Blog entry for:

lightness of complacency. i will admit it, practicing a diligent program of active recovery takes time and effort. a lot of time and sometimes what feels like a herculean effort, BUT, for me, it means that i have developed a bit of grace, and slack a bit every now and again. what gets me is that my peers with 21 days, 30 days, 560 days clean, get their lives back and BOOM, disappear because they are enjoying the “gifts of recovery.” the next time i see them, they come back with their tails between their legs, new charges, restraining orders and more damage that they can never fix, and wonder what happened. every time i here someone say that they “got this,” i wonder how soon it will be until the hammer falls.
me? i have no doubts what happens if i decide i “got this,” no matter how “different” it feels this time, no matter how many permanent mementos i create to my clean date, no matter how good i look,, the day i feel like i got this down,m is the first day of my relapse. one needs to notice that i speak of myself, and no one else, although in my experience, those who have been “around” the rooms, follow a very similar pattern to the one i described above. i would love to say that i have seen an exception, but wishes and yesterday's recovery will not keep me clean. a pleasant side effect, at least for me, from those who drift off on the “life's good” cloud, is that i have more time in my life to carry this message of HOPE, to those who really want it and are willing to do more than pay lip service to their recovery program.
yeah, but what about me? i have a few days clean and to tell you the truth, life in recovery can be boring, mundane and repetitive. the chaos is gone, the police are not looking for me, my bill collectors send me e-mails and not thugs, and i sleep with the same woman, night after night. in short, my life looks like that of a very “normal” person. i have a routine that i adhere to,. and i do not try to fill it up with all sorts of outside influences. i have nothing left to prove to anyone, i need not be the biggest, the best or even the shiniest coin on the table, although i do like being the shiniest. 😀 what i really like though, is that i have developed a recovery routine, with an obsession much akin to the using rituals i developed in active addiction. my recovery rituals have become routine and that routine, keeps me clean. the trick for me, however is to prevent that routine from becoming boring. after all, life in active addictions was a thrill ride, tempered by how high i could get. it is true, life emulating a “normal” can get boring, BUT the cause of that is NOT my recovery, nor my recovery routine.
it is true, that going to meetings, i can almost who is going to share what. it is also true, that i hear the same themes and clichées over and over again. that being said, it is not up to the members in attendance to entertain me. it is up to me to find those pearls of wisdom that are contained within the seemingly mundane some of my peers choose to share. i could go on and on, but i am certain that my point has been made. my life is boring because i make it that way.
i do not stay clean because of what i did yesterday.
i am not “cured” even though staying clean is easier than it was yesterday and i certainly do NOT “got” this.
i live a FIRST STEP daily and that is my wall against relapse, not all those things on the outside. those who choose to fill their lives with outside influences? well that is their choice and they will have to accept the consequences, for me, the consequences of using are not acceptable.

∞ DT ∞