I was a chronic relapser.
When I was coming back I struggled with the shame of losing my time and having to be a newcomer.
I had to re-focus on completely giving myself to the program in the relative time period. I decided to look at how I was working the program not how much time I had.
This is how I made it through and past the first 6 months. At 9 months I still didn't feel like I had any time. At 18 months I still felt like I was a chronic relapser, I still focused on whether I had done steps 10, 11, and 12 in the past 24 hours.
One day sometime later I realized that this feeling of being new and not having some social prestige for a length of clean time was a spiritual gift and was vital to my willingness. I realized that this was part of a vital spiritual experience.
I realized that in the past I measured my sobriety by how much time I had, how I felt, or how much people in the fellowship liked me.
Now I feel that the only measure of my sobriety that is reliable is whether I have worked the program completely in the past 24 hours. Have I taken inventory? Have I prayed and meditated? Have I carried the message? Have I practiced the principles in all my affairs?
I don't ever want to lose this emphasis on the spiritual life over clean time.
