Victorious In Recovery

By David ReffnerHealth & Fitness Mental Health Religion & Spirituality Christianity Education Self-Improvement

Victorious In Recovery episodes

February 23, 2022 Special Guest - Joshua Russell
This week I have a special guest, Joshua is sharing his story of recovery with us!

Transcript
[Music]
thank you guys for tuning in to
victorious and recovery last week i had
mentioned that i planned on bringing
some people onto the show to share their
story and today's one of those days i
met this guy
in pottawattamie county jail and we got
along pretty good i have a lot of
respect for him this is joshua russell
from oklahoma city and he's going to be
sharing his story with you
hello my name is joshua russell
thanks for uh
having me on the show
i've been uh asked to talk a little bit
about the problem
and then afterwards the solution
when i was a youngster
like most alcoholics i was
raised in a
drug and alcohol field family
my mother she was a meth addict
my father
he also cooked meth
as a matter of fact he's still on the
run for that as we speak but as i got
older
at first i despised drugs
and the first time i drank
i was 10 years old
i literally drank so much
that i blacked out
i liked it i mean you know a lot of
alcoholics talk about the feeling that
it made you feel
and can relate to that
i stole the bottle from some teenagers i
drank so much of it like i said that i
blacked out and i woke up the next
morning
in a bathtub
my sister my older sister waking me up
and i had puke all over me i
didn't really drink too much after that
and then about
12 years old
i started smoking weed
and then also drinking a lot more at 13
i got put on probation for skipping
school
i did that for about three years and i
drank heavily smoked a lot of weed
and i'd say about 15
is when uh
i tried meth for the first time
i remember the first night you know they
talk about peer pressure and uh i'll
tell you that's real for sure the first
night uh you know my friends
asked me to do it with him and
i refused because like i said my mother
and my father were both meth addicts and
but the next night you know everybody
was having a good time so
i just kind of felt like hey you know
i guess let's see what this is talking
about
i remember doing a little bit of meth
and i literally right after that the
dude i did it with i asked him if he
wanted to have a pull-up contest i
remember
i did a hundred pull-ups and then right
after that i felt like my heart was
gonna explode and i was gonna die so
you know i wasn't too fond of it at
first
so i left that alone for a little while
too
but i kept drinking and i was constantly
in and out of juvenile detention center
mainly just for skipping school all the
time and building drug tests for my
probation
and
at 16
i
got my kids mother pregnant
and my
insane way of thinking i i had a buddy
of mine who
ran from his probation as a juvenile
until he was 18 and it worked for him
and he got off
so that was my plan and a week later i
got caught
so
i went to a
uh group home
for uh
four and a half months
and while i was in that group home
my daughter was born i also found my
higher power but i didn't understand
much about him
i kind of just thought like i was saved
you know and i didn't think anything bad
was going to happen to me afterwards but
i was definitely wrong about that
after my daughter was born
i was still in the uh
group home i think for maybe like a
month
and uh
when my daughter was born her eyes
wouldn't stay straight and we were kind
of
we didn't really know how to make sense
of all that at first and then a couple
weeks later
after i got out of the group home
this is kind of a funny story before i
tell you about my well my daughter was
born blind but
um
like i said my mother was a meth addict
so
at the time the judge would not release
me
to her custody
so
the judge had a court hearing with my
kid's mother who was at 18 and i was 17
and
you know the judge told my kids mother
that she was not gonna he was not gonna
release me into my mom's custody so
he was like look if you get a place
then i'll release him into your custody
so i was in my kid's mother's custody
until i was 18 years old
so she gets us a l
34 min
February 20, 2022 Humility & Acceptance
hu·mil·i·ty | \ hyü-ˈmi-lə-tē , yü- \
Definition of humility
: freedom from pride or arrogance : the quality or state of being humble

ac·cep·tance | \ ik-ˈsep-tən(t)s , ak- \
Definition of acceptance
1: the quality or state of being accepted or acceptableHis theories have gained widespread acceptance.
2: the act of accepting something or someone : the fact of being accepted : APPROVAL acceptance of responsibility
3law : an agreeing either expressly or by conduct to the act or offer of another so that a contract is concluded and the parties become legally bound
4a: the act of accepting a time draft or bill of exchange for payment when due according to the specified terms.

Transcript:

Welcome
to victorious in recovery what you're
about to hear is simply one man's
journey to victory over addiction
my ups and downs and everything in
between and the solutions that i find
along the way
my purpose is this
to let you know that you're not alone in
the things that we go through trying to
recover and that there is hope of a
recovered life from addiction my name is
david victorious and i'll be your host
[Music]
thank you for tuning in to victorious in
recovery it's been a pretty good week so
far
got to spend some time with my son and
we got to take some pictures in nature
of course he's
eight years old so he wants to take
pictures of
dog poop and weird stuff but either way
he took some great pictures
thankfully this week i got to work
on my third step with my sponsor we had
had some
conflicting calendar issues
we finally got it together and we're
able to do that so i get to work on
my fourth step start writing that out
again and we all know that it brings up
feelings and kind of hurts our pride a
little bit and
it's just overall kind of
icky
doing it
so
this week i wanted to kind of
do a podcast basically on what it takes
to prep for that what requirements
through what do i have to go through
to be prepared
to take a fourth step whether it be the
first time or the tenth time
and two words came to mind they were
humility
and acceptance
i know in
12-step programs we hear a lot about
acceptance a lot a lot a lot about
acceptance
so i'm not trying to beat a dead horse
with talking about it on here too
but
like always you know there's a personal
aspect
to all these things for me
and i'm just gonna do my best to share
my
my experience
with this
and going into these
things i i always have to remember that
like some of the old-timers say there's
a name for everything
so i'm definitely not the first person
that's done it
and also
you know keeping that in mind
i have to take into account that
in comparison to the whole world
if i'm taking into account
the universe basically
i'm a very very small part
i'm a very not insignificant i would say
because i have a soul i have creativity
but
in the grand scheme of things i'm rather
small
as an individual
and i i kind of take comfort in that
because in preparation
for step four or
it could be said in preparation
for
putting action to our humility and
acceptance
i need to feel certain things before i
can get there
and one of those
is step one i have to be powerless
to ever be willing to accept or be
humbled enough to do anything else in
the steps
the next step of course
is came to believe right
and i get comfort in that one too
because
not only am i
powerless
but there's also something that is
powerful
that is worth following that is worth
trusting
it's worth giving over something that's
scary for me to relinquish
every time i talk about how big
my higher power is i think about
something that a uh except out of mind
told me i was
at about 300 pounds and
i had lost like 15 pounds and i was like
yeah you know this is awesome and i told
him he's like that's like taking a
bucket of water out of the ocean and i'm
like what well yeah it just doesn't make
that big of a difference does it
i'm like oh that hurts so deeply but
it stuck with me though it stuck with me
it's
23 min
February 14, 2022 Generosity & Service
Generous
gen·er·ous | \ ˈjen-rəs , ˈje-nə- \
marked by abundance or ample proportions
characterized by a noble or kindly spirit
Service
ser·vice | \ ˈsər-vəs \
contribution to the welfare of others

Transcript
welcome
to victorious in recovery what you're
about to hear is simply one man's
journey to victory over addiction
my ups and downs and everything in
between and the solutions that i find
along the way
my purpose is this
to let you know that you're not alone in
the things that we go through trying to
recover and that there is hope of a
recovered life from addiction my name is
david victorious and i'll be your host
[Music]
thank you for tuning in to victorious in
recovery
well it's been a pretty easy going week
for me
started out with some snow and
it's just overall been pretty enjoyable
although i i did have the same
issue this week that i've been having
lately and i just couldn't come up with
a
with the subject for
for the podcast
so i'm down to the line today and
i'm just shooting out messages i'm like
hey what do you think i should do hey
what do you think i should do
and finally somebody got back with me
and i'm like okay cool let's see what i
can come up with and
and you know i'm glad they they put it
out there
what my friend asked me to talk about
was
generosity and service
they didn't say anything else didn't say
what they wanted to know about it or
nothing they just said generosity
service and i was like okay well let's
see what i can come up with
so i started taking notes and
i came up with a few things
i'm gonna start out with
generosity and i was reading up a little
bit
and this article started out this way it
said
how did it make you feel
the last time somebody was generous
did it brighten your day
did you tell somebody about it
did it inspire you to pass kindness or
generosity onto somebody else
that sets the tone really
for what generosity and service
do or they the things that it can affect
we really we can't receive an act of
kindness
or generosity and not be positively
impacted in some way and that goes for
the flip side we can't be generous
or of service or kind and not be
positively impacted ourselves
generosity it's got that effect
you've probably heard it talked about
the butterfly effect
it's nobody can prove it
because it's a real abstract thing but
but it makes sense
because everything trickles down
everything rolls downhill
so when i'm generous it makes me feel
better
it makes the person feel better
they're more generous
and then it goes on and on and on and on
it creates this
avalanche an avalanche can start from a
branch dropping or
just one too many flakes of snow
one step in the wrong spot
and you can have an avalanche
that act that one little thing wasn't
big enough to push all the snow
but it was big enough to start a chain
reaction
and for me that's what encourages me
anytime i think about generosity is that
it has this chain reaction
even if it's not immediate even if it's
not noticeable
it makes an impact every time and in
addiction we have to be a little more
careful because we can try to be
generous to somebody that
isn't doing so well and it can actually
cause that avalanche effect in the wrong
direction so there is a certain level of
responsibility that goes with it too
there's even a like a bystander a third
party
that gets affected sometimes too
just somebody that happens to have
witnessed
an act of generosity
will many times take that and be
encouraged to
be generous themselves
and they say that there's
seven forms of generosity
and i agree with this but at the same
time i don't
and i'll tell you a little bit about
that at the end
but there's truth in all of this the
first one is generosity of thought
it can be forethought
to another act of service it can be
as simple as writing a review for
somebody
a restaurant a small business owner that
you know
you think about how good they are right
every a review
that that's being generous
that can start that chai
22 min
February 10, 2022 The 12 Steps
This is how the 12 steps help me on a daily basis in real everyday life.

Transcript
welcome
to victorious in recovery what you're
about to hear is simply one man's
journey to victory over addiction
my ups and downs and everything in
between and the solutions that i find
along the way
my purpose is this
to let you know that you're not alone in
the things that we go through trying to
recover and that there is hope of a
recovered life from addiction my name is
david victorious and i'll be your host
[Music]
thank you for tuning in to victorious in
recovery there's so many times in
recovery that i have these ups and downs
and ups and downs and
these last few days have been
one of those times
i think initially i didn't realize
how disappointed i was
about not getting
the position i thought i was gonna get
with this new company
and i i like to think that i'm mostly
self-aware
but this one kind of caught me off guard
and honestly i think it caught me off
guard just because
it's been so long since anything that
disappointing has happened really
it's amazing how much my life has
changed that that's the worst thing
that's happened lately
i remember a time where you know it was
a regular friday night that somebody
held me against my will or something
or threatened my life
or any number of things
to think that the worst thing that's
happened in this
last month or so is that i had a little
bit of pain in my stomach and that i
didn't get a position at a company that
i thought i was gonna get is
it's pretty astounding
so to be honest i was kind of
a little hesitant to even get on here
today and do a recording because i've
been kind of down
i'm like up and down from bed and
just trying to make myself do things
even the most
simple things and
a good friend of mine was talking about
this analogy that she had told me about
the other day which was
that sometimes we have
different levels
of capability
any given day
that some days we might be able to
handle only three things
and other days we might be able to
handle 20 things
and that every day doesn't have to be a
20 thing day
some days can just be a one or two or
three thing day
and i've described that similarly in the
past that
then it's like having a cup of water
that that my life and my energy and my
stress level is this cup of water
and in the bottom of it is like
childhood trauma
and mean things that people have said or
done
that we still hold a grudge about
above that is
other
stresses that we've carried for a long
time that we just haven't let go of
and so
the only part that that leaves when
we're holding on to so many things
is that top little bit of the cup
and that's what we end up having to
navigate each day of our lives
i think nowadays we do that more than
generations of the past maybe
we hold on to more
we have more things in our cup that that
just aren't popular to talk about
they're not okay they're not accepted
people it makes people uncomfortable
to hear about them and then you have the
stigma about going to therapy or
being in a recovery group
or attending a peer group of any sort
and so we're left
with no solution
for all those things that we've carried
for a long long time
not only no solution to fix it but
no relief whatsoever because it's just
not cool to talk about that stuff
humility is such a rare thing
admitting powerlessness is like this
mythical creature
so we end up with this cup and it only
has room enough for getting dressed in
the morning
going to work maybe dealing with a
couple of stressful issues at work
and
coming home and you might have enough
left to cook dinner
and maybe enjoy your evening
maybe
you know and that depends on
on how much of our cup we've been able
to clear out
and you know that kind of
sets the stage
for how important it is to do and go to
meetings
to have a sponsor
well even just to be in contact with
people that
go through the same things they have
things in common that you don't have to
be ashamed to be who you are
you know i'
36 min
February 07, 2022 Goodbye old friend
Definition of old friend
: a person who has been one's friend for a long time.

Transcript
[Music]
welcome
to victorious in recovery
what you're about to hear is simply one
man's journey to victory over addiction
my ups and downs and everything in
between and the solutions that i find
along the way
my purpose is this
to let you know that you're not alone in
the things that we go through trying to
recover and that there is hope of a
recovered life from addiction my name is
david victorious and i'll be your host
[Music]
thank you for tuning in to victoria's in
recovery
hope you guys are doing good this
morning
i had a pretty interesting week this
last week
the
job that i thought i had
actually ended up falling through based
on
some of my background stuff
and
that's always disappointing but it's not
unheard of or even unexpected anymore
considering
the types of things that i have in my
background
unfortunately when you're
a felon
it's kind of
it's just something you
learn to accept and
almost
except
most of the time
this week i had been
talking with a couple of people about
how
getting into sobriety
is
it's like losing a best friend
you know of course there's a lot of
things we gain
there's a lot of things that we learn
and
a lot of
you know just good stuff that comes
along with it but we're losing our our
best crutch
our running buddy
we're losing our best friend
we're losing the thing that got us
through so much
and it's one of those things that
non-addicts don't really get
you know a um
a running buddy or a best friend
doesn't
have to be good for me
for it to
have a hold on my life
has to be something that was present
all the time
and for me that was drugs and alcohol
and i i described it as
is saying goodbye
to an old friend
and uh
it just kind of it clicked
i was like you know what it was it was
like saying bye to
to an old friend
it wasn't just the people or the places
or the things
it was my relationship with that crutch
there's like a
there's a freedom of no responsibility
and
and i think that's a big reason why it's
hard for us to reintegrate is because
most of us
went a really long time
without having a job
without being a part of other people's
lives
really without any responsibilities
we were always stressed we were always
busy
but it's not the same
you know chasing drugs and chasing money
it's not the same as responsibility
and it doesn't have the same weight on
us as
regular life responsibility does
so then you know you end up
or better yet i ended up
transitioning a little hard not as hard
as i could have because i started out in
jail
and i had three different jails to
to get used to
not being on drugs
so my transition wasn't an immediate
impact
but my transition into
not quite freedom
and
quite a bit more responsibility
was a hard one
it was very stressful it still is
sometimes
you know because i went
for six or seven years this last time
with no job
practically no
[Music]
interaction much with my son
or with most of my family
no bills
other than maybe a cell phone
when i could afford to have one
i went from that to
reporting the three different counties
taking a bunch of drug tests every week
trying to see my son
trying to get a job getting a job
maintaining a job
paying bills
paying off old debt
getting calls again like
your son's sick
or you know covet happened gosh
and then i lost my job
and just having all these things all of
a sudden is is really
it really makes us want to run back to
what we know
our good old friend
and i was talking about
and i knew that wasn't an option
but it was really tempting some days
because i just didn't know how to deal
with real life
and i still very much
don't do a great job at it
but it really has gotten a lot easier
it got easier and easier as i
learned to give up the control
of those things to a higher power
and
i tend to want to take those things back
because i have this this horrible habit
and i think a lot of us do that
i want to take things back not like
cons
32 min
January 31, 2022 Welcome To The Real World
Definition of "real world"
SINGULAR NOUN
If you talk about the real world, you are referring to the world and life in general, in contrast to a particular person's own life, experience, and ideas, which may seem untypical and unrealistic.

Transcript
welcome
to victorious in recovery what you're
about to hear is simply one man's
journey to victory over addiction
my ups and downs and everything in
between and the solutions that i find
along the way
my purpose is this
to let you know that you're not alone in
the things that we go through trying to
recover and that there is hope of a
recovered life from addiction my name is
david victorious and i'll be your host
[Music]
thank you for tuning in to victorious in
recovery
it's been a pretty long week
earlier this week i went into the
hospital and
had a couple of surgeries
and i'm still
recovering from those it's hard to
do certain things and
which really kind of surprised me i'm
i don't know what i was expecting but i
wasn't expecting
this much discomfort
i don't know why i mean they're taking
an organ out it's gonna be uncomfortable
but for some reason i just didn't think
that uh
somehow i didn't think it was gonna
affect me that way
and that just
kind of humored me this week
how
far off my expectations were from
reality
i also got to
see a close friend of mine
make some really bad choices
and you know you get to that
point where
you're like hey
if you keep going down this road
these things are going to happen
and i can say that because i know i've
been down that road i've made those
choices
and i'm like
you really gotta get some help
then they say no
they're not ready or
no they don't think i'm right or
whatever it is it's still a no
and it's so frustrating
so frustrating because i just want
things to work out well for this person
and then i have to remember
how many times did i say no
how many times that i need it
proved to me
that it was gonna get worse and it
always did of course
i'd be like no i think i got this
or sometimes not even think about it
and
before too long i'm in situations that
i'm
ashamed of i'm having big consequences
that i don't want to have
and somewhere in there
i'm like what happened
why is this happening to me
i don't understand why my life is going
so bad
and i'm like
what gets into our heads
what part of our drug use do we stop
seeing reality
um i think it's pretty soon i think it's
pretty early on
you know at first we may
start using drugs or alcohol and
think um this is a normal thing
everybody's doing it
and then
other people go home
rest up
go into their jobs on monday
or school or whatever
and we don't
we continue to use
that's like the very first little
thing like oh maybe there's an issue
and then we cause ourselves problems
because of our drug use and alcohol use
or whatever
because we're in those problems we feel
justified to continue using because our
life has gone to crap
and then it keeps going badly so then we
keep justifying it because of how badly
it's going and eventually
everybody stops talking to you and
everybody stops helping you and your
life really does
go to crap really does
like everything's gone
and then
we have no reason to quit anymore we're
like well
i don't have a family i don't have
friends i don't have a job i don't have
a house
i don't like myself why would i quit
what's the point now
and i see this
over and over and over again i saw it at
myself
i've seen it in other friends that have
since passed away
i see it in this friend now
and it's so hard
but it was like it was comical because i
went into this surgery
thinking the same thing
yeah
they're gonna stick a few things in me
blow me up like a balloon
take out an organ
and
i'm gonna go home i'm not even gonna
need any pain meds i'm gonna be good
like no that's not how it works man
that is not how it works
there are some surgeries that are like
this this isn't one of them
and i don't care anybody could have told
me that and still somewhere in the bac
26 min
January 24, 2022 My Story
thank you for tuning in to victorious
and recovery
you know so far
it's been a really good week
i had an interview earlier this week and
got the job offer
which means that i was only out of work
for about
three weeks
and really that's not too bad
that's not bad at all for
the guy with my background
to
have an interview and
get a job offer that was
enough money that i could take it
at a good enough place
with my background
usually takes a lot longer
lately i've been talking about doing
step work with my sponsor
and i still haven't had a chance to meet
up with them
to take care of the third step stuff
but you know i've had my
fourth and fifth
on my mind of course
and it started me thinking
you know for as much as i talk on here
i've never really sat down and
told
my whole story i've never been invited
to tell my story at a meeting
or anywhere
which is a little strange to be honest
i'm surprised nobody's asked yet people
have teased me about doing it but
they've never actually done it
so i was thinking maybe
i'll kind of give a little bit of a
rundown
of some of the moments that when looking
back i'm like
i had issues even then you know because
there's a lot of moments like that
if we really look deep
and sometimes we don't even have to look
that deep to be honest
but there's a lot of moments that
before our drug use before alcohol
before
any other slew of things that we use
there's always signs
that there's going to be issues later
and i mean outside of trauma because of
course we've all had trauma and i've
talked about that at length
but there's there's little moments
you know like i remember
throwing big fits
when i was young
just
amazingly big fits
like i remember getting upset with my
brother for something
and throwing needle nose pliers at him
and it
stuck into the wall
right next to where his head was
and my sister's like i'm going to leave
those in there so mom will see him when
she gets home and i'm like no
but i mean what what could have happened
to get that frustrated
given we had one of those
tvs that was missing a knob and we had
to use the pliers to turn it so it was
probably readily handy
so it's not like i went and
looked for him to throw him at him
but still
there's just little things like that and
i'm like that might have been a little
overboard
i remember coming home from my
grandparents house and it was when i was
real little i didn't realize what day it
was i knew my birthday was coming up but
i didn't realize
one day and
we roll back up to the house
and there's a bunch of cars there and my
first thought
as a kid isn't
huh i wonder what's going on was
something happened to my mom
and i just started freaking out and i
remember running in and there's a bunch
of people and i'm crying and i'm like i
was worried about you like what could
have gone through a little kid's head to
to go from i just had a good time with
my grandparents too
the only thing that could be happening
right now is that somebody died
and that's our
magic magnifying mind as they call it in
the
a.a big book there's no in-betweens
my mind goes straight from here to all
the way over there
in a split second i've constructed this
whole story
that in the end
spells out to me
that somebody died
when really there was probably a million
other options of things i could have
thought of at that moment
one of which maybe it's my birthday
party
and then i see
the opposite of that is true too
i remember my
parents telling us that
we were gonna move to costa rica with my
mom
and
i didn't even know my mom was from costa
rica
never clicked never even thought about
it
why my mom might speak another language
didn't ever occur to me
just completely oblivious
didn't realize really what was happening
until i was on the plane there
and it occurred to me hey
maybe i ought to learn some of the
spanish language
my first thought of that i was on the
plane there
you know those are the things it's like
maybe
i don't always pay attention to what's
right in front
32 min
January 20, 2022 Wisdom
wis·dom
/ˈwizdəm/

noun

The quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment; the quality of being wise.

Transcript
welcome
to victorious in recovery what you're
about to hear is simply one man's
journey to victory over addiction
my ups and downs and everything in
between and the solutions that i find
along the way
my purpose is this
to let you know that you're not alone in
the things that we go through trying to
recover and that there is hope of a
recovered life from addiction my name is
david victorious and i'll be your host
[Music]
thank you for tuning in to victorious
and recovery
it's middle of the week and
i've been having a lot of things come up
in my studies this week i've had
a little more time on my hands and i've
been able to
spend a little
time in meditation that i haven't gotten
to spend in a long time
and i've been thinking about
the upcoming steps
i'm still waiting on my
sponsor to
do step 3 with me
but as we tend to do
i've been thinking ahead a little bit
not in a bad way not in a future
tripping way
just
staying conscious of what's to come
kind of mentally preparing for it which
i think is a healthy look forward
in one of my studies yesterday
proverbs 4 came up
and i wanted to share
just a few of my thoughts with you guys
proverbs 4 is about getting wisdom
it's titled get wisdom at any cost
and on verse 1 it starts listen my sons
to a father's instruction
pay attention and gain understanding
i give you sound learning
so do not forsake my teaching
for i too was the son to my father
still tender and cherished by my mother
then he taught me
and he said to me
take hold of my words
with all your heart
keep my commands and you will live
get wisdom get understanding
do not forget my words
or turn away from them
do not forsake wisdom
and she will protect you
love her and she will watch over you
the beginning of wisdom is this
get wisdom
though it may cost all you have
get understanding
cherish her and she will exalt you
embrace her and she will honor you
she will give you a garland to grace
your head
and present you with a glorious crown
listen my son
accept what i say
and the years of your life will be many
i instruct you in the way of wisdom
and lead you along straight paths
when you walk your steps will not be
hampered
when you run you will not stumble
hold on to instruction do not let it go
guard it well
for it is your life
so that was proverbs 4 1-13
and there's so much of that
that i can relate to i can relate to
that as a aspiring good father
i can relate to that as the son that
remembers a couple of things from my dad
i can relate to that because
it says there at the end hold on to your
instruction
do not let it go guard it well
for it is your life
and to me that that's talking about
experiences
it's talking about
what i've gone through what i've learned
from it and to not let it go
what i've done in the past what i've
been in the habit of doing is i'll go
through something difficult
and
i'll want to erase it i want to just put
it behind me and never think about it
again
which in some cases
is the right thing to do
until i can figure it out until i can
figure out what what to do with that
experience in my life
but most of the time
it's best worked through it's best
thought about
shared with others etc and then learned
from it
so i wrote down some notes of things
that this meant to me
i wrote wisdom as a rule of thumb
is going to be what you perceive as
important
to leave your kids as knowledge and
teach
14 min
January 16, 2022 Hard Questions
pur·pose
/ˈpərpəs/
noun

The reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists.

Transcript
welcome
to victorious in recovery what you're
about to hear is simply one man's
journey to victory over addiction
my ups and downs and everything in
between and the solutions that i find
along the way
my purpose is this
to let you know that you're not alone in
the things that we go through trying to
recover and that there is hope of a
recovered life from addiction my name is
david victorious and i'll be your host
[Music]
thank you for tuning in to victorious
and recovery
it's been a another good week
and i'm saying that more so to myself
try to convince myself
than anything else i think
i know that last week i had mentioned
that
i had been sick and had to go
to the hospital and stuff
but so much more happened and i just
didn't even think to say anything about
it
because everything was kind of
overshadowed by that
and more's happened since then
so where do i start
that tuesday before i went into the
hospital
i had my probation appointment in the
morning
and was told that i was taken off a
probation
they had closed out my case that i was
one hundred percent done
so in the last year
that means that i've had four cases
close
four different felony cases
that are now done
out of court
off probation done
and that's a that's a pretty big
testament of what recovery can do
that's a pretty big
statement because
in 2020
i still had three years left
of probation
so
it's barely 20 22 and now i have nothing
left
that's really good
and it's not like i did any
crazy
jumping through hoops or anything i
didn't call in any favors i didn't do
anything like that all i did
was keep a job go to my probation
appointments
and stay clean
and it's amazing because at the
beginning of all this
it looks like such a
huge insurmountable thing
like i'm gonna be on probation forever
i've got a million fees that i have to
pay
i have to take drug tests for the rest
of my life and
you know all these things that go
through
my brain
in the beginning
looking at
a huge undertaking like that
and it it almost never fails that at the
end of it
i realized that it wasn't as bad as i
thought it was going to be
so
now it just kind of adds to
those big questions what next
what happens now
well i can tell you one thing that
happened since then
or two one of them you already know went
to the hospital
had to have a surgery
gonna have to have another one
secondly
a bunch of people got laid off at work
and i was one of them
so
what next
what do i do now the reason why i bring
up those questions is because that's
what i wanted to talk about today
starting out
in
recovery and
in this whole journey there's a lot of
big questions like that
and i've heard people recently
ask things to the
tune of
what does life look like now that i
can't get high
what will i do
how do i have fun
and
there's more really big questions
why me why is all this happening to me
didn't i live a good life before this
why do i deserve this life
you know and then there's always the
why now
why did everything work out just fine in
my life even
drug use and alcohol use and then all
the sudden
everything just
fell apart why now
what did i do to deserve this
to deserve this life to deserve
this outcome
and more importantly what should i do
now
how do i move on from here
you know and every single one of these
is
a horribly
almost impossible
question to answer
i think i could spend
a lifetime
trying to answer any one of these
questions
just to find out that there is no good
answer
i think that's that's like one of the
bigger things that i've
found
throughout this whole deal
it's that all these big questions that i
want to ask myself and that i want to
ask the universe that i want my higher
power
to be accountable to answer to me
all these things
aren't the right questions
they don't really matter
it's not relevant to moving forward in
life
why did i experience
my childhood
the way i did wh
21 min
January 10, 2022 Made A Decision
What Is Step 3?
The third step of the 12-step journey introduces the process of surrendering control over your addiction to a power greater than yourself. Step Three is written as follows:
“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.”
Transcript
thank you guys for tuning in to
victorious in recovery
it's been a really interesting week for
me
i was
doing just fine last sunday
and
tuesday afternoon i started to feel a
little
off
and within like maybe three hours or so
i was
doubled over in pain and
headed to the er
so i spent the better part of the week
in the hospital
had to have
some gallstones taken out and
a stent put in and it was just a long
week
very long week but
i got released now i'm just at home
recovering again
so as you guys know i've been
doing some step work with my sponsor out
of a step working guide
i was gonna share
my answers with you this week like i did
a couple weeks ago
we're in step three
i like step three not because
of the higher power part but
because it's a surrender part
it's that
that moment where
you finally get to
give it up
and you're at step three um you've gone
through one and two of course and one
you're basically just admitting you're
hopeless
and
it's kind of a hopeless place to stay if
you don't move on in the steps and then
you go to step two
and
you're like okay
maybe there's something out there that
can help me
but if there's nothing after that
then you're just stuck knowing that
you're hopeless
and there is something out there that'll
help you but you're not willing to or
maybe you don't think
you're worth it or
that it's real you know or can help
or whatever
that's just another one of those
points where people are like no you know
what bye i can't do this this isn't for
me
etc and
so i like this one because it's
it's always simpler
than we make it out to be in our heads
it's always a very very simple thing and
it's it's basically just saying
is there anything that you have trouble
with
can you
ask somebody to help you with that
and let them help
you know whether that's somebody
you've chosen to be a god or your
sponsor or the group
or a doorknob or whatever it is that you
chose
that's as simple as this is
it's just a willingness to ask for help
and then
accept it when it's given
and as simple as that is
i have trouble with both parts
i have trouble in the asking and i have
trouble in the
accepting it
because it'll take me forever
i'll fail at every single thing
that i can possibly think of that i
think is the right way before i'll ask
somebody for help
and i'm still really bad about that
and then on the other side of it there's
always somebody saying yeah
um i went through that and this is what
i did
or i'll pray about it and i'll
kind of
think i know what i need to do
and i'll be like no
no that won't work
no
no uh
who else can i ask
i don't i don't think that'll work
and i won't even try it so it's been a
battle for me
so anyways
these are the step three questions that
i have
the first one is why is making a
decision
central to working the step
and for me
i put it's because
it's an action step for me
it's
that surrender that i was talking about
it's a way of of me saying
okay
i need help
can you help me
and then the humbling part of saying
okay i'll try that even if i don't think
it's gonna work
and the second question is
can i make this decision just for today
it's a two-part question
and
do i have any fears or reservations
about it
and if so what are they and that first
question there
can i make it for just today is
is an exciting one really
that
that's so much better than to think that
i have to
just write a blank check
of my will over to the world
and just
say yes to everything for the rest of my
life
the fact that we can do it
on a daily basis
means that i can look at my day and
look around and say okay
um this thing and this thing and that
thing
i'm gonna probably need help with those
things who can i call or i better
28 min

About Victorious In Recovery

From the publisher's feed

How does one become Victorious in Recovery? That’s the journey we are on together as I reflect on my personal recovery from the disease of addiction. In each episode I pull together insight on topics…

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