Getting a few days is great. Months even better. Who doesn't feel grateful when distancing to these things? The weakness that follows amid the malice of the world, ain't the most interesting of situations to find oneself in.

Reinforcing that safety, and capacity to show up for what matters, would seem a natural desire. Attending meetings consistently, holding those mini-meetings and working the steps.

Of course, the link between result and action sometimes breaks. It's like how the sheer pain found in memories while 'out there' creates a desire to keep at it. At times those memories coincidentally took shape per the desire for that very drive. Motivation, shaped by damages done, indicated by the pain, is then what gets avoided, and not the disease. Giving that value can invite more of the same.

The damage to a life, is damage to a variety of factors, beyond merely near and dear. And as recovery can decrease that, there's also a continuous cost to building up the days. Just think of the self, how time gets burnt. That may be better than being out there, but it's nonetheless a cost.

Sometimes the "it would harm anyway" turns into an excuse to exploit a life, devaluing their time, health or the like as a means of access. When that happens, the trust in spending resources on recovery fades. It becomes a loss to the program. Didn't you save on the programme's resources in that way, somehow? The first step may be to stop using, but what's next?

Whenever a life needs to go through withdrawals, that tends to inconvenience the surroundings, imposing a cost. "Its the first one not to touch", partially 'cause there's a timing to it all, including quitting. There is likely no one able to say when the time to quit is, except the individual themselves. Every attempt burns up capacity for effort. It demoralizes if failing. Erodes the willingness. Risks damages and inoculation. The very recovery-awareness can get ingested, twisted about, making it harder for the life to last in their recovery on the next attempt. Ever felt like you gave something, and then someone just misused it?

Recovery presents a cost to society. Changes can be .. inconvenient. Remember what it's like to suddenly not be numbed away? When a life can't be fixed away as usual, the impact on their surrounds can generate ripples in the workplace, networks and the like. It can lead to setbacks, and that can even translate to deaths; just think of the surplus of money for actual medical procedures. Of course talking about the real kind, not oppression, enabler-fixing and denying lives health by making the changes they need to. That'd seem to cost too, wouldn't it?

The costs extend through chains, and the investment need turns out fruitful for desire for more to develop. A life continuously denied. Numbed. Done hard-to-fathom wrongs unto, or exploited in other vile ways such as being left to the streets, can lead to down-the-line costs. The soul demands more healing, and like with oppression being motivated, rationalized and the like, the costs drain the cost-benefit balance of entire societies.

Addiction is an occurrence, and it takes shape, grows as a byproduct of a variety of things. When these culminate into events that trigger addictive patterns; depriving, fulfillment-fixing, numbing etc. - the particular expression is a mere symptom. Sometimes, it can even be a symptom of recovery, and resistance to changes, such as the kind that'd unveil wrongs. The kind that'd clarify what gained value and ease, seeming to be value-creating, while actually incurring networks, society, civilization and the like greater costs.

The Energy Placed in Recovery

Who wouldn't want to respect the kindnesses they were shown? One of the key elements to lasting recovery, seems to be avoiding falling prey to deferring to all sorts of "the answer to all the world's problems". When that occurs, it can get easy to forget the basics; and while the programme may be a kind of gateway recovery to the personal journey, it does provide a base creating redundancy; a way to exit situations that suddenly doesn't turn out well. Why is the word God used to begin with? Might be connected to fighting fire with fire, something that eliminates motivated deference.

As one member hands down what they were given to the next, personal recovery subsequently unlocks. Why wouldn't it? Now they're a pathway, and even if there are some issues here and there, it seems to help more than a few. The same for the programme, the process that ran continuously, assisted millions upon millions to last in quitting whatever they would struggle at. The promise continues that any can abstain.

That last bit may at times get questioned. When costs to a life continuing gets externalized unceasingly, members contribute through relying on structure to exploiting cheap access to human resources. In impoverished contexts, that get exploited in sustaining environments, production-lines and low-cost access, that can create resistance on affiliation. Looked into if you create the kind of affiliation?

They're not the only sacrificed to shape pleasant local environments. Others get terrorized and turned into examples, as they undergo court-based decisionmaking to be deprived by means of armed force. While at depth the energy may lean towards shifting a life out of a malicious circumstance, give them some space and eventually find a different way out, reality often differs. Intended perhaps at depth to improve the likelihood of things turning out well, the structural flow often gets misused. Claims of justice, truth and safety get misused to create advantage to some and not others. Some deeds are made unimitated by induced fear, nevermind the selectivity.

It's the kind of thing that invites predatory misuse of it, the demand ever increasing as addiction to terrorizing or fixing gets worse. When turned explicit, people start criticizing it, and that gets capitalized on. There are those who "got themselves in trouble" and so it is claimed "their own fault". Corrupt as the environments surrounding the programmes may be, often even those exploited for access to their intimacy, get domesticated with how "they chose to". The loss of connection to those they're naturally connected with gets rationalized, as does the nuclear-waste like intimate attachments that develop and only decay over a long time. The invest-ability of their souls gets drained, society loses interest, and they get exposed to worse and viler things.

Never mind how each that end up in that kind of context, often sank into the malice bit by bit. Cravings, like trickling streams, fed into shaping events, situations and the like. When meetings sustain that, the disease gets passed on instead of recovery. Just think of the costs down-the-line, as recovery gets misused as a power-source of sorts. It may create a foundation for things like eased expansion on the space-frontier, but what happens when the programmes becomes less trust-able? When meetings are consumed as a means of extending the length of time by which things continue: The span of lives. Relations. Dietary patterns. Over- or under-amounts without other ends being made, the costs to recovery increases.

When that happens, friction can develop. Even with what will be, that is not yet. When recovery gets misused to indulge senseless exploitation of lives, passively, through infrastructure-dependence, security-reliance or the like, the losses that result can lead to heavy costs down the line. Negative impact, creating conflict with what will be, leaving a loss of connection. Would you want to unnecessarily lose the support of layers to the future, turning it into a force against your continued recovery? It may be but a trickling stream, but a win for the disease nonetheless.

It's kind of like heroism; acting a pathway for unmet needs, providing a service to a context, whether a meeting or a social context. Only, it's not very heroic if sustaining a context, that senselessly indulge in exploiting recovering addicts. And that can get worse, it may seem a low-cost method to access cheap harm-mitigation. Issue is, exploiting the programme for that, diminishes trust. Consider what your reaction would be, if merely showing up meant you'd be exposed to a high risk of getting misused. Would you dare expend limited resources that you'd need to protect what you care about, to be selfless and self-extending? Sure would seem to take a bit extra.

Terrain

Back to earth. Continuing on senselessly is a skill, and one well-applied to avoiding using through the bodies of others. A key component to recovery, is the higher power. The disease is a product of many tributaries. Like streams feed into a river, things before, during and perhaps even after a life feeds into the unfolding of fate that develops addiction. In the same way, let's call higher power an occurrence. Higher powering, into which more than one stream feeds, whether sustained by Gods almightiness or not.

An occurrence, perhaps of something beyond, something with a bird's-eye view that can spot mistakes to avoid, mishaps and got the power to direct a life about in the terrain. Not that I would dare impose that definition, but it'd be one way to counteract the sneakiness of the disease. For instance, it likes to devalue my time as a means of access. How would I be writing this? I don't have that kind of time, it takes me hours to write a post. Thanks to previous service and a bit of guidance, it landed me writing this.

Imagine everything is good, cozy and comfortable, and suddenly it strikes. Just in that moment, when things were about to improve. It may even have been that very outlook to improvement, that created resistance. Maybe wrongs would be unveiled. Harm done, in procuring an outcome. It could be inducing denial about negative labeling, drug-enabling and indulgence in extreme consuming, leading to a fracture between soundly sensed reality, and narrated perception, causing confusion, damage and leaving a life waltzing into a relapse.

I was done that to more than once in the rooms. Avoiding the relapse time and time again cost me dearly. Burnt up my time, outreach and the like. What's that like for those that can't resist the malice? Can't be fun being turned away from God and recovery either, subjected to the malice. Not exactly inviting to the newcomer. First it triggers damages, then emotions, then reactions take form that begin old thinking - eventually moving towards old behaviors. It sorrows me to think of all those that died, and often I wish I had, with the non-optional misery it created.

And none can say no to it, 'cause it's socially acceptable. Any differing gets shot down, making sure everything is convenient and pleasurable for those that get complicit. Any refusal gets labeled as wrong, met with the utmost denial. When someone pressures another to abstain, and they relapse, it's food for excuse the culture pushing its agenda in the rooms; in turn excusing yet other cultures in counteracting it.

If you're involved with any that tend to indulge in the oppression, is there some other place you can put in your efforts, assisting their eventual recovery? Say during being alive, someone develops dependence on things at the level of soul, or attachments of various kinds that continue even after death. It gets increasingly likely that the disease continues too. If suddenly losing processing, access to it at the accustomed low-cost, that can leave a soul with high costs, weakened and needy. If you're reading this, there's a good chance you get what that risks. Ending up with that kind of mess would complicate even making use of meetings already attended, in recovering in that which follows life. What are ways you tend to spend your limited daily energy well?

Imagine now that the higher powering ain't just magically there. It's somehow sustained, relies on surplus, and somehow needs to keep building up that surplus. A life that recovers can decrease lots of harm, unlock surplus, ease recovery for others and avoid losses that would be. But for who does that unlock resources? How? In what ways? The majority of is unfathomable, to me anyway. However one thing is clear: When that power gets misused to sustain and continue extreme malice, it creates a kind of taint unto whatever provides it. The way the power is used, reflects back on that which sustains the continuation. As time passes, when it gets misused as a power-source to continue harm, the violations of lives, incessant costs and that in a way continuously escalating, the powering factor begins to lose the capacity to provide that power.

While over-righteousness may in itself be something to be wary of, there are those that get wronged continuously, especially if numbed out. That can create a problem. When some are consumed wronged, as part of sustaining the recovery, that can create a need to align with those lives. A demand to reduce harm, remove negative outcomes that build up or the like. When lives wrong themselves, or others wrong them but try to shift the blame, that's of course a different scenario.

I partially can spot that malice, because when I'd point out that oppression is oppression, I'd be attempt shut down by blame being assigned to me. The expectation probably was I'd break once harmed past a point, and the inconvenience my ability to live clean, and improvement, would conveniently disappear. It didn't match the narrative, and so a line of thought got induced repeatedly: "if I don't play along, it's my fault that this and that happens". Constant blame-shifting, gaslighting, fracturing denial-inducing and a variety of other vile twists.

An example would be the passive claim that "if members reject oppression, its their fault young girls are stuck on the street and get raped". Reality differed slightly; maybe was there space for them to quit that stuff, and they didn't have to worry about getting lured into complicity, it'd be easier for them to find the rooms. Let alone that fewer would be on the streets to begin with, was there less rationalizing on denying the changes required. Less denying the rationalizing on using heavy narcotics to fix things, on abusing lives with drugs and negative labels. It's a denial pattern that blinds lives to what they need do to be healthy, and definitely was part of shaping my sinking into what led me to this room, already before I was a teenager.

It presents a great reason to be kind, even did others do harm unto one, despite the lure to externalize the costs. Turning to these ways instead of taking the third step, means that the power-factors gain complicity in the harms. The costs begins to reflect on these, draining the surplus to act a higher power bit by bit. Mind you, after I got into recovery, I was introduced to those guys pushing funny stuff in the name of medicine. I had to figure out the hard way, that they had long since broken the Hippocratic oath, harming those they pretended to care for using the name of health, deriving their status, wealth, societal position and the like. That bit gets skipped over, and the name of "doctors" gets misused to promote oppression and negate any inconvenience.

Sadly here it gets necessary to highlight how partnering-anorexia, underearning, natalism, disregarding inherent connectivity also are forms of harm. The moment a life builds some distance to the oppression, taking the steps on the long journey of recovery, some dangers await that complicates it. This includes sexual exposure, pollution by cultures that drive underearning or obstructs decent togetherness, possessive hindrances on reducing passive harm caused, sudden reproduction, abusive family-systems, misuse of the risk of saying something that'd sound out of place etc. - a byproduct being negative situations draining the anything consuming the violations. Similarly, consuming the stuckness in oppressive circumstances, rationalizes all kinds of exploitation, turning efforts building atop that meaningless. Especially abusive relations, lack of nourishment of decent partnering and the excess intimate attachments with a long decay-time seems to invite the need for unbearable patience.

Powering

Getting out of drug-abuse of any kind can require patience, regardless of what ethos and name it goes under. Failing tacticity can be a kind of anorexia, leading to a lot more abuse with drugs. The capacity the meetings hold are limited, lest the byproducts of rationalization, fracturing denial-inducing label-misuse or the like essentially drains the capacity of the meetings to sustain recovery - even does it look good at surface for a while. I neither use the labels nor the drugs, and don't need to occupy that capacity. Some are stuck in fixations that complicate quitting; say those being threatened by courts, having to handle child-rearing, the need for independent livelihood, recovery and such all on their own - let alone the newcomers who thank God are less toxic in being new.

There are a few things that begins to dry out the power upstream: Lack of thoroughness and the disease in its various manifestations are two. Then there's the need to avoid traps when being thorough, like over-selfblame (I thought I was to blame for it all before I got into recovery). Indulgence in consuming oppression. Continuing life-as-it-was with dietary patterns, clutter, excess relations and senseless consuming of security-infrastructure whether socially accepted or not - all add small boulders, complications and the like draining that vital energy. Turns out there's an abundance of ways to self-heal too, that energy just gets tapped into as oppressive contexts positions as a pathway, all too happily misusing anything other cultures would provide.

Sounds like no issue? Even if a member might react with spite and how that doesn't at all matter, once there's less and less of it, it begins to demand more fixing, more enabling and others to do more service to compensate. It probably stops being fun, as the loss of recovery-powering begins to shape on points, at times, in ways and such - reflecting the taint that continuously expands when that power is misused. The likelihood is it'd get blocked before the taint sets in, after which the capacity to provide the powering depletes anyway.

While I'm just another anonymous member, writing like this depletes my capacity to write. As it gets read, the expressions, thought-patterns, logic, way of thinking, potential triggers etc. gets ingested. It reduces the potential healing impact, and depletes the capacity to write in the unique way I do. Suddenly I start making mistakes, that creates rejection of what I write, or what was written. The disease sneaks into my writing, misusing any trust built. Maybe I incidentally write something unwise that creates a backlash, or the drug-abuse pattern starts taking over the focus, instead of the intended topic of higher power being something that can drain. It is not without risk.

However, like with timing the quitting, similarly what is considered misapplication, it may at large be better left to the individual. Certain ideas of what is correct, ideations of what would be the case, risks neglecting contexts, details, timing or the like, leading to greater costs down-the-line if imposing some kind of law. Much like the oppression of the aforementioned kind indulges in law-euphoria, imposing the opposite could similarly lead to a high, even does members get mislead into ways that drain the powering. That said, building a solid foundation for personal recovery may assist to avoid developing the complication of depleted higher powering.

And unlike the early members, the current membership does not hold the perks of being "early in". There are plenty of programmes, and through each it is easy to quit using through the bodies of others in a variety of ways. The same simple act of showing up, doing service, creating literature, carrying the message just doesn't hold the same value any longer, doesn't counter-balance the negative impact, while it can look recovery-like for a while.

Think about it: Carrying the message to those far away, doesn't do much good if simultaneously participating in building the pressure of harm to contexts, that creates the rejection of the message. Especially if it's partaking in passive violations of kin, networks, citizens of countries exploited by the contexts that contain the majority of the membership. More-so when for meaningless indulgence, when personal changes are easy to make. The rooms are often warm and welcoming, that's something to pass on to the newcomers. Not just in the room one is present in, but every room across the fellowship.

Note: This one would be useful for those that do the work, yet its somehow not enough. Some just need to make greater changes than others, whether that's fair or not. Ever met a member or got a sponsee that seems to struggle even tho they do service, work the steps, attend the meetings and all? If you feel like you can't quite convey to them what's next, feel free to share the link to this post. An old-timer struggling, may find inspiration for the next round as well, while the newcomer that'd struggle at a casual meeting may find this inspiring.