Stanice Anderson

Stanice Anderson

I want to share with you my experience getting through 24 Christmases and counting clean.  It started with me making a conscious decision to do the supernatural thing — STAY CLEAN—one day at a time–NO MATTER COME HELL OR HIGH WATER.  To do supernatural things, I need supernatural help…God and the people in the 12-step programs and beyond to help me one day at a time.  Do the opposite of what comes natural for me to do.  Natural – not call somebody and use.  Supernatural call somebody, ask for help so that I will not use.  Natural keep that urge to use to myself.  Supernatural get to a meeting and tell them even before the meeting gets started “I’ve felt like using.”  Natural – taking the softer way and not working steps.  Supernatural leaning into step one sooo hard that I come to see beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am powerless over my addiction and my life is unmanageable and act like it by doing whatever is necessary to stay clean—pride and everything else aside.

 If you are ready to carry your recover like that, then you are ready to get through these holidays clean.  These are some of the things I’ve done and continue to do through the years:

1.  Pray and Meditate -  Use Step 11, I seek through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God as I understand Him.  At this point, I know His will for me is to NOT USE – to STAY CLEAN.  From that all other things STAY possible.
2. Bottled Water – I take my own bottle water to office parties, thereby assuring that what I drink is readily available and unaltered.  I never drink from a glass that I left unattended.  Thus assuring no one put any anything in my glass because I kept it with me.  Or that I pick up someone else’s glass by mistake.
3.  Non-Alcoholic Beer a NO-NO – I don’t set myself up with non-alcoholic beer.  I know me and the taste would tickle my fancy and before I know it, I’d want the real thing—an alcoholic beer.  Eventually, the beer would not be enough for me and I would want something to go with the beer.  Then, I’d be back in the vicious cycle again.  I remember at all times that one is too many and a thousand never enough.
4. Marathon Meeting – Before the holiday arrives, I’ve already mapped out where all the marathons are in my area or wherever I’m going to be for the holidays.  These come in handy especially when I am with fam and start to get the negative feelings that always seem to arise; especially in my early days of recovery.  I can get away to a meeting for that hour, share my feelings, listen to the experiences of others, get a hug, and then go back to the fam—reinforced.There have been Christmas’ and New Year’s where I couldn’t go around my fam at all because they would try to get me to drink out of ignorance of how addiction works.  They were so glad I wasn’t using “hard” drugs.  As far as my life shows…it’s all “hard” including the liquor.
5. Call the hotline or go to www.na.org – Before I go out of town, I research to find out where the meetings are.  The best possible scenario is I’ve already asked my 12-step friends if they have 12-step friends that I can contact while I’m in the town who may be willing to give me directions to a meeting or meet me at a meeting, or just someone to talk to in the town, if feel the urge to use.  Mapquest.com directions can sometimes throw in a wrong turn; so having the number of a local person who is familiar with where meetings are is always a good thing.
6. Pressure to Buy and buy and buy and… – You feel me.  I learned how to work within my budget and many of those years it meant limiting to buying for my son only and everyone else got what I could make, write, sing, cut out, and do.  For example baked cookies (soon became famous in the fam…they wanted them for birthdays, and any occasion that they’d come up with), pies (even made up my own recipes, mixing different fruits); designed and made my own Christmas cards; gave coupons good for me to baby sit, wash cars, go to the grocery store for a couple months; compiled downloaded music CDs of their favorite artist (for my mom, her fav music when she was a young woman), sang songs over the phone which surprised them and made their day (or so they said); let your imagination soar.   And pay your bills instead of accumulating a lot of debt. 
7. Gratitude – Remember what the season means to me and live in an attitude of gratitude understanding how blessed I truly am.
8.  Do not hang out with people that still use and surround myself with those who have my best interest at heart.
9. Allergy – When people say, “Here have a drink” or anything similar. I say, “No, thank you.  I’m allergic.”  People don’t want you getting sick.  This just happened Thanksgiving Day, I had a forkful of pumpkin pie.  I didn’t like it.  It was too custardy for my taste.  About a minute later my host announced, “Oh, I meant to let everyone know that the pie was made with Bourbon.”  My son was like, “What!  I gave my mom a taste of it.” My host said, “oh, my goodness, she’s not allergic is she?”  I spoke up for myself, “Yes!  Yes, I am very allergic.”  Now, one of the hosts was medical so he was ready to go get his case as he said, “What are your symptoms?”  I said, “I break out.”  “What!  Honey get my…”  I stopped him and but played it all the way out, “What I break out with you can’t help me with.  I break out in hopelessness. Un-Employability.  Sexually-transmitted diseases.”  Everyone laughed and we went on to have a wonderful time together. 
10. Which leads to the final thing, I don’t take myself too serious.  Be easy on myself and laugh.  I had to develop a sense of humor in order to enjoy the life that I should have lost a long time ago, but because of God’s grace…I’m in the land of the living staying clean one day at a time.

 Together we can do what I could not do alone.  Stay clean; even through the holidays!  I would love it if you would send me an email to stanice@stanice.com the first week of 2010 with the subject line, I MADE IT THROUGH—CLEAN and SOBER.

 © 2009 Stanice Anderson.