β from the isolation of addiction, i find a fellowship of people with a common bond β¦
Posted: Fri, Mar 25, 2011 09:13:12 AM
my FAITH, STRENGTH, and HOPE comes from addicts sharing their recovery...
well, this morning has already turned out to be more than interesting. i have a so-called quick project of cleaning up the work of another developer. once i looked at it i see what a fVcking lazy developer he really was, and his work sucks and is full of shortcuts that are no longer acceptable to web browsers today. since i have taken over a bunch of his websites, he will be providing me an income stream for quite a while and the fix i do this morning for free, will certainly lead to more paid work in the future.
my little piece of running technology that i sent back for their crack fix, pay us $79 to change the battery or buy a new one for $200, is languishing somewhere in Kansas waiting to be taken out of its box. i called the main vein support, so possibly someone will actually look at my watch and i might get it moving through the process. not that i am lacking any patience in this matter ;).
how does any of that have anything with me finding a source of ESH, in this rowdy fellowship that i have come home to? that my friends is a story worth telling, and as i have the morning set before me, i do believe i will go into it.
a bit of background, in case you missed it. i was not a willing participant in my recovery. due to my inability to stay clean, regardless of the consequences, i was basically sentenced to recovery with the explicit threat being, IF I COULD NOT STAY CLEAN, I WOULD GO TO PRISON. whether that was a bluff or not, i never had to find out. anyhow, everyone that wanted me to stop using, my probation officer, my addiction counselor and my psychiatrist insisted that IF i wanted to stop using i HAD to attend the fellowship of AA, anything else would doom me to a return to using. all the other choices available to me, all came from this fellowship, and only this fellowship had the long-term recovery an person like me NEEDED to get clean and stay clean. i was told that attending other fellowships was fine, BUT i NEEDED to stay in AA as they were the only ‘proven’ path to long term recovery.
being in a compliant state, off i marched, pissed off about being forced to go anywhere, much less a place where i knew from the start i was going to have issues. somewhere along the away in those first six months, recovery started to take hold in me, and i lost the desire to use. it is true that i was an addict-alcoholic. it was true, that i attended three fellowships, but of the other two, only one gave me any identification. it is also true, that after working the 12 steps and getting a year clean, i was starting to slip away from AA. i was tiring of having to round-off my square corners to fit. i never got what alcoholism was all about, much less why in the world anyone would limit their use of mind and mood altering substances to one such limited one, i mean there are much better methods and substances available, to achieve the effect of escaping reality. more and more i was dissatisfied where my recovery, such as it was, was going, and because i had attended on a regular basis, another fellowship, i was in the right place at the right time: GREELEY COLORADO, OCTOBER 1998! at that convention, i finally heard the solution to my problem. i finally heard why i was having trouble where i was. i finally heard what they had been trying to tell me for the past 13 months, that i was an an addict PERIOD, no hyphen or qualifier required. it still took another 6 months or so, before i finished moving my recovery over to my new, permanent home, as i was (and still am) shall we say, more than a bit resistant to change. my isolation ended that day in October, and finally i had the model of recovery, that has become my life. by the way, as well-intentioned as those early influences were in my life in recovery, they were flat-out wrong. their insistence that the only fellowship where long-term recovery was AA nearly killed me, and today, i share about that for that reason. those members did their best, i was the problem. i was unable to identify and reach a place of empathy with those recovering alcoholics.
toady, i get everything i need from a single fellowship. here i find others just like me, who can teach me and guide me through the maze of life in active recovery. here i have a model of a recovering addict. here i have literature written by a committee of people just like me, that speaks to me without translation. here i fit without having to alter myself, my language or my experience. all in all, here i find all that i need to have the desire to stay clean today and recover. here i find the connection i NEED to allow myself to grow and here i find the gratitude for another day clean. yes that other fellowship brought me to this one, and i am grateful for that, AND I WILL NEVER LET THAT MISINFORMATION BE SPREAD BY OTHERS, no matter how well-intentioned, there is long term recovery as well as the SOLUTION for people like me, with to alterations required, in my home.
well, this morning has already turned out to be more than interesting. i have a so-called quick project of cleaning up the work of another developer. once i looked at it i see what a fVcking lazy developer he really was, and his work sucks and is full of shortcuts that are no longer acceptable to web browsers today. since i have taken over a bunch of his websites, he will be providing me an income stream for quite a while and the fix i do this morning for free, will certainly lead to more paid work in the future.
my little piece of running technology that i sent back for their crack fix, pay us $79 to change the battery or buy a new one for $200, is languishing somewhere in Kansas waiting to be taken out of its box. i called the main vein support, so possibly someone will actually look at my watch and i might get it moving through the process. not that i am lacking any patience in this matter ;).
how does any of that have anything with me finding a source of ESH, in this rowdy fellowship that i have come home to? that my friends is a story worth telling, and as i have the morning set before me, i do believe i will go into it.
a bit of background, in case you missed it. i was not a willing participant in my recovery. due to my inability to stay clean, regardless of the consequences, i was basically sentenced to recovery with the explicit threat being, IF I COULD NOT STAY CLEAN, I WOULD GO TO PRISON. whether that was a bluff or not, i never had to find out. anyhow, everyone that wanted me to stop using, my probation officer, my addiction counselor and my psychiatrist insisted that IF i wanted to stop using i HAD to attend the fellowship of AA, anything else would doom me to a return to using. all the other choices available to me, all came from this fellowship, and only this fellowship had the long-term recovery an person like me NEEDED to get clean and stay clean. i was told that attending other fellowships was fine, BUT i NEEDED to stay in AA as they were the only ‘proven’ path to long term recovery.
being in a compliant state, off i marched, pissed off about being forced to go anywhere, much less a place where i knew from the start i was going to have issues. somewhere along the away in those first six months, recovery started to take hold in me, and i lost the desire to use. it is true that i was an addict-alcoholic. it was true, that i attended three fellowships, but of the other two, only one gave me any identification. it is also true, that after working the 12 steps and getting a year clean, i was starting to slip away from AA. i was tiring of having to round-off my square corners to fit. i never got what alcoholism was all about, much less why in the world anyone would limit their use of mind and mood altering substances to one such limited one, i mean there are much better methods and substances available, to achieve the effect of escaping reality. more and more i was dissatisfied where my recovery, such as it was, was going, and because i had attended on a regular basis, another fellowship, i was in the right place at the right time: GREELEY COLORADO, OCTOBER 1998! at that convention, i finally heard the solution to my problem. i finally heard why i was having trouble where i was. i finally heard what they had been trying to tell me for the past 13 months, that i was an an addict PERIOD, no hyphen or qualifier required. it still took another 6 months or so, before i finished moving my recovery over to my new, permanent home, as i was (and still am) shall we say, more than a bit resistant to change. my isolation ended that day in October, and finally i had the model of recovery, that has become my life. by the way, as well-intentioned as those early influences were in my life in recovery, they were flat-out wrong. their insistence that the only fellowship where long-term recovery was AA nearly killed me, and today, i share about that for that reason. those members did their best, i was the problem. i was unable to identify and reach a place of empathy with those recovering alcoholics.
toady, i get everything i need from a single fellowship. here i find others just like me, who can teach me and guide me through the maze of life in active recovery. here i have a model of a recovering addict. here i have literature written by a committee of people just like me, that speaks to me without translation. here i fit without having to alter myself, my language or my experience. all in all, here i find all that i need to have the desire to stay clean today and recover. here i find the connection i NEED to allow myself to grow and here i find the gratitude for another day clean. yes that other fellowship brought me to this one, and i am grateful for that, AND I WILL NEVER LET THAT MISINFORMATION BE SPREAD BY OTHERS, no matter how well-intentioned, there is long term recovery as well as the SOLUTION for people like me, with to alterations required, in my home.
∞ DT ∞