Turn Yourself In

I have a friend named Bob who is an alcoholic. He is presently in recovery and has been sober for 12 years. Bob never has a day without craving alcohol. EVER.

He looks to his AA friends to help him. One of the things he does is call them when he starts to "scheme" about having a drink. The moment he becomes aware of this brain process he calls a friend and says, "Hey Bob, I'm wanting to go and have a drink right now." He turns himself in.

When I asked him about this he told me that it is way less stressful and more productive to communicate BEFORE he goes and does the behaviour than to just go and do it and then have to deal with the aftermath later.

Most people don't do this because of the judgment of others in the world. We don't want to feel judged for something we are about to do but didn't. We fear that people will act towards us like we've already gone and done the deed. And that's painful.

I have created agreements with some of my friends about this idea. And this principle works powerfully.

The other day I found myself wanting to cheat on my taxes. It went through my mind and the thought held on and I started to see the benefits and how I could make it work.

I immediately called my friend an said "I'm caught in a thought process here about cheating on my taxes. I want to do that. I've figured it out even. Here let me tell you what I want to do..." I explained the process and the plan and then we laughed because we both knew that at that moment I had stopped the process.

My friend said (and this is part of our agreement) "Thanks for calling George. That took courage dude. Anything else or are you complete?"

I said I was complete and that was that.

There was no concern about it or fear that I was really going to do it. We have trained ourselves in this process to realize that as soon as the person is telling you about it they are getting power over it. There is no counseling or conversation needed. As soon as that idea hits the public world it is disintegrated, gone, forever distant.

Some days we will comment like, "geez that would've been a doozy!" Because we know that the thing is gone and it has no more power over us.

It's a different way to deal with your disempowering thoughts and what begins to happen is you start to dismiss the thoughts ahead of time because -its like the thoughts seem to know that the jig is up. That they will be exposed. The ego hates to be exposed -it likes to hide and build itself up. If it gets threatened then it doesn't like that it shy's away from that!

Not only is this good for people with addictions but it is good for all of us who are committed to something higher. To living a life they want and love.