Book 5
Ups and Downs in Life Course
Now that the brightness of life has come back through detoxification and perception-brightening exercises, each person is ready to learn how to build a sober life. As they do so, the same skills that prevent relapse also enable the person in recovery to right many of the wrongs of the past.
In The Ups and Downs in Life Course, each student learns the critical factors that cause one's life to swing back and forth between happiness and misery. When this fluctuation starts, it is hard to identify the causes and even harder to stop the wreckage.
This manifestation can be seen clearly when an addicted person is determined to quit using drugs and actually gets himself or herself clean. Then something happens, the drugs are back and the destruction starts again. The factors involved in these sudden tipping points can be very hard to determine.
In many cases, the unseen factor is the influence of the anti-social personality in the addict's life. These are people who, either because of personality or the destruction caused by addiction, become a threat to anyone they meet. Their actions are never helpful, even when they try to appear to be one's best friend. The drug dealer who offers free samples, the old drug-using friend who offers the newly-sober person a line of cocaine, the parent who always has criticism for his or her children, the criminal who will hurt anyone if it helps him come out ahead, the doctor who gives anyone hundreds of pain pills -- these can all be examples of anti-social personalities.
On this course, the person in recovery learns the signs by which he can identify these people and differentiate them from helpful, caring social personalities. He also learns how to deal with people he might still be associated with from his past or that he might meet in the future. As he sheds these past associations, the harm they did can begin to heal.
As these harmful influences begin healing, the individual in recovery is now ready to look at the specific harm he created while abusing drugs and how it can be repaired using the skills in the next course in the lineup.
