Blog entry for:

And that is to carry the message to the still suffering addict. This is quite a shift from the witty, pithy and oh so relevant post I wrote before I left the house. Unfortunately I could not save it, so you all are going to have to take my word for it.
What I “heard” as I sat this morning was the echoes of empathy for the two new guys who shared at the meeting last night. One had been “around” before but choose to take a dip in the using pool, once again. The other was attending their first meeting ever. Both were beat down enough to show some real emotion and unlike the crocodile tears I shed in my first eighteen months of recovery, they both seemed to be having a genuine emotional reaction. Even a jaded and cynical person like me, could not help feeling something and having a bit of HOPE that maybe, we reached them. The real lesson I took from that was a quick trip down memory lane about how insincere and recalcitrant I was, way back when.
In those days appearing as if I was some sort of recovery dude was far more important that being one. Sure I went through all the motions, but in my head and in my heart, I was certain that this whole recovery gig was not for me. When I heard “do not use, the rest of your life, just for today,” the JFT part got dropped into the bit bucket and I resisted any notion of staying clean while I was still on this side of the grass. It would not be an event that drove me to use, I was just plain determined that when the consequences of using were removed I would CHOOSE to do so. I was not a lifer and never would be one and although the irony of that attitude is very apparent today, here I sit, pounding on the keyboard, wondering why I was so resistant to the very program that could and did, save my life. The story I CHOSE to believe back in those days, was that I was too differnt to ever be a part of the fellowship that as become my home, after all, it was that very fellowship who made me an addict, not the behaviors, attitudes and my slavery to substances.
Today? Well today I feel a sense of being something more than a “worthless junkie” and I live the sort of life that provides evidence that I am not one. I would like to go on, but I do have work t do and I do need to squirrel this away, just in case. It is a great day to be a member of a fellowship that welcomed me, long before I was ready to be part of the flock.

∞ DT ∞