LEARN TO LEAN ON EACH OTHER

Just For Today

Once again, a group of recovering addicts gathered at a funeral home on
Thursday night.

Once again, we laid to rest one of our own.

It's been a brutal year so far among the rooms of the recovery program to
which I belong. I can rattle off the names of almost a dozen people who
have overdosed, and at least three who have died from the disease of addiction.

One of those was a guy I sponsored. Rusty, whom we remembered on Thursday
night, was nothing more than an acquaintance, a guy who briefly stayed at
the halfway house where I got clean, and the nephew of a dear friend who's
also a member of the program.

Thursday night, we turned out for Randy as much as we were there for his
nephew. Grief-stricken and overwhelmed, he didn't need to say a word, and
neither did we. He needed us. We showed up.

That's how the program works. One of the guys I sponsor saw a Discovery
Channel documentary on penguins that he likes to use in comparison: When
one of the flock is ill or injured, the other penguins gather around and
huddle close, sharing warmth and holding vigil until the sick penguin is
well again.

It's a simplistic comparison, but an accurate one. Recovery teaches us,
first and foremost, that we accomplish together what we can't do alone, and
that includes getting through the bad times.

Because the bad times are what we have trouble with. That's what we run
from, what we try to avoid as much as possible, when we're in our active
addictions. We can't face life on its own terms, and rather than trying to
accept what's handed to us and dealing with it, we run. We use drugs to
keep from thinking about it. We stay high and hope the world and all of its
problems pass us by.

That's probably what terrified me the most when I first got clean: Learning
to face life on its own terms. For years, it was all too easy when I was
stressed or frightened or nervous or agitated to just swallow a few pills,
have a few drinks or, later on, to just find a bathroom and shoot up. The
drugs made everything go away, I thought.

In reality, all they did was make me go away. Instead of facing my fears
and walking through the flames of turmoil, I did my best to go around them.
It never worked, and all I ended up doing was creating more problems for
myself.

After getting clean, I had to face reality, and the harsh fact that life
just ... well, it just sucks sometimes.

It's like standing in waist-deep surf at the beach: Sometimes, the waves
are gentle and break before they get to you; other times, they're towering
monsters that crash down like a load of cement and drive you to your knees.

Living is hard sometimes. Life isn't easy -- we're going to face crises,
catastrophes, problems, tragedies. But I can't think of a single problem or
tragedy that using drugs is going to make better. Usually, it only adds to
my problems and makes things worse.

More importantly today, recovery has taught me that just as often, life is
wonderful. My greatest hopes and dreams have just as good of a chance of
coming true as my greatest fears. Life can be beautiful today, as well.

I thought about those things while I drifted by Rusty's casket, seeing the
young man taken far too early, and about all of those good things he'll
never get to experience again.

Sunshine. The wind whistling through an open window on a spring afternoon.
Snowfall at midnight, when the streetlamps throw off a holy glow and the
ground is perfectly sculpted, unmarked by footprints and tire tracks. The
smell of mom's cooking drifting out of the kitchen. The pleased smile of a
father opening an unexpected present on Christmas day.

The contented sigh of a friend's child, head on my chest and resting in my
arms. The flutter of the heart when I'm stopped at a red light and look
over to see a pretty girl in the next car looking back at me. The exquisite
joy of driving fast with a favorite song turned up on the radio. Laughter.
The smell of the ocean.

Yes, life is rough sometimes, but that's just life. And it's guaranteed
that sometimes, perhaps most of the time, it goes the other way, too.