There Was A Time

I was baptized and bar-mitzvah'd, and now I have no religious preference or beliefs. It's rare that I get to use two Z's in a sentence and probably even more rare for the combination above. On occasion, as I'm walking to an AA meeting, I walk past my former Synogague and I wonder if there's any help in there for me. Help in the sense that I need to find spirituality. It's a huge part of the 12 steps of Alcoholic's Anonymous, yet it's the one thing I haven't found there or when I went through treatment. I can't get past the concept of a God. God to me is just another Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy: a story your parents tell you to make you do something a certain way or just behave. I can't recall a time in my life when I believed in God.

But there was a time when I had spirituality in recovery, nearly 15 years ago. When I  left Hazelden after four months of in-patient treatment I set off for Florida for a one year stay in a half way house, where I met some amazing people and had the best year of sobriety of my life. I needed a God with skin on it, and that's what I found in the rooms of N.A. down there. The people became my higher power because, as a whole, they were greater than myself. I think of that time there often, and I wonder if my life would have been different if I had been allowed to stay.

I had to leave because I had Felony warrants in Minnesota. When I came back to clear them up, the judges in Ramsey and Hennepin counties were so impressed with all I had done to change my life, they essentially kicked me out of jail despite my probation officers attempts at keeping me in. All I had to do was file a request to the fine folks in Florida to allow a felon to finish out probation there. I was already a resident as I had filled out the Declaration of Domicile and lived there crime free for a year, but I was denied anyhow.

To me, that was the start of a very long lapse which eventually lead to my relapse and eight subsequent years of alcohol and drug abuse. I did stay sober for nearly five years, but my distorted thinking and lack of a good support network was my downfall.

I can use all of this information now to deal with situations as they arise now. As I continue to fix what's been broken in my life for so long, I will always use Florida as my reference for good recovery.