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Chemical Recovery Enters the Twilight Zone cradmin Jun 21 : 19:03
It doesn’t matter how we used drugs but rather the psychology of why we used them.  You are moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into The Twilight Zone. -------------------------------------- Upon return from a one year deployment to Afghanistan in the war on terror, no, that is only what Mr. Goldwater still called it, officially it was now recognized as the war on man- made catastrophes, nonetheless the one thing Goldwater longed for most upon his return to the States was the fellowship of his CR brothers. When he arrived to group that first Sunday evening back, all looked just as it was when he’d left, or so he thought.The familiar smell of pre-group coffee was still in the air when the meeting began at approximately, but certainly not promptly, 8:30pm. As strange as it was for group to begin late things got stranger when Goldwater noticed that there were no longer rules posted, only a list of suggestions to replace them. But the changes that sent a chill down Mr. Goldwater's spine were those made to the CR traditions. It was during the tradition sharing that he realized he had entered—The Twilight Zone.
Total Recovery had progressed into Total Discovery which one member explained meant that recovery could never be realized until we "found" ourselves. It doesn’t matter how we used drugs but rather the psychology of why we used them. No sooner had Mr. Goldwater recovered his breath after the shock of so drastic a change in group philosophy than the next tradition was being explained. Humanity’s Authority had replaced Biblical Authority, rationale being there is no supernatural, consequently no God or God-inspired Word, instead it was the agreed upon norms of men that became the law of "the room." Truth in Love had morphed into Free Love (by which the group now proclaimed: if all our desires were satisfied there would be no need to resort to drug use).
Empathy was usurped by Sympathy as those in recovery were all considered victims needing the understanding and rescue of the collective. Earthly Fellowship was the natural replacement for Eternal Fellowship for how can an enlightened people believe in an unseen, unverifiable afterlife? This fellowship emphasized our connection to the here and now spent in the warm bosom of our beloved Mother Earth. Outreach remained the same in title but the spirit of it was quite altered. Anyone who did not accept the principles laid out above was deemed truly sick and forced to join the group until cured.
When it came time to share what Mr. Goldwater had always known as “struggles” in CR, there was a time of sharing environmental influences. One gentleman shared that he wanted to use cocaine when, as he went to pay for his groceries with his nearly maxed-out credit card, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, a bag of flour for sale that reminded him of the aforementioned drug of similar likeness. A woman in group reported having the desire to puff on some "weed" like in the "good old days" after seeing a co-worker smoking a cigarette on her lunch break. In both instances the leader of the group wrote down new legislation proposals to make flour and cigarettes illegal; these proposals were to be brought before the authorities the next day. The leader assured the group that he trusted his propositions would become law within a week and the group clapped heartily at his wisdom and felt very good about their recovery. After a suggestion was made to end group early, in honor of the winter solstice holiday, a vote was taken and we ended with the chanting of the group motto: Rational people, one group with one mission: Freedom from chains of dogmatic superstition Eat-drink and be merry for tomorrow we die No hell below us, above us only sky. ----------------------------------------- Before Mr. Goldwater had been deployed to a war zone in the Middle East he was well aware of a local and global war on Total Recovery being waged by Humanists and their allies. Though many of his friends thought him an alarmist, maybe he was on to something. This account of the radical changes in ideas about life, recovery, and an Almighty God may serve as mere wit and fancy, but if you start noticing that non-normative ideas and behaviors, long rejected by a prosperous people, are now becoming quite usual, and that progressive almost never means real progress, you may have entered into—the Twilight Zone.
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