Day 3 – “Just one more day.”

Joe hasn’t been home in 3 days now, but he’s been seen and he’s terrible.  He’s every horrible thing you can imagine about someone who has relapsed on heroin (or other heavy narcotics).  His phone is dead so he can’t call anyone.  Jake gave him my number but he refuses to call because he’s still angry with me.  I guess he hates hearing the truth.  He also told Jake that he’s going to keep using “just one more day” before he asks for help.

How many times have I said that?  I’ve said that every day for years at a time.

I also see that I’ve been pretty codependent with my relationship with Joe.  I’ve been possessed by the delusion that I have something to offer him that will rescue him and that it’s my job to save him.  I got it today that I can’t save him, and that it’s not my job to save him.  I also recognized that it may have been impossible for me to be very other centered considering how sick I’ve been for so long.  (I’m hearing now that I’m not the only one who has had this particular horrible stomach virus and that the fact that it took nearly two weeks to be rid of is par for the disease’s course.)  Being that sick for that long didn’t leave me with much, and I may personally have failed Joe, but by the same token, the program didn’t fail Joe.  Joe failed the program.

In spite of all that I’ve made it, sort of, through just one more day without cigarettes.  That is not a completely honest statement.  I smoked half a cigarette this morning.  The smoking cessation literature that I’ve read has made a careful delineation between what they called a “slip” and a “relapse”.  This morning I had a slip.  I’m back on task.  I have renewed commitment.  I’m aware that I made a choice to smoke that cigarette, and I know why I made that choice, and I know how I’m going to handle that situation, which I am sure I’ll face again, the next time I face it.

Another of my sponsees came over this morning to do his 5th step.  He had been as thorough as he is capable of being right now.  I told him to go home, open up his book to the instructions for the 6th and 7th steps, and to do that, then give me a call.  Two hours later he showed back up at my house with tears in his eyes and reported what the experience had been like for him.  Everything he described was exactly what the experience was like for me.

And at that moment, I got it that this isn’t about me.  I may fall back into serious selfishness because of illness or because I have fallen prey to the delusion that I can save someone.  But I cannot save anyone, not even myself.  All I can do is be willing to do whatever I need to do to nurture my recovery and to show up for those who ask for help the same way people showed up for me when I was ready to ask for help.