I wrote this over at NOPE, and was going to let the anniversary go at that, but I am so proud of myself for 730 days - 2 years! that if I can’t share my igggilys and wigggilys with everyone .... I can’t stand it!!
Well, this is one of those “benchmark” days in the life of an addict that only comes once, if at all. 2, zwei, two, dos, deux - years, no matter how ya write it, it always comes up AWESOME, RADICAL, and lets face it, it’s the place where self-love finally triumphed over self-destruction.
I should add that in 7 days I will have put together 28 years of sobriety!! Talk about “YAY”!
I remember very clearly 730 days ago, on quit number, what? 563, 1 million 326? Who knows, but in this particular QUIT I had something I did not have in any of the others. I had QUITNET and all of the AWESOME & RADICAL folks who showed up on a regular basis to give a fellow traveler, like myself, a hand.
The depth of gratitude I feel towards QuitNet, (and NOPE w a deep bow to @John S), 'Become an Ex' and all the AA meetings and retreats I ever dragged my sorry ass into is so precious as to be virtually unspeakable. So, a deep bow and a “thanks” will have to do, and a promise to carry the heart of a substance free life wherever my toes take me.
If I’m honest though, there was one moment, maybe it was an idea (on the other side of PAWS) that started me thinking about what craving really was. What is that awful emptiness and hunger if not a ‘nicotine booty call’? Finally, after ’40 years a slave’ It gradually dawned on me that ‘craving’ was my spirit-child crying out for help and I'm pretty sure that spirit-children don't smoke, drink or spit. (Or take the Denver Bronco's name in vain.)
I’m sorry to say that instead of deep listening I protected my supply by stuffing a wad of tobacco in my spirit-child's face and basically told him to 'go play in traffic'. I’ve done a lot of work on myself over the years, yet I was still in the habit of knee-jerking and ‘obeying my thirst’, no matter what. I began to ‘practice’ deep listening and I heard my wise spirit-child ask me, among other things, to stop plugging up the holes in our soul with dangerous distractions like tobacco et al. As he said, “it’s my soul too”.
It was a bit of a "walrus moment", if you remember the Lewis Carol poem... "The time has come to speak of many things: Of shoes and ships....” What I heard was: WAKE UP, THIS IS SERIOUS. Listening got easier after that, but I don't always hear what I want to hear. SIGH
But, what the hell, I haven't had a smoke in 730 days... and just to be clear, that's 17,520 hours, not that I'm counting!!
