The Green Team

I think the thing that I find most astonishing about the whole rehab experience is that all these people, at the very base level, are just like me. Mentally we have the same defects or handicaps or misfires or whatever you want to call them. We are possibly hippies born into the wrong generation or hippies that were actually hippies… I don’t know. It’s like Morrison said: “I believe in a prolonged derangement of the senses to achieve the unknown.” We are all here because we were looking for something lacking in ourselves and tried to fill it with the poison of our choice. The most important thing is that we have realized our failings and are working toward a more positive and proactive future. We have bonded over the fact that we are flawed.
“If you can name the beast, you can defang it.” Even if you cannot understand the nature of the beast, as long as you give it a name, it can be conquered. There is no denial, no fiction, no lies… everything is as real as real can be and right there, staring you in the face. Whatever your addiction may be is of little importance. We are essentially the same being, the same soul trapped in our own emptiness. What we have spent our lives searching for has been within us all along, buried beneath the layers of anger, agony, loneliness and denial. There is no longer external blame but the terrible realization of our own responsibility; something that has been chasing us, like a monster, throughout our existence.
Without that crutch, we may fall, but as is human nature, we are driven to pick ourselves back up. No one and nothing is hopeless. It can all be defined by how we perceive it, even if our vision is a little blurry. Those of us that have found that strength, even if it is fleeting, are aware of the fact that, yes, we can do this. It is all a matter of wanting it; desperately, hungrily and legitimately wanting our lives to change. The human mind is an amazing thing and many of us have spent most of our lives trying to kill it because it speaks with the voice of reason. This can be applied to outside forces as well, but without that inner self screaming “HELP ME,” we would never be able find our way out of the haze.
Something tells me this is not temporary. That this is not a passing fancy or a charade that I am putting on to please myself or others. I feel clean. Like I have washed away all the things in my life that no longer matter and, truthfully, never did. They only seemed that way because I was never sober enough to really see myself and realize what I had become. Because of this I find myself in a very foreign place, but I am unafraid. My first impulse is no longer to drown myself in the longing, aching and the self-pity. My desires have changed for the better. I want to help myself and I want to help others. It is as inexplicable as the ultimate question of “why are we here in the first place?”
As incredible as it may seem, the past no longer matters and the future will always be there. What is important is the now and the way in which we deal with it. Without this experience, I may have never found myself. Without the help and encouragement of those others with whom I have found so much in common, I would still be lost. Wandering in the haze, bumping into walls and wondering why it hurt. Once an addict, always an addict, as they say… but I no longer dread the label. I no longer feel ashamed. I am me and that is all I will ever be. For the first time in my life, I am comfortable with that concept, with the idea that I am stuck with myself, no matter what I do. There is no greater friend nor enemy in this world. You will always see what you want to see, even if it isn’t real. Questions are meaningless and seeking answers is like chasing one’s tail… it is a simple fact of life that some things are unattainable, unchangeable, unfixable and accepting that has lifted a great weight from my shoulders. I feel as though I can breathe…. I feel as though I am finally free.