Get Up, Suit Up, Show Up

One of the things we hear in meetings over and over is “Get up. Suit up. Show up.” When I went into exile from life and made my home in a coffin at the end of the world, get up, suit up, show up was about all I was able to do – and then only out of necessity. The drugs aren’t going to go get themselves. If I had waited too long, if I had not saved something to help me get up and on my way, if there was nothing to be had when mine ran out, I was in for a painful and difficult spell. Get/Suit/Show up, at that point, was not consciousness, willingness or effort. It was a biological function of addiction, like breathing. That is what it feels like to be an addict. In the coffin at the end of the world, drugs and alcohol become your oxygen. The only path I could see before me was heartbreaking and enduring it required anesthesia.

The anesthesia wore off, stopped working, and God showed me a different path if I would have it. Of course I would have it. All I had to contribute, though, was my willingness to make the effort, which, in the beginning, meant getting up, suiting up and showing up. It took me five days to get up. It took another week or so to suit up and arrange to get to treatment. It took another couple of weeks to work out those details and to show up there. Walking in the door, I believed that treatment was going to give me the tools and self-knowledge I needed to overcome the obsession and compulsion. It had not occurred to me that anything more would be required.

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