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as Groucho Marx once quipped: **i do not want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member,** and this was certainly the case for me.
of course i have said it the past, but just a quick refresher. my first meeting was in February, my clean date is September, and i was not a member until i came back from a New York city vacation about eighteen months later. it was for precisely that reason, that i did NOT want to be a member. what i wanted was freedom from my criminal punishment, and what i got was freedom from active addiction and this new way of life. yes this was not the first where i did not get what i wanted, but what i got was far more valuable than i ever imagined.
what was up? for one, i did not believe, at least at first, that those people, the members i met in the rooms, were like me, in any way shape or form. i was fVcking different and went to two fellowships to prove just that. after thirteen months, i had decided i was way to different for the fellowship i started in, after all, i really did not have just a problem with alcohol. sure i drank and drank hard, but it never called to me, in those moments of crisis or when i felt lonely, tired, hungry or angry. it was nice substitute that could tide me over until i got what i really wanted, but that substance never had me by my spiritual balls, it just was there, my substance of last resort. not accepting myself for membership in that fellowship., i was left with only the one, that is my home today. before anyone gets the wrong idea, those folks were as kind, loving and caring as the members in the other fellowship and they certainly put up with crap for quite some time. i do not regret my journey through their rooms, as it has made me who i am, but i have not been back since the completion of my second year clean.
regardless of where i knew i did not belong, i was ready to go alone, and just noodled around with getting the other fellowship up and running in my community. sponsorship and actually working the steps? well that was not going to happen, after all, i had over a year clean, had worked the TWELVE STEPS, so i was good to go, or at least that is was i thought. New York, New York, showed me how powerless i was over my addiction and was the start of my recovery journey as a member of this fellowship. there was no light switch, no fireworks or trumpets blaring anthems of exclamation, just a growing certainty that i was fVcked if i did not find a way to accommodate my hard-headed self with the fellowship that i was currently a part of, in those days.finally and grudgingly i became a member in word, deed and in my heart. i finally saw that it was not the cars, the families, the careers or the money i wanted, it was that certain bit of calm in the storm of reality, that many of the members with time, showed me. it was the way walked and were accepting of themselves and it was the bickering, the gossip, the plethora of human behaviors, that finally convinced me i was where i needed to be, the land of human-faced recovery.
i am grateful, that today, i do need to be in the land of spiritual giants, because i am not one. i am grateful today, that i am in the company of addicts, who just like me, struggled to find a place in the rooms, and have yet to have this gig figured out. i am glad today, that no matter what, IF i allow the POWER that fuels my recovery, to be a part of my life, i can and will not use, and <GASP> even be a better person that i woke up as.
only with membership, do i get the rewards, and those rewards, just like the hits, keep coming!

∞ DT ∞