Making A Difference

By the time most of us come into recovery from drug and alcohol addiction our self esteem has taken a few hits. We often feel that we are worthless, bad, unimportant, etc. We've given up friendships, jobs, family members and relationships. I know that by the time I got into the recovery program ETA I was feeling hopeless about myself and life in general. There were few people who loved me in spite of what I had become.

Thankfully, I got a sponsor and began working the steps with her. While doing so, my sponsor and the old HP pulled me out of the bitter morass of self pity and despair I had lived in while boozing and using. I was so busy hanging on to the shred of my sobriety and doing the things suggested by my sponsor that I didn't even notice. One day I realized that I no longer found living to be too difficult for me. In fact, I was even laughing sometimes. This was a true miracle.

I found people in the ETA meetings to be a lot like me and a spark of joy in my soul turned into a flame. I was developing a new relationship with the old HP and beginning to practice honesty; with myself, about myself and with others. I learned that I could laugh at myself; that some of the situations during boozing and using were funny because, now, I could see the insanity of my thinking at the time. People who had been clean and sober for a while talked about their insanity during meetings and everyone laughed with them, not at them. I learned to do that, too.

Then I got sick. I was quarantined at home for about 2 weeks. I couldn't go to the ETA meetings or talk to my friends there. A couple of people called me to ask if I was okay since they hadn't seen me. I was amazed. They missed me! Wow! It had been a long time since anyone had missed me. (In the past, most people were relieved when I quit coming around them.)

Finally, I was healthy enough to be sprung from confinement at home and was able to go to a meeting. People were actually glad to see me! They were glad that I was there! I was glad to see them, too. Some said that they had been praying for my health. They told me it was good to see me back among them. It was like coming home and I realized that we truly cared for each other. I marveled over this with my sponsor.

She smiled and let me go on and on about this new discovery. Then she said, "The people in recovery need each other to stay clean and sober. We don't judge each other on our disease, because we have all been there. The people in ETA don't love each other in spite of our alcoholism and drug addiction; we love each other because of our alcoholism and drug addiction."

What a gift from the old HP. I'm just an alcoholic doing the best I can to stay sober. To think that I matter to other people, that I make a difference, that I can contribute something to others, by simply being myself, fills me with gratitude and humility. I love this program.

Have a good and sober day.