Lessons a drug addict can teach you | Lauren Windle | TEDxSurreyUniversity

foreigner of cocaine at the age of 22. He had always been a big drinker and drank excessively up to the point of Oblivion, but for me that first line at 22 changed everything at that moment I was at a crossroads that I had. I just finished college and a long time boyfriend had broken up with me and I had to decide who I was going to be without the safety net of education and his relationship and I chose very poorly, I decided it was going to be a party. Girl, I got a job in hospitality where

drug

and alcohol use was common in Rife and when someone offered me that first line, I took it because I wanted to fit in but also because I couldn't maintain that kind of lifestyle with just drinking.

There is something really clever. The Irish biblical scholar, a guy called Alec Mocha, and I'm going to paraphrase something he said, he basically said that making the wrong decision starts when making the right decision would have been easy, but we didn't think it was important and that sums up my work. By the time I realized how important it was to make the right decisions, my ability to do so on my own volition was gone. I was lost so I kept going for a couple of years and now I drink every day I drink.

drug

s not only on the weekends but also during the week and the people who introduced me to cocaine tell me that you need to calm down, one of my colleagues actually told me that every day he saw me I looked more and more like a cocaine

addict

. crack.

So effectively, after a particularly harrowing incident in which I woke up with a black eye and only patchy memories of what I had done the night before, with the help of my friends and family, I found a support group for drug

addict

s. cocaine and April 22. 2014 I got clean and sober, so that's almost four years. Oh, thank you, yes. I'm very happy with that. I went to that group because I thought it would be fun. I thought it would be entertaining. I thought it would be a really good story. to tell it in the pub, but actually what I found was a group of people who knew how I felt even before I said anything out loud, they listened to me, they didn't judge me.

They accepted me completely broken and I found connection. I found the connection. which Joanne Harry talks about and her famous Ted talk on addiction when she said that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, it is connection, but that connection did not keep me sober, what kept me sober was the 12 steps of recovery and that's a simple It was originally written by Dr. Bob Smith and Bill Wilson, the guys who established Alcoholics Anonymous in America in the 1930s, and it basically gives tools for living to people who didn't quite understand how to live. that they couldn't. managing strong emotions for people who couldn't handle difficult situations and instead turned to things like drugs and alcohol or any other type of addictive behavior.

I'm going to explain to you what those 12 steps are and how I worked them and what it did for me, so in the first step we admitted that we were powerless over our addiction, that our beliefs had become unmanageable even in my skewed perception of life as a drug addict. . I could see that my life was unmanageable at the height of my drinking, I enjoy drinking, I have eye floaters. in front of my eyes and numbness in my fingers and toes, nosebleeds when I was 23 and extreme memory loss, I didn't wash properly, I didn't open my mail, I also developed a really unattractive facial tic that would skyrocket at most .

Inconvenient moments in general I was a complete disaster, the occasional day when I managed to do something for myself, maybe I would take a shower and I would like to moisturize my skin and at that moment I felt like I had everything together just for something as simple as that made me feel that Everything was going to be okay. I probably moisturized twice a year, so in steps two and three we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity and we made the decision to change our will and our lives to the care of God as we understood him, so this was so liberating for me.

I always felt like I was some kind of supreme ruler, that my decisions dictated everything, everything in my life, all the lives of the people around me, and realizing that I'm actually not so great that I don't have that kind of power, We are so liberating that it meant I could make bad decisions and I gave myself the grace to learn from them. I'm a Christian, so I found that greater power is in the church, but for other people it's as simple as recognizing that a group of people gathered together for a common purpose are more powerful than a single person, so steps four and five made a thorough and courageous moral inventory of ourselves admitted to God for ourselves and another human being the exact nature of our mistakes this is hard work some people don't even make it to the end of the 12 Steps because they see this as too big an obstacle, so I did it by writing four lists.

I wrote a list of everything I was afraid of every time I had hurt another person in my life, every sexual encounter I had had, and every resentment I carried and when I saw those things on paper I couldn't believe how angry I was. I couldn't believe I was drowning under the weight of anger over situations everyone else had forgotten about years ago. A very smart guy, Lewis Lewis B. Smeads. I think his name is said. When you forgive, you free a prisoner. I realized that that prisoner was yourself and that's how I felt too sharing these things out loud telling someone those embarrassing things that you have thought or done and that you never thought you could tell someone else that you use as tools for health. someone else makes you realize that it's not that bad, that you're not that bad and that was a big change for me.

Anyone in recovery will tell you that there is magic in sharing honestly at that first recovery meeting I attended. On April 22, 2014, I later went to lunch with the women and, without being asked, someone turned to me and said: do you know that I moisturize myself every day now? To pretty much everyone that wouldn't mean anything, but for me that was all the reference point I used. to find out if my life was going well and I did it two days a year and she did it every day. I saw something in her that I was so desperate to fight for, it was amazing, it inspired me to keep going with this journey, so by Step six and seven we were completely ready for God to remove all of these character defects.

We humbly asked him to eliminate our flaws, so when I wrote all this down it became clear that there were issues where I had gone wrong. I was selfish. I put drinking, drugs and sleepy living above all my friends and family. I missed my best friend's father's funeral because I was too busy getting drunk and high. When I dug even deeper, it became clear that there was a common denominator underneath all of these characters. defects and that was fear. I was making all my decisions based on the fear of being unpopular, of not being liked, of being rejected, fear of everything and actually when I realized that, I was able to control it and I'm not saying that I'm perfect, I don't have This is under control, but I can see myself doing it now.

I can say like Lauren, you're exaggerating, why don't you tell that story as it was? I can say, okay, you're afraid that if you act out Feel Good Here, they won't like you, you know? Then I can stop and give people a chance to see who I really am, so steps eight and nine made a list of all the people we had wronged and were willing to make amends. to them, everyone made direct amends to those people whenever possible, except when doing so, when doing so would hurt them or others, yeah, if you thought writing those lists was hard, try going back to someone you haven't seen in 15 years from school and tell them, they regret something they said, it's not a fun game, guys, but it's such a spectacular process.

First on my list were people like that friend whose dad's funeral I missed, but also my friends and family, there's something wrong with you. like addiction without hurting the people who love you the most when I was actively in addiction, sometimes I would stay with my sister and she would come up to my room to invite me to breakfast and often I wouldn't be there because I would still be drinking, taking drugs, partying with strangers, whatever, so I was a year sober when I moved in with her and for the first few days she came over at 5am and opened the door only to check I was still in bed because she was so scared that I would have relapsed and gone on a bender is that kind of fear and anxiety and pain that we have to make amends um so that's what I did some people accepted my apology and were so overwhelmingly kind and I was just blown away by their responses , it was spectacular, other people didn't respond at all and some people just weren't ready to hear from me and that's okay, it's not about the reactions you get from other people, it's about the fact that I was cleaning my side of the street That I had the humility to make those amends meant I was becoming the kind of person I wanted to be, so steps 10 and 11.

I continued to take a personal inventory and when we were wrong we quickly admitted it, sought it out through prayer. and meditation to approve improving our conscious contact with God as we understood him by praying only for the knowledge of his will for us and for the power to carry it out, so now I review every day. I'll look at what I did that week. make amends quickly when I've been wrong which is much easier than years later and I also take time for myself I pray, I meditate, I reflect, I've learned to do things to love myself, I now moisturize myself every day and I am so pleased to have the opportunity to perform step 12, the last of the steps after having had a spiritual awakening.

It was as a result of these steps that we attempted to bring this message to alcoholics or addicts and practice these principles in all our affairs for spiritual awakening. They're talking about anyone who's worked through these 12 steps will tell you there's something superhuman about it, you just can't, you can't explain the way it changes people's lives, it's like nothing I've ever seen and with that in mind and having experienced it and having had that incredible opportunity to experience it for myself. A year and a half ago I established a recovery course for people struggling with all types of addictions.

It is based in west London. It is a 16 week program. I didn't write them down in these 12 steps, I just provided that they're actually run by an amazing charity called Recovery 2. And I see people walking through the door coming from the same place of despair that I remember so clearly, seeing them really desperate, really struggling. and then watching them transform into some of the most inspiring people I know, who then walk other people through that journey, is the proudest thing I've ever done in my life, it's both the hardest but also the most rewarding of my life, I have no doubt that I have done this program after following these steps.

I am a better person than I possibly would have been if I had never had to struggle with addiction. But you don't need to hit rock bottom or get a black eye or do anything crazy. To begin incorporating these types of principles into your life, you can admit that you are not in complete control, that you are not the higher power, you can take stock of where life has taken you and talk to someone about it, honestly, you can identify your character. defects and you can work on them you can apologize when you've made a mistake you can take time to pray and meditate and you can go out and help other people and you will be happier and more satisfied people if you do that and I would I encourage you to do it and one final point and definitely the most important thing I'm going to say throughout this whole talk if you identify with what I just described about my journey, if you think you may be struggling with any type of addiction, whether it's alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, porn, compulsive skin picking, food shopping, I said food loves codependency, anything then you have to do something about it, it's okay if you haven't been able to figure this out on your own, I couldn't either. you know, and no one I know in recovery could do it, we're not made that way, we can't deal with this stuff, it's too big to do it on our own, but there are people all over the country, there are charities.

There are anonymous groups there are support groups there are Church groups that want to help you and all you have to do is help yourself Google reach out to them and connect with them and they will support you on that journey these things may or may not They will kill you but they will prevent you from living and your life is too important. You are too valuable to accept anything other than total freedom. Thank you.