"As we recover, we gain a new outlook on being clean...Life can become a new adventure for us."
Basic Text, p. 91
The using life is not a clean one - no one knows this better than we do. Some of us lived in physical squalor, caring neither for our surroundings nor ourselves. Worse, though, than any external filth was the way most of us felt inside. The things we did to get our drugs, the way we treated other people, and the way we treated ourselves had us feeling dirty. Many of us recall waking too many morning just wishing that, for once, we could feel clean about our ourselves and our lives.
Today, we have a chance to feel clean by living clean. For us addicts, living clean starts with not using - after all, that's our primary use for the word "clean" in Narcotics Anonymous. But as we stay "clean" and work the Twelve Steps, we discover another kind of clean. It's the clean that comes from admitting the truth about our addiction rather than hiding or denying our disease. It's the freshness that comes from owning up to our wrongs and making amends for them. It's the vitality that comes from the new set of values we develop as we seek a Higher Power's will for us. When we practice the principles of our program in all our affairs, we have no reason to feel dirty about our lives or our lifestyles - we're living clean, and grateful to be doing so at last.
"Clean living" used to be just for the "squares." Today, living clean is the only way we'd have it.
Just for Today: I feel clean because I'm living clean - that's the way I want to keep
Funny thats what I thought as a fatally cool and totally hip dude,I never wanted to be "square" funny how life changes when we become lucid,do some work and reach for our Higher Power...Its a compliment for me to be square today!!!!!
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Our purpose is to remain clean,just for today,and to carry the message of recovery.
great topic, this morning at 6:30 am I received today's JFT message from a newcomer, and I was glad to have started the day reading this message. In a way, this defined how my day went. Living clean (away from using my addiction) is indeed exciting, much more exciting than just staying clean (away from using drugs)
I find it very painful, unbearably agonizing to live today in my sickness, doing so is especially more difficult when I don't even get to use drugs to justify my attitude and behavior when I use my defects today.
For me, it's either using drugs or living clean! Trying to discover an in-between 'justified living in sickness while clean' is too much of a homongous task!
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"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.
Yes caring and sharing the na way,thank you for reminding us that all alcoholics and addicts can help each other stay sober the na way.Yes being sober the na way is good.One day at a time we stay sober and clean the na way.
What a good reading! It made me think back at my defination of living clean when I first got here and my defination of living clean now. Wow...what a difference. I remember learning to bathe daily, that my kids should eat three times a day and how to clean my house. How life has changed by not using and working the steps. Thanks for posting this and reminding me....It could always be worse!
Thank-you HP for giving me this chance at changing my life.
