โ getting clean is comparatively easy because i only have to do it once. โ
Posted: Tue, Oct 2, 2007 09:14:40 AM
staying clean is more difficult, requiring attention every day of my life.
well that is a how many angels can dance on the head of a pin kind of comparison, if my experience was any indicator, getting clean was one of the most difficult things i ever did. but wait, was it really. my problem was staying clean more than thirty days in a row, before i surrendered to the program and accepted the life of recovery. so in the sense that getting clean is an event -- it just happens, and staying clean is a process -- it has a beginning and possibly an end, i guess getting clean would be the easier of the two choices.
these days i happen to be a bit of an inquiring frame of mind, since i have been working far to hard on a single project letting the others lapse for neglect, but that is another topic for another day. so at this point in my life, staying clean is a relatively easy task. i have a bit of inertia built up, i have developed a daily routine that feeds into that inertia, and i accept that i like where i am, and the only way i got here was to do whatever it takes not to use yesterday, and once again today. i have serious doubts that i would be able to get clean again, and those doubts fed my fear of relapse, right up until the past year. in the tenth year of my all too brief recovery, i had a shift in my perspective from a program based on the fear of relapse, to a program based on the FAITH that i can and do deserve to recover. that switch is far from complete, and i understand that any shift of paradigm is in and of itself yet another process.
so the reading this morning speaks to that shift, relapse is always an option but allowing that FEAR to dictate my actions and reactions is no longer a healthy manner for this addict to live. i can live a life based on the FAITH that if i continue to do what i need to do to feed my recovery process, i will be able to choose yet another day of staying clean. fear of relapse is not irrational, it just is no longer the driving force behind my recovery, and that bit of growth is a good one!
well that is a how many angels can dance on the head of a pin kind of comparison, if my experience was any indicator, getting clean was one of the most difficult things i ever did. but wait, was it really. my problem was staying clean more than thirty days in a row, before i surrendered to the program and accepted the life of recovery. so in the sense that getting clean is an event -- it just happens, and staying clean is a process -- it has a beginning and possibly an end, i guess getting clean would be the easier of the two choices.
these days i happen to be a bit of an inquiring frame of mind, since i have been working far to hard on a single project letting the others lapse for neglect, but that is another topic for another day. so at this point in my life, staying clean is a relatively easy task. i have a bit of inertia built up, i have developed a daily routine that feeds into that inertia, and i accept that i like where i am, and the only way i got here was to do whatever it takes not to use yesterday, and once again today. i have serious doubts that i would be able to get clean again, and those doubts fed my fear of relapse, right up until the past year. in the tenth year of my all too brief recovery, i had a shift in my perspective from a program based on the fear of relapse, to a program based on the FAITH that i can and do deserve to recover. that switch is far from complete, and i understand that any shift of paradigm is in and of itself yet another process.
so the reading this morning speaks to that shift, relapse is always an option but allowing that FEAR to dictate my actions and reactions is no longer a healthy manner for this addict to live. i can live a life based on the FAITH that if i continue to do what i need to do to feed my recovery process, i will be able to choose yet another day of staying clean. fear of relapse is not irrational, it just is no longer the driving force behind my recovery, and that bit of growth is a good one!
∞ DT ∞