The topic of "How the programme helps with relationships" at the DAA 10th anniversary convention in Oxford, UK

Hello, I'm Jim. I'm a drug addict.

Thanks Sam for sharing with us. Thanks for asking me to come and be a part of this. I've been quite excited about it actually. And but as it's drawn close to that excitement has sort of just teetered over into a little bit of, I don't know if any of you ever feel like you're quite excited about something. And then it just tears over into, I could potentially say lots of inappropriate things because I might get a bit giddy and stuff like that. So

probably, I'm sure it won't happen.

It's it's nice. It's nice to be, it's nice to be a part of this. I think I was thinking about why it's nice to be it. I feel like this in my Home group,

which is at the Elephant and Castle on a Wednesday night in South London.

And yeah, I think it's because I I like feeling like I'm a part of something, something good where we have a shared purpose where we come here. Once we've been given this way of life,

the goal is to come in to try and give that to somebody else.

Where I think I've had other senses of purpose in my life, but none of them have been quite so wholesome as what this is. So I think that's got something to do with it. Although having said that, I also thought maybe I'm feeling a little anxious because the minute I set foot through the door of this venue, I told a lie, right? I'll tell you what the lie was as well. You know, when we signed in over there, we've got our names and we put our clean time, right? I don't remember my exact clean time,

but I it's about two years and four months and I rounded it up. I rounded it like right up as well to like three years.

Honestly, as soon as I've done it, I thought, why the fuck do you think is this being recorded?

Why on earth did you do that? Right? Yeah, I suppose it's I know why I did it because of out of ego. Yeah. So it's possible that that's added to my sense of being an impostor. So just so everyone knows, you know, I'm sure it's caused a massive concern out there. Not really as clean,

but yeah, that's not what I had to talk about it.

This particular,

this sort of topic, if you like, of relationships is something that I'm very happy to talk about because when I came into meetings, it wasn't DA meetings. I was first introduced to when I first got to a point where I could see that drugs were a real problem. Not that sort of thing where it's like, oh, I'm in jail and I know it's because of the drugs, but I'll be able to when I come out, I'll do this and I'll do that. Not that sort of. I can see drugs are a problem,

but the place of I can't see I'm going to carry on using, but I can't see I'm going to live without drugs. That place of knowing that drugs are a problem, that's a bigger challenge. It felt like a bigger challenge being a big part of that was that I couldn't see how I was. When I say I couldn't say I was going to live without drugs, a big part of that was how am I going to form and maintain,

I suppose, that healthy and loving relationships,

my experience of relationships before somebody took me through this work

were the mainly because of me. They were quite fleeting things and inconsistent. And mostly I approached them, not always consciously by the way, but mostly I approached them with an attitude of what I could get from them, an attitude of fear. And

and so I couldn't really see what my life

held for me. I came

here to Drug Addicts Anonymous because after a period of clean time I've relapsed. I really want to point out as well

that I wasn't doing all of this work, this design for living, this thread that's been running through this convention that we've heard about

really well explained and experiences that people have already shared up to now. I wasn't doing that stuff. I've done certain bits, but I that thing of being consistent and building on my relationship with God, wanting to work with others, even down to just doing all my amends. In hindsight, I haven't done that stuff. So I used again,

and I found myself in a place of,

perhaps for the first time,

feeling like if I didn't stop, I was going to die, but knowing that I wasn't going to stop and I didn't know what to do. And the Long story short is that through a series of events that I didn't put into place, I ended up going to meet him with somebody who I'd known from years before, who I knew was in Drug Addicts Anonymous and who I knew was working a program. And if they were still doing it in the way that I knew they used to, they might be able to help me. And I went

me, I went and met that person. We went to a meeting and Ave. since then, not only have I not used since then, I haven't come close to using since then. I suppose all I bought with me was a genuine willingness to

a step one. I think is, is, is what I'm talking about. And so I'll try and give a few examples of how, when I, how, how this works in my life and enables me to have what I have now, which is healthy and loving relationships with people

and also with the God of my understanding. In fact, the last conversation I thought I was going to have before I came and sat down here was the one I had in the toilet where I did a lot of praying. I suppose we do a lot of praying in toilets. I don't like using in toilets. And I still, if I'm out and about, or if it's, if I'm going to do something like this, I'll still try and get in the disabled toilet if I'm going to. So it's just a bit more room in there. You can get yourself comfortable and

properly plot up in a disabled toilet until the security company.

So that that was the the last conversation I thought I was gonna have. And then as I was walking across out there, I saw all of my friends, John and we got into some small talk and they asked me where I was staying tonight. I said, I'm staying with some friends. And then he said to me, huh. I didn't think you had any friends, Jim.

The reason I say that is because I value that type of interaction in the friendships that I've built here in DEA, that it's not always a a very grave and serious thing that we're doing. I like that sort of dark sense If you. In fact, when I first started coming to meetings, that was one of the things that really attracted me to, to, to to us a lot is

once made, we're a little bit sort of clear. We can find some humor in some of the

the darkest spots of of our lives. And I was driving home to a meeting one night. I was being given a lift back to this rehab that I was staying in. And I was with three men, right? They were all had long clean time, probably like two years or three years from that. They're clean now, by the way, this is a while ago and I was in a rehab. So I was quite in that therapeutic value of how I feel and stuff like that, which is

cool.

And I'd been to visit my parents in it like this is I haven't made any amends to my parents at this point.

And it hadn't gone how I wanted it to, which was basically trumpets and the return of the prodigal

king, the return of the king and hadn't really gone like that. And I was sort of moaning about that, I suppose, in the car. And the bloke who is driving, he looked in the rearview mirror. He said, oh, you know why that is, don't you, Jim? And I thought he was going to say something profound and, you know, like identification or something like that. And I said, oh, why? Why is that? He said because they fucking ate him. Ate him. Ate.

Yeah. Yeah. But it really, really made me laugh. And I'm. And I'm glad that it helped me to not take myself so seriously. And I have relationships in here that have that consistently in them. And I really value it. And all my friends that are in this room that I've sort of grown to, to love, really. I'm really grateful for that

because

having been taken through this work quickly

after the relationship that I have with God, the most important people in my life are in here. And what I mean by that is that my sponsor is probably the most important relationship I have in my life in that

I tell him everything. I tell him everything. Because my experience is that if I'm not being honest about the things that especially the things that I think I probably don't need to tell him that, you know, I probably don't need to. I'm aware of it. I've shared it with God. That's the one I mean. And so, yeah, that he's probably the most important person in my life in in that way. And

I've got, I've got a son

and I've got, you know, when we talk in there about this is good for the wife as it is for the husband. And I'm much, much better half agreed to marry me, right? So she'll be my wife in a minute, isn't it? And those two relationships, the relationships that I've been able to rebuild with my family through action, by the way, through them seeing the program, working

through the actions that I've put in, one of those actions being amends,

not just going and saying sorry. But the bigger part of an immense for me is our ongoing thanks, ongoing commitment to how I'm going to actually amend myself and my behaviour through application of this stuff.

So I'm not doing that stuff in the future. Amends means to change, right? So immense means to change. So I need to change some of that stuff. And some were saying this, I think it might be a fake. Hasn't been hard for me to do that. It hasn't been hard for me to work because I've been given this entire blueprint to be able to do that. And it is through a set of actions, right? And one of the first things that my sponsor said to me when he gave me a set of instructions when I asked him to sponsor me, one of them was a gratitude list. And he said don't forget him that gratitude and action. So if I'm saying that I'm grateful for

that, I live indoors now, clean the flat, that's a demonstration of my gratitude. I can sit around all day saying I'm grateful for this and I'm grateful for that. You can measure my gratitude by what you see me doing. If I say I'm grateful for my for my partner, I need to treat her with thoughtfulness and love and kindness. I'm saying grateful for my son. He'd give us some vegetables from time to time. One minute remaining

when I my my partner actually, she said to me, I'll have you planned what you're going to share

on the phone this morning. You planned what you're going to share. I said no, I was going to share from the heart. And then to share from the heart. She said, oh, it's. So basically you're just going to like just get up there without any structure to what you're going to say and just like rattle off a load of stuff until. Yeah, basically that's about size. Yeah. Which pretty much is what what's happened, really.

The father that I'm able to be to my son as a result of doing this, and the husband that I'm able to be to my wife as a result of doing it,

amongst all the other healthy relationships I have, is entirely down to this. And what I'll end on is that

I was having a conversation. This is something I never expected, and this is something I think is wonderful about what we do here. I was having a conversation with my with my fiance the other night and she was very upset about something she did in a previous relationship. Thanks that she carries a lot of guilt and shame for

and through talking about it, I was able to

help her really

in formula and amends that she can make to a previous partner right. The reason why I feel like that's important is because I could never have done something like that for somebody like my my part through fear. I suppose he's a very handsome man, so the black haired blue eyes thing and but through

being able to live this type of life, I can the ripple effects of it. That's the point I'm trying to make. Maybe not very well. The ripple effects of it go out into the into the lives of my closest and most significant others

and my friends and family. I was grateful to this maybe more

as what I as a result of what's on offer here. So if you're here and you think you want to stop using drugs, you can definitely have that and so much more just by doing a few simple things.

Thanks.