After being in recovery for nearly 20 years, I've learned to not let small things irritate me. I do this because it's work to go from being irritated to not irritated.

However, the other day an issue that irritates me a lot came up one more time. Transitional Living Communities is a nonprofit corporation. We started out with this status because we didn't want to pay taxes. Also it's easier to get people to donate to a nonprofit than a for profit. However, many times uninformed people don't quite understand what nonprofit means.

A good example occurred the other day. Our mission at TLC is to help recovering substance abusers rebuild their lives. One of the ways we do this is to help our clients get employment so they can pay their service fees and support our mission. Many times though when clients receive their first paycheck, instead of paying their service fees, they elect to leave the program and start over somewhere else. From an economic point of view this makes sense for them. Instead of paying the $800-$1000 they owe they start over in a new program, usually one with less restrictions. They have enough money to pay the first week or two and maybe a little left over to buy clothes or toys.

When this occurs I recognize it as a simple extension of an addict's dishonest behavior. When I point this out to the client who is on his way out the door they dismiss what I'm telling them. Many times though their decision is a bad one because they go to a program that doesn't have as many restrictions as ours and they soon relapse. They haven't yet realized the problem's not money but their disease. Usually when this happens we take them back but ask them for a down payment on their back service fees before they can re-enter. And sometimes this works out fine for everyone.

The other day two men who owe TLC over $1000 each in service fees chose to leave when they got paid. In fact, one of them even had his mother pick him up to take him to another program. When she arrived she wanted to go to his room to help him pack. When our manager objected because he was running out on the service fees he owed us, she made what I consider was a really uninformed statement.

"Well this is a nonprofit, isn't it?" she asked. Her implication, of course, was that someone else was paying our mortgage payments and electric bills. And someone else was paying for the client's food, laundry, transportation, and the other services we offer. While I give her the benefit of the doubt and realize she's not sophisticated or educated enough to understand that someone has to pay the bills I still get irritated when things like this happen.