wow, this is just so hard….i really did put together a cpl yrs once…i really enjoyed not feeling that slavery to this disease…i could put together reasons why i used again but i dont think they matter…like the na reading says "take it easy…but DO IT"…..work the steps or die mf…lately I've been in just a lot of physical pain & i've never had to try to get clean like this…it was hard enough with just the obsession, but now I'm in real pain on top of that…my boyfriend lives with horrible chronic pain everyday of his life due to a degenerative nerve disease in his back & he's been clean for 7 yrs without taking ANYTHING!!!!  I mean really, nothing even remotely narcotic…he has spent the the past seven yrs working with a dr who will do anything in the world to help him except prescribe narcotics…hes has like 5 or 6 surgeries too…he just says that you have to decide which pain is worse…active addiction or physical pain?   I know that using is betraying everyone who cares about me and even worse its abandoning my 6 mo old baby girl…but i dont want to get high…i just want to find a way to make pain stop…but i also believe in the na twxt–3rd edition revised–and the people i've met who were so key in getting written–they are all wonderful, spiritual people who prayed to a Greater Consciousness before eachjline was included–thata how i know that our book is not the gathered opinions of several strong opinionated people who wanted (still do want) to use na to serve personal agendas—–and so, even though I dont want to use but just to end the pain, i know from the hard won experience of those who wrote our book that there is no such thing as just safely using any kind of narcotic for pain–"our addicted minds dont know the difference between drugs prescribed to us by a dr and those prescribed to ourselves for pain….and  that our minds will manufacture additional pain as an excuse to use when we're caught in the grip…I know that there are people out there who are willing to talk to me to share the burden of this pain, and meetings where I can go to get support and hear how others have dealt with pain…still  though, it just hurts so much/!!!  I really just don't care about a lot of fucking philosophy right now…and talking about the physical pain I'm in does not make it any less………..but anyway, just for today, I pray that God will give me strength to stay clean and do all that He needs me to do……sincerely, julpiglet