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but i cannot force them to embrace the way of life that has given me freedom from active addiction.
which some days i find a wonderful thing, after all how much fun would it be to have hundreds of recovering people in the same room for weekly meetings? save the crowds for conventions and let me recover in the intimate company of a few dozen addicts, thank you very much!
on other days, i bemoan the fact that my friends and family continue to choose to destroy themselves through what i see as the ravages of active addiction in one form or another. on those days, i want to drag them into a meeting by their short hairs, tie them to a chair, gag them and spoon-feed them recovery in very large doses.
so there is the black and white version, most of the time however, i find myself somewhere in between these extremes. i am certainly glad that although recovery was forced upon me by an outside enterprise, the judicial system, no one already present in the rooms forced me to admit that i was a member, sign a pledge of abstinence or took down my name and number so they could contact me later to see if this was the thing for me. not one member gave me a list of rules and regulations, nor did they try and gauge how honest my desire to use really was. as i have written previously, the only reason i started attending meetings was to get out of the legal jam that my behavior in active addiction had created for me. i heard others that i judged to have circumstances more dire than mine, share about what the program had given them over the course of their recovery, and ever so slowly did i decide that maybe, just maybe i too could get what i saw, if i decided i was going to be a member.
today i am a member in good standing and even after nine years clean, the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop using. although it has been quite a long time since i really and truly felt like using, today i still have a desire to stop using and much much more. today i have the desire to give back to the program that has given me this wonderful new manner of living. today i also have the desire to attract more members, those who i know and those whom i have yet to meet. and most of all i have the desire to see what this day will bring, so off to the trenches to see if it is possible for this addict to practice a few spiritual principles!

∞ DT ∞