Today, I want to share with you a little bit of wisdom about something really important when it comes to recovering from addiction. Whether you’re an individual struggling with alcohol addiction, drug addiction, food, sex, or gambling addiction, whatever it is– all of us are recovering from something. 

But, there is something that makes recovery amplified.

That is by being in a community.

You’ve probably heard the term no one recovers alone. It’s really true. 

Something that I’ve noticed when seeking a community: the seeking isn’t always the first thing that gets us in a community. It’s usually the pain of our addiction, or the pain of someone we love struggling, that gets us to seek a community, but it’s always the community that keeps us there. 

Think about that for a minute. 

I didn’t go to my first meeting looking for peers or looking to be supported by those around me; I wasn’t even thinking about being supported. 

I was miserable. 

I was a mess. 

Very self absorbed because I was in pain. 

And what helped me was being in the community. Once I was there, I realized the people around me, the people who were circling me were filling me up, because I couldn’t fill myself up. 

The same thing happens with families– families don’t come to Tipping Point™ Recovery and say, “I really need community, I really need to be around others.”

I mean, some identify that that will be helpful… but it’s not the thing that gets people here. 

The thing that gets us here is pain. Someone else’s struggle is our pain, and we can’t sleep, or we’ve just had enough. That’s what gets us to a recovery program. What keeps us there is community. 

Every addiction journey is different. Every recovery journey is different.

The one thing that really stays the same is we don’t do this alone.

And so I say that to you to let you know, something really exciting is coming back that we have put on hold for about six months or more. 

Our Double Circle Meeting

What I learned when I went into the halls of any recovery meeting and listened to what was being taught, those lessons, tools, skills, methods, modalities –whatever you want to call it– it wasn’t mainstream knowledge, it wasn’t being taught out there in the “real world”. 

I used to sit in meetings and wonder, why don’t people know about this? 

So, that’s when and why I created a Double Circle Meeting.

Because I wanted people to know about it. People need to know about this. 

Who is it for?

everyone.

I want you, if you’re a family member, to know what the alcoholic is saying, through their recovery through their addiction. 

I want you to hear the tipping point of someone’s “pre covery” as William White refers to it as what’s happening before someone puts the substances down. And what happens once they put the substance down. 

And for those of us in recovery from addiction, I want us to hear the family. It’s a totally different, but yet so similar journey.

Families need to put us last.
Families need to put down their worries.
Families need to put down their beliefs of control.

And then…

Families need to find themselves again, because so many family members have gotten lost. 

What exactly is a Double Circle Meeting?

Double Circle Meeting is what happens when AA and Al Anon has a baby. It’s a wide open meeting for anyone with any addiction. You don’t even have to identify what your thing is, what your pain is, or your struggle. 

It’s a topic discussion meeting. It’s one hour, and I’ll tell you the best words that I can use to describe it (which are my words from being in this meeting for a couple of years, but also others from attending): 

It’s magical. It’s beautiful. It’s soothing. It’s educational. It’s eye opening. 

When you sit in a meeting and you hear others talk about a topic, something happens inside you. You take a journey of your own. You remember things. You go back into the past. 

Your perception/interpretation of one thing at the end of the meeting is not what it was at the beginning of the meeting.

It’s expansive. It’s connected.

Most of us don’t run to meetings for connections,

but that is the opposite of addiction → connection. 

Almost all of the families stay in our community because they find the community is the number one reason that they’re getting better. 

Double Circle Meeting is starting back up the first Thursday in August of 2022. It will be held every Thursday. You just need to register once. Every week, we’ll send you a reminder with a zoom link.

It’s effortless to come. It’s worth so, so much to heal with others in the community. 

If you’re an alcoholic and you listen to families recovering, it is super self-healing, even if your family’s not there.

If you’re a family member of a loved one who is struggling and you listen to others recover, your education, your knowledge of what is really going on with addiction will rise; it will grow which will allow you to better connect with your loved one! 

Double Circle Meeting is super special to us here at Tipping Point Recovery and is a great place to start. Don’t recover alone. Come let us be with you and feel the beauty of recovery in a community. 

Hope to see you there.

With love,
Kate