No Glorification

One of the rules in Pathways is NO GLORIFICATION. This means that you are not allowed to describe the good times, as they might be triggering for another client. I challenged this today, and was shot down on multiple angles. I think you should be allowed to depict it in valuable terms, in order to relive the few decent spells on board we ever had. Take AA for example. Instead of everyone banging on about Bill & Bob and on how good the program is, let everyone talk about how they wet themselves on Aunty Margaret’s sofa, put the cat in the microwave, and went swimming in the River Mersey at midnight on New Year’s Eve. It’d be far more fun. Don’t tell me there were never any good times. Don’t tell me it was never hedonistic. I once drank a bottle of whiskey and fell asleep with my electric blanket on for 12 hours. I woke up like a charred hotdog. I got told off in a different group the other month for describing a line of coke like eucalyptus up the conk. Wouldn’t you like to hear all the horror stories about alcoholism and drug use, rather than I’m two and a half years clean?

The people who are multiple years clean are scared stiff of a relapse. They’re running. Yeah, I’m jealous, but I’m also honest. They have so much to fear, they would never recover from it. It would break them. Us ruiners laugh at relapses, it means nothing, we get back on the saddle and return to the roots of our destiny quicker than those year-longs can spell relapse. I swear, I’m losing faith in recovery. One guy asked me how many months sober I was at my last AA meeting. Just because he was doing well, the whole world has to be doing well around him. “I’m pissed now,” I said to him. How does that sh*t on your boater.

I know I’m not 66 Days clean (my last best run), but I am again honest. I’m mad for the hedonism. Life gets so boring. I’m isolated in desolation and estranged, what do you expect. But what I do have is a passion for writing, no matter what’s going on. There have been three chapters to my life so far, three parts, three acts, and now it’s over. I’m going to die. What’s the point in striving to be clean if it can all be broken at any given moment, on the run? I’m giving up, I know, in a way, I shouldn’t be talking like this, but it is what it is. I know an addict girl who I have unconditional love for, and I don’t care if she uses day in and day out, I’ll still love her. I don’t mind if she sticks a vial of heroin in her groin, starts slobbering, and conks out in front of Midsummer Murders pumped up at maximum volume. In fact, I love her because she is an addict. What does it matter, is what I suppose I’m saying, what we are. What does it matter what we are at all? We’re all connected.