Author: tearj3rker
Posted: Sun Aug 07, 2011 11:59 pm
| Romeo wrote: |
| Tearjerker,
You just cleared something up for me, the other day at my NA meeting people were sharing about their bottoms(not their asses!! LOL)…..you know the drill……been to jail, almost died, lost wife, kids and house. But for me, none of that was true. My bottom was seeing the look of hurt in my wife’s eyes one too many times. I thought I’d share my story so any newcomers would understand that you didn’t necessarily have to go to jail before you got clean. Well, I shared how my bottom was seeing my wife hurt one too many times and I mentioned how I wanted the newcomer’s to know that jail isn’t a necessity when it comes to getting clean. When I finished sharing, most every pair of eyes in the room was intently focused on me……I thought I had just dropped some massive knowledge on all these folks, but I also knew by the stares I was geting that something wasn’t quite right. I hadn’t really thought about it anymore until I read what you just wrote…….now I know they were all wishing instant death upon me and they were NOT blown away with the knowledge I had just dropped on their asses…….Oh Well, that’s their problem, not mine!! Anyway, thanks for your insights into NA. |
Romeo. Take my opinions about NA with a grain of salt. I had some bad experiences with those rooms towards the end. That being said, I also had many fantastic months where life was very "full", going to the gym every day, beach, drinking heaps of coffee, doing a meeting a day and some part time work. Sometimes I forget that just because of how soured things got towards the end.
As for the whole glaring at you thing. You never know what they were thinking. They could have been listening intently. Us folk can make a lot of errors when we start to try and mind read. There are also so many formalities and rules about what you can / can’t share about, that it’s easy for people to err at times.
If you wanna prescribe to the 12 step ideas, the rock bottom should be wherever you said you’ve "had enough" IMO. For me, ironically, that wasn’t the lowest point in my addiction by a LONG shot. The lowest points in my addiction were in the relapses I did with other people from NA trying to find my rock bottom. NA almost became a criminal university for a little while.
If NA works for you, don’t listen to my stuff. It would hurt me to think I could be sabotaging some people’s choice of recovery path. I forgot some important things that I’ve now learnt:
– If you choose to believe in a "bottom", it’s something personal to you and you don’t have to share it.
– If you happen to lapse, you can stop. You don’t have to go lower. There is such thing as a lapse.
– Don’t do what I did, and walk to your dealers saying "well I’m powerless anyway". I don’t think that’s what they mean by powerless, of being powerless over the mental obsession. Or at least I hope not.
– Clean time does not equal being well.
– Another person’s advice is not always better than your own choices. In early recovery, you’re told not to make your own decisions, as you’re too unwell. So for a while I let myself be at the mercy of other’s decision making. Let’s just say, clean time does not equal being noble.
Just take what works for you, and leave the rest. Maybe I thought too much about the whole thing. If I took my own advice and just took from NA what I needed, I would probably still be there today.
