Me getting personal – again.

May 15th, 2012 by Jan

I went to my first ever NA meeting last night.

Funny how I’ve been in recovery half my life yet, I never once went to an NA, CA, SA, OA, GA or Al-anon meeting. I guess the fact that walking into AA, all those years ago seem to work for me,  so I just settled in. I never even thought to branch out.

I also never really considered myself a drug addict.
Denial can run deep and labels can get in the way of the truth.

It’s true enough that in the “olden days” I took and abused plenty of drugs, but my DOC (drug of choice) was always booze. Drugs scared me. I was always afraid that I would overdose with drugs. It never even dawned on me that every time I drank to black out – I was overdosing. Funny what we can tell ourselves.

I have no problem saying I’m an alcoholic — and today with close to 29 years of “clean time”. I have no doubt that I am an addict. Period. And as Kumar would say, end of sentence, end of day.

Today none of this is a big deal to me AND it is everything. I am healthy, clean, straight, sober and whatever label that is out there — if it fits, I’ll wear it. And if there is a program, club, circle or practice that supports, inspires and comforts me – I’ll go there.

I’m glad I went to NA last night. Partly because it was new to me, but mostly because of the message I heard. There is a specific language used in recovery. NA has its own and it’s different from AA talk. They use the 12 steps as a guide and god is mentioned in the literature, but that wasn’t the focus. What I heard was “don’t use and you have a good shot at life.”

No matter how I identify myself, that’s a good message.

1 thought on “Me getting personal – again.

  1. Angela

    My friend had a T shirt that said “Change is Good” in big letters across the top and “You go First” in smaller letters across the bottom.

    Why not be the first to do something different?

    “Do what makes you feel good about being in recovery” has been my daily prescriptive for many years, and sometimes just changing lanes or shaking it up is just the thing. Muster the courage to push past the fear, and take a chance on myself.

    It was inspiring for me to be in the company of someone who (after so many years) of working this program, took a chance to do something different, lest the demon ‘Complacency’ sets in.

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Angela Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *