Going through the NA step working guide again I can see my answers from the previous time I did it. I get to the end of step 2 and can see my old response to the question
What is my understanding of Step Two?
After the devastation of step one, that I can’t live with or without my addictions, that my only hope is a higher power. The answer to addiction is to find fulfillment in bonding and belonging with other people, but as a self-centred addicted I am not capable of this. Every time I try I fail. I always revert to my self-centered ways. It’s not even because I am a bad person, it’s just my mind tells me it’s the only way I can be happy. No matter how many times I try and teach my mind that I need connection, bonding, and belonging, I can never do it for long on my own power. My mind is not even capable of understanding that I need love and connection to be truly happy. In nearly every situation fear makes me choose the selfish option. This lack of ability to see reason is insane. I need the way I perceive the world around me and my place in it radically changed. Even as I write this I don’t see how it can work. I want it because I can see it in others but I can’t fathom how I can get my needs met by letting go and being of service to others instead of pursuing my own selfish needs. I feel as beaten by this as I was by step 1. The only thing I can think of is a higher power can do it for me, can change me, but my heart does not believe, only suspects. Maybe that is the coming to believe.
It’s fascinating to reflect a few years later on my answer then and be so wrong and so right. I thought I needed a “radical change” I also had no idea how that would happen and really didn’t believe it could. The truth was a “radical” change wasn’t necessary. I only needed to change a little bit. I only needed to change enough to be restored to sanity so I wouldn’t use drugs.
It says this in the Spiritual Experience Appendix of the AA Big Book “.. personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism..” I didn’t have to lose myself in the bosom of NA. I just had to be involved enough to keep me on track. That has been a very consistent 2-3 meetings a week.
I moved the Sunshine Coast fellowship a few months ago and have loved the meetings here. I’ve been doing meetings for 30 years. I don’t recall anywhere I have experienced a fellowship as positive as this one. At first I thought it could just be me being in a good place, the old cliché the more recovery I do the better other people seem to behave, but I’m not the only one that makes this observation. Visitors to the area comment on it regularly.
I went to a meeting last night and it was this woman’s first birthday. There is a unique culture of the meetings here being heavily focused on birthday celebrations and the meeting consisted of an hour of people sharing almost solely about the birthday girl. She had been in the fellowship many years and done the local rehab a few times and this was the first time she had made it to a year. She was very loved and very close to many people in the room. She had done rehab with a lot of them, but was also close with the members that had 20 years or more clean.
I enjoyed it, watching her be the center of attention and everyone directing their share at her was a bit confronting. I will be 3 years again at the end of this year and haven’t celebrated a single anniversary this recovery. To be honest I don’t remember the last time I celebrated a birthday, maybe when I turned 10, that was over 15 years ago now.
When it was her turn to share she thanked all the people that had stood by her, those that had visited her in intensive care and fed her, those that had let her detox on their couch, and those that had refused to give up on her even when she had given up on herself. She explained that the love of the fellowship and getting vulnerable with members had developed the intimate relationships that were the opposite of addiction.
This is something I had thought of before when I was in relapse and considering going back to NA – that I would need to stop isolating in my work, sex and drug addiction and develop intimate relationships with these other broken people who also had nowhere to go other than NA. It was less horrifying to me now and I could see that for some it was the difference between life and death.
But, I wasn’t ending up in intensive care from my addiction. I was spending my days travelling the world banging girls half my age and walking along the beach tripping on Acid and weed when back in Australia. Then I bought my future wife to Australia and had both here. When I wasn’t fucking and tripping I was obsessively working on my business so I could afford tripping and fucking. I was living in a luxury apartment overlooking the beach in Redcliffe, driving my BMW, running my own company, and had this hot new wife half my age – the only thing I was losing was my mind.
Today at 50 I am in the peak of my life. I am in the shape of my life, back down to my high school weight. Best year of business last year ever. I enjoy work more than ever without over-working or treating it like a higher power. I still have the same wife – no longer half my age, and we have two toddlers running around. I’m so happy I married her and so proud to watch her become a mum and housewife. She looks after the kids and the house and supports me to take care of all the finances. We have a great relationship and great sex. It’s Netflix and chill every night at my place. I moved from a BMW to a Porsche and drive it like I stole it to meetings on the coast and out to Lakeside racetrack every couple of months. Yes, I’m a wanker.
And now I’m no longer losing my mind. I am so balanced, peaceful and calm all the time, thank God for TRT, more on that in another post. I don’t really have that many close friends, but I enjoy the friends I do have and have dinner at least twice a week with members. I would like closer friendships like I did when I was younger and I am open to it, but the relationship I have with myself is so satisfying I can except where I am at – and it may be that way for ever.
Everything is so satisfying in my life and I have hardly changed at all. I am pretty honest and do nothing illegal (other than grey/black market PEDS and peptides) which I am private about, but not secretive. I changed just “sufficient” enough to bring about recovery from my addiction. And I do enough to stay sane from addiction. Is more change possible? Possibly. Will I celebrate my 3rd NA birthday? Maybe. More will be revealed.
