I once heard an old timer say, "It's great to have many years sober, but recovery is really about quality, not quantity." This really made me stop and think about what constitutes quality recovery. When we see someone who has the kind of recovery we want, what are the aspects of how that person lives life that makes their recovery attractive to us? I would love to hear what the rest of you think.

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free. – Barauch Spinoza

   January 24 From isolation to connection Our disease isolated us...  Hostile, resentful, self-centered, and self-seeking, we cut ourselves off from the outside world. Basic Text, p. 4 = Addiction is an isolating disease, closing us off from society, family, and self.  We hid.  We lied.  We scorned the lives we saw others living, surely beyond our grasp.  Worst of all, we told ourselves there was nothing wrong with us, even though we knew we were desperately ill.  Our connection with the world, and with reality itself, was severed.  Our lives lost meaning, and we withdrew further and further from reality. The NA program is designed especially for people like us.  It helps reconnect us to the life we were meant to live, drawing us out of our isolation.  We stop lying to ourselves about our condition; we admit our powerlessness and the unmanageability of our lives.  We develop faith that our lives can improve, that recovery is possible, and that happiness is not permanently beyond our grasp.  We get honest; we stop hiding; we show up and tell the truth, no matter what.  And as we do, we establish the ties that connect our individual lives to the larger life around us. We addicts need not live lives of isolation.  The Twelve Steps can restore our connection to life and livingif we work them. = Just for today:  I am a part of the life around me.  I will practice my program to strengthen my connection to my world. Copyright 1991-2016 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved

You didn't come this FAR, to only come this FAR"

So, I've been clean since January because I did have 2 relapses but the last one damn near could have killed me! I went into a horrible seizure and fell out the shower and I landed on my mouth, hence losing 5 teeth which did major damage on my self esteem. I get ANGRY when the thought of my past usage comes into my mind because I don't want to use and I don't have any desire to use. Let me enlighten you about something that happened at my work a couple weeks ago and I was livid. I'm now a cna and I love my job! Well, I have a lot of hyper energy and I love to make my residents happy and most of them love me! Well, I work with someone who is in the NA program like myself, from the Lexington area okay. I had a nurse approach me and ask me what I was on and she doesn't know me from Adam and Eve. I told her I wasn't on anything and she said she knew that I used to do drugs, and I asked her how she knew that, but she refused to tell me how, but I have a pretty good guess how, the girl from Lexington. She didn't believe me at all, and I didn't appreciate her accusatory comments, because I KNOW THAT I AM CLEAN, so the only thing I could say was I'll take a fucking drug test right now. I ended up not having to because a nurse that had left to go home, which is also a recovering addict came back to work and talked to me and she could tell that I wasn't high. So now, I went to my neurologist on Tuesday, and they know now about my past drug use, they sent me to the lab to do a urine drug screen and I can't wait to get a copy of the results because I'm going to take it to my work and shove it in the nurse's face who had no business accusing me like she did and say now tell me that I'm high! I've been doing really good and I'm only going to get better from here. Thanks y'all!

So it's been a while but I'm still clean and still doing the next best thing bc it works if you work it