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i want to grow spiritually, not because i have fears about...
this morning, as i sat and contemplated life the universe and everything and how that fits in with my motives, one thought that floated to the stop of the stack was that this was probably the twenty-second or third time i had this this entry. even before i was seriously committed to staying clean, i was reading these, every day, so i could tell my SINO, that byes i had a recovery routine in place. my motives at that time revolved around looking good by complying with what others wanted, all the while slip sliding away to use whenever the opportunity presented itself. what bi learned during that seven month period between my first meeting and when i finally got clean, was “getting away” with stuff was far more important than actually doing any sort of work to foster my recovery. needless to say my motives between those days and today have changed ever so slightly. 😜
it is quite true, my second and third set of steps were all about living in the FEAR of relapse, as i never thought i COULD stay clean and frequent relapse was going to be part of my store, just as it was prophesied by my counselor in treatment. her exact words that still ring in my head today were: “the best i could ever hope for was longer and longer periods of clean time, punctuated with shorter and shorter periods of relapse.” in a sense she was correct, if one considers my behaviors of four months following my “graduation” from that facility, as relapse, and it did for a bit of time, before i examined my motives and realized that i never had any intention of being in recovery, this was just window-dressing so i could use when possible and look good for my out-patient counselors and my probation officer. once i came to see who and what i was and accept at least on some level that maybe i was an addict, i never have had to use again. those eighteen months between my clean date and finally admitting that i was powerless over addiction was all about self-will and white-knuckle abstinence , especially the six months of self--sponsorship that ended up in a room with a using buddy, using a substance i really, really liked. ah, but that is an old story and i have told it many times, so what about today?
my fourth set of steps, opened some doors within me, that changed my entire outlook. i no longer felt the need to work a “fear based” program and started to work one based in HOPE. across the course of those steps, that HOPE grew into FAITH, that this program, could and was working for me, on levels that were far from evident to me. the stuff i did to stay clean back in the day, is still part of my recovery routine, by choice and not out of rigid superstitious fear. i get to grow spiritually, because i choose to live a program, despite those thoughts and notions that maybe, way back when, i just was going through a quarter century phase and all i needed was a brief “pause” to let myself grow out of it. as tempting as that siren's song happen to be, i see it for what it is: a story to tell myself so i can have permission to use, “just one more time.”
today i stay clean because i like what how i feel, what i can accomplish and who i get to hang with, when i am allowed out of the house. i do my step work because i have internalized the cliché: more will be revealed. i go to meetings because that is where my peeps are. i live a program of recovery, simply because it feels like the next right thing to do, just for today.

∞ DT ∞