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could admit that addicts could recover and decided that was something i may actually want for my life. that admission took quite some time and a boatload of evidence. i was not the type who believed in conforming to the norms society and culture foisted upon me and yet i had a yearning to fit in somewhere. as a using addict, i did fit in, at first, but as my active addiction progressed i became less and less social and more and more uncomfortable with people who could use like i did. when i came to the end, through no decision on my own, i was still quite certain that i could continue to use, once i got the legal system off my back. what i saw in the rooms, where the weak and feeble, who just could not figure out how to use successfully and had decided it must be the drugs. i was not going to be one of them, that was for certain,. that worked for the first eighteen months of my recovery journey and it is probably why i give some of the men that call me their sponsor a break when it comes to willingness and commitment. after all, i do know the pin of self-sponsorship. the confusion of living life without a daily inventory and the frustration of just not “getting” how to meditate. the truth is, up until my last step cycle, i had not entirely believed that i was living a program of recovery. i felt as if i was going through the motions and that my fraud would soon me crashing down. in fact i often said that there were times i thought that my life was a dream and i was in some rehab facility, comatose, but not brain dead, from one shot too many. so when i hear my newest peers wonder if they can get this, or express doubts that i have been doing this gig for as long as i have, i understand what they are talking about.
this morning, six days out from my last meeting, i feel the call of the fellowship that has given me this way of life. i may take vacations from meetings when i am out of town, but i do not vary my recovery routine. sitting here this morning and musing about what my life my have been, way back when, i get a feeling that is similar to gratitude, lack of regret. i do not regret what it took to get my a$$ into the rooms, nor do i regret the years of using and what i did to myself during those days either. yes it would have been nice to get a clue or two in my thirties, but the facts of my life is i did not. the fact that it took me a near miss of relapse to realize that i NEEDED a program of recovery is something i do not regret either. it simply is what it is.
this is not my first time in Santa Fe. i have been here a few times before, in fact our journeys on Friday afternoon covered the same territory that my second 5TH STEP covered, just kind of in reverse. that journey started in Chimayo and ended in Abiquiû. ending our day at El Santuario de Chimayo, seemed a fitting pilgrimage of sorts, as it felt like a completion of a journey started many years ago. today, as we go walking around downtown Santa Fe, i can be grateful that i get to share this with someone as something new, instead of something i have down before. instead of watching the pron star tonight on 60 minutes, i probably will head out to a meeting, as today i feel the need to be in a room, where everyone “gets” me.
it is a good day to be clean and i do understand that even though i was not ready to stay clean back in the day, the members who were there, in the rooms, had enough experience, strength and hope, to tell me to keep coming back.

∞ DT ∞