Blog entry for:

will lift, IF i stay clean, live a program of active recovery and allow the POWER that fuels my recovery to take care of me. it has been so long since the last time i was between STEP FOUR and STEP FIVE, that i forgot what it is like. for me, the past few days felt as if my skin is crawling with ants and i cannot brush them off. i find myself short and irritable with some people, no matter how resolved i am to tolerate their total lack of respect or attention to anything outside of their little world. as it will be another ten days before i see my sponse and do my 5TH STEP, i will need to lean hard of the POWER that fuels my recovery, to find the ways and means to tolerate, accept, respect and respond to those who just happen to be “working my last nerve.”
moving on to the main “theme” of the reading today, relapse is not part of my recovery journey. it is true, that i did not stay clean after attending my first meeting. it is also true that i “fronted” being clean, whole attending meetings and paying lip service to “working a program.” in fact, i even took tokens to signify that i was accumulating days of clean time, even though i would use at every opportunity that as presented to me. in fact, i thought i had it all figured out and i was going to be a “one a month” user. hubris and ego was my “downfall.” there are some of my peers, who would attribute that crash to a miracle being worked in my life, and that may be the case. i am not one of those people. i know that i thought i had the gig of pretending to be in recovery down and i arrogantly took a test a day earlier than i had to, just to prove a point.
that was not enough to get me to actually become a member, but it was enough to get me close enough to a program of recovery that i could live in mere abstinence for the next eighteen or nineteen months. all of that is ancient history and this morning, i can move beyond that. today, my watch word is going to be BREATHE! i know i am in a state of spiritual flux and i also am pretty sure i will not be running out to grab a little dab to do me. there may be other “temptations” that i succumb to over this day, but right here and right now, getting ready to hit the streets for some exercise feels as if it is the next right thing to do. oh yeah, RESPOND rather than REACT is a course of action that i need to implement today.

∞ DT ∞