Exhausted . . . again. Naturally.

They’re out. They’re back in. They’re out. They’re back in.

It’s exhausting. I’m afraid I have a growing prejudice against those that seem to want it but aren’t willing to ride out the discomfort in order to achieve long term sobriety. Not that I can claim anything like long term sobriety for myself yet, but at 3 months shy of three years clean, I think I may be on the right track. I have definitely endured the first difficult days and not had to go back.

The Cheerleader went out the night I thought he was doing so well. He claims to be back in. I haven’t talked to him. This is the third time he’s done this and I don’t really know how much I want to keep being hopeful for someone, only to be let down. Again.

The Farmer’s Daughter did a tour through a psych hospital after a couple of rounds of vodka and an attempted suicide by insulin. She is now at the Betty Ford Center. Truth be told, I’m jealous. I’d love to go back to treatment for three months. In many ways the 28 days I spent in treatment were the happiest days of my life. You can do an amazing amount of growing in treatment that is very difficult to do when “worldly clamors” distract you from full time healing.

Dr. Silkworth is rightly points out in a Grapevine article from January, 1947, that, “There is nothing “screwy about it at all. The patient didn’t follow directions.” Which makes me wonder if they are the kind of patients that were unable to follow the directions, or did they simply refuse to. And does it matter.

I cannot claim to have followed the directions perfectly, myself, and yet I seem, more or less, to be fine; to have recovered from the hopeless condition I found myself in three years ago. I may have missed the mark, but I’ve come close enough to score, and I intend to keep doing that. We addicts are human beings, just like other human beings, and we can protect ourselves intelligently from relapse.