I’m back, 3 and a half months clean. I’m not just back in recovery, I have myself back. I have my ego back and I have confidence in my ability to navigate the often turbulent waters of life.
Today was a day I didn’t really need a higher power. Tomorrow I might be praying, pleading for God to take my will and my life. “God today I need a higher power. I don’t care if I don’t believe – I need.”
The last time I felt like this was early 2018. I was in Bali and was reaping the benefits of some very courageous, albeit fool hardy decisions. I had committed to a single life at the end of 2015 and through sheer exposure I had desensitised myself to being rejected by women. I had approached over 3000 women I was attracted to in a 2 year period. I finished 2017 by taking LSD for the first time in 16 years, also just a few days before my NA 16th birthday.
By the beginning of 2018 I considered both a huge success and I was travelling Indonesia for a month. I had just spent a week on the island of Gilli T (where magic mushrooms are sold in huts on the beach) with a girl I met in Jakarta and now I was in Ubud catching up on AA meetings and dating a beautiful Russian girl I met in a café.
I accepted everything as it truly was. Life wasn’t perfect, but it was better than I had ever had it. At 40 years of age I was a man. I had skills to make money and seduce women. An AA old timer once said in a meeting. “Alcoholics only ever have 2 problems. Romance and Finance.” I felt so much more successful in both at that time. Of course the reality is always slightly different in hindsight. I had found a way to act out on my sex and love addiction that protected me from getting obsessed with any one woman. And while I was living the dream of remote working and travel, I wasn’t saving any money and it could have all come crashing down at any moment.
In the back of my mind I suspected both of these, but I also had the acceptance that should this lifestyle cease to fulfil me like it currently was then I would be able to make the necessary changes. The acceptance didn’t come from faith in God, but from faith in myself. I had been through hell and back in my addiction and even more so in my recovery because I didn’t have the drugs to anesthetise me. Over the last 15 years I had made crazy business and relationship choices that I truly believed were Gods will. Some of these turned out as what appeared like disasters at the time, but here I was spat out at the other end in a life getting close to my wildest dreams. Shit might hit the fan again, as it did, but right there right then I knew I could cope with whatever came my way – as I did.
I was doing lots of AA meetings and connected to a few members and I was clean with no desire to use drugs, which I thought was not worth the risk in Indonesia accept in the Gilli Islands where they are sort of legal. I also had a drawer full of half a dozen different psychedelics and another half dozen different strains of weed back in Australia. I really thought I had my cake and got to eat it to – and I did, for a while.
This morning I woke up with a bit of a nightmare, not uncommon in the early hours of the morning when I’m not in deep sleep, although I think it’s an early recovery thing. I didn’t wake up in a great mood when I was years clean, but bad dreams were not common like they are at the moment. I got up and dragged myself through my morning. Clean teeth, drink water, yoga stretches, Just For Today reading, meditation, coffee, journal, my view allows me to see the sun start to come up behind Moreton Bay island, starting to feel a bit more human.
I had time for some work on my 4th step which I’m doing a personal story method that I have never done before. I set a timer for 25 minutes and write. I have a break after the buzzer and sit with my girlfriend Ricky for a few minutes, who is still in bed. I do another 25 minutes 4th step writing. It’s not easy, I am up to when I was 7 and I didn’t become a crazy alcoholic and desperate heroin addict because I had a wonderful childhood and just got bored. It’s not meant to be easy, but I have to do it. The 4th step is not something I can justify giving up on like the 1000’s of other unfinished projects in my life. It sucks, but I have to do it. I finish, have breakfast with Ricky and we go to work together.
Nothing special happens at work, I get stressed and run off nervous energy, but not as bad as some times. I manage to take some breaks, and even occasionally relax into the work and take the time to enjoy it. There are the normal complications; dissatisfied customers, troublesome customers, and there are a few wins; a couple nice profitable orders. The ship is on track.
We go for a nice long walk along the beautiful Margate Beach, get roast duck takeaway to eat at home in time to go the meeting. Only 3 other members turn up, but it’s nice and intimate. It’s nice to feel comfortable around the people at my home group, we are not besty’s, but I feel a sense of comfort and ease with them. I count the money and put it in the lock box, help pack up the room and am home before 8pm.
I think to myself, I could do today for a long time. If my life didn’t get any better than this, if I didn’t “recover” any more than this I think I could live with that. I remember my time years earlier sitting on my Balcony in Ubud thinking, If you accept everything as it truly is then you don’t need God. I consider only a month ago looking around at my surroundings and wondering how am I so lucky at 60 days clean? How did I land on my feet so well? How did I not fuck up my life? Looking around at my beautiful apartment with 180 degree ocean views from Gold Coast to the Sunshine Coast, looking at my beautiful girlfriend half my age that adores me and treats me like the man I aspire to be. My business that is sustainable over the long term and affords me these nice things. And yet most of the time I didn’t look at the view, didn’t appreciate Ricky, and my business annoyed me. I knew I should be grateful, but I just didn’t feel it.
Now 90 days clean I thank God I can appreciate the wonderful things in my life again. This is not the gratitude of denial where my life is shit and I say I have faith in God and trust and accept. I’ve been in shit situations before where gratitude and acceptance were not realistic or appropriate. In those bad times I could only accept what I had to do that day to change my shit situation, or at least get through it until time changed it. The only gratitude I thought my life deserved then was that I was me and had a deep belief that I could cope and get through it.
When I was 7 years clean I almost went bankrupt from a failing business. The stress that brought on me while over-working to try and get out of it was horrible. And only last year I spent a year in the children’s hospital with my son who went from perfectly healthy to completely paralysed, unable to walk, talk, eat, or do anything on his own. That was the toughest time, and the only gratitude I could find was that I was me and was able to cope and walk him through the doorway of his new life as well as be available for his younger sisters. But acceptance, gratitude to God, get fucked. I prayed to God kill him or make him better – He did neither.
But today I have a higher power, despite my lean towards atheism there is a power greater than my disease. There is a guiding force in my life that I don’t understand and may well come from within me. Today I accept and enjoy the wonderful life I have and while I want a faster car, a jet ski, and an investment property, I know they won’t give a great deal more enjoyment or meaning to life. I am an addict and to get enjoyment and meaning to life I have to work the program of NA. I have to go to regular meetings and be involved in the fellowship. I accept I’m an addict and that I need to make my primary purpose to carry the message to the addict that still suffers. This blog is an attempt at part of that. And when I do that, like I have been lately, and I have a satisfactory standard of living, like I have, then I can accept and I can be grateful, and it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling that’s better, although admittedly not as intense, as drugs.
Red Pill Recovery 