Not The End, Just a Continuation: Step 12

Step 12
Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to addicts, and practice these principles in all our affairs.

After so much time between my last drug, my last drink, and today, why bother going to Narcotics Anonymous or Alcoholics Anonymous meetings any longer? I mean, seriously, haven't I got this recovery business wrapped up nice and pretty after ten years? Is it really necessary to keep going to these meetings and hearing the same things over and over, year after year, month after month, week after week?

When I first started down this road, I went to a meeting every day. I did that for four or five months. Then for the remainder of that first year, I went at least four or five times a week. As the years began to build up, I went less and less. Now, most weeks, I go to just one meeting. There have been times I thought I could just stop going all together, but after a couple of weeks, my thinking gets skewed. For some reason, it is very easy for me to "forget" I'm an addict. I start entertaining ideas of controlled using or controlled drinking. Or my thinking might become skewed in the way I handle things that are going on in my life. My weekly meeting allows me a safe place to process things with people I trust. So, the number one reason I continue going to meetings is for myself. I need what I get from my meeting. It is my ongoing maintenance to deal with the disease of addiction. I get sick without the maintenance.

The second reason I continue attending meetings regularly is to "carry the message." When I walked into my first meeting, there were people in that meeting that had more than a day clean - which is all I had. There were people there with a month clean, three months clean, a year clean, ten years, twenty years clean. If they hadn't been there to not only guide the way and share their own experiences with me, I wouldn't have stayed clean. I'd have lost hope. So, "carry the message" is simply offering hope to those who are seeking a way to get and stay clean. Carrying the message means I will continue to show up and offer up my own experience to those who don't know how to put together a day - or even an hour - clean and sober. Carrying the message does not mean I go out and recruit addicts still active in their addiction, dragging them to a meeting and cramming something down their throats. Carrying the message is very simple... all I have to do is continue doing what I need to do for myself and allow others to know who I am and who I was and who I am becoming.

Another reason I continue on in recovery and attend meetings is to learn better how to "practice these principles in all my affairs." Remember the principles associated with each of the steps... the honesty and integrity and willingness and acceptance and courage and hope and faith and love and all the other principles provided through working those other eleven steps? Living those principles in every area of my life takes practice. It takes reminders. It takes seeing how others do it and seeing what works for me. It is so easy to fall back into hopelessness or try to get through tough situations without any faith or courage. It doesn't take much to lose my willingness to go on. I can quickly fall back into being dishonest with myself and with others. My weekly dose of recovery, via that weekly meeting, is my GPS for continuing to move toward the place I wish to go, the person I strive to be.

"Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps...."
Learning to live these spiritual principles, and apply them in my life, that is the spiritual awakening of the 12th step.

"Carrying the message..."
Allowing others to witness the unfolding of my life, that is the only way I know to carry the message of recovery.

"Practice these principles..."
Living a principled life - with my family and friends, in my work, in all that I do - that is what it has been about, that has been the journey, and that is how and why I remain on this path of recovery.

I’m Maze. I’m an addict.