Written by, John H.

I believe in myself
I believe that every action for myself
gives value to myself
and if you are willing to act
in love of you
I believe in you

The story of my recovery is the story of desire. What I desired was life, for I was living without desire. I did not know who I was, or what I wanted, or even how I felt. I couldn’t remember anything about my life, I couldn’t remember anything at all. I didn’t have an identity because without memory and emotion, there is no identity and so I lived without being, because there was no John to be.

To live without a self requires a lot of doing and I did a lot. I worked 70-hour weeks and I did marijuana continually, but the best and greatest abandonment of self was simply to merge my identity with a woman. (Although this also required more and more and more dope to really seem to work.)

Drugs never stopped working for me, but I stopped coping with work. I recognized I faced mental death if I continued, so I didn’t. In the quiet desperation of simply wanting to live, I grew a little bit and wanted to live enough to live life on life’s terms. I did withdrawal and at every point I could, I chose sobriety, even in pain.

I did feelings. I really didn’t want to, but after a while, I got used to them. I took an interest in other people and got close to them. I began to see who was really there instead of my delusions. I lost my second marriage this way, but any lie at all will end my sobriety and my life.

After a year’s sobriety, I almost went out behind the fact that I was lying to myself and others. I was stealing had been for many, many years and calling it something else. In the ongoing development of my recovery, though, it just got to be too much all at once, and I had to get straight with myself and GOD. Once I did, though, I was healed, and in a way I never knew possible before the program.

The joy of my life today is awareness of the details of life and in having the honesty not to want to change them. Although I no longer consider myself “in love,” there are many people I do love, and I love them for themselves alone. 

The greater prize and the hardest, though, is to love myself. Love yourself first, John H.

Published in A New Leaf – September 1991