Just For The Day
Just For The Day
#18 - August 31, 2025 - Gratitude
Jay and Diane share the NA daily reading for August 31st and discuss how abstaining from addictions (substances or control ideations) can free our resources and help us build healthy relationships with ourselves and others.
They also discuss how working the steps of recovery changes our lives and our relationships.
Just for today, recovery has given us freedom. Let's greet the day with hope, grateful that anything is possible today.
Jay and Diane's Just For The Day podcast is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Just for Today, any 12-Step program, or any other recovery-based product or organization. They should not replace your regular group or sponsor meetings.
The views expressed are solely those of the hosts and guests. Take what you like and leave the rest.
Welcome back to another episode of Just for the Day. I'm Jay and I'm a recovering addict.
Speaker 2:I'm Diane and I'm codependent, and today is the last day of August, august 31st.
Speaker 1:August 31st. The topic of today is gratitude and the quote is hopeless. Living problems have become joyously changed, Our disease has been arrested and now anything is possible. That sentence doesn't make any sense to me?
Speaker 2:No, it doesn't to me either. I'm trying to read that Hopeless living problems have become joyously changed.
Speaker 1:Hopeless living problems have become joyously changed. Our disease has been arrested and now anything is possible. There you go.
Speaker 2:The NA program has given us more freedom than we ever dreamed possible. Sometimes, though, in the daily routine, we lose track of how much we've been given. How exactly have our lives changed in Narcotics Anonymous?
Speaker 1:The bottom line of recovery, of course, is freedom from the compulsion to use. No longer must we devote all our resources to feeding our addiction. No longer must we endanger, humiliate or abuse ourselves or others just to get the next fix. Abstinence itself has brought great freedom to our lives.
Speaker 2:Narcotics Anonymous has given us much more than simple abstinence. We've been given a whole new life. We've taken our inventory and have identified the defects of character that bound us for so long, keeping us from living and enjoying life. We've surrendered those shortcomings, taken responsibility for them and sought the direction and power we need to live differently. Our home group has given us the personal warmth and support that helps us continue living in recovery and, topping all this off, we have the love, care and guidance of the God we've come to understand in NA.
Speaker 1:In the course of day-to-day recovery we sometimes forget how much our lives have changed in Narcotics Anonymous. Do we fully appreciate what our program has given us?
Speaker 2:Just for today, recovery has given me freedom. I will greet the day with hope, grateful that anything is possible today.
Speaker 1:Hmm.
Speaker 2:Gratitude is always a great topic. There is so much to be grateful for any given day if you have the right perspective.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's hard to be Gratitude when it's present makes it really hard to have much or any of the other negative thoughts or feelings that you might have.
Speaker 2:I guess that's why so many times, when you have things like depression or frustration or anger, the response is okay, count off 10 blessings.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because it's hard to have those more negative connotation feelings while you're experiencing gratitude.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like how this reading highlighted a number of key landmarks in recovery. One of them, the first one it brings up in the second paragraph is the biggest one the freedom from compulsion to use.
Speaker 2:Compulsion to use is the is an extremely good, tight definition of addiction, because it's not just using, it's the compulsion, it's the drive, the uncontrollable drive that is never satisfied the compulsion to use the I I often refer to it as the obsession yeah, well, and you and I have talked before about, for the longest time I didn't understand what addiction was until I had that experience when I was pregnant, with cravings where I just couldn't get it out of my mind. Yeah, and there is that. I can see how that would feel like a type of slavery, when you have that obsession just going through your mind all the time and the compulsion where you feel like you have to. Eventually it's inevitable. I'm going to give in.
Speaker 1:That's right recovery, like taking your inventory, identifying the defects of character that bound you for so long, being ready to surrender to your shortcomings. I think that's a really interesting way to describe. Oftentimes, when I go through the steps and think about the shortcomings, I'm often thinking about them in the context of conjunction with removing them, with asking my higher power to remove them, and here it's stating that as surrendering to them sorry, surrendering those surrendering the shortcomings not surrendering the shortcomings has to do with giving them up.
Speaker 2:Yes, right, these shortcomings that we've held on to for so long, that have been our survival techniques.
Speaker 1:The idea is be able to give them away and it's which is I love that phrasing, because it is hard to do that, because you love them. You don't realize why you've been using them for so long, because they're comfortable and they're what you're used to, and it's scary to let go of them, and so I really like that phrasing.
Speaker 2:It's like of mice and men, where he just loves the animals and the girl at the end so much that he just squeezes the life out of them.
Speaker 1:Right, right Right.
Speaker 2:And we, you imagine holding on to those defects. You hold on to the addiction, you hold on to that compulsion to use, and it takes so much energy to do that that when you're able to give it up, you're just how freeing that feeling would be.
Speaker 1:Not initially, though. Initially that feels scary and difficult, right yeah, it also talks about taking responsibility for the shortcomings and seeking direction and power to live differently.
Speaker 1:So, that power has to come from somewhere else. It also highlights a home group. Our home group has given us the personal warmth and support that helps us continue living in recovery. This is just a great overview of some of the um, you know, main items that really make a difference. And obviously, topping it off, the last sentence. Here we have the love, care and guidance of a God we've come to understand.
Speaker 2:You kind of touched on, like all the different parts of this reading. I feel like any one of them we could dive deeper into if we wanted to. Yeah, at the same time, I feel like you skipped over some when you talked about the compulsion to use. There was more in that paragraph as well. Right, the freedom from the compulsion to use, but we're also talking about the freedom to free up our resources from feeding our addiction. How much of our resources went into the addiction before, during and after? Right, it talks about endangering, humiliating or abusing ourselves or others just to get the next fix. And and the freedom that comes with recovery and not feeling like we need to endanger ourselves, humiliate ourselves, debase ourselves or others, and you're healing those relationships. You're healing the relationship with yourself and you're healing the relationship with other people. And it says that abstinence, just abstinence itself, is the bottom line of recovery. That's, that itself is very liberating.
Speaker 2:That's right and something to be grateful for. And then I feel like a lot of the things that you went into has to do with not just the abstinence of giving the substance up but actually working the steps. And as you're working the steps, then, yeah, you start to see these defects of character, you start to surrender your shortcomings, you build that relationship with God, you take responsibility for your actions. And these are all things that aren't just in Narcotics Anonymous, they're also codependents, are also dealing with these as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 2:If they're doing their, their program right, they should also be taking these actions. We may not have to deal with the the freedom from compulsion to use and the and the other addictions, and the, the feeding the resources. But again, if you look at it differently and you look at the codependence addiction being criticism, yeah, you absolutely have the same thing like we do have to go through these things for those negative behavioral patterns as well yeah, like we could boil this down to.
Speaker 1:I mean, so it's giving. I'm seeing it. There's like two phases. There's the bottom line, recovery, and that's where it talks about freedom from the compulsion to use, no longer devoting your resources and endangering, humiliating or abusing ourselves and others. Right. Then there's part two, which is okay have you gone through the effort of doing the inventory, removing the shortcomings, taking responsibility, seeking direction, connect to higher power, et cetera?
Speaker 2:right.
Speaker 1:You can boil that first step down into yeah, what is a compulsion to use? Right, a compulsion to use is a behavior that you can't avoid, that you're stuck in and you're used to. And what is a codependence using?
Speaker 2:Well, I'll tell you, there's lots of different things that we're using, depending on the flavor of codependency, but I bet almost every codependent could relate to biting your tongue when you're a passenger in a car, sure, and the other person is driving, because we generally have that fear, that control that's it, it's the need to control.
Speaker 1:That's what it is, because it manifests sometimes as a criticism. Other times it manifests in hiding your partner's drugs and alcohol, or it manifests in hiding your partner's drugs and alcohol, or enabling them.
Speaker 2:Or enabling them so that we don't have to deal with the withdrawal. J, that's right To get the happily high J.
Speaker 1:Or pleading with them not to use. Or shaming them not to use or trying to compel them. It's all about control. So, for a codependent. The compulsion to use is anything that fits that bill of feeding your sense that my actions have control over your behavior. That's it. And anytime that happens, the codependent gets a little pump and goes ooh.
Speaker 2:Ooh, there's the dopamine. I got it. There's the dopamine.
Speaker 1:I tried and then inevitably they can't. They have no control Right and that's where they get frustrated Right but they live in a fantasy world and then, inevitably, they can't, they have no control, right, and that's where they get frustrated, right, but they live in a fantasy world that their actions do make a difference.
Speaker 2:And we do endanger, humiliate and abuse others and ourselves, and you devote all your resources.
Speaker 1:How tired and strung out and just destroyed is the codependent. That's just had enough because, their world is consumed by someone else's musing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's because they're not letting go.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So it's no different.
Speaker 2:I don't see it as any different, so I have been corrected, the whole reading applies.
Speaker 1:No, it's true, it's totally true.
Speaker 2:The whole reading applies to codependents and and addicts no matter what your addiction is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm saying that not not just because of what I've heard and understand, but my own personal experience having family members that are addicts. The addiction for me was convincing myself that if I didn't call my dad, he'd eventually feel bad enough to change his behavior because he missed me.
Speaker 2:Right that I would withhold love.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right the day. And it wasn't the behavior, it was the fantasy in my head that my behavior had enough control over him. And inevitably it never worked out. But I sat, I lived in that fantasy world for years.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I constantly have to be on guard because I'm always tempted to make a phone call to text him to do something. So just the other day we were having a conversation and there was the opportunity to jump back in and rather than doing that, I just sat and went. Okay, huh, that's interesting, because the old Jay would have jumped in and tried to compel and tried to compulse and manipulate and ask questions to get him to see different ways and to solidify.
Speaker 1:I'm like no, this has nothing to do with me and I need to step away. And because it's addicting, it's addicting to live in the sense of control.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's interesting that you had to go through doing that for many years, all those different ways of manipulating, before finally surrendering and saying I got to lovingly detach because clearly nothing I'm doing is actually going to help.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's what we do. Eventually, codependents will learn that we are not in control of every situation, and part of that release for us, part of that abstinence for us, is learning not to try to control every situation.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, yeah, mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:Let's let the situation play out and see where it goes.
Speaker 1:Which is why we should relish those small opportunities to stretch those elements of where we feel the need to control, like something should be a little bit better we could do it. We push a little bit farther, just leave something a little undone leave something a little less less pretty.
Speaker 2:Jay says this to me all the time but those are.
Speaker 2:But believe me when I tell you, those are the little moments it's true, and you know what one of the ways that we've done this is. When we first started the first few episodes, I poured over to edit them as perfectly as I could and we had talked about we want this to be raw, we want this to be. This is just people. Imagine you're at a meeting and somebody's reading and they are fumbling over the words while they're reading. That's okay, that's them being real. But I still struggled and I still wanted to kind of take stuff out and I've gotten better at this, where I will take out noises that are annoying, but I don't necessarily, I don't edit the content anymore.
Speaker 1:Good.
Speaker 2:And I just let it go. So if you're listening to us, yeah, there might be some stuff that's undesirable by all means, let us know. If there's something that we do that drives you nuts diane talks too much, or jay clears his throat too much, or whatever it is, send us a message, let us know. We'll work.
Speaker 1:We'll work on it, but we've stopped editing all of that out that's good, because that's you stretching and saying, hey, I'm just going to put myself out there and Don't have to control everything and grow.
Speaker 2:It's great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, yeah. So. Anything else, no. Just for today. Recovery has given you freedom. Greet the day with hope, gratitude for anything that is possible. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2:We'll see you tomorrow.
