One Year of Methadone

My roommate Lea has been on methadone for one year today.  She is doing fantastically better than how it used to be a year or more ago while still far from recovered enough to put together a functional life.

Trip math reveals 52 weeks x 6 trips/week is 312 trips to the clinic.  The clinic is usually closed on bank holidays.  She took the bus on a couple of snow days.   Call it 300 trips.  We almost always went to a meeting after she got her dose at the clinic.  Fortunately for us, the clinic is a short ten minute drive and the Alano club is on the way home.  It works out extremely well to get us to a morning meeting six days a week.

Helping Lea is the best thing I have done in my life in terms of putting myself out there to help another human being.  Decades ago, I started three charities in an effort to “save the world”.  That was not nearly as gratifying as I thought it would be.  I have learned in AA that I get to save the world one person at a time.

I don’t know how it will end for me or Lea.  Clearly I am a better person for having made the effort.  There was lots of practice getting both moral and morale support from my friends.  I could not have done this without them.  It has helped me to be grateful for what I have including a living income, good friends, my recovery and compassion for others.

I am grateful for the happiness and serenity that I have been blessed with as a result of making a huge commitment helping someone else better their life.  I am a much better person than I was a year ago.