Living Clean

by Narcotics Anonymous

  Allowing ourselves to be happy can be a surprisingly long process. It always continues in one way or another. Some of us fear contentment because it might lead to complacency. Others of us fear that if we are ever content, there will be nothing left to try for. Learning what truly makes us happy can be hard, especially if our relationship to seeking pleasure was tangled up with our most destructive behavior. Finding the balance is a challenge. “When I got clean I could feel the grief of every leaf falling from the tree,” a member shared. “I feel like a novice at finding joy. I thought I would have to let go of pleasure to be clean.”

  What we learn about love in the rooms prepares us for other kinds of relationships. We may find love, create families, or be restored to the families we had left behind. Some of us discover that we have talents for contributing to the world in other ways, whether through our creativity, our empathy, or our addict ability to focus on one thing and do it ’til it’s done. The skills we learn in the rest of our lives, in turn, become tools we use to help carry the message. When we stay involved with NA, we can see that we have a valuable contribution to make to the world. We may not see all these changes at first, but we feel it somehow and get a glimmer of hope that our lives are changing.

  Desperation to Passion

  Once the process of cleaning up the wreckage begins, the ways that we need to grow may not be visible from the outside. We go from being totally impulsive to feeling like our decisions have to be permanent. Something has to drive us or draw us. We need a purpose, or we start entertaining ourselves with obsession and compulsion. There is something about being stuck that feels hopeless, and easily turns into complacency and indifference. It can feel wrong or embarrassing to be struggling to keep the light on in our own recovery when we think we are supposed to be carrying the message to others. The responsibility we feel to carry a message can serve as an excuse not to share the truth about our lives. But without the truth, we have no message at all. And when we are not open, it’s hard for light to get in. Admitting is the beginning of change.

  Putting the life back in our recovery is really not that hard. We look for the passion, and we nurture it. The hard part is finding the willingness to take action and pick up the phone or go to a meeting when we are feeling uninspired. There is magic and a healing grace in meetings, but we cannot see it when our attitude blinds us. Coming back to meetings after we have been gone for a while can be awkward and difficult, or it can be like coming home. There is a sweetness to walking into a room we have not been in for some time and seeing so much unchanged. Still, meetings make more sense when we attend them regularly. When we drift in and out, they can seem dull and boring. Part of the magic comes from continuity: seeing each other grow and change, watching the miracle unfold in one another’s lives. Occasionally someone shares brilliant words. More often the brilliance is in what we see, not what we hear.

  Passion is a lot like desperation: It is a motivating, energizing force that can propel us forward. But passion is rarely bestowed on us; it comes from within. The more we draw on our passion, the more of it we have. Making the shift from desperation to passion is a First Step issue. Our journey is always just beginning, and our capacity—and our need—for spiritual growth is infinite. The same tools that brought us from the brink of death can continue to bring us miracles beyond measure when we learn to fuel our journey with passion and excitement, rather than pain and desperation.

  There is a transition that happens to each of us in the process of recovery, an indefinable moment when we move from desperation to passion. Where we had been motivated by the fear of greater pain, we start to see new opportunities for growth in our struggles, and become willing to move forward out of hope, rather than fear. This may not be our first spiritual awakening, but it is clearly an awakening of the spirit into a new sense of possibility.

  Faith in the process means believing that we are moving in the right direction, even if it’s not where we thought we would be going. We take on greater challenges, we stand for principles we never had before, we tend to our responsibilities even when they seem too heavy to bear. We learn that our Higher Power will help us do what we cannot—but will not do for us what we can do for ourselves. It is surprising to find how much we actually can handle. When we stop trying to control things we are powerless over, we learn where our power truly lies, and how we can use that to make changes in ourselves and our world.

  We are a part of something today. But we are not just part of one thing: What we learn about unity in NA helps us to figure out how to be members of our families, members of our communities, members of a team at work or at play. We learn that we are never alone: We are here with one another and for one another. We trust that more and more as our experience grows. We can see that our actions have consequences for us and for the people around us. Denying this is a form of self-obsession. We do matter, and we want to consider how we contribute.

  Each time we surrender, we find once more that the desperation that drives us to our knees fuels the passion that carries us forward. When hope manifests into reality, our lives change. Our experience affirms what we believe, and belief grows into faith. When our faith grows into knowledge, the program that we once struggled to practice has become part of who we are. We find here what we were looking for all along: connection to others, connection to a Higher Power, connection to the world around us—and, most surprising of all, connection to ourselves.

  Why We Stay

  What is it that keeps us in NA after the initial desperation eases? Of course, there’s the desire to help the newcomer; our Twelfth Step reminds us that this must always come first. But many of us, at some point in our recovery, have felt that perhaps that was all that was left in the rooms for us. Our commitment to help might have kept us coming back, but some of us were left with a nagging feeling that we hesitated to share: “Is this really all there is?”

  Our answer today is a resounding “No.” In our lives and in the lives of addicts around the world, we can see change—not only from the desperate, lonely people we were when we got here. We can see great changes in ourselves and in the way we relate to others from the first time we work the steps compared to our next pass, and our next. Our experience in NA service teaches us to interact with others in environments that are sometimes stressful, and to remain loving and open even as we stand our ground. We learn when it’s important to stand for principles, and when it’s best to step aside in the name of unity, knowing that a loving God is ultimately in charge. We plan for the future just for today and let go of the outcome, even when we really want it. Living, loving, surviving loss, and celebrating success, we find that the tools of recovery that gave us our lives also help us to live with grace, integrity, and joy. As we practice principles, our understanding grows and deepens.

  There is no limit to the process. There are no limits to where our recovery can take us, no limits to how much better we can get. We short-circuit our recovery when we keep a reservation in our Second Step by thinking that there are some parts of who we are that cannot be restored. When we accept the possibility that we can get infinitely better—that there is no end to what recovery has to offer—we begin to understand that spirituality is not just a way out. It is a way of life that will continue to bring us new gifts, new possibilities, and new awareness as long as we practice it. If we allow ourselves to be motivated not by fear of the past but by hope for the future, we are as excited to move forward when life is good as we are when we are struggling.

  We have found a way in—to life, to freedom, to passion, to limitless growth. We are no longer trapped in a process driven by our own desperation. Something different happens as we move into recovery motivated by passion, hope, and excitement. We are released into our own lives. We are freed from the feeling that we must constantly be on guard. We are free to discover the capacity of our own hearts: Where we have been closed down, we have the ability to love and care for others more deeply than we had imagined.

  Ye
s, we are a vision of hope, as the Basic Text says. This book is about seeing that hope as something that always grows, drawing us forward throughout our recovery and throughout our lives. We don’t just recover; we thrive. The NA program gives us tools for living. The work is never-ending, and the rewards of living the program are ongoing as well. We work to improve our circumstances, creating and re-creating a life that matches our vision for ourselves. Often the change we seek is in our ideas and attitudes. We learn to see the world more clearly. We are so grateful for the recovery we can see in ourselves and the people around us. Great rewards are always waiting for us, if we are willing to make the effort.

  Narcotics Anonymous is a bridge to life, and a path we can walk throughout our lives. The gift is freedom. Each level of freedom we experience opens us to greater freedom beyond, just as each level of awareness allows us to recognize how much we do not yet see. Although we may live very differently from one another, we share the same journey. We are so grateful to have found recovery, to be living clean, and to know, wherever we are in our travels—the journey continues.

  The Ties That Bind

  Narcotics Anonymous is a program of action, not theory. We don’t think our way into a new way of living; we live our way into a new way of thinking. Before we got clean, our identity was built on fantasy: who we could be, would be, should be, or even who we used to be. In recovery we connect with reality through action. We show up and do our part. We experiment with jobs, relationships, and service commitments. Some of us begin simply by trying to keep a houseplant alive. Wherever we start, each of us ventures out into the world—clean—and tries something new. We learn who we are by taking a stand, taking risks, and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable. Even when we make mistakes, we can learn something vital about ourselves.

  We identify as addicts, and the principle of anonymity teaches us that this is the most important thing. If we forget we have a deadly disease, it doesn’t really matter who or what else we think we are. But once we are clear about that, and get used to the idea of being clean, all kinds of possibilities open up to us. As recovering addicts, we are free to explore the world and to consider who we are and who we want to become. An experienced member suggested that the whole trick to living is figuring out who we are and doing it on purpose.

  Connection to Ourselves

  It can take a long time to set ourselves free. When we come to recovery we have been devastated in many ways. Although living clean isn’t all about crisis, it can sometimes seem that way. Our feelings are so powerful. There is so much change in our lives, and change can be messy even when it’s positive. Our personalities and our sense of who we are were warped by our addiction, and when we get clean we are even more confused. It can be a while before we have the opportunity (or the need) to ask, “Okay. Who am I now?” We change in recovery, but we also uncover who we were all along. We find ourselves. For many of us, this is the restoration the Second Step talks about. It may even be a restoration to a state we’ve never experienced before, because we’ve never had the chance to be ourselves without pretending, without hiding, without trying to be something else.

  There may be many different ways we describe ourselves, and the ones that seem most important can change depending on where we are in our lives. Identity is a confusing word. It indicates the things that make us different from each other, and the things that make us exactly the same. Our identity is composed of the things that distinguish us either as part of a group or as separate from it. We are as different as our stories, but our literature reminds us that “addiction makes us one of a kind.”

  At some point, our identity as using addicts came to define us. At the end of the road, it seemed like we were nothing but our addiction. As we stay clean, we begin to discover who we are. Some of us return to an identity we once knew and had lost; others of us come into the process uncertain of who we might be. Experiences from our past can make it hard for some of us to see ourselves in new ways. The labels we have applied to ourselves don’t allow us to change. Powerful emotional experiences can shape our identity; sometimes they seem to define us. Those experiences made us who we are, and we embrace them. For that matter, we might not want to see ourselves otherwise. Sometimes we are simply stuck in unresolved past experiences like abuse, prison, or the death of someone we love. How do we reconcile who we have been with who we are becoming in recovery? We want to be free of our past without missing any opportunities to learn from it.

  Sometimes it can take a while for our sense of ourselves to catch up to who we are. We may even sabotage ourselves to return to familiar chaos or pain when our lives start seeming too different from what they had been. Gradually, we learn that much of the unmanageability we struggle with is the result of the choices we make. When we begin to get comfortable with new choices, our lives change—sometimes radically.

  What makes us happiest are things it may never have occurred to us to want. Some of us have the experience of “lost dreams awakening,” picking up our desires where we left them and finally living the lives we had always wanted. Others of us find that the dreams we left behind no longer fit the people we have become. We come in with a regrettable history of broken promises and broken dreams, of dishonesty, betrayal, and failure. Believing we are worthy of the things we want can be its own process. We may have been afraid to dream at all. Some of us punish ourselves in recovery for years, holding ourselves back from joy because we feel we don’t deserve it. The tools and the love we find in NA can help us break these patterns, no matter how long we have been living with them.

  We can get stuck in patterns so quickly. Vigilance is necessary to keep old patterns from resurfacing. Something needs to break the circuit of our negative thinking. It may be an action we take, like meditating or going to a meeting; it may be an action someone else takes. Our friends and sponsors come to know us well enough to recognize when we are off course, and help us to make a shift. When we are living just for today, we find courage that we never expected, and we can go forward into our lives with joy, excitement, and great hope for what is possible. But when we dwell in the past or worry about the future, we find ourselves trapped again almost before we know what happened.

  There is no single, easy answer to how we make peace with our past, and it rarely happens all at once. Throughout our recovery, different pieces of ourselves become available to us, and other parts are ready to be let go. Sometimes this is a peaceful process, and sometimes it’s terrifying. The fact that something does not get resolved in one round of steps or in a few conversations with our sponsor does not mean we are not progressing. Returning again and again, in stepwork or in dreams, to “the scene of the crime” is part of the experience many of us share in recovery. Each step we work gives us back a piece of ourselves and relieves a little of our burden of regret, shame, and fear. We let go of some things we believed about ourselves and find others. We return to some of the things we once cherished and find out if they still suit us today. The ways we change can be surprising.

  We leave pieces behind along the way. It is almost like a children’s game: With each step forward, we must turn around and retrieve a piece of our past. Defects of character are removed, but other things are as well. We change jobs and find out how much our identity was tied up in what we did for a living, or we experience a change in our relationship and find that it changes us in other ways as well. This can be upsetting. We may not want to admit that what worked for us yesterday is no longer in our best interest. As we start to know ourselves, we may be afraid to keep growing because it opens up the possibility that we might lose the self we have only just gotten to know. Experience teaches us that the more willing we are to move forward in our lives, the more fully we become ourselves.

  We learn what is true for us by going through difficulty, staying clean, and looking back on the experience. We may think we are the ones being tested, but the reality is that we are continually testing our faith and understanding against our experience. When w
e go through difficulty in recovery, it can feel like we are in the same place we were before we got clean. And while sometimes we re-create old experiences in our new lives, more often we mistake a temporary difficulty for a permanent condition.

  The simple act of accepting ourselves changes us. We start treating ourselves better and we respond to the world with a new humility. The Basic Text says in the Eighth Step, “We want to look the world in the eye with neither aggressiveness nor fear.” As we clean up our wreckage and live differently, we can respect our actions and find respect for ourselves in the process. Part of the charm of many of our more experienced members is that they can seem so eccentric. One suggested that this was a consequence of no longer having defenses in the way. More and more, we are comfortable just being ourselves. We appear in the world exactly as we are. That freedom is part of the promise of our Third Tradition. Because we have only one requirement for membership—the desire to stop using—we are given permission to be who we are. We no longer have to lie to gain acceptance.

  Connection to a Higher Power

  Many of us notice when we first come to meetings that members who are recovering and happy with themselves seem to shine. That light of the spirit is the most beautiful thing we have to offer, and it’s less fragile than we think. After all, it survived our addiction! Tending that light is partly about nurturing the passion inside us, and partly a process of trimming away all the stuff that hides us from ourselves. Our defects “grow in the dark.” In the light of recovery, our assets begin to blossom.