Multiconstruct

http://www.cyberrecovery.net/NA/StepTwo.html 

Cyber Recovery posts the steps of Narcotics Anonymous electronically. I have been asked by a deaf individual to translate the steps into concrete, simple English with all hearing references removed. I did this orally and it was immensely helpful and personally rewarding for myself to understand the material and to grow in my health literacy skills. Here is the first half of Step 2, I hope to finish by Sunday.

Step 2

Not seeing our life is good is like still doing drugs. We can focus to much on things that are wrong. We can focus to much on a thing that is good. We can look at the good things in our life to much and have an accident. Drug addicts look at the world in three ways. We can think things are to good and not pay attention. We can think the world is sad and unhappy and feel sad and unhappy. We can also look at the world with clear eyes and see thinking like a drug addict makes us unhappy. When we see clearly we can find a balance. We can see good and bad and respond like we should. Seeing things as they are is a gift. We can move forward without being afraid of a disaster. Life is not happy all the time or sad all the time.

Doing the same thing and thinking it will be different is what drug addicts do. We have to think about our old way of doing things to have a different life. If we don’t its still like when drugs controlled our life. If we trust enough to act differently we can see change can happen. We do something different and different things happen. We are moving forward. Knowing what real life is makes us sane.

Being an addict makes us obsess over stuff. “Coming to believe” lets us see what is real. Thinking can only take us part way to God. What we say to ourselves has to match what is real. When they are different we suffer. We have to work on this every day. We believe what we have done.

Faith is trusting without having done it. Belief can be what we have done or faith and what we have done. In the old days people submitted to a king. When we ask “is it okay?” to someone we are  submitting to them. We all have people and things we submit to. We submit to things we believe in. In recovery we look at what we believe in.

This choice is very clear in recovery. Early in recovery we can decide not to submit to things that make us feel bad. We learn to decide what it is to be sane. Choosing what to believe takes practice. Some addicts didn’t know they could choose what to submit to. Some addicts never thought to try and resist.  Submitting appeared like we had to.

Believing in something is giving up to that idea. Our seeing gets bigger when we look at things like other people do and feel. We talk to others about what we each feel and do. We can talk to others and read books to know how to stay clean. “Coming to believe” means we can stop submitting to bad people and bad things. We can ask ourselves, “Can I do better?” Looking at ourselves every day helps us see reality. We start to forget to worry about tomorrow and yesterday. The parts of yourself you don’t like are often crazy. We would not choose to do those things today. We have a bad life when we are not grateful.

Being sane in recovery must meet our needs each day. It is natural to feel confused as you change. When we are confused or upset it means we are changing. People in meetings and God can help us even if we haven’t worked all the steps or gotten very far in recovery. In recovery people are here for us and we are here for others. This is not true when we act like an addict to control other people. We can’t expect people to treat us better because we stopped doing drugs. We can treat people better who stop doing drugs if we want to. It is important to do it because we want to help or be nice and not because we expect something. What we do willingly is different then what we have to do. Being part of a group means we respect each other.