Monday, May 30, 2011

oh happy happy damn day. lol

Any holiday that involves people not working is always a nightmare here in house of Gandy. It's always the same pain that is trotting out every time. The only change and it was a good one is I had no involvement in the Memorial Day Blow Out of 2011. (not even close to the Easter massacre) I only knew it went down after some stomping up the hall way went on capped with a slamming of a door than doesn't close all the way (very effective. lol) I ask my mom what was going on while I was gone hesitantly. It mostly involved my selfish , crack and Xanax riddled sister's selfish-self centeredness. I'm not saying she doesn't have real pain, but she was unpleasant and self centered as a child. Deep down , she doesn't like me and I have mostly no feeling for her. Although I have mentioned before, I would make a solid attempt to get her out of a burning house.. Today was different for me because I am different. I don't look for reasons to get my feelings hurt so I can retreat under the bridge and mentally masturbate myself with how wrong everyone else is. Yes, things suck but nothing sucks forever and I am making decisions and changes daily to get me to a different level of living and loving and coping with the people the universe places in my life, or the ones I pull in to allow me to practice being a good human even though they irk me. I hope there is no freaking holiday in the foreseeable future where everyone in the house is here all day. Otherwise, I might break out the "nighty night sandwiches" to serve at lunch and put them all down for a nap. lol I have been changed and it was apparant in my reactions today. I'm a few inches closer to being the me I hope for on birthday candles and stars in the sky.

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Suddenly, without notice, things get different.

This was one of those days when all the changing that I am doing caught up with me and suddenly everything including me is different.  I have opportunities landing in my lap that are proof positive that the universe loves me just as much as everyone else. I wasn't as it turns out,  born into a life where I was automatically excluded from all things that make being human so great. I am well thought of by people that matter to me. I'm trusted and I have people believing in my abilities that I didn't know I possessed.  It's really more magical than any movie. Simply by opening my heart and mind up to the truths of the universe, the thick glass wall that kept me from being a participant in life has been removed. The only way that glass goes back up and cuts me off again is if I myself  stop making choices that open me up. I don't want to be closed off from the spirit or the planet again. There are things that I have to do in order for that to happen and the main thing is to stay with people who are spiritually in tune and open. The longer I go without being around a source of life and change, the more and the quicker I forget such a space is available to me. Spiritual amnesia leads to living death. When I can't remember who I am , anyone with any spirituality can give me a jump start. That is why I am always bringing new people into my circle. The odds of us all forgetting who we are at once are next to impossible. I am so thankful for everyone who utters the syllables that form my name and all the people I speak the names of when I count my miracles at night. Thank you for being my friend and thank you for reminding me who I am, but mostly for showing me all the possibility that lies in us all, each of us.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Get me out of here

My sister poked her head in the computer room and said her stomach was growling. She asked if I wanted her to pick up anything for me when she made her breakfast run. I said no. So an hour and 15 minutes later she comes back and is completely serious when she interupts my phone call to ask me if I knew anyone with a litle "Flat Bottom boat". I didn't even try to hide my displeasure as I replied NO. 5 minutes later she is back and asking me where she could find some rocks. Free rocks. She wanted to make a little walk pathway in the backyard where be barely even mow. Next she shows me some baskets she has tried to paint black and I nod my head approvingly. Next she digs through some storage bends and puts on her little skirted swimsuit which she is still wearing. Now we do live near the lake but it is easily 3 blocks from here and she has never been.

I honestly can say, whatever she smoked or swallowed in the75 minutes she was gone does not interest me in the bit. I can't get over how she gets overcome with this creative thinking when she is stoned on whatever but has no talent for reproducing these delusions of artistic, creative endeavors. May that still is always just below her skin but it comes out screwed up when she is stoned. Do you remember the fake leather suitecase she autopsied in the wee hours of the morning?  It could be worse, she could get mean like I did on occasion.lol  I hate that she keeps doing this shit. I really hate it. I wish the universe would step in and intervene in her insanity. But that is my plan for her and not the power all that is.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

light

Once you have felt the full impact of enlightenment, it is damn near impossible to find any comfort in returning to the darkness of being. We were built and designed to live in the light. We are not mushrooms that thrive in the dark and love to be covered in waste. Just for today, I don't want to live in an UN-natural state of being. I am light, and I'm "lovin' it.

Monday, May 23, 2011

More insight from Campout.

I am in that place this morning where I have had an experience and I must find a way to process it and get the most out of the effort. I am very disappointed that this weekend failed to move me in the way it seems to move others. Part of me wants to stomp and pout about how yet another time, I don't not fit in the groove that others do, the other part of me knows better. If anything was learned over the last three days is that my journey on the planet is going to always me uniquely my own. I have to find my own way of feeling connected and part of things. The thing I keep learning over and over and over again is that I'm not supposed to be like you. I am suppose to be me. I have to be me in order to get the things done, things the universe wants me to get done. I have to be honest, as I watched out the window of the rv at everyone running about, I was thinking, what is it in me that keeps me from enjoying the things that I am seeing through the plexiglass. So I think I am more assured now that there is nothing wrong with not caring for big functions, dances and campouts. It has nothing do to with me not trying to be "part of". Those just aren't my things and I am confident in that now. I'm not going to feel like I am not trying any longer. I know myself a lot better and I trust myself a lot more thanks to the 13th Annual Campout. Wasn't what I expected to figure out or learn from the weekend but, it's a pretty big shift in understanding and I will happily take it. The parts I did enjoy the most were the parts I could have driven out especially for like others. It is no big surprise that my favorite parts of the weekend were when I got to spend time with the people from the hall that have the "sparkle" I am drawn most. There are people in my recovery that I don't think it would ever be possible for me to get enough of.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Tried tried it , suspectd, but now I know. Camping is not for me.

I followed through with giving camping a try at my recovery groups's annual lakeside 3 day fest. Other than the food being good, and getting to spend some stolen moments with friends, it was difficult for me. If I hadn't got to get away for 2 hours on saturday, I may have just collapsed into a big piled of weeping, anxiety ridden gray haired idiot.
I was very very upset that it was yet another thing that "earth people" that I don't connect with at all. I really wanted to but it just didn't happen. If I could have talkeveryone without having to be at the lake I would have preffered that. My best times were the stolen moments with friends in the camping RV..

I didn't over eat once this weekend. I was afraid if came myself any slack on watching the food intake I would lose momentum. There was a sack fulll of mini-Hershey's on the table in the RV the whole time, and I knew if I even ate one, it was set up a compulsion I would be able to stop until I hated myself. Just like PILLS, one is to many and a thousand not enough.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Comfort from strange places

My whole life I have loved thunder storms. The make me feel small and insignificant  compared to the weather patterns that have gone on for millions of years. My god, I really could be Wiccan. The earth is the source of life, those other planets couldn't sustain us. We make things like the internet, and flat tvs but we never have been smart enough to change the course of the behavior of the earth. I like that i am living on a "LIVING THING" with it's own way of doing things to insure its own survival. We are the expendables. We can suck the crude out of the holes and fell every tree we can find but we will never have the upper hand. The earth can shudder for 15 seconds and do away with entire sea boards when it chooses to. The earth is certainly a power greater than ourselves. I love that my life and my problems are small compared to the vast power of the planet. If the earth is getting hotter, perhaps it's running a fever in a first attempt to rid itself of the parasites called humans.

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Yuck

I'm completely disconnected with with the good stuff. I don't feel it today and all week has been me, simply going through the motions. I don't understand where the disconnect is coming through except I have really not been able to do anything but dread speaking tomorrow night at my NA hall. I just can't figure out how to make enough chronological sense about of my life to put it in story form.  People seem to have sort of high expectations for me and of course I hate that.  I'll go and share about it in the meeting today and then try to start interviewing people in my recovering team to figure out how to reconnect.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Alive and Hopeful. Two miracles I will list on the top of ye ole Grattitude List.

I'm telling my story Friday night at my NA group. I did not want to do it because so much of my story confuses me. I could not say no. I will hope that whatever needs to happen happens and I don't offend the christians. I can't not share that not being a christian and being very wary of them didn't keep me from coming back to recovery. I have good friends in NA that are Christian and they no that the place I come from is one of being beaten down by misuse of the bible. I'm 75 percent better already about that. But when I meet someone and that is pretty much there lead line, I usually retreat. I don't want to be around anyone who believes anything without question. I don't think my mom has ever once questioned the validity of the indoctrination she got as a child in the holy roller church.

The best part of 12 step recovery is you are urged to think, and question and find out how the principles can fit into your own life. I have to talk about God, and I have to talk about the 18 years or so I spent in AA. To share in a general way and still get my point across is going to be fucking tricky.  I have no message to deliever, just my little story of what it was like, what happened and what it's like now. Then let go of the results. I was a singer, I was a paid actor and to find myself running from being the center of attention is a real trip. I'm still all in! Doors of opportunity open and today I find a way to walk through them.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

had a reality check.

A friend for 18 years , that lives two towns away ask me to pick him up to bring him to an NA meeting which I of course agreed to. He hasn't drank for 18 years, but like me, took the break from alcohol to become a drug addict.  He has such a tender heart and has never, never been treated with any real respect from his family and his friend. I drove up and he was on the porch. I was really horrified because I would have never known it was him. He looked like a homeless person and smelled pretty bad. I talk to him on the phone often and I had no idea he was in this shape. I don't know what frightened me so much except he wasn't my friend, or at least the one I last saw two years ago. I can't imagine people didn't have the same reaction to me when I didn't leave the house for 2 years and dyed my hair orange. I can't believe he was bleeding to death right under my nose. I know very few things for sure but I know beyond all doubt , if he comes to NA, gets welling and honest, he can salvage his life and find a new way to thrive like never before. I've always been in his corner and have never thrown him under the bus. I won't stop now. It just scared me.
Underneath his scare costume, he is a tender hearted man who NEVER not even his parents treated him well and no one ever wanted him to be happy in his life. Their all dead, and he has time for a great life. If he has a desire to stay clean and get honest. I will pull his ass up 80 in a red wagon if he wants to go to a meeting. If not, I'm just going to have to love him from a distance and hope he has a change of heart while there is still time.

Friday, May 6, 2011

It wasn't a leap of faith, I WAS PUSHED!

I have know idea what made me think of this, but nearly 20 years ago I saw this guy show up at a Lambda AA meeting with his suit cases. He had left his partner who did not want him  to have any life of his own and tried to disuade him from growing and changing. He said he told his older lover that "I will sleep on the sidewalk before I ever stay another night with you or in this house".  (When you don't have somewhere to go and you leave your house, that is sincerity)
When someone makes the decision the status quot is no longer and will never ever be enough, and they take bold action because of it, I find it the most thrilling thing in the world to be allowed to witness with me own eyes. I'd say 50 percent of the people of the world will never draw a line in the sand and say ,"I WILL NOT TAKE THIS ANYMORE". 
When I see people have enough and decide no matter how frightening not knowing what will happen, it makes it easier for me to embrace change in my own life.
Truth inspires truth and change inspires change. Through out the history of the world, things that didn't change and adapt, went the way of the dinosaur

In my life at 43, I have found the only way to enact change is to go "All IN"  with No Reservations. My resolve strengthens when I see others take the bold step of blind faith just as I have.

Despair, is that still a word?

I woke and and for some reason word, "Despair" came to mind. I have had days in recovery that weren't that great, and my emotional pain was not pleasant, but I have never been consumed by despair, since I had enough and tried a step based way to live. My life today, just for today is as opposite from from "Despair" as night is to day. Today there are pockets of light in me that I honestly haven't even realized are there, purging the embedded despair that I thought were original dark parts. I have been revolutionized and revitalized. Despair is the heart of the dark, and I never want to to be consumed by it again. Light-living is way more cool than trying to learn to love the dark.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

I had a great moment today of seeing who I am and who I want to be.

There is a "recovery house" that visits the noon meeting at my hall in Longview several days of the week. It's partly where the county houses people with mental issues while they adjust to life on meds and part the place the state hospital sticks people when they need to empty a bed. There was an older black guy who came in and sat next to me and he was besotted with the problem many of the house residents have. He was sleepy. Very sleepy. I suspected his meds were kicking his ass but it could be just detox. A guy from his house  brought him a cup of coffee with cream. I was listening to someone share when I heard a liquid splat next to me. He had nodded off and dropped the full cup of coffee. I felt so sorry for him, his first meeting , new surroundings and now a full cup of coffee pooled between his legs. I flew up and got the mop and paper towels and told him "I"ll take care of this. He quietly asked for a paper towel to use on his jeans. The warm feeling i get from taking care of another human who is less than at there best is as good as any drug. I was so overwhelmed by my emotions tapping into his, I had to take a moment behind the locked door of the bathroom. I felt for a split second I could cry forever. I didn't even get his name but his presence today reminded me, that I was human. Not only that, I was a human with terrific capacity to love strangers and help them take care of needs they don't have the capacity for taking care of themselves.

It goes along with me talking the other night about the paradoxes we often mention. My favorite is the break I give you in good speed, in turns allows me to give me self one and faster. Is it possible that the reason the way I treat you so instantly comes back to me, is there is no separation between us all. We are all one spirit but believe we are separate because we think the body is who we are?

This is a little Project I am working on this week I'm calling "Just Talking on Paper.

This is just the telling of some of my story as if I was casually telling an alien from outer space about some of my time here on the planet.


Talking on Paper
By Clinton Gandy





My name is Clinton Rolen Gandy. I am 43 years old. I’m an addict, alcoholic, smoker, liberal, loving, compassionate, funny , introspective, thoughtful, hopeful, bipolar, deeply spiritual,  clever gay man in the heart of East Texas. I have issues with family. I have issues with food. I have issues with idiots on TV with microphones that should be filled with shame they even think the way they do, much less broadcast it.

You may read that short paragraph and think, I don’t have anything in common with this guy so why should I read what he has to say? My answer is, maybe you shouldn’t. I am not everyone’s cup of tea and for many, my mere existence consternates them to the point of shaking their fist in the air.  I am not everyone’s cup of tea and I get that. I only have extra time though now, for people who “get” me and I “get” them. Turns out life isn’t high school and I won’t be running for class President again so , it’s ok that I don’t “bond” with everyone I come in contact with. It’s a huge relief. HUGE. There are extras and there are day players. There are contract players and there are guest stars in my life today.

I had a sort of a break through moment several Sundays ago. I had some mania trying to kick in and I was trying desperately to NOT do anything that what egg it on and make it worse.  Through a random set of thoughts it occurred to me. My neighbor an older lady I called “Iris” because she grew them everywhere, had been given just months to live and she was so worried about who would take care of her husband. I saw this fire in her eyes where she was basically daring death to come and get her because she couldn’t leave her husband of a thousand years.
The thought that struck me was, I’ve never had anything going on in my life that I would be willing to fight, to take death to the mat for one more day of my life.
My new goal, and I used the “g” word very sparingly because I see people going nuts “achieving”, I am shooting for creating a life that I would fight for if it was threatened by my early exit. I grew up wishing I had never been born and then as I got older it turned into “I wish I were dead”. So the concept of not being completely apathetic about my own demise is new to me. My experience is the less you fill you life with special things and people, the less likely you are to be hurt when they are removed. So I have gotten very good and wanting nothing, hoping for nothing and expecting nothing. I am even afraid to admit, at times that I want to live for fear that just by admitting it, I will end it.
I have 43 years of really screwed up muddled thinking that I am running autopsies on. Is this real? Is this true? Does this serve any purpose in my life other than to weight my ass down. I feel like the people on that TV show “Hoarders” when the day comes they have to begin sorting out the decaying things in their homes, paring everything down to necessary useful items so they can have a quality life.
I’ve had many many pitiful moments in my loaf, most of which I constructed myself. I can’t imagine anything more worthy of pity that to spend the rest of my life as if I were already a corpse. Dead on the inside or too frightened to lose making me ineligible to win. This is the story of life, running from it and going through it. I won’t flinch in my honesty. I have nothing to gain and nothing to share if I try to come off as anything but my flawed self who is learning to love, live and fight for my shot at having one.

I was born in Linden, Texas about 6 miles away from my home town of Hughes Springs. Where I went on to live for 18 years. What my welder father and Real Estate Agent mother had no way of knowing the day they brought me home was that I was not the run of the mill baby that people take home every day from thousands of hospitals. I was special and it would take nearly 40 years for me to realize that.
My earliest memories are from a white brick house we had up until I was in the third grade. It was a cookie cutter 1960’s development on the east side of town. I think my memories start around 2 or 3 years old. Most of them involve me wanting to play with my sisters dolls and dishes. Oh yes, I have a sister that is 6 years older than me.
It seemed like everything I was interested in  I was told was NOT a boys toy. One day I went to my sisters room when she had gone to church and put on her colorful smock dress my mother had , had a seamstress make. I puts some panty hose on my head so they legs fell like like pony tails and started to put on a little show for myself. I looked up and my dad was there and no happy. He made me wear the pantyhose pig tails and smock to breakfest. Honestly I think I was my first introduction to shame. Feeling shame for something that just came naturally.
My dad put a halt to my Barbie fun and baton twirling. I hated him. I hated that everything I was interesting in was considered “girl stuff”. I was clever though. I kept right on playing with whatever I wanted I just had to do it in secret. So, at four years old, I accidently discovered the only place I was acceptable, in secret. I literally played in the closets of the house, in the barn or in the bathroom. I would make wigs out of curled paper and fingernails later on out of milk cartons.  In hind sight I hate that I gave up who I was with no fight. I didn’t know any better and just assumed that they were right.
Things went from bad to worse when I started school. I found out I talked like girl, ran like a girl and threw a ball like a retarded girl.
The first negative term I was given in first grade was sissy. I knew it didn’t feel good but it was very quite benign compared to the names to come. One of the confusing things that started for me in school and happened all 12 years is I was elected class favorite in school yet teased on the school yard. In the meantime I am desperately trying to figure out how to fit in and exactly what and how I was supposed to be and act. I just felt lost in grade school I didn’t know if I was getting invited to the party to be made fun of to have a good time.
I know 5th grade brought trouble for me in the name of Keith Gilbreat. He didn’t just call me names, there was an anger to his words that scared me. He was really mean. I never found out why he disliked me so intensely.
It isn’t like I am claiming I was perfect. I was a precocious little shit. I was spoiled my parents terrible. I mean terrible. Our grade school had no air-conditioning so my parents bought a big window unit for my classroom only. Which I sat in front of with my best friend Stephanie. I would eat Sweet Tarts in class that I kept in old pill bottles and claimed they were vitamins. When I graduated first grade, the window unit came with me. We were the only class in the whole Elementary to have air. It’s shameful now, but at the time I really was annoying with my cool air, high voice, retarded girl ball throwing self. I would never try to paint myself as anything but honest as I can be.

I was very excited about Jr. High because I would be able to join the band and wear the costumes. As soon as my mother found out I was wanting to be in the band I was informed in words more stern than I ever had heard, that I would be playing football and I could not be in the band.
I don’t know why I didn’t put up some fight. Anything, but nothing. I did join the football team and in 6 grade you have to have a year of “training” before you can play real games in the 7th grade. I was stuck with all those boys who were so mean to me and we had to exercise til I nearly threw up. It was my own little concentration camp experience one grueling thing at a time.
In the seven grade, I was six foot tall and probably 200lbs. I looked like a football player. I rehearsed and dressed like everyone else and on the bus ride over to Winnsboro Texas, I felt a sickening feeling, an omen mid-birth. We went through our little exercises and took place on the field. The grass was so green, the field lights so bright, it was beautiful. As I was looking around , it hit me. No one bothered to teach me how to play football! I knew nothing about the game after a year of gear up and weeks of rehearsal on the team. They put me out to start and they never told me how to play the god damn game. I guess it was such a completely crazy idea, a boy in 7th grade who had never seen a football game would just genetically know about yards, and gains and penalty’s. I had no choice but to continue because my mom and dad said I couldn’t quit. So I decided, if I had no choice but to play, I was going to be the bloodiest useless member of any team in Texas. And I was.

I had to play in the 8th grade too. I sucked just as bad but I was in good company. My team “The Colts (baby Mustangs)” never won a game in the two years I was forced to play, well we tied zero to zero and celebrated like it was the Superbowl.

I don’t have whatever “gene” that makes me the least bit interested in team sports, or sports in general unless you count figure skating. Figure skating is the bastard cousin to accepted sports.
In 8th grade I over heard some girls that I was crazy about talking about smuggling bottles of wine into their slumber party. I had never had one bit of interest in alcohol and I thought drug users were thugs. Listening to the shenanigans they told of seriously made me want to drink with them.
The summer between my 8th and 9th grade years I took a family trip out west. We were having a very fine dinner our host and taken us out to where there were wine glasses at each setting. By the ninth grade I was already 6’5. The waiter assumed I was legal and kept pouring wine. I felt warm and goofy. It felt like my eyeballs were moving slightly back and forth and I excused myself to go and look at my eyes. You couldn’t see the movement by I loved the way it felt. I was free and at as and I told a story that held the attention of all the adults at the table.
We left the restaurant and strolled down the strees of New Port. Even walking with the warm breeze felt incredible.
Even though the experience was fantastic I did not immediately go looking for more when I got home. I was so desperate to make friends, specifically some male friends. Since kindergarden I had no friends who were boys. The ones that liked me were a little to afraid by guilt by assocation I think now. Like the sissy would rub off on them. I saw an in, with a guy that was nice and he had an older brother. They were kind of wild and listened to Quiet Riot and they seem to be doing some drinking.
Our small town of twelve hundred rose in importance to area teens because we had a brand new skating rink built and open. I know that to anyone younger than possible 30, the idea of going to a building, renting skates and going in circles for two hours while the music of the day was played must seem ridiculous. Taking it even further , the skates were not in line roller blades.
The guy I had my eye on to be my friend and has brother told me that on Friday and Saturday nights there was an old black man that sold 40 ounce bottles of “Bull” for 5 bucks. So for my first night with beer and the boys, I brought 10 dollars. The fact that one would be enough never even crossed my mind. Isn’t that crazy, I’d never drank a beer in my life, but if I could have only had one , I wouldn’t have bothered with it.  In my whole drinking career, a six pack would have to stay alone in the fridge until I could put at least a 12 pack with it for it to be enough to bother with.
When my family had moved into the grocery store that my dad bought just before 3rd grade, I started swiping for or five of these candy bars. “Marathon Candy Bars”. They were long and looked like Laura Ingalls braids. I would go hide in a very dank dark dirt floored storage building , walk around in some old white/mother of pearl clogs my sister had stored in there and eat those candy bars.
Now, I know I was medicating a ton of hurt and loneliness. But the reason I brought this up is, one Marathon Bar would have been over to quick and not allowed me the enjoyment of focusing on something that was nothing but tasty.
As far back as I remember, any chance I had to get “MORE”. I went for. When I would ask my mother’s card playing friend if I could get her coffee, I would heap the powdered creamer in there even while not knowing what it tasted like and if there was such a thing as “TO MUCH CREAMER”.  If I wanted to stay up late, I had a drive to stay up all night, if I wanted to sleep in, I wanted to sleep all day.  I may not have been born to extreme, or maybe I was, but I latched on to it as soon as I could. More of anything is always better. Even with love. There is this great line in Beaches where Lani Kanzan tells Bette Midler’s character that she moved to Florida because she couldn’t love her daughter anymore. She goes on to say that Bette’s character needs so much love she wears people out.
I knew instantly what the writer was getting at. Some of us or born where enough is never enough when it comes FEELING like you have had enough.
I need some signs I have had enough, stretch marks, blisters, sores,  blood shot eyes, something to gauge my over doing it in the pursuit of pleasure.

Monday, May 2, 2011

WDR

In '98 after alcohol had completely kicked my ass for 17 years, having about 4 years sober in AA, I held three little blue pills in my hand (not viagra) and looked at them. I remember clearly hearing the prominent voice of self direction in my head say "Now there is no way possible, these could get you into as much trouble as alcohol did". They got me in more trouble the liquor did.



So in my recovery today, when I hear the voice of the disease prompt me to participate in action or behavior that in my gut I feel is questionable for the health of my spirit, I try very hard not to play the game I am being tempted with. I can't take the "shortcuts' that I want to sometimes, I can't short change my friends with attention and I can't act out like I did before I knew better most important I cannot fail to bring love when I have it to bring.



All of those things tend to leave a sticky dark film on my spirit that cuts off the flow of the universe. Once that happens I start slowly forgetting who I am and who I will be, and I begin to forget there was ever hope for me at all. We can call it insanity if you want to but I consider it the less compassionate form of death.



Do those basics. Share honestly what is going on with you. Walk past the fear and right into a meeting. The disease of addiction will try to convince you that you have something to lose if you get honest with the people who want nothing from you other than strong recovery and peace for you. For us to become worried or ashamed to honestly share with other recovering addicts is slow but certain death. I think the reason we get a program of our own is to have a plan or a pro-gram in place to apply when the shit hits the fan. Just for today, I'm going out fighting. If the moment comes and I realize I feel like going down screaming.



Just for today, I accept the fact that I will always have more unhealthy first instincts but to stick around for the second and third recovery based instincts to kick in.



I love the line in the book that says something to the effect of "Sometimes, being restored to sanity means that we just don't act on the first impulse". (paraphrased, I'm not a memorizer)



"I couldn't live as a human with or with out drugs" (and nothing has changed)



WE DO RECOVER