Blog entry for:

the miracle of the life that is mine today. yes as ironical as that statement may seem, it is quite true as well. it seems that for me anyhow, the longer i stay clean, the more i grow, the “better” i get, the fuller my life becomes. so here is where i stray from the beaten path. part of the problem, for me and it appears many of my peers, is that once i get the life i have been working for, recovery activities slide to practically nil.in fact, i chose not to go to a meeting last night, because something more important came up. not that i am in any danger of relapsing because i miss a meeting, but it it becomes part of a pattern, then all best are off.
i often wonder what it was that kept me in the rooms, when the sword of the 20th Judicial District was removed from my life and why some of my peers and i, get that it may be BECAUSE we do what we did way back when that keeps us clean today, and others, well… more than once i hear the refrain of living this new way of life and there is no time for the activities that this way of life is based upon.
in my experience, i have friends and peers, who have boatloads of clean-time, and some who seem to be good for nine or ten months and then BOOM, out they go again. when i look at the what they implement in their daily lives, it sometimes still does not make any sense to me. the rule seems to be a close connection to other members and consistent meeting attendance in a meeting where everyone already knows your name. those who drift in and out of meetings, seem to be the ones who eventually return to the comfort of a being purple-hazed. they provide me an object lesson that is invaluable, and it is perhaps their example that allowed me to free myself when the yoke of major legal consequences was lifted from my shoulders.
i often wonder how a godless heathen such as myself, can manage to have a strong program and stay clean and those who have a deep and abiding FAITH in an organized religion cannot. once again, what is it that makes me so different from them? it is when i dwell on the differences between myself and those who seem to be caught in the revolving door, is when i get in trouble. all of a sudden i am better than they are, and perhaps i ham smarter, wiser and certainly more dedicated that them as well. when i start to ascend to that plane of illusory superiority, then the difference between myself and all of my peers, get magnified, and i lose any sense of belonging that i may have had.
just to be clear, i do understand that the power i have to stay clean today is not inherent in me, even after a few days clean. the power to stay clean comes from the POWER that fuels my recovery. i do understand that i not only DESIRE, i actually REQUIRE the help of my peers to get whatever it is that i NEED to stay clean today. my recovery cannot exists in the vacuum of self-sufficiency that comes from having a full life outside of my recovery sphere. oh i can pretend i am of a superior sort, that can slide by on just the dribs and drabs of a half-assed program of recovery. nor can i afford to get all superior and judgemental about those who seem to get by on the minimum amount of recovery program. either was spells disaster for this addict, and if i were to be totally truthful, i have a recovery routine, that for me, is just the bare minimum i need to thrive in my life. oi could peel some of it off and survive, but i no longer want to be a survivor, i DESIRE to be so much more and understand that that what i put into my program, regardless of how full my life is, is what i get out of it. it has come to the time of day, to wrap this up and head on down to one of those parts of my full life, full-time employment at a job i actually enjoy doing.

∞ DT ∞