Blog entry for:

a spiritual coma or am i learning to awaken to the possibilities of life beyond addiction.
without a doubt, i snoozed through my life in active addiction. even after i got clean i spent the better part of my first decade, napping through life as well. admitting that i was far from present and negligent about paying attention to the details of what was going on around me, was a giant leap for this specimen of mankind. i juts assigned one of the men, who call me their sponsor, the task of paying attention to what is going on around him and writing down some of the things he learned today. a sort of running start to get him back into step work. i do not know how well or even if it will help him to wake up and smell the coffee, to borrow an image from the reading, but it certainly may make him more aware of what is going on around him. for me, waking up and taking notice of what was really going on, was one of the most significant events of my recovery journey. it was amazing how much of my life i was totally clueless about and this whole turning inward and “feeling” my way to the next right thing, is certainly an extension of that exercise started on that fateful day, over a decade ago,
okay, it is weird that i can use the measuring stick of decades, when it comes to my clean time. i never dreamed of staying clean for even a week, much less into the number of days i have strung together. the reality of what that is coming to mean to me, is that i am becoming an old-timer and i can no longer say with pride that i am just a “pup” in recovery. what that means in a practical sense, is that the steps and my participation in a program of active recovery,m take on new meanings. whether i care to admit it or not, i am moving into a state of “advanced” recovery, because i learned a few lessons along the way. advanced recovery, as i am coming to see, does not mean looking down on my peers from “on-high.” it is coming to mean learning to be on the same level and valuing each and every one of them as an important part of my on-going recovery journey,
i know some of my peers, resist the notion that there is more to working steps than just staying clean. what that means for me, gulp, is that i have to let go of my judgemental bias and allow them the freedom to dwell in that house, without judging the shite out of them. some of the men i sponsor, seem to ascribe to that theory as well, and in that case, i get to try and dissuade them from looking the recovery journey as a dead end street with a single destination, just for today. do not misread what i am saying here, staying clean, just for today, is the overarching concern of my recovery process. learning to live in the “real” world, with eyes wide open and a chance to discern ideas and facts that i do not know, or have forgotten, is a side-effect of my just for today program. i GET to see more than what occurs at the end of my nose, because i have dedicated myself to a recovery program. i GET to be more than just a bystander in my life and most importantly i am learning to trust that my intuition and feelings are not necessarily always wrong.
waking up after 25 years of using was tough,. waking up after seven years clean was even more jarring. and seeing the man i have become after nineteen years clean, is no less of a tectonic shift than the day i decided to become a member. seeing where my pride and prejudice is affecting my relationships with my peers, is quite a step forward and maybe, just maybe, i am stumbling on to the focus of my next set of steps.

∞ DT ∞