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with a promise of hope: freedom from active addiction.
that was not what i thought i wanted at that time, in fact i was put-off by the sparsity of rewards being promised to me. so put-off in fact i took a strong suggestion from my probation officer and went over to a fellowship that had twelve promises, and i used the fellowship that has given me a new life as my social club, the members here were far less nosy about my business and far more fun than those way to serious members of that other fellowship.
and of course i did not come to any program with a desire to find a new manner of living, nor even a desire to stop using. what i thought i wanted was a reprieve from my sentence and an easier softer way out of the jam i had got myself into!
fast forward nine years and four months or so, and today looking back at my first desperate days in actual recovery, and the seven months it took me to make a decision to actually recover, i see what was really going on way back then. it was a continuation of a pattern of living that i had developed in my active addiction. i was compartmentalizing my life -- recovery in one fellowship, social life in the other -- and doing my best to ensure that the two did not meet. what i actually got was just enough recovery and just enough love from the members of both fellowships that thirteen months into my recovery i made a decision of who and what i was and where i needed to seek recovery, and i have never regretted that decision to this day -- i am where i always needed to be -- and i am grateful that the promise offered by my fellowship has been fulfilled -- i am and can be free from active addiction today. an explicit promise that manifests itself in my daily life again and again. as a result i have received many gifts, in fact i was commenting to my girlfriend last night that i can hardly believe that i have the life i have. people like me, do not succeed, do not accumulate material items, do not create and maintain longterm relationships and do not love nor allow themselves to be loved. people like me are locked in the twilight world that borders on reality, jealously peering through a dirty grimy porthole to a real world, where real people live, and medicating our feelings of inadequacy and pain away.
that promise so simple yet so complete that it encompasses more than a laundry list of how and what my life will look like if i choose to recover. today i am grateful for the promise and the many gifts i have received as a result of that promise -- and the gift for which i am most grateful for this morning is.... (drum roll please) a spiritual manner in which to live my life. honestly for this addict the rest is wonderful gravy and more that i ever believed i deserved. life is ironic in that way, no matter how smart i may be, i never knew what was missing from my life, and the harder i searched the further away it got. i am glad i did not discover twelve step fellowships while running and gunning, i now believe that i came to recovery at the time i needed to be here and i am one of the lucky ones that do not have war stories about their previous trips through recovery and the hell that came between those flirtations with recovery and their current recovery. today, right now, i am free from active addiction and i am grateful for that little reprieve and will do what i can to make sure i have the chance to do so tomorrow.

∞ DT ∞