Narcotics Anonymous

Just For Today - Daily Email Service

   February 1                                                       Hardships

   "We felt different....  Only after surrender are we able to overcome the
                          alienation of addiction."

                                                            Basic Text, p. 22

                           ----=----

   "But you don't understand!" we spluttered, trying to cover up.
   "I'm different!  I've really got it rough!" We used these lines
   over and over in our active addiction, either trying to escape the
   consequences of our actions or avoid following the rules that applied to
   everyone else.   We may have cried them at our first meeting.   Perhaps
   we've even caught ourselves whining them recently.

   So many of us feel different or unique.  As addicts, we can use almost
   anything to alienate ourselves.  But there's no excuse for missing out
   on recovery, nothing that can make us ineligible for the program-not a
   life-threatening illness, not poverty, not anything.  There are thousands
   of addicts who have found recovery despite the real hardships they've
   faced.  Through working the program, their spiritual awareness has grown,
   in spite of-or perhaps in response to-those hardships.

   Our individual circumstances and differences are irrelevant when it comes
   to recovery.   By letting go of our uniqueness and surrendering to this
   simple way of life, we're bound to find that we feel a part of
   something.  And feeling a part of something gives us the strength to walk
   through life, hardships and all.

                           ----=----

   Just for today:  I will let go of my uniqueness and embrace the principles
   of recovery I have in common with so many others.   My hardships do not
   exclude me from recovery; rather, they draw me into it.