THOUGHT FOR THE DAY 12/26/09

Pleasures cease to be pleasurable when they start to enslave you. Are you missing out on true and lasting joy because you spend all your time and energy chasing empty pleasures?

It's great to feel good. But don't settle for mere pleasure when you can have joy and fulfillment instead.

Enjoy yourself, and yet make it meaningful enjoyment. With each thing you do, stop and consider what value it will add to the quality of your world.

When pleasure has no meaning it is no longer pleasurable, and just becomes a sad pursuit. Empty pleasures quickly fade, and leave behind nothing but the emptiness.

Instead of chasing pleasure, allow joy. While pleasures are specific and occur only when conditions are right, joy is unconditional and available at any time, in any place.

Enjoy the pleasures when they come, but don't become enslaved to them. For real, meaningful joy asks nothing of you and is always yours to live.

-- Ralph Marston

This really spoke to me on so many other levels than just addiction. I can remember sitting there one day with everything that should have made me happy...I had the miracle baby we had waited so long and tried so hard for, I had a wonderful husband who loved me and would do whatever he could to make me happy, we finally had our own house instead of renting someone elses on our own piece of land. I had the job I wanted and plenty of money in the bank but I was STILL not happy! I felt like something was still missing and I didn't know what!

I was also in one of the darkest phases of my addiction at the time as well. I spent all my time chasing that "false happiness" that my pills would give me that I wasn't able to enjoy what was right in front of my face!

It wasn't until I was on the other side of my addiction that I was able to realize and see all the things I had RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF ME that meant true happiness. True happiness that would last longer than the few hours the drugs would (and then leave you in some of the darkest moments of your life!)

It wasn't until I was in MMT that I was able to really realize this. While in traditional therapy I was still struggling so hard with my w/drawals and then later the cravings from the chemical imbalance we now know that opiate addiction causes to be able to focus on the real meaning of happiness and what real happiness is!

I can remember the day it finally "hit" me too. You guys are going to think I am CRAZY when I tell you this or at least think I am such a sap! BUT...... I was on the way back one early morning from the clinic. I would have to go at 4 AM to be back in time to get the kids off to school and get to work. I would have to drive over this long bridge over the lake and I would be driving east so the sun was always coming up by the time I go back over the bridge. I remember driving back across that bridge on my way home that morning and just being STRUCK WITH AWE about how beautiful it was! How at peace I felt and how honestly and truely happy I felt!

Then it finally hit me. I had to pull over because the emotions we so strong. I hadn't felt ANYTHING in so long and then to all the sudden see the real beauty in something so simple and realize what I had been missing out on.....it was just too much for me.

I vowed right then and there I would never go back to that life again. I liked those feelings! you can't truely enjoy the good feelings without knowing how bad the bad ones feel. If you don't feel anything than you aren't alive and I had been dead so long that it was almost overwhelming how good it felt from something so simple as a sunrise over the lake.

That was an "ah ha!" moment for me in my recovery that I will always treasure.

RuthAnn