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An Excerpt from Kickass Recovery:
From Your First Year Clean to the Life of Your Dreams,
by Billy Manas

The idea of projecting a positive vibe is not just a goody-goody way of going through life. I’m not trying to alarm you, but I have seen firsthand how a lack of gratitude led to someone losing their life. This was a man I knew and cared for very deeply. I showed up one night at one of my favorite meetings, and he was chosen to share his story with the group (what 12 steppers refer to as qualify) because he had just gotten his ninety-day key tag. During the qualification, he explained how, a few months before, he had stopped doing service, stopped attending meetings, stopped calling his sponsor, and, finally, after ten years of sobriety, relapsed.

Think about the progression that led to the relapse. A definite lack of gratitude existed there. The only time a person will stop doing all the crucial steps to keep themselves safe is when they stop appreciating how important and lifesaving the steps are. They are no longer grateful for the freedom those things have given them.

I could hear it in his voice when we went out for coffee after the meeting. He was saying everything he thought I wanted to hear, but there was an emptiness inside him that I could feel viscerally. He was being swallowed up by a bad set of circumstances and allowing those circumstances to control his life. Something in my gut was telling me it wasn’t going to end well for him.

This kind of thing happens all the time. Someone suffers a romantic breakup, and the reality of their partner moving on to someone else makes the idea of getting high really tempting. The pain is so great that a person might begin to tell themselves they don’t care if they die. Unfortunately, with the drugs we have going around these days, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It was really sad when I had to come to terms with the fact that this friend, whom I was sitting face-to-face with months earlier, finally overdosed and died. It was the same story you read about every day: a hot bag laced with fentanyl. The cliché “Grateful addicts don’t use” used to just go through me as a weightless platitude I heard from time to time in meetings. Now it strikes me in a much different way. Now I think of my friend who lost touch with gratitude and is no longer with us as a result.

Gratitude in Advance
In addition to gratitude helping to keep us existing in a high-frequency state, receiving all the good life has to offer and assisting in the process of avoiding jails, institutions, and death, it can also help us achieve our wildest dreams. When I was deep in the process of breaking on through to the other side — that is to say, trying to get an agent and a book deal — I was working with a life coach and learning how to set intentions and manifest those intentions by practicing what I call “gratitude in advance.”

It all began innocently enough. First, I realized in the dead of winter when gigs were not very plentiful that I needed to try to raise an extra $200 a week for the next month. So I set an intention. If you’ve never done this, it requires many of the steps we have spoken about thus far. We make a decision to do something, we take a definite action, and we have faith that it will come to pass.

Part of the last step — the faith process — included my being thankful for, in this particular case, the extra $200 per week that I manifested. Yes, you heard me right. I was grateful for something before I received it. Hence the expression gratitude in advance. I am telling you this story because, of course, I did wind up manifesting that $200 per week for that entire month. And then I used gratitude in advance to manifest a fancy New York City literary agent. And then, finally, a book deal.

You can do the same thing. If there’s something you want to set an intention for, the steps are fairly simple: decide that you are going to get the thing, take an action toward its attainment, and begin to burst at the seams with gratitude in the all-knowing certainty that it is on its way to you. Before you know it, it will arrive.

Billy Manas, author of Kickass Recovery, is a regularly featured columnist for Elephant Journal, a contributor to Good Men Project and The Fix, a published poet, a working musician, a full-time truck driver and a dad to three daughters. His journey from Adderall-chewing, methadone-swilling, pot-smoking maniac to speaker/author with over nine years of sustained recovery is, as is so often the case, fraught with excitement and a few valuable anecdotes. These anecdotes have found their way into his many talks at jails, detoxes, rehabs, and his new “Kickass Recovery” workshop. www.BillyManas.com

Excerpted from the book Kickass Recovery. Copyright © 2020 by Billy Manas. Printed with permission from New World Library.

Recently I jumped to a conclusion concerning a friend that I had just asked out on a date. After she said that she'd call me back, I assumed that since she was my friend, she would, but she didn't. Later that night I couldn't sleep so I went for a walk to tire myself out, and I found her car parked in front of a guy's house. (I know who this guy is.) After that I blew up because I assumed the worst possible things and I didn't care. I understand that I made a mess of things by blowing up at her, but I felt that I was justified. Now I just want to repair what has happened, and no matter what I try to do (meditation exercises, distraction, distancing myself) I can't get what I did or her out of my mind. Am I wrong to feel this way? I want to have her friendship in one form or another, but how can I fix something that was completely my fault when she won't give me a second chance?

- Jamie

Dreamchaser:

Jamie, I hate to be the bearer of "bad" news, but people do NOT have to give us second chances. I'm sure everyone has begged someone else for a second chance and received the blow off at some point.

The reason for this is FREE WILL. We are each given FREE WILL when born into human form. As a result, there will be times that we really think we know what is best for ourselves or someone else, but people will not listen to us.

This is not the first time you blew up around her. This is not the first time that she's felt your wrath (in one form or another). She does not want to deal with that and she does not have to. Her free will allows her to make that choice. Now as her friend, you have to respect that decision and leave her alone. If she wants to contact you, she knows how to go about doing so.

You cannot force someone to love you. You also cannot force someone to forgive you. She chose not to take it past friendship. I know you think that she would be good for you, especially at your current stage in life, but she has the right to choose what she wants in her life, and no matter what you feel, you have to respect her right to choose.

As much as you are going to hate hearing this, you have to trust that some higher power has a better understanding of what you need in your life. I know this is an old cliche, but it REALLY does stand true:

When one door closes, another one opens.

You need to take some time to work through the issues that her "rejection" of a date (but NOT of your friendship) sparked, along with your discovery of her car at someone else's house and everything else that transpired. You are striking into some very deep and painful scars. These scars go way back to previous lifetimes, but in this life, go back as far as your early childhood. You are dealing with issues of abandonment, betrayal, and a fear of being unloved. All of those lead to feelings of inadequacy. If you deal with them now, you will come out of this stronger, with better understanding of yourself and why you react to women the way you do.

You are a wonderful person and will have the love you are looking for. You will look back on this particular woman and swipe your forehead and say, "Whew. I'm glad that did not work out. I am SO much happier now than I think I could have been with her." I know you cannot see that now because you are too close to be objective, but the day WILL come.

I wish you a swift "education."

*****

Astrea:

Yes, this is a big mess, and you're right, you have only yourself to blame.

I hope someday the girl sees that you're not dangerous and that she CAN be your friend again. It will take you a long time to get her to trust you, and a lot of hard work on your part. If you really want to make up with this girl, be ready to work at it, and be ready to be PATIENT, too!

The night this happened, you asked her on a date and she said she would call you back - but she didn't. That would indicate that she didn't want to go out on a date with you, and for the time being, you should have left things the way they were. By following her around and losing your temper, you have ruined any chance with her for a long time. She's seen you out of control, and she REALLY doesn't want to go out with you now.

The first step in repairing your friendship, if you can, is for you to realize that what you did was WRONG; there was no good reason for you to lose your temper because she was visiting someone else's house. YOU COULD have been angry with her for not calling you back, but you overreacted and took things over the top.

You had absolutely NO BUSINESS walking by "this guy's" house that you "know about." If you were really walking to "tire yourself out," you would head in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION, where you wouldn't be tempted to check up on where she was. This was something that might be considered STALKING in some places. You're lucky that you weren't arrested!

Then you lost your temper because you "assumed the worst." Whatever she was doing with him wasn't any of your business. You think it's okay because you felt "justified" at the time? I can't figure out why you would think that you had any say about that girl's whereabouts, who she sees or what she's doing, since she is just a friend and you weren't even dating.

I know you have apologized to her over and over (that is, if she'll speak to you at all.) Now you have to LEAVE HER ALONE until she is ready to talk to you again.

It's very important that you try to PUT YOURSELF IN HER PLACE and understand what she is feeling now. Trying to apologize more will only make her more afraid of you. You can't MAKE her forgive you any more than you could MAKE her date you before this happened.

I'm sure if this girl is really your friend, she'll forgive you after some time has passed. What I hope you LEARN from this experience is that you shouldn't be trying to control someone else's actions.

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.