Getting High on Recovery

Recovery is about getting your life back. Maybe it’s time to recover your sense of humor?

___

Why are so many addicts or recovering addicts also comedians? Humor should be a part of recovery because humor is central to what it means to be a human being.

Humans are the only creatures that laugh. Except for monkeys, hyenas and some dogs. Okay, humans are among a select group of creatures that laugh. That has to count for something.

Do you need to heal your funny bone?

Recovery is about getting your life back. Part of life is allowing yourself to have fun.

Sometimes we make recovery too serious and work too hard at it. Recover your humor and you may just recover a part of yourself that you may have lost. 

It goes without saying, but since I am a writer, I will say it anyway. Making fun of recovery is not something I support, but laughing about recovery and all of the stupid things we say, the things we do, and what we experience is how we survive.

Addiction = Ad+Diction

The word “Addiction” means different things to different people.

One root of the word is being sold to, given over or giving ourselves to something. That makes sense because addiction is about losing ourselves. Healing our utter devotion to something that could kill us is what many of us have to face in our recovery.

Another, less known definition of addiction is found by examining it’s compound words:  Ad + Diction.

AD – an advertisement, selling products.

An addiction is like having a sales and marketing department inside our heads. We can have an entire conversation with ourselves because the entire department never goes to sleep.

Addiction begins with a poor attention span, a lack of sleep, trying to listen to the many conversations inside our heads and our inability to stop buying stuff. Exhausted yet?

A lack of sleep makes you and I more prone to drink, eat, smoke, chew or buy nearly anything we want or whatever someone is selling. Just go into 7-11 when you have not slept for 24 hours. Your wallet will be empty but your arms will be full of nachos, Pepsi, chips, chocolate bars and energy drinks.

Why energy drinks? We all know that when you are tired, you need energy drinks instead of sleep. Makes sense.

Diction – how we talk, or what we talk about.

I can have an entire two hour conversation inside my head, but getting that conversation to travel down to my lips is a different story. It makes complete sense inside my head, but when it comes out what I say is gibberish.

I wonder if this is what it feels like to be a politician or Donald Trump? We have our inside voice and then there is the outside voice…

Putting it together: Ad+Diction

Ad + Diction = Having multiple, confusing conversations inside our heads along with our inability to speak legibly. In short, addiction is like politics. It used to make sense a long time ago, but now we spend all of our energy just keeping the machine going.

Seven things you can to do recover your sense of humor

1. Don’t make promises. Promises get serious way too fast. In that spirit, I’m not promising that the next five things will work, or that they are brilliant. It’s the best I can do so cut me a little slack.
2. Remember to keep it short. I like to write short pieces because my attention span is shot. Try not to engage in long conversations, long movies or long drives. Just be kind to yourself.
3. Give yourself permission to have a sense of humor. Go easy on yourself. This is one of the greatest gifts you will ever unwrap.
4. Don’t be afraid of politicians or clowns. Remember that everyone needs something to laugh at. Underneath the makeup, we are all clowns. It’s just that some need makeup and other’s need parties.
5. See your doctor. I’m not saying that if you don’t pay attention, that is a sign that you are also an addict or that you automatically have ADHD… it may not hurt to get your attention examined. At the same time you may want to get your prostrate examined. Hopefully not at the same time as your attention. That would be ugly.
6. Be a child and Choose Yourself. Children laugh up to 300 times a day, adults laugh around 5 times and in recovery a good laugh can be as rare as a day without a trigger. Spend more time around children and spend less time around adults. Watch comedy and wear funky hats. It is difficult to be serious when we are wearing funky hats.
7. Join me in laughter-recovery. Join our community and we will join with you wherever you are at. You can also read some of my work by clicking on the links beneath my ‘Keep it Real.’

In recovery from addiction, from trauma and mental illness you need all the help you can get. Humor is about getting more out of life and it can make you more resilient. Heck, it will just make you happier. And that is worth the five minutes that you took to read this!

Keep it Real

I am a writer for The Good Men Project and Real Recovery. For exclusive access to Good Men Project content, including ebooks, webinars on writing, editing and building an online presence, and other content click on the GMP link below. And because you are a reader of my blog, you will receive a 10% discount, which is about two bucks.

Photos by Brian , Farad Sadykov and smswaby