My life was centered around and ruled by drugs. The imperious urge to find and get more by all means necessary. I may have not gotten arrested and there a certainly things that I had not done yet, but as my disease progressed so did what I would do to get the next one.
I am so grateful that, today, I do not have to live my life one hit at a time. Cravings still pop up now and then however, today I have tools to keep me from acting on those cravings.
In recovery, there will be cravings (crazy thoughts too). With the support of my friends and family and by being honest with what I am going through I can push through those cravings and stay clean - one day at a time
I don’t believe that I have ever used this word correctly; I did not know that it involved risk. How many times did I venture out all in the name finding the next hit.
Every time that I was in public while under the influence, I was at risk of being arrested. At any moment, where I sat in a drug dealer’s home, there could have been a raid and I would have been arrested. Many times, in a paranoid state, I stepped out and into situations that I could have hurt myself or someone else (I once walk 9.5 miles because I was to paranoid to stay on the subway train). Luckily, I made it to my destination (took over 3 hours, in the middle of the night… going from one borough to the next). SO GRATEFUL that I don’t have to live that way anymore.
Now what about the road to recovery? It was a venture that I was afraid to take and so desperately needed at the end of my active addiction.
Life comes with risks and challenges. Recovery has giving me the tools to help me make better decisions, to assess situations to ask for help, to question my perception of things; to pause. I still make bad choices at times however, I am not beating myself up the way I used to about these ‘bad" choices. There are lessons to be learned in everyone of them one of them being, which road not to take.
Staying clean opens the door to new possibilities. I get to choose where I to take my life that is best for me - one day at a time
