 My name is Carolyn Delaney, I'm the founder and CEO here at Journey Enterprises for a media company on a mission to make recovery from addiction visible because it's important. It saves lives. There are over 26 million of us in recovery and we want those who are still sick and suffering to know that there is a path for them. There's millions of us here on the other side of active addiction and that it's probable that people can and do recover. Our videos share personal intimate stories of what people's journeys were like, going from what it was like to what happened to what it's like now in an effort to let people know that we're here, we care, and that there's a way out. Visible recovery saves lives and we want the world to know that. So if you have a story about recovery and would like to share it, please contact me, Carolyn at recovery-journey.com. I hope you enjoy our video, have a great day. What it was like for me is I started, I first discovered alcohol when I was about 12 or 13. I was invited to this party that my older sisters were throwing and my parents were going to be there. A bunch of friends, it was a big old party in the summer and it was the summer between 6th and 7th grade. And my mom said, we're going to be there, you're going to be safe, drink what you want, just have a good time. And I couldn't wait to do it again. I couldn't wait to do it again. I wanted that feeling again. And the way, again years later now that I think about that is when you bounce a ping-pong table, a ping-pong ball on a ping-pong table and the first time you bounce it, you know, it goes up nice and high and then it comes down and the next time it doesn't go up quite so high and it comes down and then the third time still shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter. And that's how I think about my drinking. So it started at that young, young age and I would drink and drink and drink over the course of decades, trying to get back to that high point of how I felt that night at that party and never achieving it and thinking, well, the next time, you know, this is the solution worked that one time, it's going to work again. So I have a couple of examples in my life, in my adult life where I thought, maybe I should put alcohol down and I could. And it was no problem. Like I didn't miss it. I didn't have any cravings. Like, okay, well, clearly I don't have a problem with alcohol because I'm able to put it down when I want to. And then inevitably I would go back to drinking again. And then circumstances would happen and I would find myself thinking, maybe I'm drinking a little too much again. Maybe I should stop again. You know, I kept trying to bring to bear my own best thinking and my own power to address this thing. And then that it's almost a feeling of horror when you realize that your very best thinking and your very best capabilities are no match. I found my way to a fellowship where I learned that recovery happens and went into that full of fear. Full of fear. I was on my own and this was now the next day. So this was Sunday. Thinking I walked in the room and thought all of these thoughts about these people are not like me. But that one is too fat. That one's too thin. That one's too tall. That one's too short. That one's too old. That one's too young. Like my brain was giving me all these reasons to disassociate myself with the other people in the room. And it was rapid fire. It was just rapid fire. And yet underneath it all, I knew I needed to be there. I knew that I had no solution. And then these people opened their mouths and they started talking. And I swear to you, people said things out of their mouths that were deep dark secrets in my head that I was never going to say out loud to anyone in that very first meeting. And my jaw hit the floor. Like, how do you have the courage to admit these things out loud when they are my deep, dark, dirty little secrets? And on the one hand, I felt exposed. And on the other hand, I felt like I had finally found my family truly. And for my blood relatives who may watch this, this is no disrespect to you. But my blood relatives do not identify with being an alcoholic. And they don't understand. They can't understand because they're not alcoholics. What it's like to have the mind of an alcoholic and to live every waking moment with alcoholic thinking. But that's my reality. And that's what I did. And it was from there that I found the way to fully engage in the fellowship and in a program of recovery. And in fully engaging, I was led to a solution that works for me. And that solution is finding a power greater than myself that can restore me from insanity to sanity. A power greater than myself that can stand between me and that first drink. And I also identify as a food addict in recovery. And so that higher power stands between me and that first compulsive bite of my alcoholic foods. And the whole remainder of time that I've been in recovery is all about ways to perfect that relationship and to perfect that dependency upon that power. Because I know dependency on my own power in this regard does not work. Now I can depend on my own power and myself will in all kinds of other ways. For anyone who is gonna watch this and hear this who is in your place when you didn't know what you were doing, when you were in your hopelessness and you're like, where do I turn next? What piece of advice would you give? Like what last bit of hope would you give to that new person or that person who has continued to relapse but who really wants to get clean and get sober? Like what is that last piece of hope that you would leave someone with? What a beautiful question. Good question. Because there is so much hope to be had. I would say probably one of the most difficult things to do because like my addicted brain wants to tell me lies and it tells me lies in rapid fire. And it tells me things like, I don't need anyone. It tells me things like, I've got this. It tells me that those people don't know what they're talking about or I don't fit in with them or any number of different lies. And the hope that I would leave for somebody who might watch this video is as best you can, don't listen to those lies. Go put yourself, what I did was put myself in a position where I could hear the message of hope and then talk to the people who spoke to my heart. That's the hope that I would pass on is avail yourself of people who are in recovery and listen and when you feel that twinge in your heart act on it, it's the hardest thing in the world to do. Avail yourself of the people who have hope and let them know that you need it and we will give it to you freely and gladly and with a happy heart. I was bullied really severely as a child and that kind of set me off into a downward spiral where I wasn't able to handle or process my emotions in a healthy way and I was living in a constant state of fear. You know, I was always waiting for the next bullying incident to happen. I began making some decisions that led me further and further away from my holistic or authentic self and into drug use, you know and it was like drugs was like, oh my God, great something that can cover up the pain, you know but it escalated and even when I got completely addicted to heroin and cocaine and crystal meth and pills and everything that goes with being that level of an addict, it was never enough. No matter how I would feel and what it would do it was never, ever enough. And eventually it got to a point where, you know I was, I had overdosed many times. I lost so my closest nearest and dearest friends and knew that if I didn't wake up and cut this out then my time was gonna probably come quicker than I thought and I remember making a decision that with such firm intensity that I'm going to change now I don't care what I have to face. I'm gonna face any of it. I remember making that decision and I feel it's instrumental for people who are trying to turn their lives around and wanna get on an upward trend. You have to make a decision, such firm amplitude with such firm decision making power that you are going to change your life no matter what because that decision keeps coming back into the periphery of your awareness and it keeps checking you, you could say. I just got it in the sense that as long as I kept directing what little bit of intelligence I had to this profound innate intelligence of my body which you know, I look and I'm like my body's way more intelligent than I am, you know. But I realized that by making a habit out of directing my attention to my inner world, meaning feeling my heartbeat, feeling how my body has all these beautiful, mind blowing, awe inspiring, physiological and autonomic reactions and responses taking place. When I focused on that, I felt better. Okay, especially as I started to really develop these possibilities within me, I got to a point where I was generating so many feel good chemicals inside of me that no drug or addiction to past behaviors, emotions, attitudes could even come close to replicating this feeling. The reality behind all this is anybody can do this. Nobody is exempt from not being able to do it. We can become aware of by letting go of who we think we are, by getting into this state where our body is producing feel good chemicals. When you know how to do it and you apply it with consistency, then the results start to become self-evident. And when the results come and you start to feel better than you ever have and you start seeing the circumstances of your life reflect this internal state, then you are inspired to keep going and to keep cultivating and keep developing the possibilities that being in this state represent to you. What challenges did you face and what helped you? My life ever since I got clean, my life just still wasn't quite right. I was making a lot of, I never healed the root cause of my addiction. It's like I used all that energy to get out of the addiction. But then when I was like, okay, I made it, I survived. I never addressed the root cause of it. But I conjured up incredible willpower and that I stuck with it and that I was able to get through something that was really, really difficult at the time. But the reasons why I did it were still there and it wasn't actually until I got arrested and went to prison for selling marijuana and I spent three years in there. And it wasn't until I was in there that I truly hit my rock bottom. I hadn't been using, but I was still addicted, you could say, everything gets brought out to the utmost extreme degree when you're in a place like that. And I had no choice, essentially, but to live as a victim or to find a way out of it. I made that decision that I was going to love life and love my existence way more than I was my addiction. And so I employed the same kind of mechanism in that I was like, well, I'm going to love and embrace this place, this experience that I'm having, even though I don't like it. I began considering like, well, what would I have to change about myself to be able to do that? Because from all outward appearances, there's every reason to feel like a victim here. Finally, I let go. And when I let go, I felt this great peace come over me. The challenges was overcoming myself. I had like, that was the number one challenge that really kept me in a state of perpetual suffering that when I realized that I didn't have to do that anymore and that I could live in accordance with this greater acceptance of reality, they began to really change quick. So what do you want people to know about recovery? But also like, what does recovery mean to you? I don't look at recovery as an isolated event. I look at it as one thing amongst many things that are always happening, that if we create a barrier of resistance to it, then it just gets worse. If we can find it within ourselves to not resist it and instead embrace it, it gets better. That really is something that is part of a much greater system that we aren't able to comprehend with our normal senses, but that when we trust it and embrace it as something that's trying to teach us something greater than we had the capability of recognizing when we were stuck in our suffering, then it allows the process of recovery to take on a much greater meaning and almost become something that aside from all its severity and seriousness, that is something that can truly be a teacher. It wasn't easy, but it was simple. To me, recovery is it's one step in the greater recognition of this process because I know as an addict, I wasn't doing it to just cover up my pain. I was seeking something greater. I was seeking a way to transcend my own limitations, my own feelings of stagnation, my own limited awareness. I just didn't know how to do it in any other way at that point. And so drugs just became the necessary option because there was nothing else. You know, there's this language about pathways to recovery. What's your pathway? The path is really one of freedom. It's really simply about choosing to love your... It's a reprioritization of values. It's one, you have to be honest with yourself, and it's like I said, number one is making that decision that you're gonna change no matter what. That's the first thing because it keeps coming back to that. Then from there, it's choosing to feel these feelings inside of you, this elevated state of being that you have the ability to generate from within you. So essentially it is just a path of unification. It's a path of becoming whole within oneself. It's choosing to make the inner world of perception of self where the emphasis of value is placed. It's not about like ignoring the external world. It's about creating a balance between the internal world and the external world. We give most of our attention to extraneous or outer circumstances, and we give so little attention to internal states of being. So when we reshift those scales and start placing a lot more emphasis and attention upon these internal states of being, then the outer world around us takes on a whole new dimension, bringing yourself into a habitual state of presence that we start to shed all of the past, all of the old beliefs, behaviors, actions that are hardwired into our perception of self and reality. But it's in becoming present that we shed all those things and let them go and liberate them because they're just old energy. When you're in that and you know it is and you feel like it, you keep creating potential, you keep creating circumstances and situations that further reinforce you being in that state of presence and that you then learn how to sustain as a result of that. You know, as a police chief, I've been at many scenes. You see the dark side of things. People have passed that I've had to go to and I've had to make notifications. And then to, I know, you know, my daughter and her boyfriend are struggling, was scared to death. You know, many sleepless nights I had. Journey Magazine made a difference to me because those stories there are people that are in recovery, doing great things. It showed me that there is hope in recovery. This Amplify Hope, the bracelet here, I have worn that every single day since I've had it. Keep doing what you're doing. You folks that are sharing your stories and talking about all the good work that you're doing gives that hope to recovery. People are living because of what you're doing. Keep the faith. We have a lot to work to do, but we are all coming together. We will work together. We are getting our communities together. We'll get our state together. And with the help of Rotary, we'll get our world together to work on substance use disorder and safe supplies.