Blog entry for:

okay, what i heard this morning was not exactly in line with the reading. for the record, having had situations in my life that were painful and ongoing, where no solution or end was visible, i know that a hug and a kind, empathetic word from one or more of my peers, can do a lot. i also know that keeping my feelings bottled up inside will kill me. so for me, it is a no-brainier to share when i feel overwhelmed, or caught in an intractable place.
now that the bidness at hand has been dealt with, what i head this morning was echoes of what a peer and i spoke about yesterday. they were concerned that if someone was doing the gig: meetings, steps, sponsorship, service, and could decide after twenty years clean that it was not worth it, and walk away straight back into the using world, what HOPE was there for any of us. i had finally come to the conclusion, after milling over the fact that someone with twenty years clean could make that decision, that i was not them and to judge their decision through my eyes was counter-productive. i do know that they were looking at external measures of their life to determine the worth of their recovery. i get that notion as well, and wort about it yesterday a bit. all of this is just a preface to what is really on my mind this morning, and i just thought a bit of context was needed.
i make no secrets that i started my recovery in another fellowship. ancient and venerable as it was, at thirteen months clean i started my migration away from that fellowship and have never gone back, save one, on my second clean date anniversary. i tell the men i sponsor that i do not care where they go to meetings BUT they will be working the steps, in the recovery tradition that is my home. if that is a problem for them, than they need to find another sponsor. yes, i am damnation and rigid about that point, that often my peers think that i hate the fellowship that gave me my start in recovery. hate is certainly a strong word, and i do not hate them, but for me, their brand of recovery, nearly killed me, and it was all my fault.
from the very beginning i has severe issues getting my recovery over there and having a social life over here. they spoke of experiences i did not share. the spoke of craving a single substance and that only happened once in my life, and passed within days. in fact being dope sick that one time, was what kept me way from that whole class of substances, but i digress. i did not understand the need for any one substance, but i certainly did understand the NEED to get high every day, so i almost got that notion. the fact that what and how much i used was an issue over there, was the first wedge driven between me and that brand of recovery. i slogged through that entire book and it made little to no sense to me, and it seemed that everyone over there was sitting around waiting for the promises to come true, pitching 99% of what that large piece of printed and bound literature had to say. a few of the ideas i latched on to however, would have been deadly. the first being that there were “types” of people suffering from that affliction. classes as it were, and at the bottom those of the “hopeless” variety. to give up on a whole group of people because one judges them to be hopeless, is in my opinion wrong. the other big out, that i found distasteful was the notion that there were some who ere “constitutionally incapable of being honest.” that also rang to me of a ginormous loophole, waiting for me to dive through. the final nail in that particular coffin was the lip service they paid to the whole HIGHER POWER concept. sure one could have any HIGHER POWER concept, they wanted, but at the end of the meetings one WAS going to pray to the christian notion of GOD, regardless of what your beliefs happened to be. worse yet, was when the experienced members shared about their HIGHER POWER concepts being thing as ridiculous as a “door knob” or an actor playing a part in a film, i knew that sooner or later i would need to find a quite different home, if i was to ever finish my sentence clean and get out from under the thumb of the justice system.
today, looking back at that time when i was was about to say fVck it all run, this sh!t is not paying off, i am amazed that the alternative i found was not only palatable to me, but quite comfortable. here i fit, without having to adjust my language, what and how much i used, or try and understand what the FVCK they were going on about. and because of that the DESIRE to use, has not come back and the obsession to use has been totally and seemingly irrevocably removed from me, as long as i keep on doing what i have been doing: living THIS program to the best of my ability.
quite honestly, i am grateful that fellowship was here, accepted me as one of its members and allowed me to find my direction, until was ready to really take the FIRST STEP, admit to my innermost self that i was powerless over addiction, not mind and mood altering substances. if by some fluky set of circumstances, i found myself in a meeting of that fellowship, i would identify as an alcoholic, to respect their traditions, but i would be adding that lie to my my TENTH STEP, that night, as i am not now, never have been, nor will i ever become an alcoholic, it really is as simple as that. i am now and addict in recovery, my problem is not my uncontrollable use of substances, it is addiction. life without the use of those substances gives me the opportunity to recover, and more important to me from time to time, the opportunity to be more socially acceptable than i have ever been in my life. thank you AA for giving me this start, and as i said to my previous peers at work: so long and thanks for all the fish!

∞ DT ∞