As we recover, we gain a new outlook on being clean.... Life can become a new adventure for us.

Basic Text, p. 91

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The using life is not a clean oneno 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 mornings just wishing that, for once, we could feel clean about ourselves and our lives.

Today, we have a chance to feel clean by living clean. For us addicts, living clean starts with not usingafter all, thats 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. Its the clean that comes from admitting the truth about our addiction rather than hiding or denying our disease. Its the freshness that comes from owning up to our wrongs and making amends for them. Its the vitality that comes from the new set of values we develop as we seek a Higher Powers 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 lifestyleswere living clean, and are grateful to be doing so at last.

Clean living used to be just for the squares. Today, living clean is the only way wed have it.