Someone asked me recently how I did it.
How I got off drugs, meth of all things.

Undoubtedly tonight at my meeting I’ll be asked once again as is the tradition for anyone getting a chip for a year or two or more clean.

I’ve given much thought to the question. Less to the mechanics of my leap into sobriety, but more about which of my words might just be a trigger for another addict in attendance… to turn that bright light on upstairs to illuminate them to the possibility that they, too, deserve a future.

You see, it’s not the quitting of drugs that’s important. It’s about the installation of hope in someone that they are worth far more in this world than the company of any drug and its cohorts. It’s about having been utterly blinded by the stupor of a drug and its false promise of contentment which blocks out hope or vision that there’s really anything more to life. To that end, we are all addicts. We all have something we’ve allowed to remain which blocks hope. Something to which we remain bound.

“Clean and sober.” It’s almost cliché these days.
The distinction between the two, however, is perhaps the most important thing I learned in my two years of recovery. I got clean once, but I get more sober with each passing day.

The truly recovered are not recovered at all. They are recovering. And the truly recovering can instinctively tell the difference. A recovering person hasn’t simply stopped using. They have started living. It’s evident that clarity of mind, purpose and a place for God was birthed at some moment. But rarely is that moment a single epiphany, but the commencement of lifelong epiphanies which, strung together, create the continuity of recovering.

The high I get from my ongoing little epiphanies of life these days. They continue to escort me down a much more beautiful path. And when you find yourself in a much prettier place, hope is much easier to find. In fact, it seems to find you.

And ain’t that really the definition of God?

So for the addicts in all of us, I say to you, we are here in this world for one reason only: Be that hope for someone today.

Musings at 3am on a Tuesday…go figure.