The Graduate

Graduated today. Big day.

I record here a few words I spoke, as I hope to look back on them in one year's time with a sense that this is where it changed; where I changed.

“Hmmmmmmm”. How am I feeling right now ?

I think I have two words for how I’m feeling.

“Yeah, baby !” (That one was for Randy).

Like Virginia Slims, we’ve come a long way – I know I sure have.

We came in like seeds; and the problems underlying our addiction was the rain, and the Donwoods helped stop the rain for awhile. It’s hard to watch your own self grow, but in my group I saw the seeds all around me sprout into seedlings, then blossom. It has been, it is amazing. New people emerged from the shells they’d been living in for a long time.

I hope that we keep in touch long enough that I can see the flowers that develop.

To those who are still going through the program, I’d like to say that flowers can be in your future too, if you choose.

That’s one thing that I’ve learned here – that what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom is our free will, our power of choice.

When we choose to be free of addiction, and keep choosing to be free, amazing things happen: serendipitous meetings with people who can help us out, unforeseen job opportunities, seeming random conversations that turn into treasured relationships.

Lee Stringer, a marketing executive in New York, wrote a book about his eleven-year addiction to crack. In it he describes living in a tunnel underneath the famed Grand Central Station, and finding a pencil one day as he searched for something with which to clean his paraphanelia. Lee chose to write a few lines on a piece of paper that day, instead of continuing to get high. That choice led to another obsession – writing – which consumed him fully and led him to kick his addiction. Today he is a successful, published author.

When I entered this facility, I was alive but choosing to die. Today, I am alive and choosing to live.