David’s Talk #4 Addiction Truth and Lies
David's TalkA series of talks on addiction, treatment and recovery
Talk #4 Truth and Lies
David Pavlus is the founder and former Executive Director of Last Door Recovery Society, with over 35 years of addiction treatment experience. David recently celebrated 36 years in recovery, these are his legacy talks, a series on addiction treatment and recovery.
Adding Integrity to your life to overcome addiction
One of the most difficult things people have to deal with when there is an addiction in the family is all the lies that go along with addiction. One of the rhythms that happen in addiction is lies to cover up what’s happening, “what we’re doing, what we’re going to do, what we’re thinking about.” So eventually people get to the point where there’s no honest communication anymore.
One of the first reliefs families get in recovery is when their loved ones gets better after a few nights’ sleep, a few meals, and the damage starts to stop as people who used to live in addiction start living just for today. People start to learn how to be honest in recovery, people start to say things like “I just went the whole day and never lied once”. They start to add words like honesty, integrity, morals and values not just to their vocabulary but actually start to live with these principles in their daily lives. It is a pivotal moment, a moment of change, a moment of integrity, a moment to where people start breaking that chain of addiction.
Putting the past on hold
Everything is so connected in our life, the lies can start dragging people back into addiction. Its suggested to sometimes the best people can do is stay out of the past. Just leave it alone for a little while. Believe that people will get well, spend some days practising recovery and stopping the lying and stopping and stealing.
Doing a journal
In recovery people start the steps and read addiction recovery literature, go to 12 step meetings, and people start to share their experiences. The goal is at night, to write how the day went, and realize they are getting better, that’s the point of a Journal.
Telling stories
In addiction, people tell stories. People make them bigger. People make them smaller. People in addiction want to create an identity that goes along with their using. In early recovery, people do the same thing, it’s mostly about ego, covering insecurities.
Recovery from addiction
As soon as people stop with lies, stories, illusions, and that false identity that they developed to protect themselves, or to keep their addiction going, people’s addiction starts to die. It doesn’t have that hold onto them anymore. People start thinking things like, “I don’t want to go back to that way of life”.
People get excited about life again. That is on of the spiritual awakenings in recovery.
About these Videos
David P celebrated 36 years clean this year, is the founder of Last Door Recovery Society, an addiction treatment centre for youth, adults and families. Thousands have healed from the harms of addiction over 3 decades.
- David’s Talks are produced by Last Door Production, stay tuned for more in these series of talks.
- Produced by – Last Door Productions
- Editing Matthew Kalenuik
- Camera and Lighting Mike Morrison and Nitin Rathod
- Producer Giuseppe Ganci
