so, whatcha' still waiting for?

I visited with my sponsor yesterday, and on the way home, went to a meeting with a friend.

Talking with my sponsor, he said the same thing as my dinner companion the other night:  "relapse does not have to be part of your recovery."  He also went on to add that there's no sense in beating yourself up if you do relapse; just brush yourself back off as best you can, and get back to the program.  Oh, and hopefully you'll make it back; not everybody gets to.

Later, I hooked up with my buddy; we hit a meeting where there were a bunch of people talking about having come in and gone out repeatedly.  There was one guy I was going to pounce on after the meeting, but he vaporized before I could get across the room.

Having had a couple of friends relapse recently, I take this stuff pretty seriously. 

For some reason, I've been running up against this theme repeatedly.  So, I'm going to write about it repeatedly.  Try to organize my thoughts on the subject.  Get this stuff down on electronic "paper".  Deal with concrete sentences, rather than the feelings which bounce around inside of me; changing colors like chameleons.

I was talking to a young kid at a meeting a month or so ago; yapping on about how upset I was about my friends going out.  I was surprised at how cavalier he was about it, until I realized that I used to feel as he did.  Back in the day, I'd just shrug; if they'd valued their recovery, then perhaps they'd make it a higher priority. 

I'd recite platitudes, such as: "you can carry the message, but you can't carry the addict."  But, there was always a very small thought lurking in the recesses of my mind:  had I actually done anything to carry the message? 

There's another saying that I've heard for years; I used to believe it:  "some people have to die, so that others can stay sober."

Maybe someone can explain this to me.  I've been taught that a lack of power is my dilemma, and that I can get access to the needed power to be able to not pick up, by having a spiritual experience.  This is the "wholesale miracle"I referred to in the forward to the second edition of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Somebody please find me where it says in the big book, any words to the effect:  "we found we had to find some losers to die, so that we could stay sober."

Yeah, I'm not gonna' hold my breath waiting for that.

-M

*in my opinion, a "miracle" that isn't extended to everybody, and requires that some people die of addiction, is a fairly shitty deal.