30 years in Recovery-Written 14th April 2016

Well today is my 30^th Birthday in Narcotics Anonymous. I could tell over this week as the morning air got cold. It reminds my body it’s time. It seems like a dream now that 30 years ago on this morning I told my mother I was using again and couldn’t stop. She went to book me into the family doctor and I went to get on one last time, but could get anything, and I was defeated and just went home. The doctor sent me straight to a detox. McKinnon unit. I have been to Psychiatrist/Doctors/Social workers, but never detox. Getting clean in addiction was always just stopping drugs and keeping drinking, or stopping drinking and keeping drugs, but never abstinence! It was a Monday night and that evening they sent us to the McKinnon Monday Night NA meeting. I was terrified, but I was alive and feeling. What I saw and heard there that night gave me hope, when I had been feeling hopeless for so long. Hearing people sharing honestly, appearing really happy, was something that moved me. No one was honest in my family especially about how they felt. Mother was mentally ill, and father was absent and had one motto, don’t upset your mother. As a first child I was enmeshed with her madness and it has been a legacy I have had to work hard on all my life. Being enmeshed with madness gave me know regulation tools, so living inside my own skin was torture. Till I found alcohol, drugs, Rock and Roll and sex. The rest failed into insignificance. I loved the new world I had found, was obsessed with it, and it doesn’t take long when you’re a glutton for drugs and alcohol to be insane yourself. I tried to cut done and control use, but always failed miserably! Do throwing in the towel and winning made sense.

I was only in the detox 51/2 days, the rest I did in the meetings, working the steps, with a sponsor, and forming great peers (go the Cabramatta Grunters!)

They told me in detox to do 90 meetings in 90 days, and I had no idea how you fit that in, until I got home and realised I was a full time drug addict before detox, and all I had was time. I did two meeting a day and three on Sundays. It was very lonely leaving all your playmates and playgrounds and playthings behind, but I knew I had to do it. I hung on to a crazy Lithuanian Crass Punk vegetarian animal Liberationist girlfriend till 28 days, and the madness that was creating allowed me to finally let go of that to. For four and half months I did meetings. Got my first sponsor and started to get numbers and ring them. I stayed for the second half on meetings, which was excruciating in the beginning, like asking someone out on a date. I bought the NA Basic Text and read the first three steps every day. That book I carried everywhere. I was amazed how you could live on sickness benefits money. I would make a sandwich, and carry the Basic Text in a little bag, and ride my skateboard to meetings. (First recovery name was Skateboard Steve!) I would go bowling on Friday

nights after the meetings, joined an NA indoor cricket team, The Shot Ducks! It was crazy fun. I rode a moot bike after I got my first job, and back riding again is brining all sorts of memories back. I joined groups and some of those friendships from that first year have all turned 30 this year to. We have grown older and wiser together. I could never have imagined where I would be in 30 years when I started out. If you told me I was going to be a country singer, work as a therapist and wear a suit to my day job and like it, I might not have even stayed. But I have matured. My Family is my focus now.

I have quit my Directors job to make my Family and being a Husband and Father the priority, not my work. That’s been a huge decision for a first child Hero that’s supposed to be there for everyone else so I am ok. That first year taught me recovery was about relationships and connection. I know now that is the new buzz word for addiction treatment, but all those years ago, we found that in the deep loving that comes from holding hands and sticking together to save your own life. The Spiritual awakening that has come as a result of these steps is to big a story to convey for here right now. I will one day write that book. I will say though that I am eternally grateful for the Members that came before me, that created the space, maintained their recovery and opened their arms and hearts to newcomers like me. It taught me to do the same. The therapeutic value of one addict helping another is without parallel. Thank God

This week I am sharing at the Glebe Friday night meeting. It was the last meeting I got taken to before I left treatment. Carol H picked me up and took me. Thank you Carol. Wayne Hennessy looked after me there, gave me his number, and then I called it the next Day-It saved me. Saturday night I will share at the Saturday Liverpool Meeting. The first meeting I went to straight out of detox. Still going strong, and many folks from my generation of clean time still going strong. It was give what I have away with gratitude and ease, because it was so freely given to me. Thank you God