Are you Happy, Peaceful and Joyful?

Most people like to unwind with a glass of wine or a couple of beers at the end of the day or on the weekend. We find ourselves stressed and a little exhausted and perhaps slightly beaten down after a hard weeks work and we unwind, destress and find a sense of comfort in a glass or two of wine or whatever our drink of choice is.

Sometimes we overdo it when we celebrate (or mourn) and we find that extra bit of happiness and joy and for some peace when we get tipsy or drunk. We often find that we have more fun during these occasions when we consume a little more alcohol than normal.

For others our sense of peace and happiness and even joy may come in good food. Although this is less intense for most of us we do find comfort in food and we do often associate emotional well-being with good food. Maybe that chocolate or cake is your go to place when you feel like you need to “treat” yourself.

Most of society will carry on their normal lives with a. relative sense of happiness, peace and joy. They don’t need to treat themselves or alter their natural state every day to feel ok. For people with addiction however our natural state is one of total unhappiness, fear and being lost. Our lives sober feel so uncomfortable that in order to survive we find comfort in substances.

Somewhere along our development from childhood we have come to experience discontentment and a need for a feeling of absolute contentment. We spent may years trying to blame everyone for why we felt so out, so unloved, so lost, so hard done by. We spent years expecting everyone to supply us our every need in order to help us maintain a sense of contentment. Eventually we developed deep resentment toward people because we believed they were the source of our unhappiness or at the very least not trying hard enough to make us happy.

We eventually found drugs and alcohol which seemed to provide the best solution to our existence and then we developed deep hatred and anger toward anyone who tried to take the drugs and alcohol away believing they were trying to stop us from being happy and content.

Before we knew it we had decided subtly that we were forever go to be unhappy and that people would never be able to provide enough for us to feel content. We believed we were doomed to a life of misery. The consequences of addiction seemed like a small price to pay when compared to this live of unhappiness.

Every time we entered into recovery we believed recovery would give us a sense of happiness and contentment. We expected everything to magically fix us. When we left treatment after 21 days or 6 months or even 12 months we were disappointed again as people, society and even our recovery groups were not giving us what we wanted or believed we needed so we relapse.

Recovery is not about finding external things to make us happy or keep us busy. It is not about replacing one bad addiction with a so called good one. It is not about being responsible or living in misery to avoid unwanted consequences. We have to change our perception and our expectations.

Recovery is about realising that we have chosen unhappiness as our natural state because it has become one of our greatest tools of manipulation. it has kept us in a constant state of emergency which has resulted in two things: 1. it keeps people around to provide for our needs. 2. it justifies our continued use of substances.

When we stop thinking, acting and making choices that subconsciously keep us unhappy we will start to recover. When we realise that we can find peace, joy and happiness in any situation we stop running and looking else where for these things. A job, relationship, more money, better living conditions act will never bring you happiness, peace or joy - we may spend our entire lives chasing these things always looking for the greener grass on the otherwise but we will never find these things this way.

Deep down people with addiction are good, kind, caring people with unlimited potential. They have just insulated themselves with the thick levels of denial, hurt and pain and feel like they can never truly be who they want to be. Accepting and even celebrating who you really are and becoming who you really want to be is the only way into a sustainable recovery and a constant natural state of happiness, peace and joy.