Living Within Samsara

Reconstructing Rick, with a byline reading “An Addict Trying to Recover” is a blog told from the mind of a newly recovering drug addict who’s been through the trenches of hell itself and has managed to escape. When drugs, sexual exploitation, street living, and prostitution is what you’ve known for so many years, Rick offers what it’s like to learn a different way of life. His is yet another journey within Samsara. Follow his journey. I am.

Do you have a loved one or relative who drinks? This is a memoir of what I went through.

Because of my own battles with alcoholism, I was finally able to love my relative completely and wholly without expecting her to stop drinking. Because I found a solution for my problem, it also helped me to find a solution for “life’s problem.” I am so grateful I did have a second chance at life because it got me to a place of accepting my beloved’s illness along with accepting her. I credit this acceptance with my Codependent recovery after I got sober - that I never could have understood UNTIL I got sober.

If you don’t have a drinking problem, I can still offer you some resources - for YOU - if you have a relative or loved one who drinks.

Alcoholics Anonymous meetings are for alcoholics. Increasingly, though, more and more addicts-only as well as the dual-addicted person is showing up to meetings.

How does A.A. address this? Does A.A. address this? Are “addicts only” welcome? Is it conducive to the group purpose to introduce yourself as an addict or alcoholic/addict? How about if you have no problem with alcohol? Can A.A. still help you? And who enforces the Traditions anyway? These are questions I hope to answer with extensive clarity.

Do you or have you spent a large portion of your life insuring that people like you? Have you bent over backwards for people you may not even know, only to try to get them to like you? Do you or have you ever extensively worried whether someone likes you or not? If you seem to find yourself in a never-ending circle of not feeling good [or not liking yourself due to] caring too much about other peoples’ opinions or you seem to be the walking low self-esteemer then read this article that focuses on the 2nd Agreement: “Do not Take Anything Personally” from Don Miguel Ruiz’s Four Agreements. You can escape this cycle. If I could then anyone can.

Hopefully this article can delve a little into how we can make some perception shifts and small changes so that our *insensitive* world either does not seem so insensitive or, even better, that we begin to not notice the insensitivity! When we truly do honor who we are, the opinions of other people do not matter! So getting to this self-acceptance seems to be the key doesn’t it? How do we that? Hopefully this article will give us that solution. This article is especially geared for the HSP’s or multisensories but can help anyone who feels *more different or odd* than the *normals* of the world.