Medallions in my heart. Clean time 3 yrs, 2 days
I ’m Rick and I’m an addict.
Yesterday I went to in convention and was able to sit down and meet the great deal of people. The most exciting thing was seeing old friends and people who were having such a good time without using. The energy was electric at the clean time countdown. The hugs were warm. The smiles were passionate.
The Rockford convention of NA is one of my favorites conventions that NA has. The reason why I like it is there’s a lot of places for people to sit down and relax. It’s not all about the meetings or the workshops, it’s also about catching up with old friends and making new ones.
One of the greatest benefits I have found in joining this fellowship is that now I have more friends than I ever had in my life. These are not your typical friends. These are addicts and as such are prone to strong emotions. They are also highly passionate and loving. The greatest example that I can give of the experience is if you had a dog and you just came home after a long day. You would know that the second the dog saw you he would jump up and down and thought you were the greatest thing on the face of this earth. No matter what you felt. It’s amazing to think that even though inside of your head; you may feel like you’re worthless that dog shows you simple love and companionship. That’s pretty much what an NA convention is.
Even people that I see in meetings all the time were there and I have to tell you that it’s 10 times more exciting to see them at a convention sharing this the same experience that I am. I’ve also learned something unique at this last convention. People that I thought that ran with other crowds and I felt distant from suddenly I felt very connected to.
The other exciting thing was that although I missed going to several of the seminar they had all of the NA speakers on CD. Actually, I prefer to go to a convention and socialize and not go to the workshops and seminars. I prefer to pick up the CDs and listen to them later. The reason why prefer to do this is actually quite simple. I cannot see the person speaking and I also cannot see the people around me. If I’m listening to the CD. This removes all possible distractions. Imagine sitting in a room on a semi-uncomfortable chair and somebody who is cute is sitting diagonal to you. I guarantee you that I will only hear 2% of what the speaker saying and the other 98% will be the voices in my head thinking about how hot the person is. Sadly, this means that I will miss a lot of messages and a lot of recovery. As an addict. I cannot afford to do this. I must take seriously seriously.
This leads me to my next point. As an addict I have found in my life the ability to bend and weave as needed. I have adapted and taken risks, many of them very unhealthy. I have taken drugs that I absolutely had no clue what they were or what effect it would have on me and yet I took them nonetheless. I went to places that looked dangerous and had a history of violent or criminal activity. I had no problem breaking the rules and rebellion was innate to my personality. To form my recovery into a standard process and one which I am told how to do it from others is very hard for me. An example of this was working my fourth step. I could not sit down and just write it out. I had to use Dragon naturally which is that program that you speak in the program types. Actually I’m using it right now to write this blog post. This is because my mind thinks faster than my body can react. Why should when I go to a seminar act like everyone else?
Because of this I have different ways to learn and I have different ways to interact program of recovery found in NA. While others are sitting down in a room listening to the speaker of which I’m very glad they do, I become restless and uncomfortable. Yet, if I had a CD I could play it back five times and get the message different each time.
One of the things I have learned in my three years journey is that when I try to work somebody else’s program, it doesn’t work for me. But when I work my program the way I wanted to work it’s an entirely different story. I am excited about my recovery. I’m excited about the people in my life. I love my brothers and sisters in NA more than you can possibly imagine. Now that I have three years clean I want more. I won’t live to see 20 years clean . I’m too old. So each time I pick up a medallion or key tag I know I won’t have a very large collection in the long run but just for today I will enjoy the medallions in my heart that is my brothers and sisters in the fellowship of recovery called NA.
