I like to post different views on recovery and addiction. This is one, you may have another. I am in abstinenced based recovery but that is not the road for everyone. Success can be measured differently by different people -Tracey When people think about recovery they tend to do it in terms of black and white, addicts are either active, currently using, or in recovery, no longer using. when I look back at the blurry haze that has been most of my life I often find myself lost trying to figure out when I have been most 'active' and when I have been most 'in recovery' over my 15 year long adventure with drugs and alcohol I have shifted through many phases of use, sometimes only drinking, sometimes only drugs, occasionally (albeit rarely) neither. In my youth everything was in play, the game was 'get fucked up' and the rules were lose, every narcotic was a new experience, a new tool on my belt of feelings and experiences that I could have ready and waiting...