As those who know me are aware, I got clean pretty young. Despite that fact, I was in and out of numerous hospitals, psych units, and programs, as I struggled, not just with chemical dependency, but myself inside of my head. I personally tried to get clean, hundreds of times. I'd wake up in the morning, usually from some craziness from the night before, saying... I'm not going to use today and didn't even make it to the evening. It was years spent being a walking, talking train wreck, because I underestimated the expression, "Addiction is more than drugs... addiction is about the noise of the mind." When I got to the rooms of recovery, a long-timer said to me, "Look, I know that you're young, but this is my experience, it's easier to stay, than keep coming back... mostly cause I know a lot of people that left, and removed themselves from the opportunity to heal the ultimate problem... the way our head can (dis)operate... and they couldn't get back."
In my years of recovery, I've never seen someone leave the program, or had them come back and say... "Hey I'm just here to visit... I've been using... My life's better.... see... nothing was wrong." It doesn't happen. Just last evening I was sharing with a friend and they were telling me about a newcomer who OD' and damn near died, who I'd recently met. They said, "See what happens when you get to know people and care so much about them... if fuckin' hurts." Yes, it does. Too many leave relapse as an option on the table, even when they "Say," that they don't. Anything we leave on the table and allow to haunt us usually finds a way to come back and bite us in the ass. It's an experienced fact.
Not coincidentally in Chapter Nine of the Basic Text there's a paragraph that reads... “Rigorous honesty is the most important tool in learning to live for today. Although honesty is difficult to practice, it is most rewarding. Honesty is the antidote to our diseased thinking. Our newly found faith serves as a firm foundation for courage in the future.” That future... that one second from now is about sticking and staying... and not running out on our healing.
In a particular Area, they have an expression, that I really liked... "Stay in position..." As in staying in the position of recovery, and don't allow ourselves to get tackled and dragged by the disease, away from healthy solutions. There's no glory in helping it out with our own hands, cause we're holding onto sickness. Our dysfunctional mind really can be cunning, baffling, and powerful, with the ability to make a "Trap House," look somehow appealing, or certain chemicals appear relatively harmless cause they're legal. In reality, they're hell-realms populated by hungry ghosts and vampires trying to survive on a spectrum of mental and emotional isolation. From that perspective... Staying in position, is better than "Trying," to keep coming back. We all know people that didn't. The disease washed them in like a tide and did the same in washing them out because in some way they weren't anchored deep enough in recovery.
Just for today... I will take my running shoes off. I will root myself in recovery. I will make staying clean my number one priority. From here I will work the Steps to heal my heart and mind, unified and in harmony physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, so that I get to live fully whole and wholly free. That is our one promise.