Curious Doug and the Liver Transplant

I wanted to share an excerpt from a letter I wrote to an old High School friend. There is a couple of repeated "catch phrases" from the previous post, but a slightly new message.

Sometimes it just needs to be said, and kept, for future pondering. This blog is kind of a place for that stuff.

Presented for your consideration:

I was at my VA meeting just last night. It's a discussion group where we kind of pick a topic from something that is going on in someone's life. Some problem they're having, or something good that happened and so on. It's quite a cross section of people... white, black, hispanic, and from all branches of the service. We talk about Alcohol Cocaine, Crack, mostly Alcohol, but whatever. Our only common ground, really, is being in the service, and being sober. Well, Our "Discussion Coordinator", Mike, took a moment last night, in front of the group, to tell me how much of an improvement I've made and how I "Get It". He said that, "in doing HIS job, it's a good feeling to know when someone has accomplished the goal." Now, that's not to say I'm cured. There's no such thing. It's not Alcoholwasum, it's Alcoholism. What he IS saying, though, is that I have taken the "tools" I've been given to stay clean and sober and learned how to use them. So many people struggle with it, but he sees and feels that I've learned not only to "talk the talk" but "walk the walk". It's been a lot of hard work... it's nice to be, not praised, I don't deserve any praise for having an alcohol addiction. It's more acknowledgment that I have made progress.

I hope I'm not being presumptuous with Kudo's for myself, but it's part of my . . . stuff !