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and narrower my path seems to become, is not exactly how i see my recovery journey. in fact, the longer i stay clean, the easier it feels fro me to stay clean. it is not that the challenges of living in the real world diminish, it is all about how i have learned to accept and live through those challenges. my point is, that for me, if living clean and in recovery became more difficult as i stay clean, i would have walked away a long, long time ago.
yes, i can taste the irony here. the reading speaks to life in recovery becoming more constrained and requiring more effort as the says, months, years and decades of clean-time add up. this cynical addict, would wholeheartedly agree, most of the time and yet here i am pounding a “yippy-skippy” rebuttal to the premise that time makes recovery more difficult. for me, by living a program of active recovery, i find i have more choices about my life than i have ever had before. i have more friends, do more things, make more mistakes and suffer the consequences of my poor decisions, without once wondering if a little drop of poison is what i need to forget what happened today. it is true that i have wondered more often lately, if life is better on the other side and what a little trip to a legal purveyor of a substance i used, could bring to my life. there was once a time where that substance allowed me to face a seemingly hostile and cold world, and the reality of life today seems to be a closer fit to that fifty year old fantasy of what was. as i sat this morning i did consider whether or not the risk of such a sampling was worth giving up what i have received over the course of my life clean. as i got up to have my cuppa and bowl of oatmeal, i realized that i was unwilling to try that experiment because i happen to like having choice as a primary factor in my life.
as i quickly dismissed the assertion that a trip down memory lane back to the beginning was not what i had a DESIRE to do today, i looked at the path before me. it is not as if i have not had a struggle or three across my recovery or in the past year. would a visit with “puff, the magic dragon” really help me cope better with the pile of “benjamins” i gave away to scammers? would a “magic” gummy creature really help me cope with the physical injury that is hampering my fitness program? would a vape or three really relieve the discontent i feel at my job? the answer to that litany of concerns is: no it would not. it is true that for the length of time i was under the influence, i might be able to forget about my life fro a while, but when it ran its course, what was, would still be there and i would be less able to cope with what i saw, the same as it ever was. i do not need to go ask Alice, as i know what it feels like to be ten feet tall and today i choose to allow myself the freedom to choose.
is the path of my life in recovery steeper and narrower than it was way back when? for me, i would have to say, not at all, i GET to make choices that were never apparent back in the day. i GET to earn an honest wage. i GET to have relationships in which i can give and receive love. no matter how bleak my outlook looks today, i get to find a path that allows me a life worth living, just for today.

∞ DT ∞