wave your hands in the air

one of the 4th step promises:

Nothing counted but thoroughness and honesty.

for the rest please see here

today i received a call from another addict who was struggling because he relapsed over the weekend and was trying to hide it from his parole officer. he is involved in our drug court system and he is in the final phases of that process. he was expected to drop a ua today, but was planning on skipping it and making an excuse to give.

he is involved in the 12 step process and he was calling from his sponsor's phone. i know him from meetings and have watched him grow from a place of complete addiction to someone who is reaching out after a relapse. for those of you who don't understand this, just this change in behavior is really huge because he is not trying to handle everything on his own and is using the fellowship to find a way to behavior change.

when we spoke, i asked him how his life had been these last few months using the tools and the suggestions of the fellowship. he indicated that it had been really good. i then asked him why he decided to change his habit of following those suggestions. he asked what i meant. i responded by asking him why he got high. he said he was lonely. i retorted by asking what the fellowship suggests for a person with less than a year. - working with others, going to meetings, finding gratitude. i pointed out that he had not used these options, but chose to find his own solution to his problem. and i asked how that worked for him. now he still feels lonely, but he's also got shit he feels like he has to hide. i also asked what kind of life he really wanted to live. it seemed to me that if he was trying to avoid jail, he might be doing a piss poor job because the guilt and shame he was living in seemed a lot like jail to me. i then had to hang up because i had to go to an interview.

i got a voicemail about 3 hours later from him thanking me for talking with him. he had spoken with his p.o. and come clean about the relapse. he also dropped his ua knowing it was dirty and he will go back in front of a judge on friday. not lying about who we are and where we are is one of the most important gifts of recovery. i think he's doing just fine.


this is a colorado band (flobots)that seems to be getting much national airplay these days. i think they are kinda funny and cool and this song is kinda bittersweet. they are a little reminiscent of cake (whom i really dig a lot).