Blog entry for:

all that is worth having can be kept only by giving it away. so it is 1PM not 5 or 6 and i am writing this. been to my home group, shared, did the work i needed to do, and now am starting to wind my day down into reading a book, that just does not grab me. all of that has brought me to this place as i eat some lunch and wonder, what it is that has value in my life. the literature specifically says if it is not practical, it is not spiritual. there are no qualifications, caveats or fluff around that statement, so when a reading goes on and on about the spiritual gifts i have received, i have to ask myself, really? seriously?
i am eating a meal i purchased with the money i earned, sitting in front of a computer in a house that i also pay for with the fruits of my labor and will soon be paying my monthly mortgage without wincing or blinking once. and yet, all that material stuff seems a bit hollow this afternoon. do i truly appreciate the gift of recovery and the implications, practical and spiritual, it has in my life today? the answer is maybe.
i am not crazy, as i have some real examples of craziness demonstrated quite vividly in the past forty-eight hours. i am not sad, and i am certainly better off, than when i walked into the rooms. i have a career, a relationship, friends and peers, and a certain easiness about life, that eluded me for so long, back in the day. so what do i have today, that i am unwilling to give away, to flip the main point of this little exercise on its head, as it were? practically, well the material stuff, i may be willing to give away, if and only if, it was necessary to keep my recovery intact. that feeling of ease, the knowledge of who i am and how i fit in the world around me, and the certainty that i will be cared for, are all things i freely give away, and that act seems to keep them as part of my life. it is true, i do not know what it is like to walk back into the rooms of recovery, after a relapse. it is also true, that the fact i have not found it necessary to go out and test the waters so to speak, is because of what i have and what i want to keep, materially and spiritually. i do not think about using, all that much. i do not have the desire to use, and have not obsessed about using since that dark day just before the last time i used. in fact, when my peers, some that have some clean time, tell me that the desire comes and goes, as well as the obsession, i am puzzled, and instantly i begin to think that maybe i am different after all. what it ends up being, even in the short run, is that i have something that stems from the removal of my greatest desire, to get high, that i am not willing to lose. hence i do the stuff i was taught to do, even when it feels like i am just going through the motions, because i KNOW, that if i do not, i will be as crazy as my friend coming in from active addiction. that is a consequence i am unwilling to face, so for m,e, it is a good day to be clean, just for today.

∞ DT ∞