I like to (but choose not to) smoke pot

For me to make real progress in this program, I had to realize that I wanted to smoke pot -- was good at it, craved it, etc. -- AND I wanted to quit. Both of those things are true. When I realized that, I was able to accept the fact that I was an addict, and I quit beating myself up for wanting to get high. I was able to say, "Okay, I want to get high, and I want to quit, and for today I will choose, with the help of others and my higher power, to not smoke pot."

That's what worked for me. The other thing I do is, if I can't figure out what I want, I look at what I have. If I don't know what I want to do, I look at what I'm doing. So when I complain about my problems instead of working on them, I have to honestly admit that at this moment what I want is to complain, not to work. Realizing that helps me move towards deciding to work.

So when I hear somebody say they'd rather get high through the holidays and decorate their house than go to an MA meeting, I think to myself, "That is true and honest." I do NOT judge that person, because I know that person is doing the best they can, and being honest in a meeting. I also think that as long as an addict thinks that way, they'll keep smoking pot, and/or suffering from terrible cravings and guilt. When that addict is able to say, "I want to get high, and I want to get sober," they'll be on the road to making a different decision -- one that will bring different results.

I hope some of this makes sense to somebody!

Anonmyity

Just posed this one on the Recovery Pipeline, where the topic this week is Anonymity -- which, by the way, is as difficult to type as it is to say.

Here's part of the original share:

The program is anonymous for several reasons. 1) for newcomers to feel to safe 2) for people to protected in public. 3) so people can share without fear of their business being talked about.

I'm Paul, and I'm a marijuana addict. Thanks for the topic. I think one of the original reasons AA adopted this tradition was that a pretty famous person a baseball player, I think) got sober and told the world he was part of AA. Then he relapsed, and the credibility of AA took a blow.

But the three reasons you've listed are perfect, and I think the most important is so that people can share freely and be honest. The first decision I made in MA, after I decided to keep coming back, was to not BS the group -- BUT if I thought people were talking about me, judging me, etc., I would not have felt safe being honest, and then I would not have stuck around.

I still struggle with this, though: talking about what others have shared in meetings. When I am talking with friends in recovery, sometimes we will share news that we heard about other people's lives, which we heard in their shares. Or we will try to guess which newcomers are going to stick, based on what they shared. Or we will use a person's share as an example of what works or what doesn't.

Thank you for reminding me that all of this is breaking anonymity, even when I am saying positive things about somebody. What happens in a meeting stays in the meeting! Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, and I am grateful for that reminder today.

The Importance of Recovery Friends

Friends were among the first gifts of the program for me. I came in lonely as well as depressed, sick, freaked out, etc. The first thing I saw was a room full of sober potheads. Their existence gave me hope, and I quickly figured out that I needed to hang out with them -- in meetings and after meetings and at events -- if I was going to stay sober, because most of my other friends were either not sober at all or had no idea what I was going through.

As I started getting sober and making recovery friends, I noticed a wonderful thing: that we could communicate on the usual, smalltalk, shared-interest wavelength, and we could communicate on the spiritual, how-ya-doing wavelength. I still think that's wonderful.

My recovery friends know me much better than other people, so their friendship is especially appreciated and important to me. They are not the whole program, just like meetings aren't, but they are a valuable resource for fun, understanding and support that I always grateful for.

Carl Jung on Addiction

What do You do When People Say "God"?

My girlfriend went to a small gathering of spiritual-minded folks last night, and when she came back she asked me, "What do you do when people say 'God'?"

What followed was, typical of me, a long and rambling discourse that mostly left both of us confused. I could boil it down to this, though: depending on the context and speaker, when someone says "God" to me, I either:

A) do nothing, because there's nothing for me to do,
B) translate their "God" into my "God" or some allegorical Being,
or
C) get a little defensive.

In other words, if somebody says something like "A religion without God (like Buddhism, Hinduism, or Taoism) isn't a real religion," I get a little defensive; I mean, tell that to the billions of people practicing said religion. Or if they are just describing their beliefs, like saying "I think of God as being that guy on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel," then there's nothing for me to do.

The translation thing, though -- well, that's where I started to ramble. And basically, what I was trying to say was this: I think of God as a purity of love and a complete absence of ego or will, which exists in each of us and is accessible to each of us, if we can set aside our own ego and will to let love flow through us. And in that purity of love, all are the same, all are loved, all are one.

So when someone says "God will take care of me," I tend to translate that into something like, "If I can cultivate within me the spirit of pure love and live in that state, I have nothing to fear or worry about." And if somebody says, "Eternal life can be achieved through Jesus, son of God," I turn that into "Peace and freedom are available to me in the eternal "now" if I can cultivate the spirit of pure love by following the examples and teachings of Jesus, whom I believe to be the physical embodiment of the purity of love which I call God."

And, most relevant to recovery, "Turn it over to God" means, to me, "Set aside my ego and will right now, so I may act in this moment as I would if I were living in the spirit of pure, egoless love."

See how I can ramble?