Blog entry for:

for me or for someone who happens to be suffering the effects of life on its own terms.
there was a day not so long ago, when i was the only one who had this clean date, and yes, today i have 15 years clean. much more on that later. where i am going is the fact that i have a sponsee and a great-grand sponsee who are also celebrating this date as their clean dates as well:

Leonard H
6 years in a row,
Amazing job my friend,
Keep Coming Back

Chris M
Three years is awesome,
thank you both for showing me
it CAN BE DONE

so quickly back to the topic at hand, the healing power of touch and being there.
as cynical, as i am and still can be, i always thought that the healing power of touch\, was one of those Boulder new-age kind of ideas that ranked right up there with wheat-grass smoothies. a good idea for some other gullible fool, but not for me, after all…
sure massage is healing touch, but until i experienced that for myself, i was skeptical that massage could do anything for me either. well as a passive participant in massage for several years now, i can tell you, that my body craves its sessions and when i get out of my two week cycle, i certainly know it. where this is leading to, is that if the act of active touch, such as massage can have physical, emotional and yes spiritual effects on me, why not just a hug.
having been on both the receiving and giving ends of that transaction i can report, that i certainly feel the emotional and spiritual healing that comes from just a sincere hug. as a consequence there is more than likely a physical effect as well, as what benefits me spiritually and emotionally, affects me physically as well. i have come around to believing in the healing power of being there and giving someone a hug.
i certainly should get cracking on cleaning up the last task before my product launch this morning, but i still have one more topic left to explore. as i said over a hundred of words ago, today is the fifteenth anniversary of the last day i used. i did not know that would be the last time i used, that evening. nor did i have a clue about the direction my life was about to take. because of those two facts, the core of my FAITH is that IT IS THE WILL OF A HIGHER POWER that i stay clean today. i have no doubt about that today, and living in that manner frees me from all sorts of nasty, pointy stuff that the life, such as it was, had in store for me on a daily basis. for me, back in the day, recovery was going to be my “get out of jail free” card, and although it did end up that way on a physical plane, on an emotional and spiritual plane, i have been freed from the prison, i created through a quarter century of active addiction.
i used for the first time somewhere early in my fifteenth year of life and soon enough, if i continue to live by the core of my FAITH, i will be clean longer than the time between my birth and the first time i used. yes i know i was a late bloomer, and this date could have come much sooner, had i caved into the my desire to use, before i did. what kept me from using that first time, for so long? FEAR, i believed all the propaganda of the seventies, that if i did the littlest, tiniest bit of any drug that i would end-up with a needle in my arm, and that did come to pass, not because of some magical gateway, but because i was an addict already, just waiting for that first feeling of bliss that i achieved all those years ago. well FEAR, while a component of my life as well as my companion in recovery is not what keeps me clean today. i no longer work a FEAR based program, although i certainly do have a healthy respect of the prospect of relapse. i stay clean today, because i like what living a program brings me, and today i celebrate the life that is and do not regret leaving the life that was me. after all, i know how to get all of that old stuff back and i choose not to today.
so time to get a bit of work done, before the rest of the world gets to involved in the commerce of this day. it is a good day to be clean.

∞ DT ∞