While on vacation yesterday my companion and I were on the deck of a party boat that was headed to a small island about an hour from Puerto Vallarta. There was an open bar on the boat and waiters were busily circulating through the crowds.

“Margarita?” a waiter offered, putting a tray of colorful drinks under our noses.

“Gracias” I replied. “But we’ve had enough.”

He smiled as us knowingly, and later brought the juice we ordered. My standard answer when I’m offered alcohol in any situation is always the same: “I’ve had enough.”

And I really mean that. The fact that the last time I drank was twenty plus years ago is of no concern to anyone around me. They never know whether my statement refers to twenty years ago or twenty minutes ago. And the other part of it is that they really don’t care.

I’m grateful for the life of recovery I enjoy each day. And, I’m fully cognizant that if I weren’t sober I wouldn’t here to write this blog. My reality is that I’ve had enough of self-destructive behavior. And because I’ve had enough, I’m able to enjoy the life God has so graciously given us today.

In 12 step programs, we hear the phrase "practice these principles in all our affairs." But what does this actually mean? After all, we go to meetings. We have an amends list. We've found a sponsor. Don't we spend enough time thinking about staying clean and sober? What this means to me is that we don't stay clean or sober in a vacuum.

I think this means we take the principles and concepts we learn in the meeting rooms and from reading recovery literature and apply them in our daily lives. A good guide for us is to use the 10th step. "Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it." This is an excellent concept for our daily lives.

Was I short with one of my coworkers today? Did I cut ahead of someone in line? Did I ignore my children when they sought my attention? Was it half listening when my mate was talking to me? Did I cut someone off in traffic? Did I not do my part at work today and let my coworkers carry the load? Did I leave work early without permission?

The actions in the paragraph above might seem minor. But isn't life mostly about the small things?

When I look into the history of my drinking and drugging I don't recall ever relapsing over something big. It was always something small. I never started drinking because our country went to war. I never relapsed over an election. But if the sun didn't come up when I thought it should, or if I broke a shoe lace, then that was enough to send me for a drink or a drug.

So, "practicing these principles in all our affairs," is what my recovery life is all about. If I take personal inventory all day and clean up my messes as I go, then I won't have a lot of garbage to clutter my mind. I won't have to deal with guilt. I won't have a pile of resentments. I can end my day with a clean slate.
This constant focus on the seeming minutia of our lives may seem self absorbed and extreme. But I believe that if I relapse it will likely kill me. I've had too many friends who returned to drinking and drugging, and didn't survive. So I view recovery as a life-and-death battle, the outcome based on how I carry out the mandates of the 12 step programs.

So while I don't do it perfectly, I do my best to practice 12-step principles as I trudge through my daily life.

12-Step meetings abound all over the world, and Nuevo Vallarta is no exception. Yesterday evening I was able to attend a speaker meeting a few blocks from the hotel.

It could have been a meeting anywhere in the United States, except the group has more transient members because it’s in the middle of a resort area. While many of the members knew one another, several of the were visitors only spending a few weeks before returning to their homes in the U.S. and Canada.

The speaker - a woman from California - spoke for 15 minutes, and then picked gratitude as the topic. The subject resonated with the group and several of those who shared spoke of their gratitude in being able to find sobriety before their disease destroyed them.

As I left the meeting to return to my hotel I was awash in my own gratitude – thankful for being able to spend two-weeks in such a beautiful place with someone I love. I close this with the recognition that – had I not found sobriety – I would be alive today. Let alone have the resources to live the life I do today.

The basic premise of our program is that when clients come in they want help. To enter they fill out an application that says they want to change their lives, and they're willing to follow our guidelines in order to do that. But sometimes a client slips through, sometimes clients who aren't ready to change.

Why do they come to our program? I'm not sure. Maybe they just want to get out of the weather, maybe they simply need to regroup, or maybe they aren't even sure what they want. During a group the other day we encountered a client like this. Our district manager had reported this client to be an ongoing problem. He didn't want to follow guidelines. He would come in after curfew, he wouldn't do his chores, and he questioned everything he was asked to do. Plus, he hadn't paid anything on his service fees. In short he was living with us for free and being a disruption in the process. Many times we don't have a problem with people who live with us for free while they are searching for work, or while they are complying with our guidelines. But when they're not looking for work, they're being disruptive, and they're not really serious about their sobriety then it comes to a point where we have to decide what to do about them. That was the case with this client.

When confronted about his behavior in group the assumption was that he wanted to be in our program. And that was the question that was put to him:

"Do you want to be here?"

"Of course I do," he replied.

"Then you'd need to comply," our manager told him. "You need to do what we ask you to do, to follow our guidelines."

"Well, there are things I'm willing to do, and things I don't want to do," he replied.

"This isn't that kind of a program," her manager replied. "You have to follow our guidelines."

"I'm not sure I can do that," the client said. “I want help, but I want the kind of help I want."

After that statement the group started to wind down. The manager ended up telling him that we determine the kind of help we give people here at TLC. Many times clients come in and agree to do everything they're asked. But after they’re with us for a while, get a few meals under their belt, and start feeling better, then they try to change the guidelines. They want to do what they want to do when they want to do it.

When the client said he was unwilling to do the program our way, he was finally asked to leave. It may take him for a while to realize there's not going to be too many people who are willing to help him on his terms. Life just doesn't work that way.

However, we wish him well. And, he’s always welcome to come back and try again…

Today, while on a two-week vacation to Puerto Vallarta, I find another reason – besides the fact I’m relaxing in paradise - to be grateful for my sober life today.

This epiphany came about while I was talking to a 40 year old man named Jorge, who sells tours, timeshares, and other entertainment to tourists on a downtown corner. My discussion with him began when I complimented him on his superior command of English. His accent was more American than Mexican.

He spoke English so well because he was taken to the U.S. as a four-year-old, where he grew up in the State of Washington, As a teenager he began using drugs and alcohol. Eventually, because of ongoing legal issues, the authorities deported him after they discovered that he wasn’t a U.S. citizen. At the time he was thirty three years old, married to a U.S. citizen, and the father of two daughters.

“I wasn’t a very good person,” he told me. “I had a lot of chances. I deserved what I got.”

Still, it was a shock to be deposited in Tijuana, Mexico, with no money or resources - other than his grasp of Spanish. Eventually, he migrated south to Puerto Vallarta, on the Mexican Riviera, where his grasp of English helped him find work selling tours and timeshares to tourists. Today he’s married to a Mexican citizen and has three more daughters with her.

While he understands and accepts that his behavior in the U.S. caused him to be unceremoniously deported, he says life is a struggle today. He admitted he still “smokes a little pot” once in awhile - but plans to “give that up soon.”

His story made me grateful for the life I have today.

The widely publicized antics of actor Charlie Sheen are no shock any of us here at TLC. None of my recovering friends are dismayed by his behavior. The only difference between many of us – including myself – and Charlie Sheen is he’s a talented actor with unlimited resources to pursue his addictions. Actually, a few of us were admiring the man because he's so tough. Most of us agree that if we had his resources we’d have been dead long ago.

I remember one time when I came across $16,000 that belonged to my former wife, while she was out of town. I spent every bit of it in three weeks, wrecked both cars, and nearly destroyed myself in the process. For an addict, unlimited resources are often a death sentence.

While Mr. Sheen has a bully pulpit from which to expound his views on recovery, most of us just smile knowingly when he makes his pronouncements. For example, he says that AA is boring. He says that AA is a cult. He says only five percent of the people in AA remain sober. Some of what he says is true. For example, this latter is borne out in AA Central Office literature. They’ve published pamphlets estimating that only one of every 33 people who walks into an AA meeting for the first time will die sober. So his estimate is actually a little generous. But the rest of what he says is pretty much subjective, the ramblings of a resentful, angry addict.

For example, over the years some have said AA is a cult. Usually, in my estimation, the people making these pronouncements are in a similar situation to Charlie Sheen. Even though they may not have denial of his magnitude, they’re still angry and resentful at AA. As to the cult issue, there have been people who tried to make that point for many years, but to my knowledge it doesn't have widespread currency or acceptance.

And if we think AA boring, that can sometimes be a telltale clue about our own personality. When I was young my Grandmother told me "if you are bored, then it's because you're boring." I agree with my grandmother. If Charlie Sheen is bored, then it's because he's probably deep down a boring human being. When I finally got clean and sober life changed from boring to exciting. I had new perceptions. I had many, many new challenges. Each day became for me an adventure in sobriety. Dealing with the challenges of staying sober after so many years of living in the muck of alcoholism and drug addiction makes my life a journey of discovery.

Finally, my opinion is that Charlie Sheen spends way, way too much time protesting 12 step programs. When I spend a lot of time thinking about something, whether it's my health, aging, or the challenges of running a business, then it's because those things are on my mind. My prediction is, that if Charlie Sheen survives his addictions, we'll see him as the keynote speaker at a recovery conference.

In any event, I believe we all wish him the blessings of a clean and sober life. Hopefully, Charlie, we'll see you one day on the road to happy destiny.

Writing a blog each day is an interesting challenge. My goal, when I started this project, was to write each day from the perspective of recovery. After producing a blog for over 200 days I've accomplished this.

But perhaps somewhere, in the back of my mind, I thought maybe more people would read it then the statistics indicate. Is that my ego? Sure. I think every aspiring writer has this vision of people beating a path to the door to read his stuff.

An unexpected and pleasant benefit has been the response from parents. I guess when parents are desperate they will grab onto most anything, even my blog. Probably half the comments and responses I've received are from parents who read this to learn about TLC. And parents who’ve made follow-up calls gave good feedback. So if the only thing I’ve achieved is to help one or two people into sobriety, then I've done some good.

If we do something positive we're going to get a positive result. Many times, though, we don't know what the result will be.

More than one sponsor has told me that my responsibility is to do the work. The results are up to God.