How To Surrender To Recovery

And that use of that term surrender and what it means, how you've used it in your addiction and how you need to use it in your recovery. So when we use the word surrender, you know, if you've ever stepped into any of the A rooms, A-A, N-A, S-A, O-A, any A's, we talk about surrender as part of the process. In the 12 steps, you go through this process of surrender.

And the surrendering occurs kind of in step, two, three, kind of straddle that process there because you realize you had to rely on a higher power to bring you back to sanity. And that is, in essence, surrendering, right? And a Christian principle of surrender is surrendering yourself over to God. And in step four, you begin that process of surrender. You have to be open to Step four is the step that you're doing the fearless searching moral inventory.

So if you haven't fully surrendered to the idea that you are an addict and surrendered yourself over to the process of recovery and you remain in that surrendered state with your addiction, then you're not going to get very far in recovery because what you did was you surrendered yourself over to addiction and And any of you who have experienced that, what I call the switch in your head, which is what I have, a switch in your head that can easily flip you into destructive behavior when you're

really in your addiction, you know what that's like. You know what it feels like to just flip that switch and go right into that painful downward spiral of usage, right? So you've surrendered yourself over in that process. And in that moment, you really begin to kind of lose a big chunk of yourself. You can really get lost in the process. So the idea of surrender when it comes to recovery is the same thing.

You have to give yourself totally over, which means you're going to turn your back 180 degrees from where you were in your addiction to moving into your recovery. And I'm not going to pretend like that's an easy process because it is certainly not an easy process. It's one that's kind of like almost trial and error and you try and then you fail and you try again and you fail.

And that's a whole constant relapse process, the point where you begin to kind of be confused about, you know, why am I doing this? Not the addiction part, but it's like, why am I doing this recovery thing?

You're surrendering over control of that to somebody else and to a higher power. So if I'm going to stop doing something, that means I'm going to be giving up that idea. So there's an analogy I've used for years in my practice that I came up with to kind of describe it. When you are beginning that process of recovery, it's like you're looking into this big pit. There's a big hole in front of you, and it's so deep. It's one of those that's so deep that you can't even see anything.

down in it very far right because it's it's so it seems like it's so deep so you look down and that's recovery and it's this deep dark pit that you're going to jump into and there's a rope and it's hanging it's it's suspended and and there's this voice in the pit that says come on grab the rope and and uh just go go down climb the rope down into this into this pit And it's black. And you're thinking, no, I'm not doing that. I'm scared to death. I can't see.

And then finally, all this stuff is happening around you that's very destructive. And the only way you can protect yourself from that destruction is to get in the pit. Like it's a torrential wind or tornado or something coming. So you've got to get in the pit to save yourself. Because the destruction is all around you. So you grab the rope and you start climbing down. And pretty soon, I mean, it doesn't take more than like, you know, six or seven.

I'm doing the hand over hand motion in the air here, like I'm climbing down a rope, right? So you climb down the rope and it's dark. Now you're in the darkness. Now it's totally dark and you can't see. And all you hear is this voice saying, just trust me. Come down the rope. Trust me. You can do it. And you're thinking, no, I can't.

And so you climb and you climb and maybe you start climbing back up and then you see all the destruction up there where you were before and you don't want to get into that. So you just keep, and this voice just keeps saying, trust me, trust me, climb down. You're going to be okay. Just keep going. Trust me, you can make it. You'll be able to get there. And then it's like, no, you can't and you can't and you can't and you keep trying and you keep trying.

And so you figure out that you're climbing and you keep climbing and you keep climbing. And then the rope starts getting smaller. It's, it's like getting, you know, you're, but now you're so far down and down on this. You can't stop. It's so much work to get back to the top that you're not going to make it. So then you keep climbing down and the rope is getting smaller and smaller in diameter.

And now pretty soon you're hanging just by basically a string and you get to the very end and you're hanging on by this thread and It's able to hold you, but it's a really, you know, you're just hanging on for dear life. And this voice keeps saying, trust me, trust me. And you get down to the end and you're hanging and you get to the end of the rope. Now there's no more rope. You've climbed all the way down the rope. And the voice says, let go. And man, oh man, you are not going to let go.

You are not letting go of that rope. But the voice keeps saying, just trust me. You're going to be okay. Just trust me. And you're paralyzed. And that's that end stage of recovery where it's like, I can't. The trusting in the recovery. It's like, I can't. I can't. I can't. I can't do it. I can't. I've never trusted anybody. How am I going to trust this voice? And this voice is a voice that you have never heard before. But it says, trust me. Just let go. I would not steer you wrong.

So you just keep thinking, I can't. And finally, you just get to the point where you just, you don't have any strength left. The fight has gone out of you. And you're just, you can't even hang on another second. And you let go. And you sure, the moment before you let go, you're sure you're going to plummet to your death. You just can't trust that voice. So you let go. And you drop about three inches and you hit solid ground. And that voice changes.

And all of a sudden there's a lot of light around you. And you see that that voice was actually attached to somebody. And they were there the whole time. And they said, you know, you made it. And you can't believe you're standing there. And then you feel like a fool because you were panicked. and fighting and not trusting the whole time when there really was no reason to not trust.

And then you begin the process of living in that safety because all the carnage and the wreckage that was going on where you were before is now not there anymore because you're where it's safe and it's a whole different world. From a Christian perspective, that's kind of what it's like to trust God when you don't. You're raging against Him and believing that He's not been there for you. He's not going to help you. But there He is. And you should have trusted.

It would have saved you a lot of trouble. But you learned not to trust when you were younger. So I can't really blame you for not trusting. So that's the story and the analogy I use today A lot to try to describe to people what it's like to really be okay with letting go. See, because when you're in all that wreckage going on around you, and you're not trusting anybody, people, situations, or whatever, and you're just getting hurt and banged up, man, it's really bad.

And you wish you could find another way out, and the easy way out was to just trust, right? So letting go can be very hard, can be very, very hard for people. And believing that there is something greater than you that actually wants to help you is a great thing. But if you don't let go, you are not going to find that peaceful place for you to exist in, where you can heal and learn a new life, learn a new way.

So when we let go in our Addiction what we've done is we've just let go of everything and sometimes it happens quickly and sometimes it happens Gradually over time and it kind of depends on your drug of choice a lot of times but Sometimes it's a situation or the people around you or what you think of yourself or what they taught you to think of yourself So it's easy to let go In your addiction and you just don't care.

It just really doesn't matter You don't care if you live or die breathe don't breathe you just you just want to get high and that's it and you don't care about anything else you don't care about anybody else you don't care about anything and that's a that's a that's a sad place to be man that's just this is sad so letting go we we know how to do it because we've done it in our addiction letting go in our recovery is seemingly impossible, but what's the point, right?

So if the only point is for you to be able to stop using so you can be destructive and then go back to it, it's not good. Tom Sizemore, the actor, he was in Heat and a lot of different movies. I think the last thing I saw him on was the old episodes of Hawaii Five-0. That's a dude that... He let go in a major way. I mean, he didn't really care. There was a horrible TV show that was a reality show. I think it was on VH1. It was called... I think it was Saving Tom Sizemore. Saving Sizemore.

And it just basically was a film crew wandering around with him as he's just going from place to place, getting high and being destructive.

And it was like... I don't know whatever... I don't know if you can even... view it anywhere but man oh man how in the world did you go from being a hollywood uh a-lister he really was he he was a supporting actor but he was i would put him in the a-list good actor um but uh how did you go from that to the the self-deprecating kind of experience of having a film crew follow you around while you're destroying yourself with uh every drug you can get your hands on man and then finally getting into

recovery but ultimately he blew his career up because of some inappropriate behavior that he engaged in that was brought to light and it's sad because the guy worked so hard to get into recovery and he finally got there and then he lost it all in the end anyway and I feel for Tom because of that but you know his addiction just got the best of him there's a great book uh he um he wrote uh some by some miracle i made it out of there um where he chronicles his his life and his recovery and i it's

it's a very revealing very truthful story about letting go in addiction i mean it's a great way to talk about letting go in addiction that he uses that voice to do that. I mean, one of the passages in the book, he used to, his girlfriend was Heidi Fleiss, the Hollywood madam, and he was in the movie Black Hawk Down. And there's a great passage in the book.

He said that he was seeing her fairly regularly when he went to, they filmed that movie in Morocco, and when he went to Morocco to shoot Black Hawk Down in 2001, And whenever he had eight days or more off in a row during the shoot, he would go back to Hollywood, to L.A., to see Heidi. And he said, even though I didn't see it this way at the time, I was also coming back in order to do a lot of math. Heidi was the one who had it.

I didn't know how to buy it or anything because she was so much more familiar with the drug than I was. She would do her best to not let me go overboard. She wouldn't let me stay up all night on it, and she essentially wanted us to both use it wisely and not the way she'd used it in the past. I was lying to myself, of course, but I thought I was just using a sort of aphrodisiac. I didn't realize I was simply transferring my former heroin addiction to another drug.

You know, this guy went through heroin, crystal meth, cocaine, alcohol... he just plowed through it all but he surrendered it was like he didn't even he just didn't even get it at the time but my love with my love affair with meth didn't begin in earnest until I was done with Black Hawk Down on set I mostly stayed sober by playing a lot of chess with Ewan McGregor He beat me something like 664 games in a row.

Tom was a guy who surrendered over to his addiction in a huge way, and he had kind of a tragic life growing up, of course. But the surrender to his addiction was just insular because of his lifestyle and everything and his friends. you know, Sean Penn and, and, uh, Ian McGregor and, you know, everybody who's hanging around with, they all have their own quirky narcissistic ways, but you know, surrendering over to your addiction is something that was painful for him.

And if you ever saw the, uh, uh, the Drew Care, Drew, Drew Carey, the Drew, Dr. Drew Pinsky's show, um, celebrity rehab he was on there and it was probably one of the most moving compelling things I've ever seen because it really even though it was highly criticized at the time when it was filmed as exploiting actors and it wasn't really rehab and whatever no it wasn't it was it was it was a show about detox it was the first two weeks of realizing that you you know to get to get into sober

living you have to like to the sober life and and getting into recovery you have to go through something that's transformative and There was one episode in particular where Tom Sizemore, he showed up like two days late for the show, the taping. And when he got there, it was like 10 or 11 o'clock at night. And they called Dr. Pinsky and had him come to the rehab center to bring him in because he was just a hot mess. He was high as a kite. He came in. He hadn't eaten probably in two days.

I think he was doing... a bunch of speed. And you saw him when he stepped in. He sat down and he's eating some noodles that happened to be there, some Chinese noodles, and he's talking to Drew. And you can see him just jonesing for his drug and his face changes and his eyes get wild and he just wants to get out of there and get high. And he's like, I don't want to do this. And somehow Drew, through his relationship with Tom, was able to talk him into staying.

But I wish there was a way to easily get that show, at least that one, because I'd love to play even the audio version of that exchange between the two of them because it's the most real... depiction of what it's like to be working with an addict who does not want to get into recovery and desperately wants to get high and desperately wants to get out of there that I've ever seen on television. They usually don't show it that way. And It's the surrender.

Tom was completely surrendered over to the idea of being an addict. He was not surrendering over to recovery. And it wasn't until years later, honestly, when a lot of his friends were starting to die off because of their addiction and he was starting to lose a lot of friends. And that's what happens to us. I mean, my clients, they come in and I ask my clients, every time I ask my clients, so how many people do you know that aren't here anymore?

How many people died from overdoses and addiction-related deaths? And they've all got a list of a lot. Sometimes it's two or three, sometimes it's like 10, 12, 15 people. It's shocking, but that's the world they're in. They've surrendered over to addiction. How do you surrender over to recovery? So the examples that I've given, like that analogy I gave you of the rope, right, and trusting. And for me, you know, you have to have a higher power. And for me, as a Christian, my higher power is God.

And my belief that I can be healed if I surrender over to the process of saying, you know what, you can recover from this because there's a higher power that actually wants you to recover. Right. And it's, you know, I'm pointing to my head. You know, this is abstinence. Abstinence is in your head. Abstinence is the idea that I am not going to do this right now. It's right now. And it's you saying, I'm not going to do this right now. That's abstinence. That is not sobriety.

Sobriety happens, and I'm pointing at my chest now with my finger. Sobriety happens in your chest. It happens in your heart. It doesn't happen in your head. It happens in your heart. Sobriety happens in your heart and moves up to your head because your heart changes and you can stay abstinent for a long time, but not be sober. And that's a scary thing, right? Because you haven't let go. You haven't surrendered over to the idea that there's something else that I want.

We do it in so many different ways in our lives. Think about it. If you're married, you surrendered over to the idea that you're married. you are married. I am not leaving you no matter what. That's the surrender of marriage, right? I'm surrendering over in marriage. If you're a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim, you surrender over to God. If you are a child and you need protection, you surrender over to your parents. You say, you know, protect me.

And when you become a parent, if you're a good parent, you surrender over to the idea that you are now a parent. I might, Everything I do now will be guided by the idea that my children are watching and they depend on me. So I surrender over to responsibility. There's many, many examples of that that you can parallel. And addiction is the same thing. You know, if you have surrendered over to addiction and it's destructive, it's like anything else. You're in a bad relationship.

You're in a bad job. You're in a bad location. You're in a bad, you know, something's bad. You've surrendered over to it. I want out. So I'm going to walk away. If you're in a bad marriage and your spouse is abusive, Amber Heard and Johnny Depp, we're listening to it over in Alexandria here. It's on and on about surrendering over to the idea that I'm not leaving you, but I'm surrendering over to abuse. So if you're in that bad marriage, what do you say?

Well, I can only take this abuse so long and I'm gonna try to fix it. I'm gonna try to somehow fix that marriage. Then you surrender over to the process of recovery or you don't in your marriage. And if you don't, guess what happens? You don't get out of the marriage. You surrendered over to bad marriage. So finding ways to work through the idea that somehow you're going to surrender over to recovery is simply something that happens. Your brain tells your heart something. My heart's broken.

My heart, I've broken my own heart. I want that heart to be repaired. And so I'm going to surrender over to recovery. I am scared. I'm scared. I'm being told to let go of that little last little thread on that rope. And that voice keeps saying, just go ahead and trust me, man. You can do it. Just let go. You'll be safe. Trust in me and you'll be safe. Right? Straight from scripture. So trust and I let go.

And if it's my sponsor that's telling me that or my spouse, my friends saying, come on, man, just take that step. Take that step and go into rehab. Take that step. And we want you to live. We want you to just trust. You can make it. Yes, you had trauma in your life. Yes, you had things that went wrong for you. And yes, there was this abuse and there was this torture that you were living for so long. But you know what?

You can end it by not torturing yourself now with drugs and alcohol or whatever your substance is or behavior that you have been torturing yourself with for this long. So move away from that. Trust us. We will be here for you. I will be here for you. You know, a therapist, a rehab center, people in recovery, your sponsor, your friends in the rooms, they've all been there and they've all had to surrender over to recovery, just like they surrendered over to their addiction.

And they are the ones that are telling you, let go of that, let go of that rope. You're going to land on ground. We're not going to let you fall. We're not going to let you plummet to your death. There are people that are out there that are willing and wanting to do that for you. You just have to trust. And that is the thing that as addicts, we don't trust. We just do not trust. We don't trust anybody or anything. We don't believe them. We've been let down over and over again.

But at some point, you're going to have to trust somebody if you want to get sober and clean and live and that's the thing is because if you don't I can guarantee you 100% of people who do not get into recovery will die an addiction related death 100% it will take you out I guarantee it no one who's an addict lives for a long time there's no such thing as an old addict if they started when they were younger, if you just started doing, you know, engaging in your addiction and you're 90 years old,

yeah, you're probably going to outlive your recovery, of course. But I'm talking about the common people, the normal people. You are not going to survive longer than your addiction. You're going to die before your addiction ends. And that's a sad thing. Because there are a lot of people out there that care about you and want you to be who you used to be and be safe and sane and stable and sober. So surrendering over is scary. It's a scary proposition. Find somebody that can guide you to that.

A good sponsor can do that. A good couple of people in recovery that have already been doing it can do that. A good therapist can do that. But you must surrender over. And I bear witness to it in my office every week. There's somebody that comes in and I see them transform from guarded, defensive, arrogant, crazy behavior to honesty. And that's the first part is be honest. So if you're going to let go of that rope, honesty in, I am an addict. I have addiction. And I need help.

I want to get high, but I need help. I don't want to get clean and sober, but I need to let go. Go into the process where you get to that point in step three is outlined in step three of the 12 step process of turning yourself over to God as you understand him to bring you back to sanity. I hope these words were helpful to you and guided you towards some idea of recovery and what it can be and how effective recovery can transform your life. But without help, you're not going to do it.

So if you really want to get clean and sober, sane, stable, and sober, then reach out for help. Look for somebody who is a professional to guide you through it. If you need some help, I can help you. Just reach out to me, Dr. Jacques DeBruker. You can reach me through my website, WellspringMindBody.com for some real work on recovery. So if you are looking for help, go get it. Thanks for listening to this episode of Doc Jacques, your addiction lifeguard. Catch you next time.