If You Want What We Have

[bluidkiti]

From the Book

If You Want What We Have:
Sponsorship Meditations
By Joan Larkin
©1998 Joan Larkin


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One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one makes.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Newcomer
What’s the point of pretending that I’m giving up my drug of choice one day at a time, when I know I have to quit for the rest of my life? Isn’t it hypocritical?

Sponsor
There’s nothing hypocritical about living in the present moment. It’s an old and honored spiritual path. To be fully awake and alive in this day, using our senses to experience what’s going on right now, not avoiding our feelings, not playing games with our minds, is a profound achievement. Living in the future isn’t living; it’s keeping our minds so busy that we can’t be here. The role our addictions is escape; its opposite is living in the here and now.

At some time, we’ve probably promised ourselves or others that we were never again going to act our addictions. We weren’t able to keep these promises; in the past, we didn’t know how not to use.

Limiting our focus in recovery to a twenty-four-hour period makes the challenges we face seem more manageable. We can get through twenty-four hours, no matter what. At the end of it, we can rest. It doesn’t mean that we’ll forget all about recovery tomorrow—only that we are willing to live in recovery now.

Today, I commit to living this one day of recovery fully.