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I have never been to a DRA meeting but I hope you'll
let me post this anyway. There are none in my small town. We have two
meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous a week, and I’ve been to every one of
them for the last six months. I’ve been taking antidepressants for the
last eight years. I tried Norpramin, Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil, and I
would usually stop taking them after a couple of months and then I'd see
the doctor and maybe start again for awhile. I don't think I ever gave
them a fair chance to work. I drank wine and smoked pot almost every
evening because it seemed to help me to relax and get to sleep. Last year
I had a nervous breakdown. I just lost it. I couldn’t stop crying. I
quit going to work and I didn’t bother to call in. I locked myself in my
home, disconnected the phone, and just went to bed. At that time I just
wanted to fall asleep and never wake up. I never seriously thought of
suicide, just sleeping forever.
My neighbor Mary got worried about me, and came
pounding on the door. I wouldn’t answer so then she started beating on
my bedroom window. I finally let her in because she refused to go away and
I was afraid she'd break the glass. We had been next-door neighbors for
several years but never really friends. That day she was my guardian
angel. Mary took me to the hospital and I stayed for two weeks. On the
fourth day in the hospital she came to visit me. She sat and talked with
me for a long time. She told me that she was a drug addict and alcoholic
who didn’t need to drink or use drugs anymore. I would have never
guessed it. Here was this smiling, kindly, gray-haired women who was
telling me she was a drunk She told me her story and told me about the
fellowship of A.A. She left some A.A. pamphlets for me to read and told me
to contact her any time I wanted to attend a meeting.
Mary took me to my first meeting the day after I got
out of the hospital. She gave me a Big Book and suggested I read it
carefully. I heard a lot of my story at that meeting. I felt accepted and
felt a new sense of hopefulness. I haven’t missed a meeting since.
A few weeks latter I discovered the DRA website while
surfing around late at night from one of those websites that have all the
recovery site links. I read through the Q & A, and the other pages and
knew the ideas of dual recovery would help me with my A.A. program. I sent
for the books and Mary and I both read them. It put my recovery in
perspective. The people in my A.A. meetings didn’t seem to mind when I
talked of my medications and depression like I heard they do in some
localities, but the DRA books validated my feelings and needs in a way
that the Big Book couldn’t do. They have made the Steps more meaningful
to me because they relate to my psychiatric illness too. They described
how both my illnesses affect each other and my recovery. They helped me to
really understand that I am not guilty or bad for having these illnesses
and how to live in the solution one day at a time.
Today I know that smoking pot and drinking changed how
my medications worked and made all my problems worse. I view sticking to
my treatment plan from the hospital just as important to my recovery as
going to meetings and staying clean and sober. I have found a whole new
world of friendship and purpose by going to meetings. I know being sober
for six months isn't a lot of experience but to me it feels so good. Some
days I still feel the depression but I
do feel better than I have in years and now I look foreword to waking up
in the morning.
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