I wish I had a dollar for every time I have heard the slogans “First Things First “ and “Easy Does It” over my years in the program. Much like the other slogans and repetitive phrases that we hear in the rooms it is easy to take them for granted. It occurred to me this week that probably the biggest downfall for people in early recovery is not paying attention to these simple slogans. How often do we see people get clean and sober and after a short period of time become so involved in trying to catch up or make up for the years lost to their addiction they begin to lose their focus on recovery. They forget that the first “first” in “first things first” is their recovery program.
It is human nature to want to make everything all right when we first get sober. We want all who love us to forget our behaviors of the past and accept our new life in sobriety. We want to repay the financial debts our addiction has caused and we will work long hours or several jobs to accomplish this end. If we stopped our formal education because of our addiction we want to hurry back to college. Pretty soon we are stretched way to thin and wonder why we feel overwhelmed and confused. We are definitely not practicing “Easy Does It”. Sometimes the only place we are applying this slogan is in how we work our program and we need much more than a half-hearted approach to sobriety in order to remain sober.
I have often thought that if I was diagnosed with a terminal illness and told that the only way that I could put the disease in remission was to walk from here to California I would immediately start lacing up my hiking boots. No argument, no questions and no resistance. Yet when alcoholics and addicts are faced with the same proposition they quickly place obstacles in the recovery journey.
To truly place first things first our personal recovery must become our number one priority. It was explained to me that I had to begin to think of myself in a new way. If I had a bad cold I was an alcoholic with a bad cold, if I was broke I was an alcoholic who was broke, if I was unemployed I was an alcoholic who was unemployed. By placing my condition first I would begin to realize that I needed to place my recovery first in my list of priorities. I have since learned that by doing this all my other so called “needs” or “problems” seem to take care of themselves if I do the foot work and rely on God’s help.
A friend with two years sobriety recently left a big job when he realized, in time, that the seventy hour work week was causing him to miss meetings and neglect his program. Good choice. Others I know continue to heap on the pressure and stress in order to somehow make up for the wasted time of the past. This can only lead back to the past they are trying to make up for. Why not spend the first eighteen months of your recovery devoted to building a strong foundation in a twelve step program? We beat ourselves up enough in our active days. Why not practice “First Things First” remembering always that the first