Seeing Things For How They Really Are
When someone is caught up in an addiction it becomes easy to lose focus in order to see things for what they really are. Throughout the process of sobering up and confronting life’s problems, one is able to gain clarity on situations that may have been previously foggy. By confronting life’s problems a person is then able to gain better control of their life in order to keep improving.
“Before I got to Narconon I knew things were getting really bad and that they were out of hand. I was drinking around the clock and I couldn’t go four hours without having a drink or I would get really sick. My family was concerned for my well being. They knew I was in trouble; I wasn’t being myself and I was lashing out at the world. A lot of money was being spent on copious amounts of alcohol. I couldn’t get started with my day without having a couple of drinks. I was run down, tired and I was just shut off to the world. I knew I was in trouble so I called up Narconon. Kyle got me right in and I was here within 48 hours.
“I went right to withdrawal where a team of dedicated people got me through every meltdown I had. They worked with me one on one to get me through the perils of withdrawal. Any discomfort, pain or anxiety that I had they stuck by my side and did all they could to provide me comfort.
“After this I moved on to the sauna, this is the backbone of the program. I noticed that my tremors and shakes were gone. After that happened other things started happening, good things. I was sleeping through the night and I was falling asleep naturally without a struggle. My night terrors and drinking dreams went away. My skin, my eyes, my hair, all looked healthier. I began to feel less and less cloudy and more and more energetic and happy each day. I felt 18 again as the end result.
“After this, I moved on to Objectives. First I participated in a series of training drills that helped me to be able to confront things and people comfortably and to exercise control over anything that is thrown at me. Then I moved on to actually doing the objectives. These truly pulled me out of the past and got me focused on the here and now, this very moment. It got me extroverted and talking about things that were on my mind and have been bothering me for a long time and driving me nuts. They helped me realize that those days are over, the moment is now and to embrace it. It also taught me a lot of patience.
“Afterward, I did the Overcoming Ups and Downs Course. This course is so important because it helps you break down who is good for you and who is bad for you. It breaks things down by the way people act and carry themselves. I was able to take a long hard look at the people in my life and decide who I’m going to keep in my life and who is going to be left in the past. I can see who has good intentions for my well being and who has intentions to see me fail and so on and so forth.
“After this, I was introduced to the Personal Values Course which goes over the importance of enforcing ethical behavior on yourself and living by a good set of morals. It also goes over the importance of others around you having good ethics and good morals. It is just basically the answer to doing right by the world in a world that is filled with so much wrong. I was able to sit there and write everything I have ever done that was unethical and didn’t live up to any moral that I stood for. I wrote down my wrong doings, it sounds grueling but after going through the sauna and ridding my body of toxins and going through objectives with the result of being able to see things for how they really are, this process went very smoothly. All sorts of weights and burdens and secrets that have been burning in my brain were gone and I felt like I finally had a clean slate.
“After this, I moved on to Changing Conditions course which broke down all the areas of my life into sections. This course shows you how far you have really come since you stopped using and shows you your progress. This course also shows you where you are at in your life now and what you can do to better yourself further. A lot of people become comfortable and complacent and forget that you can always do better and be better, even when you are doing the best you ever have been. This shows you how to keep doing better and I was able to build a game plan to continue my growth. I finally have a plan. I have a plan to get out of debt, a plan to stay in shape with a set diet and exercise regimen, a plan to gain trust back from my loved ones and so on and so forth.
“I may be finished with this program but the real work is beginning now. With this set of tools, there is no way I can’t succeed. No one wakes up happy and says I’m going to do drugs and drink myself half to death. And this is life; life is not always going to be smooth. Things are going to be thrown at you that are going to be stressful and sometimes painful. Instead of running to a liquor store to deal with things, I have tools that I have learned in this program to use instead; and that’s how I’m going to stay clean.”
Mike O.—Narconon Colorado Graduate
