“The Leaky Dam”

When I was brand new, I picked up a lot of program-speak right away. Freshly sober, ego raging, and major pink cloud action happening? Yes, I was speaking the language of the program as though I actually knew what I was talking about. Never mind that I hadn’t worked through the steps. As far as I was concerned, I was an expert and already knew everything.

It’s a bit humbling to look back at that now, but I can have the same compassion towards myself that I have towards others I meet who are in the same position. There are meetings out there where, if you have less than a year, they prefer that you don’t share for these very reasons: you’re new; you haven’t worked your steps yet; you haven’t been restored to sanity; you don’t know nothin’ and even worse, you don’t yet know that you don’t know nothin’. Their message is simple: sit down, shut up, and listen; try to actually learn something; you’ve been given what just might be your last chance—grab it with both hands and hold on.

My first sponsor and I had a conversation once. I don’t remember what it was we were talking about (those early detox days are pretty hazy), but I told him about something I did and bemoaned the fact that I was engaging in ‘old behavior’. He chuckled a little, then looked at me and said, “well, if you’re still doing it, it’s not old behavior, now, is it?” Talk about putting me in my place. You can’t take a step back if you haven’t taken any forward.

It’s a miracle of the program that we are able to make any change at all. Before we start treating our disease, our lives are like rivers flowing with such force as to be seemingly beyond changing course. By working the program, by following suggestions, we dam that river and move it in a new direction. The more suggestions we follow, the better the dam and the better a new course we set ourselves on. Each suggestion we follow is like adding another brick to make the dam stronger. Each suggestion we don’t follow leaves a hole for our old patterns and behaviors to pour through, continuing our lives on their old course of insanity and destruction.

Our sponsors aren’t there to coddle us or to tell us that everything will be alright. A good sponsor will never cosign our bullshit, just as the good friends we make in the rooms won’t. Sometimes we don’t want to hear it. Sometimes we can’t bear to look in the mirror being held up because we don’t want to see what’s reflected there. Sometimes we cut off contact because we can’t bear to acknowledge the truth they are showing us. I’ve heard it said that if you aren’t pissed off at your sponsor on occasion, they’re not doing a very good job.

We are the ones who put those bricks in, who build the dam that changes our lives. We need to listen in order to learn how to build it. And we can put only a few bricks in if we want to. We can go to meetings every once in awhile, work some steps when we feel like it, and all the while the rivers of our lives continue flowing in the same direction. We can try that easier softer way for as long as we feel like, but the real change only happens when we get honest with ourselves. When we admit that our way doesn’t work. When we find the willingness to follow the principles and really truly work the program, that is when things truly change. Until then, all we have is a leaky dam.

“Who’s Got An Attitude Problem?!”

I better raise my hand, here, or else I’d be one huge hypocrite. Besides, I’m not the first person to be described as having an ‘attitude problem’. Something tells me a lot of us who come into the rooms have heard this dandy little turn-of-phrase used against us. Sometimes our attitude problem is nothing more than a description of the in-your-face way that we refuse to be anyone else’s golden boy (or girl). Sometimes it’s a dangerous insistence that we can do it ourselves. This is most dangerous to ourselves, naturally. One of the indicators that we have hit bottom is when we finally admit that we do need help; that we can’t do it alone; that our way really isn’t working.

The literature talks about a changing of our attitudes, how through working the program, our attitude changes into an ‘attitude of gratitude’. Kinda catchy. A little cheesy, too, but like so many other of the little aphorisms we encounter in the program, it has far more truth in it than its simplicity suggests. I’ve heard many people share that they make a gratitude list everyday. That’s not a bad habit to be in. It’s not something I do personally, but I admit there are plenty of times where I’ve stopped to count my blessings.

The mind is an amazingly powerful thing. What philosophers talk about—how we determine our own reality—has a lot more truth in it than we realize. There’s the old saying that if a man feels he’s going to die today, we will probably find a way to make it happen. Scientists have done studies proving that people who believe they are lucky actually are.

The cycle of depression is a damning one. When we hate ourselves and the world around us, we act with negativity. We snap at the hands of those who reach out to us, and our lives become self-fulfilling prophecies. We think everybody hates us, so we treat them in such a way as to ensure that they do. We think there are no opportunities for good things, and so we don’t look for opportunities and shun them when they do manifest. Because we are convinced that good things can’t happen, we sabotage ourselves when they do. Because we think we are unlovable, we act out in ways that prevent others from loving us.

The whole idea of gratitude is to take this vicious cycle and turn it in the other direction. By being grateful for the good things we do have, we can begin to open ourselves up to other good things coming into our lives. Counting our blessings can lead us to a place where we are happy and content, which in turn becomes its own self-fulfilling prophecy. When we can see the good things that have happened to us, we can begin to accept that, yes, good things can and do happen to us, which helps us to be open to more good things happening. A positive feedback loop is created in the place of the negative one.

We really do determine our own realities. We can be convinced that life will always be terrible, and then it will be. Or we can be convinced that life is good and that wonderful things will occur, or even just that it will get better—and then it does. It takes faith. It takes patience. Sometimes it takes a whole lot of acting as-if. But it works.

“Relationships, Inc.”

RELATIONSHIP: Really Exciting Love Affair Turns Into Outrageous Nightmare; Sobriety Hangs In Peril.

My sponsor told me about that acronym once when I was going through some severe pain. I had violated some highly-held suggestions of the program (no new relationships for a year, no thirteenth stepping, don’t date a newcomer…) and was paying the price. At the time, I couldn’t understand why I was in so much pain. I couldn’t understand what had gone wrong. I had thought, “Just because I’m in Recovery doesn’t mean I’m going to stop living my life, right? RIGHT?!”

I gravitated towards those who told me what I wanted to hear, as we tend to do when we are letting our own will run things. I clung to the people who said it was okay to date someone from the groups, that it’s what happens—we have common understandings with each other and know where the other is coming from and can best relate to each other. I listened to the people who said that it was perfectly okay for me to date a newcomer since I was one, too.

Every comment was used as a rationalization to justify my doing what I wanted to instead of following the suggestions I didn’t want to follow. Instead of letting go and trusting my higher power to give me what I needed, I had my hands firmly on the steering wheel of my life. I knew what I wanted and I was damned and determined to make sure it came to pass. I ended up every bit as insane as I was before I started my Recovery without a shred of serenity in sight. It is nothing short of a miracle that I didn’t relapse.

Having put some time between then and now, having worked through the twelve steps (some of them more than once), and having gotten a lot more Recovery under my belt, I can see the wisdom of those suggestions much better now. I can also see the folly of my own actions much better.

You don’t date a newcomer because you have no right to put someone else’s sobriety at risk. My definition of a newcomer is different now, too. It isn’t so much about how much time someone has, whether they’ve hit that magical ‘1 year’ mark or not, but more about whether or not they’ve worked their steps. Someone who hasn’t worked their steps hasn’t been restored to sanity, as we say. Their thinking is still insane. If someone is insane, they aren’t capable of being in a healthy relationship or picking a healthy partner for themselves. They haven’t yet learned to truly love themselves and are incapable of truly loving others. Of course—and perhaps more importantly—all of this applies to our own selves when we are new to the program.

The meditation I received in my email this morning was about relationships. I must confess that it is just a little bit weird for me any time the ‘Just For Today’ meditation applies so specifically to what I’m going through in my life. Sometimes I’m grateful for it; sometimes I’m pissed off by it; sometimes it’s just plain creepy. This is definitely one of the creepy times. Anyway, the JFT talked about how we can work the program on the issue of unhealthy relationships, too. As we did with our addiction, we must first admit that we have a problem. Ultimately, we apply Step Twelve: practice these principles in all our affairs.

I just happen to be working a set of twelve specifically around my relationship issues, which is why it was a little creepy to see this particular ‘Just For Today’ this morning. Doing this new work was something I came to organically. I was feeling some pain (ah, that wonderful motivator) and just started writing. Page after page came out, and it occurred to me that I was doing step work without even realizing it. I talked with my sponsor about it. Then I went back and looked again at what I had written and realized that I hadn’t actually done step work, merely prepared myself to do so. I had done what some people call ‘Step Zero’—admitting I had a problem, surrendering to that reality, and admitting that I needed help. So I cracked open my step-working guide and dove into the actual work.

It’s been hard, maybe even harder than when I worked my steps on my addiction. Going over all my relationships has been an emotional ordeal, to put it mildly. But I’ve already hit on some powerful realizations. Though I’m still in the beginning of this work, I’m already gaining wisdom and even a bit of relief. By turning the spotlight on this issue, by writing it down in black and white, it’s all laid out there for me to see. And one thing is abundantly clear: when it comes to how I have done relationships in my life, I have been completely insane.

The women I’ve chosen to be with, I’ve chosen them not because I thought they could make good partners for me, but because I was desperate to have someone in my life. I can see how I’ve let guilt, shame, and fear motivate my choices. Time after time, I chose women who couldn’t possibly be good to me, because I was acting out of a place of fear—the fear that I would never find someone, that I’d always be alone. There are other things, too, like the idea that I need to have someone in my life in order to be happy. That is straight-up insanity, and it resembles my addiction in a not-coincidental way: I used to think I needed to be loaded in order to be happy, too.

I have (and still do) struggled with self-esteem issues, feelings of low self-worth. Sometimes they were at the forefront of my mind. At other times, they were buried beneath my consciousness. I kept them there, deep in my denial, because to recognize them would have interfered with my getting what I wanted. It’s tough to remember that I am a child of the Is. It’s tough to remember that the power greater than myself loves me so deeply, so powerfully, that no matter how much love I can possibly imagine, the actual amount of love the Is has for me is far, far greater.

When I have acted out of fear of being alone, or the sense that I am not worthy of having someone good in my life, I have made errors in judgment every bit as insane as those I made to feed my active addiction. I was incapable of examining a potential mate to see if she would be good for me. I made wild stabs in the dark out of desperation, hoping and praying that someone—anyone—would say ‘yes’ to me. If a woman came along who was interested, I said ‘yes’ without even bothering to think about whether or not she could possibly be a good partner to me in my life, or if I was even actually interested. The end results were always pain. For someone like myself, with a history of suicidal thoughts and behavior, I can see how my life truly does depend on finding another way.

And so I choose to do the work. I choose to honestly admit that I do indeed have a problem and am absolutely insane. I’m finding the hope that my higher power can restore me to sanity. I am having faith in the process. And I am putting my courage to use, examining what I have done, looking at my part and not others’. I do all of this not just in the hopes of being restored to sanity and becomming able to have a healthy relationship, but also with the hope that I may find peace and comfort in the knowledge that I don't have to be in one. My goal is to have Serenity whether I am in a relationship or not, and that's a damn fine goal to have.

“How About A Little Real?”

One of my issues is frustration with bullshit. I know, I’m totally alone in this, right? Seriously, though, I seem to live in a culture where lies and half-truths and bald-faced deception is the norm. Those who cheat are the ones who get ahead, those who play by the rules are the ones who are left behind. I’m reminded of that old saying about how nice guys finish last. Or maybe it’s that one about how everything in America is legal—until you get caught. But I digress.

Through working our Recovery, we learn that principle behind the first step that eluded so many of us for so long: Honesty. But we are also human beings living with other human beings in the world. No one is perfect. In the end, all any of us can do is our best. And so we have things that aren’t totally 100% honest that seem to creep in. Lies of omission, little white lies, etc. There is a spectrum to honesty, and right now I’m thinking that if we can hold ourselves to the ideal, then we will probably do alright even if we don’t get there all the time.

I was talking with a sponsee the other night about this principle. I joked that I did plenty of lying before I got Recovery, I just was never any good at it. Most of us are very adept at deception. A lot of times it's done with the best of intentions. To my mind in this moment, it strikes me as something done in some form or another as an attempt to control. We hide things because we don’t want to hurt other people’s feelings. We keep our mouths shut because we don’t want to get in trouble. We try to preserve others’ confidence. These are only a few examples.

Again, we do our best, and when we are able to fully express the truth or hear it spoken, it is like a breath of fresh air. Honesty is hard. A lot of people go overboard with it. They practice brutal honesty. That, my friends, is not part of the Program. A minister friend of mine once said that the best way to go about being honest is to ‘speak the truth in love.’ That’s the course I try to hold for myself. I don’t always succeed, but more often than not, I do.

I was at a meeting earlier this week and heard a bit of that fresh truth. I don’t know if the man sharing was an old-timer, but he sure sounded like it to me. He laid bare some real hard truths about the program and the fellowship. Most folks who have been in the rooms have felt the love and welcoming of the fellowships they attended. If we’ve had the courage to put ourselves out there, introduce ourselves to others, we often feel an even deeper level of that acceptance.

This man, though, had a few choice words on that subject. He talked about himself as a realist. He talked about how, yes, there are cliques in meetings. He mentioned a time when he was gone from the rooms for a period of six months and didn’t receive one phone call. He spoke of the times he called people at one o’ clock in the morning and they were bothered. This man wasn’t mentioning any of this as a pity statement, he was just letting folks know—these were his experiences. I heard him speak and silently rejoiced, hearing the clarion-clear sound of the real.

We do our best. We are still human beings. We aren’t perfect. You won’t always get along with everyone at the meetings you go to. That is part of life. Some meetings will feel exclusionary to you. So what? Find another. You are the only one responsible for your Recovery, and no other. If your recovery is dependent on others feeding you bullshit, you probably won’t make it. There’s a reason people in the rooms talk about having friends in their lives who will call them on their shit—who are honest with them, who can speak the truth in love to them, and who can hold up the mirror and show us the things we don’t want to look at. We need to see those things about ourselves that we don't like; it's the only way we can change them and grow.

We get to choose the people we have in our lives. We get to choose whether we have folks who hold up that mirror, who speak the truth in love to us, or we can choose to surround ourselves with those who coddle us in our denial, who insulate us from that which we most need to hear.

“Know Thyself”

I was talking to a friend recently who’s dealing with some frustration right now. Certain things in his life are not what he expected. People have turned out to be different than who he thought they were. I listened to him talk and couldn’t help but smile and think about how I knew exactly what he meant.

More will be revealed.

The process of breaking free of our addictions, of being returned to sanity, is also one of rejoining the world. Or, as was more the case with me, joining it for the first time. I was such an isolator; I lived in my own head more than in my real life. Any time reality didn’t go the way I thought it should, or turned out to be different than I thought it was, I reacted by moving even deeper into my own self. This still happens to me every once in awhile. News that’s real hard to take can still bring out that knee-jerk denial reaction. With time, and with work, I’m learning better to overcome it.

For the most part, though, I find that I actually enjoy being wrong. Being wrong about something is one of the best reminders that I am only human and not perfect. When I have one of those ah-ha moments, where I am shown the truth of the world around me, there is gratitude. I might not feel it at first, but I usually end up in the place where I am glad to have learned the way things really are. It means I have become more in tune with my life and this reality thing I share with others. For someone who used to spend all his time hidden away from the world in fear, that is a real blessing. Being able to hear a new truth and coming to accept it are skills that I didn’t used to have.

Acceptance was not an innate ability for me; it is a skill I have learned, and one that I continue to learn better. Every time I overreact to something I don’t like or don’t want to hear, it is an opportunity for me to look at myself and understand myself better. What is it about me that I’m having such an extreme reaction to this? Why am I so upset? Where, oh where, has my serenity gone? I’m being a bit sarcastic here, but it is one of those funny-but-true things.

If you have resentments, they are yours.

Getting angry at others is something everyone can relate to. The fourth step teaches us that, if we are upset about something someone else has done, there is something inside of ourselves we have failed to address. We may have expectations which weren’t met. We may have desires that were thwarted. Perhaps we had ambitions which weren’t healthy or won’t be realized, or both. The power of the fourth step is that it gives us the chance to address those issues. It is an amazingly powerful tool which allows us to get in better touch with ourselves, to understand why we did what we did. It calls on us to look at our own actions, to examine our part in things. We can’t control other people, places and things, only ourselves. And so we look at ourselves.

Working my fourth step was a real pivot point for me in my Recovery. For the first time, I could see in black and white the patterns of behavior which had created pain and wreckage for myself and others. For the first time, I got a glimpse at how the disease had wreaked havoc on my life. I could see the truth about myself, and with that knowledge came the opportunity to do things differently. I see it now as the moment where I started moving away from the man I used to be.

Being in touch with myself gives me a chance at being in better touch with the world I live in. Reality responds in kind, revealing more to me about itself, which in turn gives me a better chance to know myself. It’s one of those amazing positive feedback loops that makes Recovery such a blessing. There is pain, of course, and difficulty too. But from the fires, that crucible which seems to create only ashes, can rise peace and serenity.

“The Next Right Thing”

Hang around the rooms long enough, and you’ll hear people talk about doing the ‘next right thing’. They’ll say it like this: I keep on doing the next right thing, and it all works out; or like this: all I have to do is the next right thing, and my life goes so much better. It’s one of those simple-but-not-easy aspects of the Program. It’s not always easy to determine what to do next. It’s not always easy to determine what’s right. It’s like so many other things about living the spiritual life in that it takes practice. It takes work. It takes time. But we do get better at doing it with practice. The more we work it, the better it works. Time, after all, takes time.

My sponsor has often suggested to me that, in the times when I’m not feeling too great, the best way to handle it is to find a way to be of service to others. I have sponsees of my own. I can go to a meeting and share. I can help a friend who is in need. It doesn’t even have to be Program-related. After all, Step 12—the spiritual principle behind which is Service—says we practice these principles in all our affairs. Doing something Program-specific is perhaps the most obvious way to be of service, but how we do it isn’t what’s important. What’s important is that we take action.

I had a crazy day yesterday, but it was one of the most amazing days I’ve ever had. I’ve had many a crazy day, but there was something about yesterday. I’d almost describe it as the good kind of crazy. Or maybe it’s the fact that it was good that makes it seem so crazy. That’s the addict side of myself jumping out, trying to steer my thinking and say that if things go well in my life, that THAT is crazy. It’s not. Good things happen in our lives. It’s only the sick disease of addiction that tells us that they don’t, or can’t, or won’t.

I’ve been pretty stuck inside myself lately because of the ground-shaking events of my life. When things aren’t going well for me, my tendency is to sit on my pity-pot and think my whole world is coming to an end because life isn’t meeting my expectations of what it should be like. I’ve been upset about (most-likely) losing my job. I thought it was something stable that I could depend on. I’m upset, too, about the difficulties in one of my friendships because I had somehow forgotten that he, like me, is just a human being and not perfect.

The difficulties with my friend hit on some parts of myself that I’d somehow thought didn’t need work. I felt—and to a certain extent am still feeling—a lot of pain from it. But for me, pain is a motivator. It’s when I am in pain that I find the willingness to change. It’s when I’m hurting that I find the desire to do the work on myself that needs to be done. Maybe there are people out there who can find their willingness without being in pain; I’m not one of them. It seems that I have to really be hurting before I’m able to let go and admit that action needs to be taken.

I’ve stepped up my program. I’m doing a lot more writing in my journal. The day before yesterday, I wrote and wrote, starting to do the hard work to heal parts of myself I’ve been neglecting. I still struggle with relationship issues, and all-too often feel that I will never find someone special who I can share that deep, intimate, emotional bond with. I have jealousy towards others who are in relationships, and jealousy towards those who are content to be by themselves. But I know the reasons why:

Inside of me is the sick and insane idea that I am not worthy of having someone in my life who cares about me. My disease still tells me that I am not worthy of being loved. I still have more work to do before I can more fully accept that the disease is wrong on this. One day, I hope to truly accept myself for who I am, as I am. I hope that, one day, I will be accepting of whether I have a special woman in my life or not. And I will know that, regardless of whether I do have a partner, I am enough. After I did the work in my journal, I actually got down on my knees and prayed. Call it a mini-fifth step, sharing the things that I wrote with my higher power. I can’t even tell you why I felt the need to be on my knees to do it, except that it just felt like the right way.

I’ve stepped up my Program in other ways. I’m calling my sponsor more often. I’ve talked to him about this new work that I’m doing and asked him if it was okay for me to lean on him more directly and more often as I do it. Who knows, even after this phase of work that I’m doing is finished, I might even continue to do so. My life seems to go better when I ask his advice first on just about anything. And yesterday, I got to be of service in a whole slew of different ways.

Another friend of mine has a baby in the hospital right now. She’s having fever spikes, seizures, and the doctors, for all their medical expertise, can’t quite figure out why. It must be terrifying, the not knowing. If you’re told what the problem is, what the disease is, you can do research. You can educate yourself and figure out what the best way forward is. When you don’t know what’s wrong, you have to live with the uncertainty and that can be so hard. I went to visit her and her family at the hospital and was made all-too-aware that, whatever my problems are, there are those who are dealing with far worse. I’m lucky to have such relatively minor problems in my life. I’m not the one standing over a hospital crib, waiting to see if my baby lives or dies; if she will get better or worse; if she will come back from this and be healthy, or have brain damage the rest of her life.

After my visit to the hospital, I went to see another friend. This is someone I had dated and, as we realized things couldn’t work for us as a couple, decided that we still wanted to be in each others’ lives as friends. That is an amazing benefit of the Program. I have never been able to be friends in this situation before. I was always stuck in my own hurt and frustrations at not getting what I wanted out of life. If she couldn’t be what I wanted her to be, well then I simply said, “fuck it” and that was the end of that. But she’s a good woman. Kind, caring, supportive. I need people like that in my life, who are able to be good friends to me and give me the love and nurturing that I need from my friends. I’m hopeful that I can do the same for her. My being able to do either is a direct result of working my Program, learning to get over myself, and learning how to better accept reality as it is, not as I would have it be.

Through all of this, my phone was ringing off the hook. I heard from both of my sponsees. One called asking for some advice on how to be of service, wondering if he was ready yet. I told him, “Go. Do. Be.” Being of service, no matter the method, is a huge part of working this program. Another was having difficulties in his personal life, struggling (as we all do) with feelings of low self-worth and frustrations about not having a special someone. We met up, and we talked, and we went to a meeting. We picked up another friend who’s also having a difficult time right now and took her with us.

Once we were there, the secretary told me that his chairperson hadn’t shown up yet and asked me if I would do it. I smiled and accepted. I told my story as best I could; for a discussion topic, I chose ‘miracles’. It was a good meeting, and afterwards I was a bit amazed by how good I felt after what had been a long, full, and hectic day. When I got home last night, I wrote more in my journal. I want to harness this feeling of being motivated to do the work while it’s here, because I know this too shall pass. I was tired so I didn’t write as much as I had the night before, but that is alright.

As I laid down in bed and prayed, something amazing happened. I had one of those negative imaginary conversations my disease is so famous for distracting me with. It was brief, though, and had very little intensity. It was like the darker side of my self gasping weakly for air before sinking back down below the water. I realized that I hadn’t had those kind of thoughts in many hours. It was a huge change from the near-constancy I’d been experiencing before I started taking action.

And all I did was the next right thing.

When I do the next right thing, my life goes better. I’m a better me. I’m of more help to those around me. And I receive all manner of blessings, not the least of which is freedom from my addict brain and its sick and insane way of thinking. It still amazes me that this program is so simple: put one foot in front of the other, do the next right thing, and the benefits will show themselves to you.

“What’s In A Miracle, Anyway?”

I got some bad news on Sunday that has put my world into turmoil. It’s got me questioning a lot, mostly myself and mistakes I’ve made in the past. I’m wondering how much longer I’m going to have to pay for them. The news has shaken me at the foundation, really. It’s tough to walk through. They say that ‘this too shall pass’ works both ways, meaning that the bad times don’t last forever, but neither do the good times. In this moment, I’m thinking the same could be said about ‘more will be revealed’—that what is revealed can be good or bad.

The NA ‘Just for today’ daily meditation comes to me in my e-mail. There was a passage in today’s which really struck me: “living life on life’s terms can send shock waves even through the recovery of long-time members”. The meditation was talking about the need to avoid painting an overly-rosy picture for newcomers. Not that we should whine about the difficult times, but that it’s important for newcomers to see that it really is possible to handle life’s difficulties without resorting to our old ways of dealing with them. We don’t have to reach for the bottle, or for the bag. We don’t have to check out. We really can get through whatever it is sober. Even if it doesn’t seem possible, it is. And talking about our difficulties while showing we’re dealing with them without getting loaded can be a powerful message to newcomers. To those of us going through those difficult times, getting through them without getting loaded can seem like an outright miracle.

It is.

A lot of people feel that becoming upright citizens, through working the program of Recovery, means refraining from the use of profanity. I’m not one of those. Life is fucking hard, sometimes an evil bitch-goddess, and shit happens. But this is one of the reasons why we used in the first place: we didn’t know how to or couldn’t handle life any other way. If a woman left me, I got loaded. If a friend betrayed me, I got loaded. Fucked up day at work? Yep, got loaded then too... even if I had already gotten loaded to get through it to begin with. It was my answer to everything. I didn’t have any other solutions. And I didn’t have any faith in myself to deal with it any other way.

At a recent meeting, I heard someone talk about the ‘no matter what’ club. I haven’t heard it spoken of like that before, but I liked the sound of it and I do consider myself a member. One of the things I tell myself through tough times is that I don’t have to get loaded—no matter what. Right now, I’ve got craziness with my job situation and I’m having major issues in one of my close friendships. It’s pretty hard stuff, to put it mildly, and I’m really feeling like the rug has been pulled out from under me in a number of different ways. My preconceptions are being challenged. What I had come to depend on in my life as stable is proving that it might not be so. It’s hard. It hurts. It’s pretty fucking scary, to be honest. But I know that it’s okay.

Life goes on, no matter what we do. Everything is always changing. For human beings, creatures who seek permanence, this can be really upsetting. We can lose our cool. We can cause all kinds of damage with our reactions, with our attempts to control. Recovery teaches us this: don’t. Stop trying to control. Let. Go. Accept what is, let your higher power guide you, and move forward.

Some people talk in meetings about the successes they’ve had, thanks to their recovery. They get new cars, great relationships, go back to school, even land their dream jobs. That’s great, and there is nothing at all wrong with being grateful for the good things in our lives. But for me, the real miracle has been and continues to be that I can face life on life’s terms; that I can get through the good times and (especially) the bad times without getting loaded. For someone who once used getting loaded as a response to anything and everything that life threw my way, THAT is the miracle.