Free Journey

Being of Service

Back when I quit using I received my first taste of service in a treatment center. I remember the struggle of letting my selfish, self clean toilets for other women. I remember cleaning the hair out of drains and scrubbing hairspray from the counter. I loathed the work. The pay off was I was able to move freely about the recovery community. The first time I complained to my sponsor she lovingly reminded me that this was but one chore – per week. She reminded me that the others too were serving me. That by giving freely, with love I was gaining 10 fold in return. I soon learned to give of myself unconditionally. When I left treatment it wasn’t long before I envied those women who only had one chore per week. I was soon serving myself and my child completely and I found gratitude for the service those women shared with me.

This is a critical moment for me. This moment taught me to be willing to serve the still suffering addict. In fact, it was more than willingness, it was desire. For just over 8 years now I have been of service to the fellowship and the suffering addict. It took some time… Years actually to learn to balance this service and the service to myself and my family. Even though I understand how difficult it was for me to do less service with quality I get frustrated at other members lack of willingness to do any. I spent my Sunday being of service 2 committees from 10:30 am to 6:00 pm. This is a considerable amount of time away from my children and I would not be involved in both committees if one of them was not an effort by the Western States to teach and train addicts just as my sponsor did in the beginning. The frustrating part of this is that people are elected and don’t fulfill their responsibility and others still refuse to get involved.

I find the phenomenon in society as well. I serve the youth, minorities and low income individuals regularly through my employment. I find ways to get involved and stay involved. I use the skills I acquired in Narcotics Anonymous to repay the community I created chaos in. I see the same people at every table. I see people who hold title but show no action. I see community leaders and members refuse to get involved.

What is it about our society that we have lost the desire to be involved? Have we as a nation become so self absorbed and is it a result of the disease of addiction or is really just human nature to live life selfishly involved.

I ponder these questions regularly as I try to separate my disease from human nature. I learned through steps 6 and 7 that I am human and I falter as all humans do. So today, I try to find those behaviors that I am able to arrest as part of my disease and those behaviors that will always be simply because I am human.

posted by freedom14 @ 2:17 PM