As I approach my ninety day sober mark on the 18th of this month, I have been thinking a lot about this process from a higher level than I’ve thus far been capable. The change in my life the past three months has been truly remarkable; I started and finished an intensive outpatient program, I’ve started to repair the relationships with my friends and family and rebuild trust with them, and I’ve successfully detoxed from heroin for the first time in my life and have slowly begun to pick up the broken puzzle pieces of my life and reassemble them. Only in the last few days, however, I have realized that I am not only picking up and reassembling the fragmented and shattered pieces of my life, but rather I have the incredibly unique opportunity to put them back together and rebuild exactly the way I want them to be, the way it always should have been.
Emerging from the exhaustion, the filth, the ‘high cost of low living,’ (a phrase I’ve heard a number of times in the various meetings I attend) is incredibly difficult. No one can prepare you for the level of disappointment, the guilt, shame, and all of the other horrible thoughts and emotions that come along with addiction. When you finally hit the bottom, you are in a state of utter despair; a state of total emotional, moral, and spiritual bankruptcy. Getting through those first few weeks takes immense strength and toughness. You cry like a child, you curse like a sailor, you come to know suffering like you’ve never known it before.
All anybody, even those who have been in such a state themselves, seems to be able to say to you is, ‘it’ll get better.’ And every time you hear those words you want to scream at them and ask them, ‘When?! When will it get better?!’
But with each and every sunrise, you do start to feel better. Little by little, bit by bit, you regain your strength and slowly start to think clearly. As withdrawals come to a close you finally feel human once again, perhaps for the first time in years. You may not yet realize it, I certainly did not, but it is in this precise moment that you suddenly become more powerful than you ever could know.
All of the sudden you are back in control. You have reclaimed the reigns of your life from the poisonous and evil grips of addiction, at least for now. I won’t try and tell you that you are free of the disease, because the truth is that you will never be totally free of the disease again, and the moment you think otherwise is the moment that it will strike you down again. This is the start of your recovery, the starting point that returns to you your choice in life. It is a long road ahead of you, a very long road indeed. But unlike active addiction, the more work and the more effort that you put into your recovery the more positivity and opportunity for good will come into your life.
To be continued…..
G.M.C., 2.14.2020, Day 86
Daily Recovery 