DDA Members Share their Experience on DDA Step 2 of 5:
“We became willing to accept help for both of these diseases.”
“In traditional 12 Step fellowships, I often found minimal understanding of my mental health problems, and at worst, I sometimes felt like some sort of underclass of person in recovery because I had to take medications. This made taking the suggestions challenging to say the least as I sometimes felt like I wasn’t always understood.
In DDA, I found unconditional love, peace and acceptance around both my mental health and the fact that I need to take various medications as part of my daily recovery routine.
What I found from working this Step and with being a member of DDA, is that I was able to be more open-minded about the suggestions that are made to me due to the fact that the people making these suggestions were doing so from a position of understanding, kindness and a compassionate place.
I found that by becoming willing to treat both elements to my make up, I unlocked a lot of the doors that had slammed shut in my previous attempts at recovery.
Accepting help for both my mental health & addiction issues, enabled me to move forward and develop a deeper understanding of my dual diagnosis recovery and I accept now that I’m going to need help at times, but that that’s ok.
Being willing to accept help around both the addiction issues and mental health problems is something that we can start working on, even in early recovery.”