Today life is good! For the first time in a very long time I can honestly say that with conviction. Don't misconstrue that previous statement as saying that everything “in” my life is perfect, because I have plenty room for improvement. But the difference is I know I am ok, I have always been ok, and I always will be ok!

My relentless journey to the middle started 20 years ago. I started using drugs and alcohol at the age of 14. Not knowing why at the time the overpowering urge to change the way I felt consumed me. So like any “lost” teen I dove into a world that accepted me and made me feel better. It wasn't until I was 20 that my family and I had our first inkling that my life was headed in a self-destructive direction. I “know” today that it was my innate wisdom trying to tell me “hey wake up.” Thus, I entered my firs drug and alcohol program. I was introduced to AA. A seed had been planted. I am not trying to knock any kind of 12-step programs, but for me that seed just wasn't enough to keep me clean. That was 20 years ago. Since then I have been in 16 treatment programs. Everything from attack therapy, 12-step, all kinds of cognitive and psychotherapy, methadone clinics and lets not forget psych wards, and finally jail. Now 14 out of the 16 were of my own will and need to change my life for the better. Or in other words my innate health bubbling to the surface trying to override years of habitual sick thinking that was running my life. Now one might say, duh that's a no brainer, just stop!! Sound familiar. Anyone that has ever lived life in any kind of self-destructive cycle knows that it's not that simple. Or so we thought at the time.

It wasn't until I was at my last treatment program;   I had hit an all time low in my life. Not only had I lost the respect of my parents (which wasn't new), alienated everyone who truly cared about me (again nothing new), but I had lost my daughter. I felt as if there was absolutely nothing in this world that could fix me. I must have been standing in the wrong line when God was handing out brains. I knew then I was beyond help. Or so I thought.

As I sat in my first Health Realization class I heard something that absolutely floored me. The instructor said something that I “knew” was pure undisputable truth, I felt it. She told us that we weren't damaged goods, she said that it was our God given birthright to have peace of mind at any time we want it, without having to take something. She didn't talk about having to do this or that to find it, or looking here or there for it. She said we already had it inside of us from the time we were born. We just have been disconnected from it for so long we forgot it was there. I was blown away. For the first time in 20+ years I had hope. If what she was saying was true and I was really ok then anything was possible.

I continued to attend HR classes for 6 months. Every time I left class I felt “light” full of hope for my future, and a knowing that these feelings were coming from me not the class, or the teacher or program. I did keep questioning myself, could I continue feeling this way when I left the program. I had never been able to stay clean after leaving any program I had been in. I drove my HR instructors crazy by continuously asking them “am I going to lose this awareness that I have now?”

Well after leaving the program things didn't quite go as well as I wanted them to I managed to stay clean for 2 months. Then I relapsed. But the strangest thing happened; while I was back in the lifestyle I so much wanted to be rid of I still had a sense of peace and well being. My using was not like it had been, I tended to use less, my moods weren't so manic, I really tried to listen to people that were around me. Weird things started to happen. The people I was hanging out with, peoplethat were in the midst of hell due to their thinking and using and whatever other destructive behaviors they were doing, started to gravitate to me on a level of innocence. They would call me and want to just talk; they would show up at my house at all hours, not for dope, sex or anything other than just to be heard. I began to tell them things that I “knew” were real “truth.” See I realized that they like myself had heard a lot of rhetoric in the past about how “F'd' up we were and do this or that to better our lives. I knew from experience that by telling them that I'd be talking about something that I wasn't sure to be true. I'm not even sure of the things I said but the feeling I had when saying them I will never forget. And neither will they. I understand that no matter where we are in our lives, even if it's in the world of pure chaos like drugs and alcohol we still have our wisdom, innate and 100% pure and undamaged, waiting patiently to be tapped ino.

Today I have 10 months clean and sober. I'm very grateful to have made it through all the trials and tribulations of my past. I understand that I did the best I knew how to do at the time. And most of all I “KNOW” to the very core of my being that I will never lose the sense of well being I have today and in knowing this all is possible!!!

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