Lessons a drug addict can teach you | Lauren Windle | TEDxSurreyUniversity

[Music] so I did my first line of cocaine at the age of 20 I had always been a really big drinker and I would be in strength to the point of oblivion but for me that first line at 22 changed everything at the time I was a bit of a crossroads I had just finished University and long-term boyfriend had broken up with me and I had to decide who I was going to be without the safety net of Education and of their relationship and I just chose really badly I decided as gonna be a party girl I got a job in hospitality where drinking and drug taking run rife and when someone offered me that first line I took it because I wanted to fit in but also because I couldn't maintain that kind of lifestyle on drinking alone there's this really smart Irish biblical scholar a guy called Alec Matta and I'm gonna paraphrase something he said he basically said making the wrong decision starts when making the right decision would have been easy but we didn't think it important and that sums up my drug taking by the time I realized just how important it was that I made the right choices my ability to do so on my own self-will was gone I was lost so role on a couple of years and I'm now drinking every day I am taking drugs not just on the weekends now but during the week and the people who first introduced me to cocaine are telling me like you need to calm down one of my colleagues actually told me that every day he saw me I look more and more like a crackhead so effectively after one particularly harrowing incident where I woke up with a black eye and only patchy memories of what I'd done the night before with the help of my friends and family I found a support group for cocaine addicts and on the 22nd of April 2014 I got clean and sober so that's almost four years yeah I am pretty loose about it um I went to that group because I thought it would be funny I thought it would be entertaining I thought it would be like a really good story to tell at the pub but actually what I found were a group of people who knew how I felt before I even said anything out loud they listened to me they didn't judge me I was accepted completely broken and I found connection I found the connection that Joanne Harry talks about in his quite famous TED talk on addiction when he said that the opposite of addiction is not sobriety it's connection but that connection didn't keep me sober what kept me sober were the 12 steps of recovery and that is a simple process laid out it was originally written by dr. Bob Smith and Bill Wilson the guys who established Alcoholics Anonymous in America in the 1930s and it basically gives tools for living for people who didn't quite get how to live for people who couldn't handle strong emotions for people who couldn't handle difficult situations and turn to things like drugs and alcohol or any other kind of addictive behavior instead I'm going to talk you through what those 12 steps are and how I worked them and what they did for me so step one we admitted we were powerless over our addiction that our believes had become unmanageable even in my skewed perception of life as a drug addict I could see that my life was unmanageable at the height of my drinking enjoy taking I got floaters in front of my eyes and numbness in my thing fingers and toes nosebleeds as a 23 year old with extreme memory loss I didn't wash properly I didn't open my mail I also developed a really unattractive facial twitch that would go off at the most inconvenient moments all in all I was a complete mess on the occasional day when I many to do something for myself I would maybe have a shower and I'd like moisturize my skin and for that moment I would feel like I had everything together just to something as simple as that made me feel like everything was going to be okay I probably moisturize twice a year so steps 2 & 3 we came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him so this was so liberating for me I always felt like I was kind of the supreme ruler like my decisions dictated everything everything in my life everything the lives the people around me and to realize that actually I'm not that big that I don't have that kind of power we're so freeing it meant that I could make wrong decisions and I gave myself the grace to learn from them for me I'm a Christian so I found that high power in church but for other people it's just as simple as acknowledging that a group of people gather together for a common purpose and more powerful than one person on their own so steps four and five made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves admitted to God to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs this is hard work some people don't even get to the end of the 12 steps because they see this is too big a hurdle so I did this by writing for lists I wrote a list of everything I was afraid of every time I'd ever hurt another person in my life every sexual encounter I'd ever had and every resentment I was carrying and when I saw those things on paper I couldn't believe how angry I was I couldn't believe I was drowning under the weight of anger from situations that everyone else had forgotten about years ago some really clever guy Lewis Lewis B Smith's I think his name is said that when you forgive you set a prisoner free and realize that prisoner was yourself and that's how I felt also sharing these things out loud telling someone those shameful things that you have thought or done that you never thought you could say to another person that you use as tools for health self-hatred saying them to someone else makes you realize that it's not that bad that you're not that bad and that was such a game changer for me anyone in recovery will tell you that there is a magic to sharing honestly at that first recovery meeting that I went to on the 22nd of April 2014 I went for lunch with the women afterwards and completely unprompted someone turned to me and said do you know I'm moisturize every day now now to virtually everyone that would mean nothing but for me that was everything that was the benchmark I used to work out whether my life was going okay and I did it two days a year and she did it every single day I just saw something in her I was so desperate to fight for it was incredible it inspired me to keep going with this journey so steps six and seven we were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings so when I had this stuff written out it became apparent that there were themes that I had gone wrong I was selfish I had put drinking and drugs and numbing out life above all my friends and family I miss my best friend's dad's funeral because I was too busy getting drunk and high and when I dug even deeper it became apparent that there was a common denominator underneath all of these character defects and that was fear I was making all my decisions based on a fear of being unpopular at being unliked and being rejected fear of everything and actually when I was aware of that I was able to rein it in and I'm not saying I'm perfect I don't have this down but I can see myself doing it now I can say like Lauren you're exaggerating why aren't you telling that story as it was I can be like okay you're afraid that if you represent yourself properly here they're not going to like you you know and then I can stop and I can give people the opportunity to see who I really am so step 8 and 9 made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all made direct amends to such people wherever possible except when to do when to do so would injure them or others yeah if you feel writing those lists as hard to try going back to someone you haven't seen for 15 years from school and telling them you're sorry for something you said that is not a fun game guys but it is such a spectacular process top of my list with people like that friend who's does funeral I missed but also my friends and family you don't go through something like addiction without hurting the people who love you most when I was actively in addiction I would sometimes stay with my sister and she'd come up to my room to invite me to breakfast and often I wouldn't be there because I'd still be out drinking taking drugs partying with strangers whatever so I was then a year sober when I moved in with her and for the first few days she came up at 5 a.m. and push the door open just to check that I was still in bed because she was so afraid that I would have relapsed and gone out on a bender it's that kind of fear anxiety and pain that we have to make amends for so that's what I did some people accepted my apologies and were so overwhelmingly gracious and I just was blown away by their responses it was spectacular other people didn't reply at all and some people just weren't ready to hear from me and that's fine it is not about the reactions you get from other people it's the fact that I was cleaning my side of the street that I had the humility to make those amends meant that I was becoming the kind of person that I wanted to be so steps 10 and 11 continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted him sort through prayer and meditation to approve improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him praying only for knowledge of his will for us and for the power to carry that out so I'm out check in every day I will look at what I've done that week I will make amends promptly when I've been wrong which is a lot easier than years later and also I take time for myself I pray I meditate I reflect I've learnt to do things to love myself I moisturize every day now and I'm so pleased that I get the opportunity to do that step 12 last of the steps having had a spiritual awakening it was a result of these steps we try to carry this message to alcoholics or addicts and to practice these principles in all our affairs so the spiritual awakening they're talking about anyone who's worked through these twelve steps will tell you that there's something superhuman about it you just can't you can't explain the way it changes people's lives it is like nothing I've ever seen and with that in mind and having experienced it and had that amazing opportunity to experience it for myself a year and a half ago I set up a recovery course for people who are struggling with all kinds of addiction it's based from West London it's a 16-week program based on these 12 steps I didn't write it I just facilitate it's actually run by an amazing charity called recovery - and seeing people walk in the door coming from the same place of desperation that I remember so clearly seeing them really desperate really struggling and then seeing them transform into some of the most inspirational people I know who then walk other people through that journey is the proudest thing I've ever done it is both the hardest but most rewarding thing in my life there's no doubt in my mind that having done this program having worked through these steps I'm a better person that I would have been possibly had I never even struggled with addiction at all but you guys don't need to hit rock bottom or get a black eye or do anything crazy to start incorporating these kind of principles in your life you can admit that you're not completely in control that you're not the higher power you can take stock of where life has brought you and talk to somebody about it honestly you can identify character defects and you can work on them you can apologize when you've been wronged you can take time to pray to meditate and you can go out there and help other people and you will be happier more fulfilled people if you do that and I would so encourage you to and one final point and definitely the most important thing that I'm going to say through this whole talk if you relate to what I've just described of my journey if you think that you may be struggling with any kind of addiction whether that be booze drugs gambling sex porn compulsive skin picking shopping food I say food love codependency anything then you have to do something about it it's okay if you haven't been able to sort this out on your own I couldn't either you know and no one actually that I know in recovery was able to we're not built that way we can't deal with this stuff it's too big to do it on her own but there are people up and down the country there are charities there are anonymous groups there are support groups there are churches who want to help you and all you have to do is help yourself google them reach out to them and connect with them and they will support you in that journey these things may or may not kill you but they will stop you living and your life is too important you are too precious to accept anything other than complete freedom thank you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 328,777

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Drugs, Freedom, Rebuilding, Recovery

Id: ytVxYTavE1U

Length: 15min 50sec (950 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 28 2018