Book Review by James Diaz: The Secret of Recovery by Jeff Finlin

         Many of us have experienced in early recovery that 'pink cloud' of euphoria. Our addictions kept us in isolation and despair, and the mere fact of being with other's on similar paths of reclamation after so long in the wilderness gives us the feeling of a homecoming. Simple things can feel like great joys; putting out chairs, making the coffee, doing the readings, greeting the newcomer at the door, chairing a meeting, having responsibilities, like, being trusted with the keys to the church door. We're just really fucking grateful, many of us, for things that most people would take for granted or see as mundane. Well, when that wears of, and it does, we're usually in trouble. Eventually even attending meetings can feel like chores. People we used to be in awe of begin to annoy us, they overshare, hog up the meeting, prey on newcomers while talkin' like guru's etc. We can get disillusioned real quick. And anyone who has ever attended a business meeting has probably thought, "what the hell ever happened to principles before personalities?!"

          My problem was always the God bit. Spirituality. I was abused with religion growing up, so the spirituality aspect of the program was always something I struggled with. I would walk out of a meeting the moment anybody even mentioned God. My first sponsor drove me deep into the middle of Kentucky for a pig roast in the middle of the woods one night, to meet a guy who he thought could help me with my God stuff. We were far deeper South than I felt comfortable going, in a county where people didn't have dogs as pets, they had wolfhounds, and you could hear their half domesticated howling filling up the night air. Fitting, as that was sort of how my soul felt right about then. I wanted to stay clean but I was so disillusioned by the simplistic approaches to spirituality in the rooms.  To buzzwords and catch phrases.

         The man I talked with that night was a guy who had been brought to his first meeting at gunpoint while in the army, after waking up in a straight jacket with half the bones in his body broken. His MP literally took him with a barrel to his back to his first meeting. If I were going to listen to anyone talk to me about spirituality it was this guy. I always respected people who had it rougher than the rest and still managed to pull of a program that wasn't boiled down to simple clichés. He taught me what he called a cracker jack box prayer (I still don't know why he called it that) but it went something like this; "whatever you did today to keep me clean, maybe you can do that again for me  tomorrow. Thanks." "Leave out the God part", he advised. "Just mumble the goddamn thing if you have to, like you're talkin' to yourself." The point was to acknowledge that I was by no means capable of going it alone. Whether it was God or good orderly direction I was getting hung up on, I had to admit I was pretty bad at living life on life's terms. I lacked humility. Most of us do. And so a simple thing like talkin' to yourself in the form of a blank check prayer can be just enough to keep you out of a spiritual ditch. 

            Like Finlin says of humility; 

         "Humility is always the result of something. It is a result of truly seeing our place in the grand scheme of things. We can't practice humility. I cannot try to be humble. As soon as we try to be humble, we are no longer humble. When we humbly ask to have our defects of character to be removed, it's because we realize we don't have the power to do it ourselves. We have been humbled. So, practicing humility is kind of laughable. We can take who we are into the world, but that's about it."

        What I wouldn't have given to have had a book like Jeff Finlin's "The Secret of Recovery" back then. Jeff verbalizes what many of us feel at some point in the rooms. And there are no good road maps for where to go when we get lost. Jeff's advice, in part, is to understand that the self is the splinter in the skin. "Selfless service is not about carrying some kind of cross down the street", he writes. "It's about breaking down the barriers of our conditioned responses... We do what is needed without worrying about our own fulfillment-without worrying about what we like or dislike. Doing something that does not mean anything to you with total involvement is what breaks down the karmic structure. We get out of our own self, and by doing so, the internal structures start breaking down, and our energy is able to start flowing in a different way." 

       While the Big Book and the Basic Text and 12 and 12 are all good guides in our recovery, sometimes, for some of us, we need something more. It helps when that something more comes from someone who has experienced the same frustrations and roadblocks we have. "Our method of recovery is not really something we choose," Jeff writes in the opening of the book. "In the long run, it's something that chooses us." "So many people are running around in recovery circles these days, trying to define what path of recovery is right for "them." They think they have a choice in the matter. What is the right recovery for "ME?" Well, what we think of as "ME" is generally the problem."

         The bottom is an awakening, Jeff says. The bottom of self, an emptying out. Most of us filter the world through paradigms of "ME ME Me." We can't seem to get out of our own way. But everything is connected to everything else. I'm a piece of a much larger puzzle. But often we feel like pieces of shit at the center of the universe.

        As Alice Wetturland says; ‘The piece of shit at the center of the universe’ describe the feeling of self-loathing and depression that becomes so all-consuming that you actually begin to inflate your own importance. This misperception is a sickness, and the cure is to invest in others. Not to prove to yourself that you are good because you can do things for people, but because shifting focus to something outside yourself teaches you that you’re not the only one around with a story to tell. You’re not the only piece-of-shit creature who needs things, who longs for love and comfort and satisfaction.'

          Similarly, Jeff Advises, we need to learn how to get out of our own way. Much of that is about surrender-kenosis; self-emptying. And perhaps surrender too is something that chooses us. Hit enough walls and something happens, if we survive the crash. "Grace is always a factor," Finlin says. "Philosophy doesn't create an experience. The experience created the philosophy. What is your experience up until this point? Ask yourself."

       Throughout 'The Secret of Recovery, Jeff balances his own relatable experience with what he calls the reluctant yogi. Sannyasin meditation meets step work and service, along with a profound understanding of our interrelational selves. Like D.W. Winnicott, Jeff describes those things that should happen but don't, and those things that shouldn't happen but do, in our early lives, that warp our growing points into growing pains. For anyone who has ever struggled with "their" recovery, the point here is to subtract what you call you and yours and dip into the larger stream you're already a part of. You're not the stone, you're the water. Or rather, you are stone and water and air and mud. Everything is in everything. It won't always feel like it. That's okay. How else would we ever know it wasn't all about us if we didn't entertain the thought that it was from time to time. That's the human experience. The point is not to stay there too long. The Secret of Recovery is not just a good road map, it's a good road, one that we don't walk alone. Once we realize, or something out there realizes for us, that we are not the center of anything, we begin to become part of something that carries us, we know not how or where, over the mountain and towards the light. 

          "Our accumulated experience up to this point is useful for survival. That's about it." "There is nothing to hang onto here," Jeff writes. The world is impermanence, forever changing. So, the questions begs; are we not also? Forever changing?




The Secret of Recovery is available for purchase via Amazon. Visit jefffinlin.com for more.

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