Message To The Newcomer - Recovery Is Boring if you want it to be

I want to welcome the lurkers, those of you reading and wondering if recovery is for you. I know you are probably going through some problems right now and it brought you to this forum. Your reading, wondering, should I quit? Your mind races with fears of life without booze or drugs and its bleak and horrific, You begin to think that you don't really want to quit, you just want to get it under control and use successfully again. Sound about right?Addiction is a mind f'. Those voices in your head, the chatter. it’s crazy up there and it's the worst place to be. In your head, thinkin yourself out of the latest mess. See, if your like me, one of the first things you lost was honesty. Even when you had nothing to lie about, lying just became a way of life for some of us. We have learnt, through our amazing skills of manipulation, that the more we believed our lies, the more other people bought them. We became experts at it. The downside is, the lack of honesty has taken it's toll and we barley hear that voice inside us anymore, the one that said, maybe you do have a drinking problem or this crack pipe really isn't the way to live anymore. No matter who you are, someone loves you and your killing them by killing yourself. Your hear, half reading and plotting a way to fix this issue that you made but someone else is to blame for it. Just stop, for a moment. Is this where you want to be in your life.How has the trip been so far and do you really think things will get better with using?It takes one thing to get clean.One simple little thing.That is a desire to stop using. That one little spark is all it takes and you can turn your life around for good. You know, the path you have been on has got you this far. Consider this moment a tree branch on a cliff that you grabbed onto on your way down to the rock bottom. Look below, where using is taken you. Right now, this branch is only here for the moment and there may not be another one. Right here, you can say, I want off this cliff...and you can climb back onto stable land.

You may not see what awaits for you on stable land but I can let you know one thing about it. Unlike active addiction, you can make recovery whatever you want.It can be as rewarding and as exciting as you choose for it to be. The one thing you are given back, that you haven’t had for so long, is a chose.

You don't have to live reacting anymore. You begin responding to life and making changes and choices that shape and change your future and the more you get into you recovery the more you get from it.

If you want it, for this moment, the choice is yours.One tiny spark of desire to stop using is all it takes.

For me, it was the pain of using was greater then the pain of staying clean, that was my one spark that I held onto for the first year. I held on to how it feels, at the end of the binge and how hopeless I felt, how I wanted to die.In all my days of staying clean, I have never felt as bad as I did coming down.For me, it's worth every moment.