For the first time in 15 years, I really think that I am recovering from addiction. As many of you know, I relapsed a few months ago while I was on vacation. I had been clean for 9 months before this happened. I am actually happy that it happened, as crazy as that may sound, because I learned a few things...

First of all; I learned that even though my Dad loves me, he just does not understand that I can't sit around and drink a couple of drinks with him and watch him pop pain pills and chew on a fentanyl patch...He is an addict also, so one would think that he would understand. I think he is so caught up in his own BS, that he wasn't even thinking about how that made me feel. It made me so anxious that I actually had a panic attack, which led to me downing some whiskey, which led to me relapsing on some pills.

The next day, I was pretty depressed. I just felt like I had undone everything that I had worked so hard for the previous nine months. That was not true, though. I decided to make sure that this bump in the road was NOT going to be a continuous screw up. After doing some hardcore thinking about what happened, a calmness came over me and I had a small epiphany...See, I view my recovery differently than most people...I feel that this happened for a reason; it happened to make me realize that I absolutely cannot spend time with people that are using (even my Dad) at this point in my recovery. I realized that I need to stay in my little nest of safety that I have created at my home. Outside world stressors are just too much at this stage of the game.

I came home from this experience knowing that I am strong. I knew I screwed up, decided to come back to my zen at home, and left the BS at my Dad's house. I actually decided that from that day forward, I am done with alcohol as well. It took this happening for me to realize that Alcohol has been a serious gateway to drugs and in order to protect my sobriety, I have to stay away from booze too. And its been a few months with no alcohol, no drugs and I feel better than I ever did before this happened.

i hope this article will help my friends in the addiction forums to realize that when we backslide, its not always failure...a lot of the time we are learning things and realizing things that are helping us get to where we need to be.
Never give up, keep an open mind, and sobriety will find its way into your life when the time is right.

Much Love... -D-