When I broke my leg, the mending of the bones was done with a titanium plate, screws and some time for it all to knit together. In seven weeks I was cast free and was hobbling around pretty much normal. However, the process of the healing of the tendons and ligaments that were stretched, ripped and misaligned was a much longer process.  It took several months of physio therapy and exercise to gain back strength and heal the soft underlying tissue. So while it looked like I was healed from my broken leg, no more cast or crutches, there were still a lot of underlying issues that had to be looked after.

When I came into recovery the First Step talked about my need to admit my addiction and that my life had become unmanageable. Cutting out those substances that brought me into recovery was one thing. The process of learning how to manage my life, well, that is still ongoing. The main problem seemed to be solved: I wasn’t consuming, but like the underlying soft tissues, my life was still far from manageable and I needed some more recovery time for that to happen.

For many years leading up to recovery, my addiction was my method of dealing with most everything. I was now without anything to cushion my personality and some unpleasant character traits from an unsuspecting world. My therapy, my work at managing my life, consisted in continuously working the steps, going to meetings and meeting with my sponsor.

Even with a few years in recovery, I still find myself doing things that aren’t responsible management. For example. I procrastinate. I put things off. I don’t take the time to complete the task when it first comes up and it then becomes a mountainous deed that Hercules wouldn’t be able to tackle. I am unsure why I do this. I know–I can see the waste of time. How much time do I waste? Too much. I allow a small item to take up a whole lot of space in my head and waste a lot of time thinking about doing it, not doing it, how to do it, why to do it, when to do it etc. Time I could use in a more productive manner ‘if’ I would only attend to these little items as soon as they come up.

I am grateful that I have a recovery program that allows me to see these faults, shortcomings or whatever you wish to call them. And it gives me tools to deal with them on a daily basis. Sometimes just realizing how much time I’ve already wasted thinking about something I should have done is enough to motivate me to do it. I am grateful that there are fewer things that I procrastinate about. And I’m grateful that my program teaches me to look at other areas of my life that I wish to improve and use what I’m learning to improve those situations as well.

I doubt that I will ever get out of life management therapy. I spent a lot of years in my disease of addiction and it will take many more years of recovery to smooth out the ripples and waves that I made. It’s a task that I take on gratefully because I have seen the results in many areas of my life. It’s still one task at a time, one step at a time and one day at a time.