Slips are not slips. This was one of the first things
pointed out to me in early recovery. The term "slip" is a way of
minimizing a life-threatening, serenity, family, and employment shattering
relapse. What such relapses do to one's sanity, self-worth, integrity, and
values was best summed up for me by someone returning to the program who said:
"If someone else did to me what I have done to myself, I would've killed
the sonofabitch."
My sponsor used to refer to "slips" as
"planned campaigns." He would smile at me and say, "It's like
for a week I poured motor oil all over my front steps, then stepped out one
morning and "slipped."
Oops! That was certainly unexpected. How did that
ever happen? These are all other ways of telling ourselves and others, it
really wasn't all my fault; not really. And just a little slip wasn't
that bad (I'm still alive, right?), and here I am at a meeting so I'm all
better now and can't we talk about something else?
It has been said before: Cheating at poker is merely
dishonest; Cheating at solitaire is insane. When addiction is in control, the
lies recovering addicts both tell to and believe themselves only have one
purpose: To prepare the addict to pick up again. And addiction's purpose in
having you pick up again is not so you can have a little break from recovery or
a moment of fun. Its purpose in having you pick up again is, in the end, to
kill you. And, if you have been around long enough to have a relapse, you also
know that every relapse hurts more than just the addict. It hurts people who
care about you, who love you, who depend upon you, who trust you: they all get
wounded.
Yeah, so I was at a meeting and heard another addict
trying to come back to the program after a series of relapses. It was the first
time I had ever seen her at a meeting, but before she shared I already cared
what would happen to her. I was scared for her, and I told her so. It made
me think of a scene from my mystery novel, Rope Paper Scissors.
In the story, a school teacher and a couple of
students managed to trick and blackmail a number of druggie students into
attending their first NA meeting. The student, Edgardo Rodriguez, comes from a
using family and has a heroin-addicted older brother not far from death.
Edgardo is talking to Uncle Tom, one of the NA old timers, outside before
the start of the meeting.
~ ~ ~
He (Uncle
Tom) looked at Rodriguez. "No one ever got to that door, Eddie, because
life was great and everything kept coming up sunshine and lollipops. However
and whyever they started using, right now they got big holes in 'em they think
they have to try and fill with drugs; Never good when what's causing the
problem is the only answer you got."
"You
mean it's pretty much hopeless?" asked Edgardo.
"Hell,
no," said Tom, holding out his huge hands "Hope is our big draw. See,
somewhere deep inside each one of 'em, they know they caught by somethin' big
and mean. Nobody like being a slave. What to do about it is still a question to
them. Maybe they pick up an answer or two tonight. Maybe they pick up a drug,
OD, and fucking die before sunrise. That's all up to them." He looked at
me and back at Rodriguez. "See, it's not your problem; it's their
problem. Time for them to deal with their problem; Time for you to let
go."
"And
if they just fucking die?" asked Rodriguez, his tone somewhere between
anger and desperation.
The big
man paused, looked into a shadow or two, then shifted his gaze to Edgardo.
"Then it's time to cry, and then let go." Uncle Tom dropped the
remains of his cigarette into a butt can next to the door. He turned back and
faced us. "You get into recovery, you live longer." He put his hand
on the doorknob and looked back at Rodriguez. "You get to go to a lot of
funerals, too." He waved good-bye and followed the others through that
door, closing it behind him
~ ~ ~
Recovery isn't a life style choice, something you do
to please someone else, nor something to do in order to keep out of jail or
pass a drug test for employment. It has certainly been used for all of that,
but those things are side effects. Recovery is the first step in moving from
being a using obsessed drug addict to a genuine human being. Its principle
symptom is that state of ever increasing choices called freedom.
Imagine a newly freed slave picking up the chains he
had worn for years and through all of his beatings, losses, and crushed
hopes and then trying them back on because, well, slavery wasn't really all
that bad. That is what a relapse is.
