There is a saying that goes something like “it’s fine to make plans but don’t plan the results…” There are a bunch of versions on that theme, but the moral is do your best and leave the rest up to the powers that be. OK that is fine I get it.
Things leading up to teacher training have been going pretty smoothly. I’m coming upon 9 years clean! Yay for me! So about a month or so ago I looked at the calendar and realized that my clean date falls exactly on the night of my home group, September 16. I fly out for teacher training the next day so I was psyched to be sent off with a celebration of recovery.
It is typical to show up at the business meeting one month prior to your celebration to let them know when you would like to celebrate. A few weeks ago I’m at the business meeting and someone speaks before me and requests the same day that I want! The deal here is that my clean date is the 16th and I’m leaving the next day so I’m not in a position to wait a week.
Some discussion ensued and it was determined that it is group policy that the person with less clean time gets to celebrate. OK, fine, what person that’s been around for awhile is going to argue with that? I mean it was this persons first year clean. I suppose what is important here is how *I* felt. It really hurt. I was thinking to myself “holy shit. I’m not going to be able to celebrate this year.” No matter how it fleshed out in my head it seemed like a bad thing.
Luckily for me I just let things be. I mean what was I going to do. I figured there must be a reason for this and one outside of my realm of understanding. I was committed to calling my sponsor to ask him…
So I did and he suggested that I go back to the group and see if we could both celebrate or even talk with the person and see if there was a way we could switch it. It was determined by the group that two people can’t celebrate on the same night. OK.
So basically I have to wait until I get back from teacher training to celebrate. I’ll get my keychain on the night of my clean date and that is cool. I’m not upset just a bit shaken since this will be the first time in 9 years that I haven’t celebrated on or around my clean date. It’s OK I’ll be fine, but a bigger question came up in my mind which I think is really important to me and possibly the fellowship in general.
Is one year clean more important than nine years clean? And what about anonymity? Isn’t this suppose to be a level playing field? Well I guess I’m glad that I didn’t have one year clean too otherwise the group would be really screwed, but in that case I’m sure there would have been a dual celebration.
What is true for me is that it is imperative to treat all addicts the same regardless of time clean. Personally I think this approach does affect the fellowship as a whole since it doesn’t uphold the principle of anonymity. I’m an addict too and I should be able to celebrate at my home group. The amount of clean time that I have shouldn’t exclude me. More importantly the amount of clean time an addict has shouldn’t give them any sort of advantage.
You see shit like this happens because people want to be nice and do the “right” thing but that is just bullshit because in one way or another it becomes exclusionary to others. Nine years clean or nine months clean doesn’t matter since we are all human beings we all have feelings.
I’ll celebrate when I get back but I’m definitely going to talk to some other members and get their thoughts on prioritizing celebrations based on clean time since I definitely think it is a violation of the traditions.
You know what is great about this? It is the fact that I didn’t have to kick and scream to get my way. Instead I just let things be and in the process noticed something that just didn’t feel right. Something that seemed against the way of the program. My way isn’t as important as the way and that is what is true for me…