Sunday Serenity

Good evening and happy Sunday to the Cadre sphere. I hope you all have had a nice long weekend. If you had a long weekend. If not, hope you had a nice weekend. Anyhow, my name is Jason Lennox, and I'm here with you as your resident recovery champion. Really, all that means is that I'm a champion for recovery in recovery. With recovery, about recovery, I just live, breathe and eat recovery. And for me, that's from drugs, alcohol, mental health, many other things. So really grateful to be here, as I always am on Sunday night.

Sunday, serenity. So I believe serenity is the key to recovery, at least mine. And in line with the Cadre theme. Good evening, Speak Wonder. Great to see you. In line with the Cadre theme, this evening, this month, the theme of freedom, I'm going to start a series of four that really talks through the different levels of freedom. I think there are just different phases that we all go through in terms of freedom. And so the first couple I'll talk about are kind of freedoms like breaking free of the things that haunt us.

And then the second two will be creating freedom. But good evening. Yes, freedom is a good theme. So first, most important for people like us who have had problems with drugs, alcohol, you know, the anonymous programs, Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, they talk about this obsession. And I think it's there in some way, shape or form for any of us who've struggled with different forms of addiction. Although obsession might be maybe not the best word in my opinion, because that implies that we have some intent.

I think there's just this natural gravitational pull towards substances or the things that we're addicted to when we've. We've just got so much chaos going on inside. But regardless, it's very important that we find our way and we break free from that thing that just keeps us in that vicious cycle. And for me, again, that was drugs and alcohol, anything I could get my hands on. So what I wanted to do is share. There was a very vivid moment for me when this happened when I was about one year into recovery.

And a few years ago, I published a memoir. And actually not for this reason, but it always helps because when I go back and I think about scenarios like this, I go, well, why don't I just open the thing up and read it? So I'm gonna just read an excerpt from about that year One mark, for me, where I just had this moment where I really knew I was free from that. Just the chains and the grip that addiction had on me for so long, it took a while into recovery it took some work for sure, but I just want to read that and give you a little flavor for what that was like because it's there and it's available for all of us.

So bear with me as I stare down a little bit here as I read. Good evening, Sherry. Good to see you here, Emily as well. So it goes like this. Just after the one year anniversary of my sobriety, I stood in Dean's building after a day of work and stopped, stared at the wooden wall of the long, dark hallway, tears forming in my eyes. Out the window, large snowflakes drifted slowly from the sky toward the ground. I thought back to all the parties in that apartment and remembered intensely all the sadness and despair I had felt there.

This was the place where my worst days of addiction were lived. I wondered how I had gotten here. A little over a year after my near fatal overdose, I stood in the same space that had almost taken me down. I thought about the recovery celebration coming later that night, and especially that my grandpa was coming. My grandma's loss was so heavy on my heart. And having my grandpa come to a recovery meeting, something I never imagined he'd do, was a step toward healing from losing her. He represented her, and I wanted them both to be proud.

I'd managed to outlast the evils of addiction for a whole year. In a moment of the most intense gratitude I'd ever experienced. Everything went silent and the tears started streaming. I knew the fight was over. Finally, my obsessive thoughts about drugs and alcohol were gone. I was going to make it, no matter what happened. Just one year into recovery, I felt the sense of victory that only living the right life could bring. The principles I'd been living by were working, and I knew I'd never let them go.

Perhaps unconsciously, from that moment on, I understood that my new job was to share my victory with as many people as possible. So again, I share that because that was a very pivotal moment for me. Because for that first year, I had some good experiences. I went to treatment. I was with some great people, but there were still doubts. And I lived so long with this life of drugs and alcohol as my solution. And anytime something went wrong and I experienced bad, like it just naturally pulled toward the drugs and alcohol.

And within that year, I had these thoughts. And I remember people asked me, are you done? Forever? And forever was a hard thing for me to really wrap my head around. And I remember asking the guy, so you're saying if the world was going to end tomorrow, you. You don't think it'd be a good idea to go out partying and having a good time. And he said, no, absolutely not. That's not in the cards for me and it's not something I'll do again. I couldn't wrap my head around that, partly because I'd just been living for so long the way I had been living.

And so I fought that. And then it came to a point earlier in that book where I'm really in a bad space about nine, ten months into recovery. And I'm thinking, like, suicide might be the way out again, because I couldn't imagine going back, but I couldn't imagine continuing the way I was. So I was in a really tough spot. And again, just thinking about this, how am I going to stop this? Am I going to stop this? Am I ever going to go back? Am I not going to go back? Am I going to live? Am I going to die?

It was incredibly burdensome on my brain, on my body, everything. So when I had that moment there and had gone through and done some more work and cleaned up more of my past, which is a really, really powerful solution and a big part of this, I was able to kind of go back and really attack the things head on that were haunting me, the things I felt so much guilt, shame and remorse for. And when that happened and I had those moments, I knew then and as I stood there, I just knew that I was actually free from that.

Because there's a big difference between me staying sober and being in recovery and doing what I'm doing and me feeling well enough to know and I'm not going to go back. And I always say when I. When I talk and I share my story, I don't have a big enough ego to say I won't ever go back to that lifestyle. But I know today more than ever that I don't ever have to, which is a big difference. I know today that I don't ever have to. If I continue to use the tools and live the life that I've lived and use those tools that I've been given and been shown and learned over time.

So it was important. That was a huge first step. We won't get anywhere if we can't break free from that obsession, whatever, that subconscious just pull toward drugs, alcohol, other forms of addiction that fulfilled all those things that we were running from or that just were so painful that we didn't have any other way. And it was, it was the most powerful. I'll never forget that, that night, standing there as you could. You could Hear. I remember it so vividly. And it was the beginning of. I knew that.

I knew then that I could live this life and I could do it forever. And that was the first time I'd ever experienced that. Because I rolled into recovery sideways, not because I thought I had a different kind of life, but because I don't want to sit in jail anymore. And I was in so much pain that I just wanted to go to treatment. The thing that they've been talking about, I did that. They told me to go to aa. I just gave this thing my all for six months, whatever it was, because it was either that or jail.

And so I did this thing. And when I got to that year, and I realized there was this obsession and this thing that had just been gripping me and I could never get off my mind. I didn't wake up thinking about that anymore. And that was the most beautiful experience ever. And I believe it took that before I could get to the next phase, which is really breaking free from all those things that underlie that. The underlying conditions and the things that have been haunting me, pushing me to find the drugs and alcohol in the first place.

Mental health, some of the upbringing, the trauma, all those things. So freedom is. There are so many different levels and definitions and ways that we can spin it. But most important for all of us is am I free from those constant thoughts and the regular rumination about drugs and alcohol. And if I'm not, that's fine. That was me, and that was my story for a year. But I had to get to work because I knew it was either I keep down that path and I'm going to go back to the life I lived, or I find something different, or I end up dead.

I mean, those are my three options. And I was really just willing to go all in. I was in so much pain that I called a buddy and he said, let's get to work. We got to work again. I got to work on cleaning up my past and doing all those things. And that time it actually stuck. So that freedom is most important to me. I'm so, so incredibly grateful that I found that freedom and that I don't have to wake up in the mornings and think about if drinking or drugging are going to be part of my day. Because not all of us get there and we lose a lot of people, A lot of people in this world, in this country.

I just shared about this the other night. We lost 307,000 people last year in the United States alone to drive drugs, alcohol, suicide. Imagine that. 307,000. You put that up on the list of the greatest causes of death, and it's top three. So to be one of those people that made it out on this side is just phenomenal. And it's a blessing, and I'm grateful for all of it. Thank you, Sherry. It's great to know you as well. And look forward to continuing this journey through the theme of freedom. This month of July.

Freedom comes with a price for a lot of us and for us trying to find a new way to live. Boy, we gotta kick, scratch, claw, do all the things, hang on as tightly as we can. Sometimes just hope that we don't drown until we have real help that can get there and get us through it. I'm grateful that I got there. I'm grateful again that I get to share this journey with you. And we'll keep going. We'll keep going with the freedom theme. We'll talk next week about mental health, some of the traumas, some of the things that just kind of plague us as we're on that journey to addiction.

And we'll go from there and creating freedom. The fun stuff where we actually create different kinds of lifestyles. And, like, the freedom in the good way. There's breaking free, and then there's creating free. And look forward to getting there. So I hope you all have wonderful weeks and stay cool or warm wherever you are. Talk soon.