somedays it's a struggle in our recovery to just work on ourselves. as a person with a few days back to back, i realize that i cannot save every addict i come into contact with either in person or on the internet. i work so hard with sponsees and sometimes i forget to look at myself and my personal recovery program.

some people might call this old-timersitus. while we carry a strong, postive message of experience, strength and hope we forget ourselves we get so busy trying to get a positive message through to the newcomer. sometimes we lose a bit of our spirituality, peace and serenity. sometimes we get angry when people don't grasp the simplicity of this program that has saved our ass time and time again.

in my area there is only 3 of us in NA with 20 years or more. a couple of inbetweeners but mostly people with 7 years or less. while i sponsor a lot of guys i don't do the service work i used too or the H&I work i used to do. sometimes i ask myself why? and my answer is it's time for somebody to step up to the plate and take responsibilty for the running of our area. i have done more than my share of service work, a shitload of H&I work and the youngers members of this program need to take action because they are the future of NA.

I have to work on me for a while. i don't know about any of you other folks who have some time behind you. i have not lost focus on recovery. just feeling like nobody wants to step up and get shit done.  we need the Unity put back into NA and it needs to be done soon.

we have a majority of people in my part of AZ that have 6 months or less because they choose to go back out even after being clean for a while. then after the relapse drag their asses back into the rooms just to tell us how crappy it truly was back out there. instead of working this simple 12 step program for a better way of life. Nothing i can say will stop somebody from going back out. we can only hope that you hear something in the rooms of recovery that will f#@K your using up.

A brother in Recovery,

JJ