"The good times can also be a trap; the danger is that we may forget that our first priority is to stay clean."
Basic Text, p. 42
Things can get really good in our recovery. Perhaps we've found our "soul mate" built a rewarding career, started a family. Maybe our relationships with our family members have healed. Things are going so well, we barely have time to attend meetings. Perhaps we begin to reintegrate into society so successfully that we forget that we don't always react to situations like others do.
Maybe, just maybe, we've put some priorities ahead of themselves. Is meeting attendance still a priority with us? Do we still sponsor? Do we phone our sponsor? What step are we working? Are we still willing to drag ourselves out of bed at some ungodly hour for a Twelfth Step call? Do we remember to practice principles in all our affairs? If others in NA reach out to us, are we available? Do we remember where we came from, or have the "good times" allowed us to forget?
To stay clean, we must remember that we are only one drug away from our past. We stay grateful for the good times, but we don't let them divert us from our continuing recovery in Narcotics Anonymous.
Just for today: I'm grateful for the good times, but I've not forgotten from where I've come. Today, my first priority is staying clean and growing in my recovery.
I had a good time the evening before, talking with my Sponsor. It was a great relief for me to bring out the small disturbances in my daily life recently into the open, sharing it all with my Sponsor only to realize in the process what I'm getting into. So grateful that I have at least one person on Earth with whom I can share anything, as it is, freely. What a blessing.
I remember telling my Sponsor while sharing with him that I gradually seem to be losing what I have due to not using what I have! Well, that hit me when it came out of me So, this JFT on Priority, nothing could be closer to my reality than what this JFT says...
__________________
"If we do an honest examination of exactly what we are giving, we are better able to evaluate the results we are getting."Chapter 10 - Emotional Pain - NA Way of Life.