Living Clean

by Narcotics Anonymous

  We find our kindred spirits in the rooms—people who just plain understand us. We laugh at each other’s jokes and at our experiences. Once we get comfortable with the changes in our lives, we can see the humor in many of the big issues we face in early recovery. But when we are still in the process, it is not funny at all. Our friends in recovery help us to laugh at ourselves. They may build us up and tear us down, but ultimately they accept us as we are. The friendships we share in recovery are among the strongest we ever experience.

  Some of us use the word “family” to describe this closeness, and sometimes it really can feel that way—when we have holidays together, share celebrations and mourning, watch the big game together, and so on. One member suggested that a home group was like a family not only in its closeness, but also because we don’t get to preselect its members: “Some of them are really difficult,” she said, “but they’re ours, and we love them.” Some of us do have relatives who are in the rooms or are involved in our recovery, and our fellow NA members may be part of the lives of our children, our parents, our spouses. A member whose mother was elderly and alone brought Mom to all the local NA events, and she quickly became “Mom” to a whole group of people in recovery who were longing for family connections.

  Some people regard the whole fellowship as a family, and there are usually one or two in an area who will say, “Hi family,” when they begin to share. But some of us are uncomfortable with this. Especially if our own families were violent or unsafe, or if we have experience in other kinds of groups that made demands of loyalty from their members, the talk of “family” makes NA seem dangerous in those ways: that demands will be made of us, that we will be asked to compromise ourselves or put ourselves in harm’s way for “the family.” To some of us, it’s not threatening at all—it just sounds a little cheesy. We may not even have language to describe the kinds of connections we have in NA, especially after we have been around for a while.

  We walk with each other through the day-to-day struggles of our lives: romance and heartbreaks, births and deaths. Our sense of connection deepens into kinship. We may not always have the kind of intensity in our relationships that we do in our first few years, but the depth that grows in its place is also beautiful. When those people who are part of our early recovery continue to be part of our lives, time adds something to those relationships that nothing else can. We have long friendships that have weathered terrible storms, people we see twice a year but who pick up where we left off as if no time has passed, people who save our lives and we don’t see them again for a year or a decade, people who are woven completely into our daily lives. These are deep emotional connections that exceed what we think of as friendship but don’t quite match what we mean by family, either.

  As we stay clean and build longstanding relationships, we experience a kind of safety we could not have imagined before. We know one another as well as anyone knows us. We have watched each other grow up and grow old, and in the lines on one another’s faces we see the laughs and struggles we have shared over all that time. We may be incredibly close at some times and further apart at others, but there is something about just knowing we have each other that makes us feel a little less alone in the world. That love and connection feels as deep as any we have experienced.

  The ways that we love in recovery can be intense and beautiful. We learn to love others—not just our fellow addicts, but our families and those around us—with a power we might never have imagined. Many of us turned away from love in our addiction. Those who loved us just made us feel ashamed. In our self-obsession, there was no such thing as enough, and the ways we were loved never seemed adequate to our ever-growing needs and demands. When there was sufficient care, concern, and support, we exploited it. Some of us were raised in addicted households, or in other circumstances where we never really felt love at all—or where it would come and go so randomly that we learned not to trust it.

  Relationships are always evolving, and we are continually in new territory as our relationships grow and deepen. There will always be mistakes. Being able to recognize errors, clean them up, and move on is a gift of the Tenth Step, and it’s not just that we are able to keep small problems from getting bigger. We struggle with the belief that we’re not good enough. Minor problems in a relationship can magnify our sense that we are inadequate, unlovable, or unworthy. Even with many years clean, we alternate between avoiding responsibility for a problem and believing that it’s all our fault. Surrender frees us from the feeling that we must constantly make up for being so awful. We can deal with our part, surrender, and let go of the rest. Accepting that we make mistakes and that they are not the end of the world or the end of a relationship is part of coming to terms with our own humanity.

  We can share honestly who we are. Beyond our addiction, we are human beings: members of society who have gifts and flaws like everyone else. We are capable of loving and being loved, of caring for others and contributing to their well-being. In the process we build relationships with ourselves, our fellow members, and our Higher Power. “In the end, what is happening is that I feel loved and supported while learning to have honest relationships, without secrets or manipulation. Secure in the love of the fellowship, my heart is unfreezing.”

  Bridging Two Worlds: Relationships Outside NA

  Our NA relationships might not be like any other relationships we have, but that doesn’t mean they are the only relationships in our lives, or even the only important ones. We have family and friends outside the fellowship. Our jobs generally bring us into contact with others; many of us go back to school, or find other ways to pursue our goals personally and professionally. We develop interests and skills that have nothing to do with recovery, except that without recovery it’s likely we wouldn’t pursue those interests. In pursuing our passions, our careers, or our hobbies we make connections with the world beyond our doors in all kinds of surprising ways. Some of us are part of faith communities or other organizations that have their own ties that bind. In all of these relationships we learn and grow, practice principles, and try new ways to deal with old feelings. Our anonymity may be something we must guard carefully in order to maintain our place in those worlds.

  Earthlings, normies, civilians—we use these terms to separate ourselves from people outside the rooms and mistakenly reinforce our own alienation. We struggle with the fear that if we get too integrated into the outside world, we will slip away from NA. Each of us seeks our own balance that allows us to participate in the world without sacrificing our recovery or putting ourselves at risk.

  With a base of intimacy and safety in the fellowship, it can be easier to venture out into the world. Learning to live and serve by the traditions gives us particular skills that are very welcome outside the rooms. Willingness, honesty, belief in unity, and faith in the process make us valuable wherever we choose to serve. We know how to make ourselves useful, how to be teachable, and how to show respect and allow others to speak. Being able to focus on a primary purpose and work creatively toward it is so much a part of our way of life that we may not realize how highly valued that is in the world at large. Learning to serve gives us skills to lead. But it’s in our relationships inside NA that a particular kind of work happens, and that’s one of the reasons that it is so important for us to “plug in” to the fellowship.

  With all of our talk about NA as “the last house on the block,” or the place we need to be, or the place where we are always welcome no matter what, we sometimes lose track of what a beautiful thing we have. When we allow others to see our recovery and what it means to have a fellowship in our lives, we are sometimes surprised at how attractive it is. It’s not unusual for us to hear a nonaddict sigh, “I wish I had what you all have.” They can see the beauty of the gift, but they may not understand the stakes in our membership, or what we had to go through to “earn our seat.” If they are fortunate, they will never understand that. We can be glad for their good fortune even as we are grateful that we hav
e what we do.

  We learn to care and share with others. Even though the boundaries can be very different with people outside, the principles we learn in our recovery can be practiced in all our affairs. Honesty and sincerity are almost always appreciated. We sometimes think that we have the market cornered on pain, but other people have their stories too.

  When we share with them we discover that we have much to learn from one another.

  Family

  Our relationships with our families can present some of our biggest challenges. There is never only one set of feelings about our family members. There are times when we see our childhood only through rose-colored glasses, and other times when we forget that there was any joy or value there at all. The list of real and imagined hurts on both sides can be hard to get past. Whether or not they are still in our lives, our relationship to our family is a critical matter for most of us.

  If we have an ongoing relationship with our families, we may not be able to wait until we get to the Ninth Step to handle all of the difficulties in those relationships. Whether or not we ever make formal amends to our families, we deal with the consequences of our actions—and the consequences of our recovery—every time we see them.

  Amends means change, and our relationships with our families do change in recovery. Some of us choose to put some new distance in there. One member recalled that he had to move away for a while: “They were nice people, but I had to find out who I was, and I couldn’t do that inside my family.” Another member found that amends meant not tolerating abuse anymore, and felt she finally had permission to step away from a destructive household.

  On the other hand, as we recover, many of us desire much closer relationships with our families than we had before. We enjoy our family, and the ability to be present and participate as a healthy, responsible member of the family is its own reward. What we learn about membership in NA can apply to our families as well. When we show up with an open mind and a willingness to be of service, the rewards can be far greater than our efforts. Sometimes those are the direct rewards of finding loving and productive relationships with the people we care for. Even when the rewards are not so direct, we can see them over time: Amending our behavior is something we do not to get a response from others, but to change our own relationship to ourselves, our Higher Power, and the world around us. As we learn to show up without anger, resentment, or fear, we develop an emotional maturity that we might not have expected.

  It is a challenge to let go of old ways of being with our families, especially when those ways operated to our advantage. Sometimes NA service gives us a window on our patterns at home. We may see ourselves playing the same roles as elsewhere in our lives: We are acting as the victim or rescuer, the mediator or instigator. Sometimes it’s positive and sometimes it’s not. But the ability to see these patterns in one area of our lives allows us to change our behavior in all of our affairs.

  When people are used to rescuing us or taking responsibility for us, it can seem simplest just to let them continue. As we take our own inventory, we can see the price we pay for not taking responsibility for ourselves in our relationships, our careers, and, most of all, in our spirits. Slipping the knots on our dependency on others can be done without needless harshness. We are grateful for the people who try to help us, whether or not we accept their aid. We try to keep in mind the wisdom of the Seventh Tradition: “Everything has its price, regardless of intent.” We do our best to accept help when we need it, and to pull our own weight when we can. There is great freedom in taking responsibility for ourselves. We are able to look ourselves in the eye, and to be clearer about our motives.

  After many years of recovery, a member found herself in the position of caring for her parents, with whom she had had a hard time as she was growing up. “Recently it has become clear how human and fragile they are,” she said. “My feelings get hurt when my dad doesn’t know who I am anymore, but in the larger picture it doesn’t matter, because I remember who he is.” Some of our hardest moments contain the keys to healing deep and painful scars. So often in recovery, the rewards come when we are not looking for anything but the next right thing to do.

  We may be surprised to learn how many different ways people work through these things. Even if we seek professional help to address our childhood and family relationships, our recovery in NA does not need to be placed on hold. On the contrary, the basics of our program support us as we struggle with powerful feelings and memories. As other members share their love and compassion, we learn once more that we are not as alone as we feel.

  When we take an honest look at our lives, we can see good and bad even in the most complicated families. The process of recovery offers us the freedom to choose what we want to bring forward from our past, and what we want to leave behind. It’s not always as easy to do as to say, but the ability to make the decision greatly increases the likelihood of being able to carry it out. Our oldtimers sometimes remind us, “If you don’t know what you want, you’re not likely to get it.”

  Many patterns for relationships that have stayed with us through our lives were established early. We weren’t born with all this damage. But we live with the events of our past, and some of them are traumatic. Abuse takes many forms, and not all of our history is easy to name. No matter which side of the equation we were on, the memories haunt us. Our history leaves us with issues that come up again and again: shame, fear, a belief that we need to justify our existence, and a sense of alienation from ourselves, our bodies, and other people. In our relationships this shows up as a feeling of failure before we even begin. It seems impossible for us to have a healthy, loving relationship, so the first sign of friction or tension seems to prove our worst suspicions. We escalate or walk away before our fears have a chance to come true—or be disproven.

  Coming to terms with our experience happens over time, in layers: There are issues we must address immediately if we are to face life clean, and issues that we must develop a foundation in recovery in order to be able to face. The baggage that has traveled with us the longest is the stuff most likely to bring feelings of hopelessness. There are times we may be very frustrated to find ourselves facing the same issues that we had dealt with years before, but we find increasing freedom as we continue to chip away at them. When we are in the grip of an old pattern, we must remember our bottom line: Don’t use, no matter what! There can be a long time between the work we do on a particular issue and our awareness that change has taken place.

  For those of us with longstanding patterns of painful relationships, it can be surprising to notice the number of long-term, loving relationships we have in the fellowship.

  Love sneaks up on us. The very fact of that love, and its undeniable presence in our lives, does its own quiet work healing the wounds that nothing else seems to reach.

  Being a Parent

  Perhaps nothing changes our perspective on our childhood like having children of our own. We gain a different perspective on our parents’ experience, and we see ourselves through the eyes of our children as well. We want so badly to get it right—but we don’t quite know what that means. Being a good parent might mean different things to each of us, but whatever we imagine it to be, we want to do it right. We can get so caught up in our theories and expectations of what it means to be a parent that we forget it’s a relationship. All the things we learn about relationships in recovery can help us as parents—we see all the issues we struggle with in our other relationships show up in some form or other in our relationships with our children.

  We learn to listen carefully, and to communicate in a way that we can be heard. Just as we do in sponsorship, we learn to meet our kids where they are. Perhaps most importantly, we learn that when we can get our self-obsession out of the way, we can experience love, compassion, empathy, and intimacy. As we make peace with ourselves, we find peace with those around us, including our children. When we practice self-acceptance, we can accept our children as the human beings they
are. Perhaps the best gift we can give our children is acceptance of themselves. And since we cannot give what we do not have, what we want for our children can motivate us in our own journey.

  Having children is a lifetime commitment, whether we enter into it carefully and thoughtfully or entirely by surprise. One of the things that distinguishes parenting from other relationships in recovery is that it is constant: We never stop being parents, even if we are not around our kids all the time. Whether we are with our children constantly or never see them at all, the fact that we are parents exposes us to a power of love we may not have known before. We are more capable—and more vulnerable—than we had imagined. Having children opens us to a deeper connection than any other in our lives, but it is also a lifelong lesson in letting go.

  Many of us assume that being a parent is something we are supposed to know how to do instinctively, and it can be hard to ask for help. The principle of open-mindedness helps us to remain teachable, and to look for teachers all around us. Some of us find the support we need by bringing our children to meetings, and raising them immersed in the fellowship; others of us have children who have no idea we are in recovery at all. Whatever choices we make about how our families and fellowship intersect, we know that the skills we learn in recovery make us better parents, partners, and children to our parents at any stage of our lives.