Is this a nightmare? Is this a dream?

About a year ago..

Is this a nightmare? I wake up in the parents accommodation at Ronald McDonald House opposite the Queensland Children’s Hospital. I look at my phone. Damn it’s 4am, too late to vape. I have to be up at 5.30 because Tommy wakes up just before 6 and I like to be there when he first wakes up. I don’t like to vape after 3am because I will be too groggy when I wake. 3am is my cut off time. I’m a bit pissed I slept till 4, I love waking up and vaping my weed and drifting off into my thoughts as I fall back to sleep, it’s one of the few pleasures I have in this traumatic time. I go for a piss, back to bed, and feel myself drifting off to sleep. Maybe I will wake up and this will have all been a bad dream.

I wake again at 5.30. It’s not a nightmare I am really living it. Clean teeth, stretching, a little prayer. I get to the hospital just before 6. Tommy is awake, his eyes are open and he smiles as he sees me walk in. I go to him and wipe the drool from his mouth, put a wet dental sponge in his mouth to moisten it and clean up the crusties. I rub my hand through his hair.

“Morning Tommy.”

“Mmmmm.” He replies.

“Mmmmm.” We hum in unison.

“Did you have a good night? Did you do a big shit for that old nurse? You need to make the night staff earn their wages. Or did you have the young nurse.” I say with a cheeky grin. He smiles back at me. “Did she show you her tits? She did didn’t she. I think she’s sweet on you. I think she jerks you off at night when it’s just you and her.”

“Mmmmmmm.” He hums with a big smile and then laughs.

“Come on. Enough of this dirty talk. Although next time she puts her tits in your face and rubs them all over you can you please take a photo for me. Come on. I deserve it. I should be in Russia now fucking hot 20 year olds not here being your fucking nurse.”

“Mmmmmmm.”

“OK. Meditation time.”

I put on our morning meditation music and sit next to his bed with him for 20 minutes. He doesn’t really like it, but he’s going to spend a lot of time on his own and bored so I figure he better get good at meditating. I look at him. The 13-year-old boy that walked himself in here to get better can now barely move a muscle. The boy who had so much potential, did well at school, plenty of friends, he even shared a business with me – he did all the work. Not anymore. Now he lies in bed all day completely dependent, being rolled from side to side every couple hours so he doesn’t get bed sores.

And here I am having dedicated myself for the next couple years to hedonism, travelling the world and seducing the hottest women while working on my craft of being a writer. Using drugs for inspiration with my newfound manageability over them. Now I am in here 30-40 hours a week with him and spending the rest of my time working or trying to be there for his younger sisters through this great loss for them too. Now I am using weed to cope, not for inspiration. This has got to be a bad dream. Maybe it is, nothing could go this wrong. Maybe I will wake up one day and it’s all been a nightmare.

Today

Is this a dream? I’m a week clean. Things can’t possibly be this good. There I was a week ago thinking, I sort of want to get clean, but early recovery sucks, while I have a few problems my life is pretty good, getting clean is going to suck for maybe a year. Only a week later the last two days have been my most enjoyable for years. Ok, that’s not quite true. The last 2 days have been the best couple days I have had in years where I haven’t had naked 20 year old’s in my luxury hotel room or peak experiences on psychedelics.

I haven’t had sex for almost a month. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed myself when my dick had been dry for that long. I am 44 now, that might help a bit. I woke up a week ago from my psychedelic haze of the day before and had the desire to be clean. I hoped I would. I had made the commitment to get clean the day before, but I was high as fuck. I didn’t know if it would stick.

I haven’t picked up the first drug and done meetings every day since. I’ve gone early and stayed late. I’ve connected with old friends and made some new ones. I have embraced the love of NA that I pushed away for so long. All the sick members that I thought I was better than. Well, I still think I am better than, my ego is certainly back. I feel like the prodigal son returning and everyone should love me.

I have spent time with my kids and feel so much more available for them. Tommy didn’t recover and still can’t move much, but he is out of hospital and accepted his new way of life with a peace and dignity no one could have expected. He has carers now so I no longer have to look after him much. I can be his father rather than his nurse. I can’t tell you how good that feels.

I am supercharged with the spirit of the universe, propelled into the fourth dimension, and the source is NA. The love cult, the rejects and no hopers. I have purpose. I have a life of experience of recovery since I was 19. I know what it’s like to have clean time and grow up and mature clean, and face life’s challenges clean – until I didn’t. And now I know what it’s like to come back.

Yesterday I sat in a meeting surrounded by old friends I have known for over a decade. I watched nearly all of them come to their first meetings and then watch the transformation of their recovery over the years. I feel part of. I’m so glad I did meetings for the last 25 years. Even though I had some breaks my membership in NA has saved me. I have friends in recovery and hope for the future, good relationships with my kids, a stable business, great physical health, and a ticket to Bali in less than a fortnight and then Thailand 2 weeks after that. Wow! I ponder the gratitude of my life as it runs over my head and down my body like warm golden light.

The speaker shares. “Not only do I take the 5^th Tradition seriously for my home group. I put it in my personal life. My primary purpose is also to carry the message to the addict who still suffers. I have family, a career, and hobbies, but I will lose all those if I don’t make NA my primary purpose. It doesn’t say my soul purpose. It just says my primary purpose.”

I awake from my reverie. That’s what I was missing all those years in recovery. I stayed consistent with meetings, but I never made carrying the message my primary purpose. Finance and romance always got the priority. How do I make carrying the message my primary purpose? I have a blog. I want to be an author. I can write my message. My writing can be my primary purpose and the audience of my writing is recovering addicts. Oh, this just keeps getting better. Could this be a dream?