I ONLY CAME BECAUSE MY JOB WAS GING TO FIRE ME
Once upon a time, there was a little boy. A bright little boy, who had never felt comfortable even in his own skin. He had always felt like there was something missing in him that made him different from other people. It was like he was born on Mars, and everybody else was born on Earth. Not really know what was missing but just having a gnawing feeling that if he could just find out what it was, he would be OK. Although other people seemed to know what was missing because when they got close to the little boy, they didn’t like him. Consequently, the little boy spent an awful lot of time alone. He was more comfortable playing with little green army men, then he was playing with other kids.
There came a time when that little boy turned into a teenager who smoked his first joint. It was love at first sight. His eyes became as big as silver dollars. And for the first time in his life, that little boy felt equal to other people. He thought that he had found something in drugs. No matter what he was doing, things always went better if he was high. When he was high, he could talk to girls better, he could dance better, and he could deal with people better. He wanted to spend the rest of his life, high. From the very first get high, it was non stop, pedal to metal, getting high straight to my chair in Narcotics Anonymous. I loved getting high, I loved copping and using, I loved everything about it from soup to nuts.
As my drug use progressed, a strange thing happened on the road to recovery. What started out as a love affair, turned abusive. The drugs just stopped working. I had hoped that they would keep on working forever. Just because they stopped working didn’t mean that I stopped buying them, it just meant that they didn’t work anymore. While before drugs made me feel good, now they were just causing frustration. While before if I was high, I could scam my way out of trouble, now I was finding myself in more and more jams. My story really went downhill when I started smoking crack. At first I started doing low life stuff, and then I became a low life. I was lost and began trying to dig my way out, only to dig myself in deeper.
I remember my boss calling me into his office. He closed the door behind me that made me realize that this was serious. He was in the middle of speech to fire me, when I told him that I had a drug problem. It stopped him mid sentence, and he called the EAP people. They sent me down to medical for an intake interview with an old man. That was the first time that I had heard about the disease of addiction. He told me that because I had the disease of addiction, that it would make me use drugs even when I didn’t want to use. He told me that I wasn’t a bad person that needed to get good, but a sick person that needed to get better. He then told me what I was going to need to do to get better. He said that I couldn’t use anymore drugs ever. He said that even if they invented some new stuff, I couldn’t use that either. He said that I was going to have to go to meetings. He told me that I was going to have to share and let people get to know me. That was even scarier that not using, to that scared little boy inside me. I told him what he wanted to hear, “Sure, no problem I can do it”.
So I went to my first NA meeting. I felt like an outcast, a misfit, and a loser. All the time thinking that this program is never going to work for me. I had tried to stop using hundreds of times before, and I could never do it. But I kept coming to meetings only because my job was going to fire me, if I failed a urine test I had nowhere else to go. I just figured that I would keep coming to meetings until I found a good enough reason to go use. The NA people told me to come early and stay late, and I came late and left early. They told me to share honestly and from the heart, and I lurked in the back of the meeting and said nothing. But another funny thing happened on the road to recovery, I discovered that this program works whether you believe in it or not. In a very short time, I put together some clean time. Not only that but I began to enjoy the feeling of being clean.
As I kept coming, my life began to improve. I began to make friends, and I began to build some self esteem. I started to feel like somebody. I got a sponsor, I began to work steps, and I built a working relationship with a power greater than myself. And then the first miracle happened, I lost my desire to use. My sponsor told me that there would be many other miracles in store as I worked through the steps, he didn’t lie. They told me that if I have made a list of the things in the beginning that I wanted to get from this program that I would have cheated myself, and they didn’t lie. Today, beyond my wildest dreams, I am transformed into a recovering addict who is grateful to be clean and part of program where miracles happened and dreams come true. And on some days even that little boy who was never comfortable in his own skin and who still lives inside me, feels OK. Thanks for listening.