Thanks, guys. I'm doing OK, though not as great as I'd like. The cravings have been kinda rough these days...I think partly because I'm now in the thick of closing out my mom's affairs and planning her memorial service. I've been spending a fair amount of time writing her obit and a eulogy for the memorial, and while I'm writing this stuff I think constantly about how getting high would make the whole process much less sad and stressful. This is exacerbated by the fact that I met a new connect recently who gets fire dope (according to people I trust), and he's been on my mind a lot. I gotta just delete his number and block him from my phone b/c I know having access to him is skating on thin fucking ice.
But all that makes things sound worse than they actually are. Aside from wanting to use and being a little upset, I'm basically fine.
Oh, one thing I am happy about. If I put aside the small lapse I had a month ago (I'll say why I'm putting it aside in a sec), today marks 3 months (90 days) clean for me. The issue of the lapse complicates things. But I am proud of how little dope I've used over the last three months.
As for how I'm figuring the lapse into my calendar... First of all, I went back and made a timeline of the lapse. Now that I've thought it through, I realize that the run only lasted about 3 days; it was shorter than I thought. Since it was a brief slip (though a gnarly one), I've decided to give myself a bit of latitude. Honestly, I just don't feel like the lapse undid or nullified the work I did before and after slipping. I also feel like the my original 'clean date' really was a landmark in my recovery. It's when I changed my approach to the problem fundamentally. Lastly, the fact that I've been able to stay clean since my mom died makes me feel really good, and that I've got a good bit of momentum gathered.
Typing this out, I know it sounds like bullshit. Equivocating. Making lame excuses. But I really do feel like today marks 3 months since I committed myself seriously and fully to cleaning up. If I slip AGAIN, I'll have to be stricter. But I realized that if the shoe were on another foot, I would counsel someone else to give themselves a pass for a one-time mistake.
Obviously I'm a little defensive about this. I've spent almost a month trying to decide how to put that lapse in context. Since I feel like I came back from it stronger than before, I'm counting it as part of my recovery. I know...a slippery slope. But it seems like pretty much everything is slippery down here in recovery land.