How To Handle Roadblocks & Challenges or Even After a Relapse On Your Road To Recovery…

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When we begin our recovery path, there might be times we feel like we can’t move past those speed bumps or the hurdles during this journey. I would search for the answers to why I’d feel stuck and think, how do I move forward?

Why do I get a stretch of abstinence and then relapse?

What if I’m not strong enough not to cave in to cravings, urges, and triggers?

What can I do not to RELAPSE?

These are excellent questions and concerns we all have to face while maintaining our recovery journey. Some can be quick fixes, or some may mean you have more work to do within your recovery path. See, recovery is not only a life long process, and it does come to us in phases. Our redemption from gambling addiction is ever-evolving as we grow and gain the wisdom to know we can not control our gambling.

So we explore all have the options to choose how we begin to live our lives in a healthy way and away from gambling addiction or any addiction really.

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First, I would remind everyone I have an excellent Relapse Prevention Guide here everyone can copy and paste this little workbook Relapse Prevention Guide…

Next is doing the “work” that is asked of you while you begin to learn the tools and the skills that will save your life. Next is being diligent in using all the tools you learn. It’s Not complicated. But, still, many can struggle as they begin the journey. We have choices to pick from to start our path of recovery. It may be a 12-Step Program, Faith-Based Program, or something altogether different. You may want an in-patient treatment center program or an outpatient treatment program that offers therapy or counseling, whatever you feel is right and comfortable for you even though moving away from addiction is uncomfortable.

I advocate much throughout social media. I see many disagreements going on within groups and others wanting to force how they chose how to recover and what works for them onto others who may just be looking for help or support within recovery. I’ve read on Facebook the never-ending battles play out of those who only chose a 12-Step Program all by itself, and it got them clean, sober, or gamble free.

I would be suspect of this and not fair of those to force their choices on others. What others disagree on is,  what long-term recovery is, and how many years you need to have to use this term. Loads of different disagreements and that is not what maintaining recovery and doing our work is all about. And for those in early recovery, seeing others get “Called Out” can also be a source of relapse to see such discord.

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My feelings are and just my OWN OPINIONS. Look, as long as you have the desire to stop gambling, knowing it is making your life unmanageable? It should be your choice alone or with your family of what works and is comfortable for you. Now, you have now chosen your treatment path. You’ll begin to realize and come to terms with the recovery work you’ll need to do in the first few years of this journey.

You’ll start to learn and gain the skills and tools required to interrupt the “cycle” of addiction, which is an essential part of this process. Becoming educated and informed about this disease while digging deeper into acknowledging the roots and underlying issues that had you turn to addicted gambling for a few hours of solace, or trying to not feel anything for a few hours.

As I started my recovery work and therapy, it became clear to me it was the pain from my childhood trauma and sexual abuse as some of those roots and why I was gambling and looking for relief from the old haunting pain and hurtful memories. Let me end with a little Facebook experiment I did a few weeks ago with a newer recovery blog post I wrote and shared on my FB recovery page.

I then did a FB Boosted Post advertising to direct FB users to my recovery blog to read this new post. I targeted the ad to the states of Oregon, California, Florida, and here in Arizona.

Here is how it performed and told me there are many problem gamblers out there still needing help and HOPE.

The post was seen and reached:
3,564  FB users
Engagement and Clicks: 231  FB Users
42.7% were Women of Age 45+
57.3% were Men of Age 55+

I was pretty shocked at these results, and the ad ran for only three days. It sure tells me I got a lot more advocacy work to do and to share hope and resources with those who have a gambling problem … ~Catherine

Some Solid Advice Instead of Gambling Your Money Away …

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A Special Guest Recovery Writer and Soon To Be New Author. Meet My Amazing Friend Deb Morgan …

“We all have a recovery story to tell ~ at least one within us to share”

When we come to a point in recovery that we are ready to advocate and begin to share it, it can be a powerful tool to help those just beginning their recovery journey. That is why and what my dear friend Deb Morgan is about to do. And, no, she’s the Deb Morgan from DEXTER …LOL.

She is a part of an amazing project and book that will be released early spring with some other amazing authors. She lives in Oregon where I lived for many years and I am so jealous as Deb knows Oregon is where my heart will always be! I surely won’t spoil any in-depth info of her book she’ll be in and finishing touches are still being done.

I thought I’d give you a preview in sharing her most recent blog post to give my friends here who visit a little of what’s to come from by Deb.  She did, however, share some early reading feedback that the book just might be the next “Chicken Soup For The Soul” a self-help book series.

The book project is being arranged by a guy who I am sure when you learn who? Everyone will be very familiar with who he is. The first book and subsequent titles in the series consist of inspirational true stories about ordinary people’s lives, overcoming, and much more. I am excited for Deb and can’t wait to read her book this spring!

Enjoy this post by Deb and make sure you visit her blog titled ‘Deb-Spot-Telling My Truth One Word At A Time’

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ADDICTION: The Trigger   By Deb Morgan / 12/12/2019 / Addiction

I don’t know any addict that woke up one morning and said: “I think I will become an addict today.” It just doesn’t happen that way. It is a slow progressive process, that hides. Some don’t ever get addicted or try a drug that makes them feel good, or normal.

Over ninety percent of the addicts have had a multitude of trauma in their lives. Trauma that was so deeply troubling that is broke part of their soul. Or it could be a mental condition and they self-medicated to feel normal. I picked Percocet. After living through trauma from the day I was born, I tried other drugs before settling on pills. Then Percocet became my drug of choice. This drug would eventually attack and I would come close to complete destruction of myself, my family, my life!

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The Trigger?

So what is a “Trigger”? It’s the final thing causing a person to go into full addiction. I am asked why people go to cocaine or heroin, crack, etc.? It tells your brain what you have to put into your body to stave off withdrawal. You see, just because someone starts with alcohol that does not mean it will be their final drug of choice.
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Our brain doesn’t care our body needs a drug, causing steady normality. Drug and Alcoholism are the same diseases just in different wrapping paper. Crack and methamphetamine are the poor man’s drugs. Cocaine is for the rich and people who can afford it. Heroin is a replacement for opiates, cheaper on the street and hard to get from doctors.

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“Addiction begins with the hope that something “out there” can instantly fill up the emptiness inside.” ~ Jean Kilborne~

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So What Happens Next?

In closing the human mind has an extremely strong power of denial and deception. People who are in the throws of drug addiction cannot see it and their brain won’t accept it. Addiction starts out innocent enough. I drank with my friends at school.
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I hated the taste of hard liquor I thought I would never drink it again. So did I keep drinking it? Of course, at the time it was fun, I was young and rebelling against the pain in my life. It would come to be my nemesis in a different form and face.

One I would fight for my life with.

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WHO Is Deb Morgan?

I started writing and talking openly about my journey about 5 years ago. Writing my story and getting it out in the world as far as I could is my goal.

I started out thinking someday I would get a book written and had no idea how to begin to do it. So I started writing, then a website, then an opportunity for a radio show, then another and I just kept refusing to give up. I was asked to be on a show a few months ago in 2019, from there life would change to the point where I don’t even know which way it is going.

I have had 15 radio spots, 2 podcasts, and was invited to be in a book titled Simply amazing women coming mothers day 2020. I will then publish my book “TRAPPED” in 2020. ” There will be another book on Fibromyalgia and Chronic Pain in 2021. Then there are a couple more on the chart that is coming.  A dream isn’t a dream anymore when we do the work, it can become a reality. “ I am living proof of that.

When we want something bad enough that will be helpful for someone else, that is the hope that it does exactly that, help and give hope. Deb resides outside Eugene, Oregon with her family.