Blog entry for:

some type of crisis during my recovery, including the death of a loved one. this is a when sort of thing, not an if, unless of course, i get stung by a thousand africanized honey bees as i sit here and type this little ditty.
no swarms of killer bees are here in my office, so i guess i can go on with what i was going to say. amazing, but true, death was one of the best reasons for me to get totally FUBAR, back in the day. the best part? it was acceptable behavior and i got quite the free pass. so when this shows up on reservation lists from my sponsees, i get it, even though those reservations have been removed by experience. i have been through the death of a loved one, in fact i was there every single day as he drifted away. so i know, that for me, as painful as it survive someone else,. i will be able to stay clean, because although the pain never goes away, it does fade with time. that pain, persistent as it is, does not kill me, nor does it incapacitate me anymore. from what feels like a different life, when i medicated that pain away, i still ended-up facing later, and in those later times, it had become toxic to my spiritual and emotional self. so death is nothing i will use over today.
i understand why there needs to be a reading about death in the annual cycle, i also understand that this issue is one of those that never goes away. when i hear members share that they do not know if they can stay clean if their child, or spouse, or parent dies, i need to remember, that was once my belief as well. it was not until i had some time and actually faced death in recovery, that i discovered that i did not have to use.
there are other crises in life, that feel far more threatening to me than the death of someone else. what if i had to face a terminal disease? what if i had to live trapped in my mind, unable to move or speak? what if i won hundreds of millions of dollars? could i stay clean? could i resist the temptation to try and change the way i feel, or would i allow the part of me that i call addiction to take control? all of those possibilities, as improbable as they may seem. brings me back to the basic question, do i want to stay clean today, no matter what? the truth is, until i face these sorts of events, i have to stick with my pat answer, yes today is a good day to be clean and i will do whatever it takes to stay clean today.
part of that is to take care of my physical self as well, so it is off to the races to burn off some of the fat, sitting on my a$$ seems to keep depositing on my gut. and yes, it is a good day to be clean.

∞ DT ∞