Blog entry for:

to be grateful today. way back when i was merely abstinent and i heard my peers sharing about being a grateful addict. i thought they must have slipped several cogs. how in the world could anyone be grateful to be an addict, let alone not using mass quantities of substances to keep their demons at bay. although i was still quite sure i had no demons to keep at bay, nor did i have an empty place in my being to fill, i often scoffed at those addicts. as the days rolled up and i learned what living a program of recovery was all about, i slowly came around to the idea that if i was not an addict, i would have never found the fellowship that has given me this manner of living. while it is certainly true that i have been clean for a very long minute, part of the rap in this phase of my recovery, is i forget to acknowledge how grateful i am on a daily basis. when nothing inside of my head is screaming, it is easy for me to get complacent and wonder what if …
spending the day with a couple of the men who call me their sponsor and getting my ass to my home group, drove home the idea that paying lip service to gratitude does little to instruct me how to live gratefully. i know that as i approach my clean date, i look back at the past year and see what i failed to accomplish, even though the past year has been wonderful, dreadful, scary and the desire to use has been upon me more than once. this morning, as i sat, what kept popping off the stack was the fact that no matter how strong the desire to use was, i stayed clean and continued to do the things that have kept me clean for so long. it might have looked like i was exhibiting super-human strength and control, when in reality i was actually surrendering to the notion that no matter how much i used, things would not be any better and would more than likely be a whole lot worse, as i am not sure my pride and ego would allow me to come back from a relapse. the easier, and much softer way, was to persevere and allow the program to fill me with the gratitude that for one more day, i was given the power to stay clean.
as i come to the end of this ;little exercise this afternoon, i can repeat what i started with, just for today, i am grateful to be grateful. i have a life that exceeds my pipe dreams, in reality that is. for the first time in many decades i am comfortable in my skin and i do not even hide the scar of my head, where the melanoma was removed. i wear that as a badge of courage, because no matter how dark my days got, i did not stick my hand in the medicine jar. i emerged from this year clean, at least as far as it has gone and chances are in another eleven days i will celebrate that anniversary one more time. that is, IF self will does not take over and i come to believe i “got” this. 🤪

∞ DT ∞