God Recovered Me From Addiction: Susanne's Story

Hi friends, my name is Susanne and I am the host for the Recovery Christian and today I just wanted to share some of my story with you. I am a child of God, a lover of Jesus, a devourer of the Bible and a woman in long-term recovery. Today I have seven years in recovery, sometimes hard, always beautiful and always free. Getting sober changed my life. God has dreamed huge dreams for me since I surrendered my life to him. I would never have come up with the wonderful things he has brought me Absolutely never. I just wouldn't have dreamed that big. So I wanted to tell you a little bit about my journey. A lot of it will probably feel familiar. I think we all tend to walk similar paths on to that pit of despair. I grew up in a home that had a lot of problems. My mother was mentally and physically ill my entire life. My dad basically checked out and traveled on the road for his job. I was the oldest of three girls, and so it fell to me to keep the world going as best as I could. Most of my childhood is a blank screen, and I'm really thankful for that. I thank God for erasing a lot of the memories and drama and trauma from my mind. It complicates things a little bit sometimes because I just can't remember, but I'm still grateful. The things I do remember are bad enough. I just don't need to remember every single detail. I believe my mom had undiagnosed schizophrenia. She had an alternate personality that absolutely hated us kids and was pretty abusive to us. She also had multiple cirrhosis and she just spent years coming and going from our home. One day she'd be there and one day she wouldn't. Most of the time we didn't know where she was going or when she was coming home. So it was unsettling, unsafe, unstable, just not a way to live. We lived way out in the country with very few neighbors, and I tell people about my childhood now and they usually say something like well, why didn't any of your family come to take care of you? And honestly I'm not really sure why. I also hear a lot why didn't DSS come get you? I think back in the 70s things were just different. People tended to mind their own business more. Today, if you left three kids home with no supervision, no car, no help, I think they would be snatched up and put somewhere. But back then they just didn't, or at least they didn't for us. So my life kind of started out like a mess. We were sexually abused, abandoned, ignored and there's a big correlation between addiction and childhood trauma. I'm not knowledgeable enough to speak on it, but I know it's there and in my case it definitely fits. But I went to college. My dad moved away and didn't tell me where. My middle sister fell into addiction very early in life. She quit high school and moved across the country and my grandparents, blessed their hearts, came and got my baby sister and raised her and she was so lucky. My grandma was a wonderful person and I'm just thankful that my little sister got to be raised by her. Over the next several years my middle sister struggled big time with drugs and alcohol. I did what I could to help, but you know how it is if you've been through the struggle. She needed to be ready to let go and she never seemed to be at that point. I had cousins die from overdoses and suicide. I had an uncle who just disappeared. Addiction was everywhere in my family, but not me. I was perfectly fine until I wasn't. I was prescribed opiates for migraines in my early 30s. Up until that point I was a very social drinker. We didn't have alcohol in our house. Very often my husband didn't really drink, I just didn't care that much about it. But those opiates slowly changed everything. I had a doctor early on tell me that there's an addiction switch in our brains and once it turns on it never turns off again. And some people go their whole lives with the addiction switch and it never turns on. But unfortunately that prescription turned my addiction gene on and it never turned off. And addiction is a sneaky bugger. You think you're fine and you think you're handling things and surely this big thing is not a problem until suddenly it is and you're in way over your head. I went from taking my medicine for the occasional migraine to taking it when I didn't have a migraine, to taking it every day. I would run out and be sick from withdrawals for days and then I would go right back to do it Sound familiar. Looking back now I just feel so sad for the me back then. That me just didn't know what to do, how to do it or even if she wanted to get well and honestly I don't think I did for a long time. But during those years I did get married, I had two beautiful children and thankfully I did manage to stop using during my pregnancies and I made a pretty nice life. There were times when I wasn't that bad and my world was really good. Then I found a way to get my thing fairly easily and it spiraled down and down. Today it's pretty difficult to get any kind of opiate, at least the way I was comfortable with. But back then it wasn't so hard. So I struggled with pain pills for over a decade until I finally broke free. I just didn't want to be sick and worn out anymore. At that time I was warned not to drink alcohol, but I was positive I would never have a problem with wine. I actually remember saying I hate being hungover, I will never have a problem with alcohol, and those are some famous last words. I did have a problem and it happened pretty fast. Apparently I didn't learn from the first decade of my problem. And that's the hard thing about addiction. When the disease takes over and begins to change our brains, it doesn't matter how smart, successful, happy or aware you are. It will get you if you don't stop, and it sure got me If you're in recovery or in active addiction. You know the story One glass of wine at night became two, became a bottle became two bottles, became a drink at 3 am to stop the withdrawals, which became drinks during the day to keep going and just became a total mess. It's such a horrible way to live. I did hide it pretty well. My husband knew I drank more than I should and everyone else, I think, just thought I liked wine. No one really knew how bad it was or how utterly under its control I was. I went to church every Sunday, I volunteered, I raised my family and the whole time I was blocking out and freaking out. So there went another 10 years until the father brought me to my knees and I finally surrendered. My body had honestly just started breaking down. My liver was swollen, my heart was not right. I was so scared I was going to die, but I didn't know how to stop. It's just such an overwhelming place to live. It's so scary and it's so bleak. One night, while my husband was on an extended overseas business trip, I called a Christian friend of mine in the middle of a blackout. I have no idea why I picked her or why I decided to call her that night. I honestly don't remember it. I just remember sitting on my bed with her reading the Bible, apparently, had already told her everything, and she stayed with me through the whole night and into the morning. We were sitting on my front porch later that morning when I saw another friend coming up my driveway and I was like, oh no, why is she here? This sweet friend had been in church when God told her I needed help and to come to me right then. So she left in the middle of the service and drove out to my house. Now, that's obedience, and at that point I just gave up, pretending everything was fine. God had intervened and I decided then and there just to let him take over. Those two friends made some calls and people started showing up. It was not easy, but I knew I needed that. Then they called my husband and said he needed to get on a plane and come home and bless his heart. He did, and he has been so supportive. He was then and he still is now. They called my doctor, who was also in our church and a personal friend of mine, and he helped me get through the next few days of withdrawal. People knew now that I had a problem and as hard as that was at the time, I was just glad that I was done. September 11, 2016 changed my life, my entire life. God gave it back to me and recovered me out of that hole of despair. Those first few weeks were not easy. Giving up the thing that consumes and dominates your life is hard. There's a grieving process. As weird as that sounds, I missed it and suddenly there's just so many hours in a day to fill. Like, where did all this time come from and what do I do with it? It's a process to figure out how life looks. At the beginning, those first few days, I'm not sure I went five minutes without thinking about the thing. I was convinced I'd never be happy without it. I couldn't live without it. I didn't know how to do it. I missed it, even though it had been awful to me for so long, but I kept going. My doctor told me that God had given me a second chance and I better not blow it, and I'm so thankful to say that I did not blow it. So here's what I know now. If you keep making the next right choice, things change pretty quickly All of a sudden. I wasn't thinking about the thing that often, then hardly at all. I remember a few weeks into my recovery, I was taking a bath after dinner and realized that I hadn't thought about alcohol that whole day, I was honestly shocked. It just happens. You just have to keep moving forward. And now I almost never think about it. Most days I forget completely I'm in recovery. It just never comes to mind. I tell people I'm in recovery if it's appropriate and probably sometimes when it's not, I'm not shy about it. In the beginning I didn't want anyone to know. I was ashamed, I was embarrassed. I didn't want my kids to know. I didn't want my friends to know. What would they think of me? That's just such a sad way to think, because everyone that I've told was proud of me and happy that I was better and honestly knew more than I thought they did. They didn't really know how bad it was, but I think a lot of people knew something was going on. Being in recovery is just no longer who I am. It's just like saying I have blue eyes or I have two kids. It's just a tiny part of what makes me Suzanne. I've always loved God. Even during the darkest years of my life I loved Him. I just didn't know Him. But now, free of the chains I was bound in for so long, I really do know Him. That has made such a difference in every way. I started reading the Bible intentionally for the first time in my life. I remember seeing people at church back then singing and praising. They had such love on their faces and I just thought what do they know that I don't. I loved God but I was not filled with the Holy Spirit back then and now I am. I'm just so grateful for that. I don't call myself an addict or an alcoholic. I refuse to name myself the thing that the devil tried to kill me with. I'm just not going to do it. I'm recovered and I'm in recovery and that's it. I personally do not do AA or celebrate recovery or any other formal program. I never have. I strongly believe that there are many roads to long-term recovery and you need to do what works best for you. We all have different paths and that's okay. It's not our place to tell anyone else how to recover. It's our place to support and pray and offer encouragement and I've had people tell me if you don't work the program, you're working your relapse, and I just don't believe that. I know programs work great for people and I encourage everyone to reach out and find what works for you, but for me, I just haven't needed it. I have friends who instantaneously healed from addiction. I was not. I prayed for it a lot, just said Lord, please take this away, please heal me. I know you can, but he had a different plan for me. He was always there with me, though, waiting for me to give in Whatever I desperately cried out and I did. He showed up One night when I was laying in bed and I was just hot and cold and sick and sweaty and miserable and just so ill, and I just remember I couldn't even pray. I just started saying Jesus, jesus, jesus, and I heard his voice so clearly say go back to sleep, you'll be better in the morning. And I did, and I was, and I've just never forgot that moment. It was really, really powerful for me. I'm glad I have the experience and knowledge and memories to reach out and help someone else. If I had been healed instantaneously, especially at the beginning, I think I probably would have just gone about my life and never really thought about it again. I mean, I would have thought that I was healed, but I don't think I would have ever talked about it like I do now. I've been on fire. I've been consumed by the fire for a very long time and I'm not anymore, so if you're on fire you better believe I'm coming with a bucket of water to help put you out. The years that I spent in active addiction and the years that I've had now in recovery have given me a unique place to be able to help others, and I hope I am. My life now is just so full and wonderful. God has given me the desires of my heart in so many ways, and desires that I didn't even know I wanted or really couldn't even vocalize or verbalize to anybody. Our father just longs to delight us and he loves to delight in us, and I hope that you will let him delight you. But you have to be clearheaded and sober for that to happen. I started a Facebook group called the Recovery Christian. Come join if you need support or can offer support. When I first got sober I looked around for Christians in recovery and I'm like where are my people? And honestly I couldn't find very many people. There just weren't a lot of Christians speaking out about recovery and I think being a believer that struggles with addiction is really tough. It's like a double-edged sword. One of my friends early on in recovery gave me a book that said Addiction is a Sin. That was basically the gist of it. I'm like this is just not helpful. Addiction is a disease. One of us wake up in the morning and say I'm going to go be addicted to drugs or alcohol or food or sex or gambling or whatever it is. We do not. Nobody wants to be like that. As Christians, people will tell us you just need to pray more, you just need to be a better Christian, you need to let that sin go. They just don't get it. I had a really hard time finding anybody who was faith-based, that was talking about recovery and addiction in any kind of meaningful way. So here I am. If you need help, I hope that you will check out the resources pages on my website, the recoveredchristiancom. Or, better yet, reach out to someone that you trust a pastor, a friend, your spouse. If you don't know who to reach out to, just ask the father to show you or to bring someone to you. He will. I'm always asking him for things and he never seems to mind. We just need to reach out. I know it's hard, but there are people out there who want to help and who understand. The first time I went to a conference called she Recovers and it was 500 women who were recovering from all kinds of things. It was just such an eye-opener to be surrounded by women who knew what I had gone through and knew how I felt, and I didn't have to explain it and they got it and they didn't judge me for it. And one lady was sitting there and she said I have to share something with you and she told us a secret and we're all like, oh okay. And she just looked and she goes that's it Like, we get it. We get it. I just say, please, please, please, do not suffer another day. You don't need to. There is life, your life, out there just waiting for you. Well, thank you for listening to my story. I'm glad that you're here and I'm glad that I am here. I have wanted to talk about recovery for a long time, but God always said not now. And now suddenly he said no. So here we are and my prayer is for all of us to be free to find freedom in Christ. It is there, it is waiting for you. God sees you, he has not lost sight of you, he never lost sight of me and he loves you, me and all of us, more than we could possibly know. Until next time, be well. Thank you so much for listening. I hope your bite-sized devotion today was very satisfying. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd be honored if you'd leave a review or a rating. We are new, so every little bit helps me bring the word to the world. I'd love to get to know you better at our Facebook group, the Recovered Christian. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. So thanks again for being here and I will see you next time. Music playing.