Daily I read a meditation from Narcotics Anonymous Just for Today. I used a bit of drugs back in the day, and for the years 1975 - 1984 used marijuana as a maintenance drug. My program is firmly based in Alcoholics Anonymous because it is alcohol, the rapacious creditor, that brought me to my bottom. The NA JFT meditations always hold some special insight and I have added the word alcohol into the text here.
"We had to have something different, and we thought we had found it in drugs and alcohol."--Basic Text p.13
Many of us have always felt different from other people. We know we're not unique in feeling that way; we hear many addicts share the same thing. We searched all our lives for something to make us all right, to fix that "different" place inside us, to make us whole and acceptable. Drugs and alcohol seemed to fill that need.
When we were high, at least we no longer felt the emptiness or the need. There was one drawback: The substance, which was our solution, quickly became our problem.
Once we gave up the drugs and alcohol, the sense of emptiness returned. At first we felt despair because we didn't have any solution of our own to that miserable longing. But we were willing to take direction and began to work the steps. As we did, we found what we'd been looking for, that "something different". Today, we believe that our lifelong yearning was primarily for knowledge of a Higher Power; the "something different" we needed was a relationship with a loving God. The steps tell us how to begin that relationship.
Just for today: My Higher Power is the "something different" that's always been missing in my life I will use the steps to restore that missing ingredient to my spirit.--pg. 267
There was a time when I walked daily with my Higher Power. Over time I let that relationship slip to the side and it eventually found its way onto a dusty bookshelf where it laid just waiting for me to pick it up again. When I finally accepted the program of AA I did not have to search for some belief in a higher power or spiritual program, I was lucky, I just picked up what had once been so precious to me, dusted it off, shined it up and today nurture it to the best of my ability.
You can find the NA JFT meditations at Milkman's Sober Living site. Also, visit Alkie Centeral.
About Me
There are two dogs inside, the one you feed is the one that grows.
1 comment:
My path was a bit different, never having had a spiritual background. Alas, I ended up in the same place; just took a little longer.
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