Living Clean the Journey Continues Page s 125-126 Paragraph 3

Chapter Five: Relationships We don't all come into NA alone. Many of us come into recovery with partners, children, parents, and others we are close too. But many of these relationships have been damaged by our disease. As we recognize that we can't fix it all at once, it can be tempting to just walk away. But relationships are not like drugs, even though we may have used them for the same purposes; we can't simply abstain. The real work of living clean happens when we are in the world, relating with others. Our only choice is to learn as we go. We learn to deal with our family, our workplace, and our community at the same time we are learning to find our place in the rooms. Each relationship we have affects every other. Each one teaches us things that help in the rest of our relationships. We don't get long-term recovery without having relationships, both in and out of the rooms. It's the meat and potatoes of life- and the dessert! Relationships affect everything we do and everything we are. The ways we respond to our experiences shape who we become. When we are willing to stay in recovery, to allow ourselves to grow and change, we experience a full range of emotions. That we get clean at all is a miracle. But it doesn't stop there: We grow to be steady, reliable, loving people who can be a force for change in the lives of other addicts and beyond. Relationships are central to everything we do. There is no step or tradition that is not somehow about relationships, and all of our literature talks about relationships in some way or another. There is no other area of our recovery that causes us more pain or joy; it's where we see our growth and our recovery most clearly.