that I can laugh at my mistakes. That I'm just human. And that it's okay to be wrong. I've found people who love me for what I am, instead of for what I have. I've learned that I might not have a mother, but I have sisters in recovery who love me. And that's cool! I can draw strength from that. I have kids who still love me (thank god!) and a higher power that loves me. I have a good man who loves me, and I love me, for the first time in my life. I can accept who I am today. I can be alone with myself and not feel alone. I can enjoy my life now. My bathroom is torn all to hell right now; any time I start to do anything to my house it turns out to be a whole fucking remodeling project! So I'm driving around all over town today looking for tile and vinyl (that I don't have the money for) and found out on the way here that I tore up the transmission in my car doing it. I don't have a job right now, and this morning I found out that I didn't get the job I really wanted, and I started getting scared. My elbow hurts because I got tennis elbow from pounding 41 tombstones into my front yard for Halloween. But you know what? I'm happy! It's okay! I know that whatever happens to me it's gonna be okay. I know that my higher power cares about me… I really liked today's meditation: "I will seek to improve my conscious contact with the Higher Power that cares for me. When the need arises, I know I will be able to trust in that care." * If I hadn't been working the steps and improving my conscious contact with my higher power for the last year and a half, I probably wouldn't have been able to handle today - and I didn't even cry over it, because I know that it's going to be all right! That what this program is teaching me. Work the steps. Call people. Talk to people - they're there for you. If I'm having a hard day, I'm gonna get on the phone and I'm gonna call until I find somebody. And it helps. You get somebody who knows what you're going through and you can get a different perspective on it and they might just have an answer. But as long as you're on the phone with another addict, you're not calling the dope man. As long as you're going to a meeting, you're staying clean. Just don't pick up. Just for today. Just for a minute, if that's what it takes. Just stay clean until the Simpson's is over! Just stay clean until the liquor stores close! Then just stay clean until the bars close! That's how I had to do it. It works if you work it, but it takes a little bit of effort - it doesn't come from osmosis - it doesn't soak in - you have to do the work. But it is possible. One day at a time. One minute at a time if that's what it takes. That's all I've got to say. I love you guys! * Just For Today, Nov. 29 Previous: Pagan Sanctum Recovery
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