Narcotics Anonymous

Just For Today - Daily Email Service

   November 30                                            Sharing the real me

      "Sharing with others keeps us from feeling isolated and alone."

                                                            Basic Text, p. 81

                           ----=----

   Intimacy is the sharing of our innermost thoughts and feelings with
   another human being.   Many of us long for the warmth and companionship
   intimacy brings, but those things don't come without effort.   In our
   addiction, we learned to guard ourselves from others lest they threaten
   our using.  In recovery, we learn how to trust others.  Intimacy requires
   us to lower our defenses.  To feel the closeness intimacy brings, we must
   allow others to get close to us-the real us.

   If we are to share our innermost selves with others, we must first have an
   idea of what those innermost selves are truly like.  We regularly examine
   our lives to find out who we really are, what we really want, and how we
   really feel.  Then, based on our regular inventories of ourselves, we must
   be as completely and consistently honest with our friends as we can be.

   Intimacy is a part of life, and therefore a part of living clean-and
   intimacy, like everything in recovery, has its price.   The painstaking
   self-scrutiny intimacy calls for can be hard work.  And the total honesty
   of intimacy often brings its own complications.   But the freedom from
   isolation and loneliness that intimacy brings is well worth the effort.

                           ----=----

   Just for today:   I seek the freedom from isolation and loneliness that
   intimacy brings.  Today, I will get to know "the real me" by taking a
   personal inventory, and I will practice being completely honest with
   another person.