Alumni Picnic

This weekend, Saturday, July 30 will be our Alumni Picnic where our alumni come to celebrate recovery and their time at Clearbrook. There's good food, good friends and a speaker meeting! John H. from Sanford, FL will be speaking and it will be a day to remember!

The picnic starts at 10:30 a.m. and will be held at 890 Bethel Hill Road Shickshinny, PA 18655.

Come join us and celebrate recovery the Clearbrook way!

Patience

Patience is not a word that is practiced with complete ease when we first get sober. Things are changing but our disease wants to tell us that it is not changing fast enough for us. That is the disease of alcoholism and drug addiction talking. That is how our disease wants to sabotage us into giving up sobriety and start using again. Some things that have helped people is to know that a lot of what the mind tells us as addicts is not true. We can look in mirrors today and know that the lies of the mind are just that, they are lies.

We can always rely on the programs of AA/NA for the mental part of this disease. When negative thoughts creep in we can go to our friends who can look at our lives from an objective point of view. Things did not get better for the majority of the people in the rooms by mistake or coincedence. They have worked the steps of the program and achieved a degree of happiness beyond what they thought possible. We believe this is available to all. We need only patience and the faith that it will work.

Remembering Compassion

Today let us all take a moment to show someone compassion. A lot of things in our lives move so fast and we have so much going on that we frequently forget to take a minute for ourselves or for someone else. Whether it may be just listening to someone or doing something nice for someone, remember to be compassionate.

For a minute, if we can just be a little less consumed by life and the things around us it will be easy for us to do for others. Love and compassion are some of the greatest gifts that we can give to those around us. They go hand in hand. So today, let's try our best to look at things with a little more love and less frustration and a little more compassion and less indifference to the world around us!

Step Meetings

There are all kinds of different meetings that we can go to. There are speaker meetings, As Bill Sees It, topic meetings, and step meetings. Today we wanted to talk about the importance of step meetings and how they can help you.

We can read and re-read all the literature that is available to us. We can memorize it and study it. If reading and studying about our disease were enough we wouldn't have to go to meetings in the first place. In a step meeting, the format usually is to read the step out of the book "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions". After the group has read the step, most groups have one member share on how they worked that step with their sponsor and how the step has affected their life.

Their is a practicallity to all this. Nothing helps us more than hearing another person share what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now. We can identify with other people that feel the same way as we do. The greatest benefit is usually that the people who have worked that specific step prove to us that by working the steps of AA/NA their lives have changed for the better.

Listening to Others

Listening isn't something we've always done. In fact, some of us when we first got sober had to re-learn how to listen and take in what other people are saying. In our addiction, we were so concerned about ourselves and what we had to say and about being right or defending ourselves that we were never actually hearing what people were saying to us. Most think listening is something easy and to some it does come easy but not for some of us.

Who knew that there was actually a way to listen and hear what people are saying, not hear what we want to hear. It's amazing what we learn from others when we look into their eyes and objectively listen to what they have to say. So, as much as possible we must be aware of what others are trying to communicate to us. This is so important because we not only get the facts but sometimes we can feel what others feel through what they are saying to us while we listen intently!

Meetings, Meetings, Meetings!!!!!!!!

If you don't go to meetings your chance for long term sobriety diminishes. For the most part the previous sentence is true. When we see someone come into the rooms, then we don't see them and they drank again. When we hear them talk the first thing most of them say is that they stopped going to meetings. Then a whole bunch of other things come out of their mouth. THEY STOPPED GOING TO MEETINGS!!! That is the important part of the explaination.

Meetings are where we are going to find the solution to our problem. The members who are there day in and day out are the people we should listen to. They can help when we can't help ourselves. Meetings are where our friends are.

The AA Promises

1. If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed
before we are half way through.
2. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
3. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
4. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.
5. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience
can benefit others.
6. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.
7. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.
8. Self-seeking will slip away.
9. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.
10. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.
11. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.
12. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for
ourselves
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us -
sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.
Alcoholics Anonymous p83-84
Reprinted from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous with permission of A.A. World
Services, Inc.

Keeping It Simple

When we first got to the rooms of A.A./N.A. the phrase "Keep it simple" could be heard all the time. It was something we constantly told ourselves because it was in our nature to complicate everything. Eventually we learned that keeping it simple really does work. It brings a sense of serenity and patience to situations we never thought we could be serene or patient with.

Even after many years in recovery we can sometimes forget to keep it simple. We get into a routine and maybe something disrupts this routine, our minds automatically go to complicated. Yet, all we need to do is look back on how crazy our lives used to be and we remember to keep it simple and things get a tiny bit easier!

The First Three Steps

The first three steps of the AA/NA program is the base of our recovery from alcohol and drugs. In the first step we have to concede to our innermost selves that we can not use alcohol and drugs in any form at all. The second half of the step tells us that while using drugs and alcohol that our lives are unmanageable. If our lives can't be manaaged by us then we have to find something else to manage it.

That is where the second step flows right in. When we look around the rooms, we see hundreds of people that have changed their lives. These people have come to believe that a power greater than themselves could restore them to sanity. The only thing this step asks is that power not be ourselves.

In the third step we turn our lives over to that power. That sometimes brings on a little confusion. The easiest way of knowing if we have gone through the third step is by asking ourselves if we are ready to continue on with the other nine steps. If we can we have gone through the step.

The twelve step programs are practiced as a way of life. With that said, we need to do these things on a day to day basis. When you do, your life improves dramatically.

Compassion, Love and Tolerance

No one is perfect whether it be emotionally, physically or spiritually. Sometimes we watch the way people act or hear the way they speak and we get irritated. Someone doesn't do something our way and we are annoyed. Yet, if we could just remind ourselves a little more that no one is perfect even if we or they are in recovery. We and other people are not always going to do the right thing but if we are tolerant of ourselves and others we can learn compassion and love at its very core.

The saying that we should treat people we want to be treated holds true in every aspect of our lives. We have a responsibility as a human being to try to live this every single day. Treat others with compassion, love and tolerance, even if they don't treat you the same. It will open your mind and your heart in ways you can't imagine!

Clearbrook- A Pennsylvania Drug Treatment Center

It's never an easy thing to admit that you need help. We've all been raised to be self-sufficient and tough it out, and for too many people, this attitude carries over when they're trying to break the grip of a drug addiction or chemical dependency. The problem is that it's often this very attitude, the idea of self-medicating, that fosters and enables chemical dependency in the first place. Chemical dependency and addiction is not an easy problem to fight. It's not a character failure. It's an illness, and like any other illness, it requires the right treatment to get it under control. Whether you're fighting a battle with alcohol, prescription painkillers or another drug, Clearbrook Treatment Centers have the capacity to help you get sober and change your life for the better.

How Drug Rehab Helps You

Chemical dependency has many components, some of them physical, some environmental and some emotional. When you try to break a drug habit by simply not using, you're only attacking your problem from one angle, and it can be a dangerous angle to take. The professionals at Clearbrook understand the complex nature of addiction and dependency, and use a multi-pronged approach to helping you get clean and stay clean.

Service Work

Some of us have always had it in our nature to want to help others but when we were using we were always too consumed by ourselves that helping others was simply a passing thought. It wasn't until we got sober that it became more real that we could actually help other people.

In the beginning of recovery it could be something as simple as opening the door for someone. Just paying attention to those things is a drastic change from when we were using. We know we were selfish and self-centered. That is why it is such a great gift that we can help other people. Even helping outside of A.A./N.A. is such a wonderful thing. For example, volunteering at a soup kitchen, a local church or temple, etc. Anything that is giving of yourself freely can impact a life. Try it! It can be one of the most rewarding things!

The Four Horseman....Keeping them at Bay

The literature of AA talks about the "hideous four horseman, terror, bewilderment, frustration, and despair. As people that are in recovery we know these feelings all too well. In our minds, while using and drinking, the only way to make these feelings go away was to have another hit or drink. It temporarily solved our problems of our minds. The problem is that "the problems" only got worse for us.

Many people speak of the moment of clarity they had. They came to the realization that another hit or drink was only driving them deeper into the horrible feelings. We then realize that there is a permanent solution so long as we do some daily work. We find powers that are greater than us to help us find that solution.

Feeling Stuck

When we are using there are many times that we've felt stuck. Some of us felt that there was no other way than the way we were living our lives but we knew it wasn't right. We didn't know of any other way to live because we had been using so much for so long. We felt stuck because we truly didn't know how to move forward in this part of our life.

Then something happened for us. Something in our lives pushed us toward treatment and/or A.A./N.A. It opened our minds. It may have taken a while but it truly opened our minds and we didn't feel stuck. We felt a bit of freedom because we saw through our actions and others actions that we don't have to be stuck. We don't have to live our lives using. We could have a life in recovery. It truly was and is possible! What a gift!

Once we embrace the 12 Steps and others in the program we can truly be free and live a life drug and alcohol free and we can move forward!