The meeting was about early recovery and how sticky
that drug can get when you first try to put it down. Non-addicts do not
understand this stickiness, this pull, this almost supernatural command to pick
up that drug and use. These are the same folks who tell you, “If drugs are screwing
up your life, why don’t you stop?” We had a number of newcomers at the meeting
and they shared about those struggles, successes, and failures. For those who
have been clean for years and decades, hearing about early recovery from those
who are living it helps keep things fresh. The disease is alive and well, and
every recovering addict, including the old-timer, is just one bad decision away from a return to the
nightmare. The main thing newcomer meetings emphasize are what some of us call
“The Dues.”
“Narcotics Anonymous is a club with the most
expensive membership dues in the world.” I heard that in an NA meeting about
thirty years ago. When you add up all of the costs of addiction, the prices, the
financial problems, the health problems, mental problems, loss of freedom, being
thrown out of one home after another, problems with the law, with employment,
rejection of friends and family, and discover those are only the down payments on the dues, the size of the problem gets frightening.
Many don't appreciate the size of that balloon payment on
their dues until they try to put down the drug. When they do that they discover that
the disease of addiction is almost a real creature with a separate personality and a
very loud voice. It talks, whines, cajoles, bullies, and has physical access to
emotions, to mental focus, and to almost every nerve. It is very much like a
very powerful mad-scientist dictator who has had power over you for a very long time
and who isn’t going to give up control of you without a struggle. You try to put down
the drug, the battle begins, and the battlefield is you.
I call it “the dragon,” some addicts call it “a
monkey on my back,” and some call it “a gorilla on my back.” What is comes down
to is a condition that presents itself as almost a separate personality whose
only ambition is to get you back on the pills, powders, and potions. It makes
it so you can only see loneliness, misery, pain, disappointment, injustice, and
horror. It does this with the promise that all that will go away if you simply pick
up and use. As I heard one recovering addict say, “The monkey is off my back
but the circus is still in town.”
No sweet fairy tales here: Early recovery sucks. It
is hard and often painful filling one’s head with constant doubts, worries, and
a million good-sounding reasons for picking up. In Narcotics anonymous the
addict new in recovery gets tools to use to combat those urges to pick up. The
main tool for me was going to meetings—lots and lots of meetings. There I heard
others going through the same things I was going through and how they dealt with them without
using. After some time passed the cravings went away and it got much easier. But
that condition only remained by continuing to use the tools of the
program.
A tool I had a hard time learning to use was the
telephone. Calling another recovering addict when I was up against it sparked
this peculiar thing in me: I didn’t want to ask anyone for help because they
might think I needed it. Then one day I was faced with what seemed to be a
simple choice. The dragon was sitting on my desk and it was either pick up the
drug or pick up the phone. It was a monumental struggle, but I picked up that ten ton phone, called another addict, we talked it out, and I was
clean for another day. Phone calls became much easier.
The dues to get into this club of recovering
addicts are terrible and expensive, but they only need to be paid once. You
learn how not to have to repay those dues (as well as how not to occupy your
grave any sooner than necessary) by going to meetings and listening, by reading
the literature, by getting and using a sponsor, by working the Steps of
Recovery.
There is no cure. Addiction can be arrested and
recovery experienced as long as that disease is still under arrest. Those
cuffs, bars, and guards are meetings, a program of recovery, and other
recovering addicts. The cop in this instance is that part of you that wants to
live life as a human being.