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.
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Just for today: I feel clean because Im living cleanand thats the way I want to keep it.
.......at times,,,part of my brain thinks wistfully back to using times,,has some 'nostalgia' for some of the sensations,,,escape that drugs gave me.......but it only takes an -instant- to remember all the downsides!---..misery,,desperation,,dishonesty,,,lonliness,,paranoia,,,braindamage,,,health,,,,need I say more?!?!
.....''Just for today: I feel clean because I'm living clean and that's the way I want to keep it.''
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...gawd,,,please don't let me -ever- forget why I came here in the first place!!(my 'senility' prayer)
My life as a daily using addict was really bad . I did not care how I lived ,or looked , slept under bridges even in a Salvation Army Box . I remember waking mornings trying to figure how to get food and my drugs all in the course of that day maybe a shower. Today I am Living Clean because I took the try to get clean and it is working thanks to Narcotics Anonymous and the 12 Steps , they have shown me I can change and be human again.
