Living Clean

by Narcotics Anonymous

  When we do the work of helping people get clean, something changes inside us. We discover the magic, the gift, when we see the light come on in someone’s eyes. We learn to get out of our self-obsession. So many of our solutions are in service. We reap the rewards of our efforts as long as we keep coming back. The addict we reach out to in a moment of need may well be the person who saves our life later.

  There’s a lot to be said for old-fashioned Twelfth-Step work. We can get confused, and limit our outreach to members we know who have relapsed. We can be fearful of new people we don’t know. Perhaps there is reason to be cautious: We’re dangerous when we’re using. We alibi out of caring by saying that we are making amends to ourselves: “I don’t need all that drama in my life.” But when we “protect ourselves” from the newcomer, we don’t defend our lives from drama; we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to witness the miracle. Sometimes what a new person needs most is just not to be alone. Simply allowing someone to be with us as we go about our lives can be priceless.

  We teach one another how to reach out. Just because someone did it for us doesn’t mean that we automatically know how to reach out to someone new. Bringing a sponsee along on a Twelfth-Step call gives them an opportunity to learn, and keeps us from trying to do that alone. We learn to be in the presence of great pain without taking it in or taking it on.

  We feel deeply and experience our emotions at great extremes. We dive into life face-first or hide under the covers, afraid to move. The price of growth for many of us is the awakening of more feelings than we know how to live with. It takes courage and humility to keep from shutting down again. Often, after the fact, we recognize that our negative thinking had cascaded. Perhaps we started with allowing a resentment to fester, and found gradually that we were less honest. Withholding the truth gave way to lying, and then sharing got harder, and so forth, until we found ourselves dealing with the consequences of a whole lot of bad behavior. Addiction and recovery are both progressive. We are very rarely standing still. We are almost always either getting better or getting sicker.

  We define ourselves by our choices. The decision to have a family means leaving behind the independence we knew before; the decision not to have a family means that we must find other ways to feel connected to people, and so on. Tradition Seven tells us that everything has a price regardless of intent, and we find the profound truth in that as we move forward in our lives and our recovery. Every choice we make, good and bad, means there were options we left behind. We can get lost in infinite webs of “what if?” as we start thinking about our lives. The Fourth Step warns us about getting caught in the “binge of emotional sorrow” that can result. We come to see ourselves not as we were but as we are becoming. NA helps us to live with the consequences—and the benefits—of our transformation.

  We all have experience starting over in our lives with new people, places, and things, stepping into a new way of life we don’t quite understand. The desire to survive and feel fulfilled is not unique to us as addicts, but in recovery we begin with connection to others and work our way to basic safety. And perhaps it has to be this way. To believe that we can trust the love in our lives is challenging. Those really deep needs are the ones we believe won’t be met. It begins with the amends process, the understanding that we can forgive and be forgiven, that we can take responsibility for our actions and make better choices.

  Although our destinations may be different, our journeys are very similar. We travel through many different identities before we find self-acceptance. We propel ourselves by using the tools we all share. When we are derailed, we end up in much the same place. When we are moving forward by practicing spiritual principles, we may go to very different places in our lives, but if we relapse, we end up in a common predicament. That is what we share most of all: not where we are going, but where we come from—and how we move forward.

  Together we rise to the point of freedom. We need one another to get there, and one of the most beautiful things we do in the fellowship is support one another in pursuit of our dreams. Sharing our hopes and our successes is as much a part of carrying our message as sharing our fears and difficulties. We have a message of hope to carry. It’s a gift and an obligation. We may not relate exactly to one another’s dreams, but we can relate to the hope, energy, and excitement of trying to realize them. We are inspired by one another’s journeys. Being present to one another’s growth gives us the tools and inspiration to move forward ourselves. But we also find we are able to stay put, follow through, and live the lives we create. Our recovery is something we can trust and believe in. New beginnings are possible anytime we are ready.

  A Spiritual Path

  The steps are a path to spiritual growth. There is no separation between the “spiritual part” and the rest of our program. Just as the facets of a diamond are not separate from the stone, the spiritual aspects of our program are not separate parts; they are perspectives on the whole. It’s all spiritual. Our understanding of what that means may change over time.

  Sometimes we think of spiritual principles as separate from the actions we need to take, but in fact they are connected. Spiritual principles give us a language through which we develop our values and learn to live by them. The principles describe our beliefs, our actions, and the reasons we act. Our relationship to the principles we practice is creative. We learn from day to day to use them in new ways, in new combinations, to better express who we are and to help the people around us. When we understand them better, we are able to act more consistently with what we believe. As we practice spiritual principles, we discover that this doesn’t “make us spiritual” at all. Instead, we are awakening to what has been going on inside us our whole lives. Spirituality is our natural state.

  Awakening to Our Spirituality

  We are not the only people who have spiritual awakenings, but there is a particular awakening we experience as a result of working the steps: We awaken to our own spirituality. We are newly alive to the world around us. We see more clearly and feel more acutely—and that isn’t always comfortable. Some of our members believe that the most important spiritual awakening occurs when we walk in the door of Narcotics Anonymous, and we spend the rest of our recovery trying to understand what happened. For others of us, awakening, like so much else in recovery, seems to happen in layers: “The fog pulled back to where I could see how much fog there was,” said one. “Each time it pulls back, I see more on the horizon; I have a sense of how big it is and how much I still can’t see. With a little luck, I’ll be waking up more and more my whole life.”

  Some of us have awakened spiritually with an overwhelming sense of a power greater than ourselves. Others have shared a slow, gentle reviving of spiritual awareness, whether or not we ever experience a sense of a Higher Power. The discovery that others care about us can be a spiritual awakening. For the first time we recognize that we matter. Living according to principles leads us to humility—a greater awareness of our place in the world and our ability to live comfortably in it. We often hear at meetings, “The most important thing to understand about a Higher Power is that you ain’t it!” Whatever it takes for us to realize that we are not the center of the universe, it’s worth it. We may be too clever to declare ourselves a supreme being, but our self-centered disease still tells us that we are responsible for much more than we could possibly control.

  When we practice living in harmony with our world, we become wiser about choosing our battles. We learn where we can use our energy to make a difference and where we need to let go. Learning to step away from a conflict once it has started is sometimes harder than not getting into conflicts at all. That doesn’t mean that we always agree with anyone or everything, or that we suddenly lose the power to stand up for what’s right. On the contrary, we learn when to step forward and when to back away. Some struggles are worth fighting even if we know we cannot win, just as some are not worth fighting even though our victory is sure. This is discernment, and it comes fro
m our experience. We learn to tell the difference between a principle we need to stand for and an opinion that we just won’t let go of. We are able to choose for ourselves when to stand up and when to surrender, and as we practice we get better at determining which is right for us.

  Learning to accept the things we cannot change and take action where it is appropriate is not just part of recovering from addiction; it is part of growing up. Many of us are like overgrown children, still wanting to have things our way without regard for anything else. Often this means that we go through a painful adolescence in the rooms, whatever our age. Maturity comes to us when we use spiritual principles rather than defects to deal with reality. Incorporating principles into our lives allows us to understand the difference between right and wrong. Many of our most crippling defects become powerful assets when we let go of self-centered fear.

  Many times in our addiction we experienced a moment of clarity, when we could see the truth about what we had become, but that awareness in itself did not bring change. Effort is necessary for change to occur. Our lives change because we take action. Some of us say that we are “applying” spiritual principles because it means we’re acting in some particular way. Others of us prefer to say we are “practicing” principles because we know we can always get better at it. However we say it, action is what matters.

  Our primary action is surrender, and we come back to it every day. There is always room to let go a little more. There is great freedom in understanding that we always have the option to surrender. In the beginning we may be confused and think we need to surrender to our disease; in fact, that’s what most of us were doing before we got here! In active addiction, we turned our will over to our disease every day. In recovery we learn to surrender to the process, to the program, and ultimately to a power greater than ourselves. When we give up the battle we place ourselves entirely in the care of a power greater than ourselves. It follows naturally that we commit ourselves to the service of that power, however we understand it.

  Surrender means having the open-mindedness to see things in a new way, as well as the willingness to live differently. When we open ourselves to new perspectives we may find more questions where we had hoped to see answers. Each time we can see possibilities that had not occurred to us before, we gain a little more freedom. We are free to change our minds, to change our perspective, and to change our lives. Freedom means that we are no longer living by default. More and more we see how much courage surrender requires.

  We see the miracle of recovery in action when an addict we didn’t think would make it actually gets the message. We can see new hope in their eyes. The contrast is so sharp that we can’t miss it. We can also recognize the miracle when we find words a suffering addict needs to hear even though we didn’t think we knew what to say. When we hear ourselves carry a powerful message, we know we are being helped as much as the person we are reaching out to. Finding that we already have the answers we need is like finding a gift on our doorstep. When we are having a hard time, the best thing we can do for ourselves is to accept that gift by helping someone else.

  A Spiritual, Not Religious Program

  Each of us has our own spiritual path. As we explore our spirituality we find ourselves on a journey of self-discovery. When we live with spiritual awareness, we find harmony with the God of our understanding, with ourselves, and with others. There is no single recipe for spirituality. Each of us finds our own way to live spiritually, and that allows us freedom to make choices about how we live. It also charges us with responsibility.

  We cannot pretend that spirituality is not central to the NA program or the NA way of life. But there is room within that for people of all beliefs—including those with no belief at all. Our right to our own spirituality in NA is unconditional, and that also means we must allow that right to others. It’s not very complicated, but this is one area of our recovery that we seem to love to complicate. Any single definition of spiritual principles would be too restrictive for us. Our traditions remind us that NA is not a place where any single spiritual path is endorsed.

  Finding a spirituality that works for us can be one of the most important challenges that we face in recovery, and yet we are often afraid to talk about it. We may worry that we will feel out of place or that others will be uncomfortable with what we are sharing. When we are carrying the message, we learn to make the boundary clear between our personal spiritual experiences and the message of NA. Finding a balance in which we are open to one another’s experience without creating the impression that we are endorsing a particular religion can be a struggle.

  While we may pursue a religion or path that uses specific language to refer to spiritual concepts, we ask ourselves how we can express that in a way we can all understand. We use more general language out of respect for all the various perspectives in the fellowship, even though in another setting we might use language more specific to our own particular faith. It can be difficult to find a way to talk about our spirituality and still leave the door open for everyone to have their own path, as well. We use many different words to describe our Higher Power. We do our best to share our deepening spiritual experience in a way that makes it available to everyone in the room.

  Most importantly, we find people we trust and respect with whom we feel comfortable sharing one on one. The work doesn’t all happen in meetings; we share and explore with our sponsor, in stepwork, or among our trusted friends. We may not ever have to leave NA to find our spirituality, but if our spiritual explorations take place outside the rooms, it is crucial that we understand that NA welcomes us back from every new voyage. Each time, we have new understanding to share and new challenges to work through as a result of our spiritual growth.

  One of the most beautiful things about our program is that it works regardless of our different beliefs. NA needs to be a place where we all feel welcomed. Even when we’re pretty sure everyone in the room shares the same faith, we still need to make sure that the NA message is clear. We don’t limit our application of the traditions to those times when we can see a problem they seem to solve. Keeping our message clear helps us all. “The more I learn to share my spirituality in NA language, the more clearly I can see the connections between my faith and NA,” a member explained. When we find ways to share our new insights using our common language of recovery, our ability to carry the NA message strengthens. Our fellowship matures and develops as each of us brings our increasing understanding to the table; we grow from one another’s experience when we are willing to share and to listen with an open mind.

  Even though it is so central to our recovery, many of us resist talking about spirituality because it comes so close to a conversation about religion. There are many reasons we may be uncomfortable with this. First of all, it’s something many of us have learned not to discuss. We know faith is deeply personal. Others of us don’t have a way of talking about it without trying to bring other people’s faith in line with our own. We already need to change so much that it’s important for us to know that our system of faith, whatever it is, will not be threatened by our program. It may be challenged, though, as we begin to practice our spirituality more actively than we had.

  We can have philosophical discussions all day long, and never make any progress in our spiritual lives. On the other hand, some of the most spiritual people we know say very little about spirituality. Their quiet example is more powerful than words. The principles we share in the steps, the traditions, the concepts, and the rest of our literature go a long way toward providing us with a common language we can all understand and identify with.

  We say over and over that this is a spiritual, not religious program, but that doesn’t mean the program can’t work for religious people. Some of us come to NA with a foundation in a faith with which we are very comfortable. Others of us find our way to organized religion as a result of the work we do to build a relationship with a Higher Power in the steps. Some of us find alternative spiritual paths, or find t
hat the spirituality we achieve through the program is enough. There is no right or wrong answer on this; there is no progression that brings us naturally toward or away from organized religion. What is important is that we accept that the program is spiritual in nature, that some of what we depend on here is a great mystery, that some of it doesn’t make sense. Many of us say that even after years clean, we still don’t know how it works; we just know that it works. Allowing the possibility that there will always be something we don’t know means that there is always room for something greater than ourselves to work on us and through us.

  Some of us have maintained the religious beliefs we grew up with, but in our addiction we compromised ourselves in ways that ran deeply against those beliefs. Many of us had to work so hard to distance ourselves from what our beliefs had been that the way we respond to hearing about them almost feels like an allergy. It can be a long time before we know why that language makes us so uncomfortable. When we start hearing people talk about a Higher Power, it can feel like we’re about to be pushed through all those feelings again, and it’s natural that this makes us nervous.

  We may have negative experiences with religion, or experiences that made our relationship to religion uncomfortable. It can be challenging to face that. Many of us experienced religious efforts to save us from our addiction, and found that faith alone was insufficient to set us free. Or we may have a very well-developed religious faith, and fear that NA is going to ask us to give that up. Whatever our experience, it is critical to our recovery that we find some kind of understanding we can work with. When we are in the process of figuring that out, other people’s opinions about what that should be can feel confusing or threatening. It is imperative that we give one another time and space to come to a belief system of our own.