I appreciate all of the your patience with me and my delayed posting to the blog, as of late! Let me just say that first of all, I will never abandon this blog out of non-interest, that I can pledge. However, in the last couple weeks, I’ve since started my brand new job as the peer recovery specialist at a treatment center in Portland! I am super excited and I actually still need someone to smack me hard, as I legitimately feel as though this is a dream (at the risk of sounding trite). I’m having a ball, honestly. It has kept me very busy, though. Right now, I pray to gain the sense of balance between work duties and still maintaining CAA, since the blog/networking with other addicts truly is a prime passion of mine.
-Louis
One of the main realizations I came to in recovery is that fact that I only have one life. This might sound funny now, but it was an eye-opener at the time.
When I was still drinking, it felt like I was waiting for an outside power to give me direction. I was just roaming around, circling in a holding pattern above my life, counting down for it to begin.
When I stopped drinking, I just knew I could only remain sober by making myself fully accountable. In the end, only rigorous honesty could make me whole again. Addiction, after all, is nothing if not an attempt to live life outside of accountability. Well, it sure was an eye-opener how my not drinking allowed the truth to the surface. A couple of months into sobriety, I had a dream that made me realize that now is my time to be alive and I should savor that. This was the dream.
I am fast approaching a tipping point. The tipping point of what, exactly, is not clear. What I know for sure is that, as I come nearer, nothing can be done, and once past it, nothing can be done about it, either. At the same time, I have the strangest sensation that I am not just heading toward the future, but the future is coming toward me with increasing speed. The sensation seems to accelerate until everything suddenly stops and I am in Slow Time. I have never heard of Slow Time, yet somehow I know this is the time that existed before my birth and the time that will continue after my death. I feel very calm as if this is a rite of passage that I have been preparing for all of my life. A sense of well-being covers me like a warm blanket.
The way in which the dream described arriving at the tipping point between past and future as a rite of passage, I thought that was very special. Much like I was returning from a suspended state back to my real self, back to the present me, as it were. There is truth in that. We all need to realize we only have one life and it is only ours to live, now. And be fully accountable.
It now feels like my life again belongs to me, after a long period of stifling guilt, with the drinking and all the bad stuff I imposed on my family. I suddenly feel I am back in control.
I feel an exhilaration with this new insight, a surge of power from a center that was off limits until this very moment. I will aim high. I will aim for the meaning of my life.
Written by Philip, 2018.
Calling All Addicts 