I began my journey with Liberty on December 16th, 2021. During an 11 day inpatient stay at Provo Behavioral, the second of my inpatient visits to the “home for the bewildered”, a fellow patient and new friend suggested I take a little broader look at my “mental health” by addressing the addiction that was bound up in what was then, a 20+ year battle with addiction. After dinner on that very first day, staff said, “load up in the van! We’re going to the Alano club!!!” My response was, “what the @#% is the Alano club.” Thus started my journey with the twelve steps. I was given the gift of attending my first AA meeting and making contact with the fellowship that continues to change my life 24 hours at a time.

What brought me to Liberty was a desire to work on what was never really a “drinking problem”, but rather a “thinking problem”… a spiritual malady that only had and has a spiritual solution. My time in the house included a voracious first run at the Big Book, which after reading it in 2 weeks, didn’t necessarily change my life, but had started to change my mind and my heart.

IOP/PHP are the key

Challenges & Growth:
My first attempt at IOP/PHP lasted 22 days. I’m grateful to say that what was planted deeply in the residential program was not fully uprooted when I chose to walk away from Liberty in February of 2022. The nearly 2-year relapse/research project included another stay at Huntsman Mental Health Institute, a dive into the most crippling depression of my life, a blood clot that nearly took my life… and ultimately being brought to my knees in every respect until the day, early in January 2024, when an Alumni Meeting text hit my phone.

Attending that Alumni meeting woke me up to the reality that there is no “graduation” in recovery. Every summit is a commencement, a beginning, a return to the work that is always waiting. I enrolled in IOP. I showed up. I struggled. I experienced amazing growth and some of the most gut wrenching defeats of my life during those 3+ months in outpatient. I struggled and fought… and surrendered and thrived… and struggled and fought… and began again. My counselors and peers in IOP didn’t give up on me, and by some miracle, I didn’t give up on myself. What I discovered was that the proximity and connection with “a power greater than me” is the only way to move from abstinence into the healing of recovery. Sobriety simply is not enough.

In the last 19 months, I have both gained and lost so much. Struggling to find a job, keep a job, maintain focus, and stay awake to the reality that drugs and alcohol were never the problem… the problem was not even the person looking back at me in the mirror, but the way that I saw him, and by extension, those around him. It was and is the broken thinking, deep resentments, judgements and prejudices that I didn’t even know I had held so tightly to for so many years. In short, “contempt prior to investigation” and my lifelong struggle with an inner bully that would not let up. The biggest challenge has been letting go… in every way… in letting God take the lead, and to renew that decision to actual trust God… to trust the promises of the AA solution… and to gratefully lean in to the gift that it is to fall down, get up, fall down, get up, fall down… and get up. To improve and progress and grow and achieve, and then both literally and figuratively, to run into the walls that are a part of the human experience. I can’t point to one specific experience that was the hardest because as surrender and commitment are sustained, the degree of difficulty goes up, and as long as I am willing to accept suggestions and let God show up, there is a way through any of the “hardest” challenges. I haven’t overcome, but I am getting through it all with focus on a few key pillars in recovery as I experience it: Staying honest; Trusting that there is a God and that I’m not Him; guidance and suggestions from a wise sponsor, and daily connection with a Fellowship of recovering addicts and alcoholics; taking things one breath at a time; slowing down; listening; letting go; and in every day, every dark night, looking for the grace and gifts and miracles that are sometimes so abundant that I fail to recognize them at first glance.

Successes & Goals:
Returning to work in hospice and palliative care; Passing the American Academy of Nurse Practitioner board examination in July of 2024; Having regular and meaningful adventures with my 3 children; Renewing and mending the relationships that I have with my parents and my siblings; Returning to active membership in the Early Beginnings group at the Alano Club; Singing with Westminster College’s Alumni and Community Chorale; Accepting and working in the field of recovery with Liberty. Letting go, again and again, of what I want (or think I want) to see that God can make so much more of my life, the successes and the failures, if I am willing to let Him take the lead… and to gratefully let a conscious contact with God transform my weaknesses and liabilities into healing and recovery for other people.

My goal is to keep waking up to the gift of sobriety 24 hours at a time and ultimately give that gift away as freely as it was given to me.

Staying sober and showing up; Learning the principle and practice of “progress, not perfection”; Staying true to what I was born to be, not just do, and not letting the defeats along the way keep me from the little miracles that show up when I am in the right heart and mind to see and accept them.

Advice for Others: Do everything in your power to cultivate and maintain conscious contact with your Higher Power as you see/hear/feel/understand that Higher Power to be. The most dangerous 6 inches in the universe is between your ears. Daily meditation and prayer are non-negotiable. Listen, really listen. Slow down. Show up, especially when it’s hardest or seems impossible. Re-program any “what-if”/”I can’t” language, both verbally and internally. Always, always give more than you expect to receive. Let go of expectations. Be gentle… with yourself and especially with others. Be as willing to unlearn as you are to actively learn new things.

Do step 1. Do it perfectly. Do it first thing every day. Stay honest. Don’t look beyond the 24 hours you are in… breathe, develop a healthy sense of humor, breathe, drink plenty of water, breathe, listen, breathe… Allow this program to move from your brain into your heart. You’re not here to move past or overcome or accomplish or gain or win… We’re here to remember who we really are, recognize our genuine relationship with every living thing, and give back everything as it was freely given to us.

Membership in the Early Beginnings Group, Alano Club SLC; Liberty Alumni Program; daily work with other alcoholics and addicts, 1 step at a time.