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before the miracle happens, just happens to feel like one the most trite and overused bon mots in the recovery world. i disliked it from the very beginning of my experience being in the presence of recovering people and it still is something i choose to use very, very sparsely. quite honestly. i got tired of waiting for “miracle,” any miracle, to happen and got quite annoyed with my peers, after i finally started to live a program of recovery, limited as it was. what i finally came to understand was that i had to shift my perspective if i was ever going to move past the notion of divine, profane, miraculous, coincidental or just life on its own terms.
i am still one that looks as the events and gifts of recovery as “miracles,” but it was pretty obvious that when i got here, i had more than just a drug problem, even if it took me eighteen months to figure that out. the fact that i had the desire to use “lifted” from me, might certainly be seen as a miracle by some, as i was one of those who had to use every day, even though i did not use any substances that created a “physical” addiction. when i woke up and finally smelled the recovery coffee, i saw that i used to keep myself sane and social, even though i got more and more isolated as the years rolled by. i still do not have the desire to use and i guess if i were to be totally honest, the day my jones was lifted was certainly miraculous. if that is the case, how does the cliché that i started this little exercise apply to me today?
that is always the rub, when one has “significant” clean time and has lived a program of recovery to the best of one's ability. i know that there have been times when i felt so overwhelmed by the events of my life, that i thought that maybe a dip into the substance pool, might bring some relief. then, the notion of the consequences kicked in. is that some sort of miracle? well many of my peers would say, it certainly was. me, i see it as a gift of my ongoing recovery journey. quite honestly using once or twice would not rain all sorts of consequences upon my head and would eliminate a whole bunch of responsibilities i have taken on. the flip side is, my daily practice of conscious contact would be distributed and i would have to humble myself to allow that to happen by owning up tot he fact that i used. the most worrisome aspect of that brief “recovery vacation” would be the notion that i might never find my way back. i happen to like the life i am living now, and i have found my recovery experiment to be an overall success, even through the bumps and grinds i have gone through to get here. so i guess, one might say that i am living the miracle, just for today.

∞ DT ∞