Don’t Look Back…Be PRESENT

I would never want to recover the life I had before my disease of addiction took control of my life.  I think I was in so much pain; in a stranglehold of fear; bottled and repressed years of anger; I only dissociated to escape that pain and found nirvana in my addiction. Yecch! I went back and looked at an old bank statement to see just how much damage I was doing to myself financially.  Needless to say, I wanted to throw up. Somehow, in one month, the last month before I became sober, I managed to spend my entire monthly income to keep my addiction going.  I saw my own notation of how to control my use –a brief equation of total narcotics possessed, divided by the number of days I needed them to last.  Again, needless to say, it didn’t work. What a waste…a waste of SO MANY THINGS!  A waste of money, of time, of opportunities lost, freedom lost, a waste of life.

I do know that in active recovery, I stand the chance – the last chance in my case, to rebuild my life; to rebuild lost friendships, and other relationships lost to my addictive behavior.  How will I ever make amends to them all?  No clue.  Just this…one step forward at a time.  I don’t want to keep looking back –it’s painful, ugly and non-productive…it serves no useful purpose to me anymore.  I just have to keep trying to solve the next problem in front of me.  Did you ever see the movie The Martian? I love that movie for exactly this reason: after being left behind and stranded on Mars, this guy has to face his mortality dead-on.  His choice was to die, or to choose to survive, and at the end [spoiler alert, sorry], he makes that a final statement in the movie…“just solve the next problem in front of you, and then the next problem, and the problem after that, and if you solve enough problems, you get to come home.”

So what am I saying today? I guess I am saying that I choose to survive; to recover.  I choose to be present and grateful for another day clean.  Today I choose not to use; not to get high; not to relapse…then I choose to solve the next problem in front of me [which in my case is to pay a hell of a lot of bills somehow].  I know I will make it somehow–because I won’t look back.  I’ll stay in the present today.  I won’t look to the future, because that just spawns fear.  I have no control.  I give this to my Higher Power. I know He will bless me with enough to slowly begin the financial healing process too.  When it seems overwhelming I will stop, breathe, pray, and change my focus to completing the task at hand. Then I will reach out to another addict and go to a meeting. This is my plan of recovery. I cannot wait for our very first meeting in my hometown of Los Alamos on Tuesday nights at 7PM at the ToTH church!

Peace, love and blessings….