GRATITUDE COMES IN MANY FORMS

It's good to be back home after a week in the islands.

Vacation prevented me from writing an addiction/recovery column last
week, but from the e-mails, phone calls and letters I received while
away, it wasn't forgotten.

Which is another reason to be so very grateful today.

I have a friend in the 12-step program of which I'm a member who says,
every day, that he finds gratitude just to wake up on this side of the
dirt. Grateful to his Higher Power for giving him another day of life,
and one without the compulsion to use drugs.

I've found gratitude in plentiful supply myself these days. If you'd
told me two years ago, when I was still in active addiction, that my
life would turn around and that I could not only afford to travel to
Key West, Fla., but to go there without using -- I probably would have
asked what drugs you were taking yourself.

Back then, it was a 24-hour job just to find ways and means to get
more drugs. I wasn't concerned with my job, my family, my
relationships or my health. As our literature tells us, I lived to use
and used to live -- the next day didn't matter, much less the next
week or the next month. I wasn't sure how I'd make it through the day
at hand, especially when I didn't have something to melt down in a
spoon and shoot into my arm. Planning ahead was unthinkable.

Recovery has given me so many gifts, one of which is the ability to
look to the future. I still live one day at a time, as the program
teaches me, but by staying clean for almost 20 months, I can begin to
make plans -- like taking a vacation. I can put aside some money
without neglecting my bills. I can purchase a plane ticket two months
in advance and, as long as I continue along a path of recovery, not
worry about trying to sell it or get a refund just to get high.

And I can go to Key West, Fla., without using. I wasn't too worried
when I left -- the friend who lives there is a recovering addict I met
almost three years ago in a Wilmington, N.C., treatment center. My
friend has stayed clean all this time, and even though I faltered, he
never abandoned our friendship. If anything, he loved me even more. He
hurt with me, because he knew what I was going through and that I had
to go through it, in order to become willing to recover.

And so I flew to Key West, and my friend introduced me to his support
group. The program is worldwide, just like most 12-step organizations,
and there are chapters in virtually every city in the country and
around the world. As soon as I stepped into the rock garden of that
meeting hall in Key West, I was embraced with open arms. I'd never met
these people before in my life, but they welcomed me like a long-lost
family member.

We held our meeting beneath towering coconut palms and banyan trees,
citronella candles burning at our feet, the din of Duval Street only a
few blocks away. Over there, the alcohol flowed freely, and no doubt
the drugs could have been found, had we set our minds to it.

But using wasn't our purpose. We were there for recovery. I shared my
story with them, my new brothers and sisters, and took from them the
experience, strength and hope of their walks along recovery's rocky
road. I would attend two more meetings while I was there, one in the
rock garden and another on a concrete picnic table beside the ocean.
Each time, I came away with an almost overwhelming feeling of peace
and gratitude.

Gratitude for what I've gained, through embracing recovery and working
to get better. Gratitude for the fellowship to which I belong, one in
which I'm never a stranger and I always find hope and strength, no
matter where I go.

More importantly, I carry with me a gratitude for what my Higher
Power, God, has so graciously given me: Another day, another breath
and another chance at life.