Just for Today - March 15th, 2026 with Stephanie R. - Feeling "a part of"

0:00All right, welcome to the Anonymous Podcast, 2026, just for today's series on your host, Douglassel. If you've been rocking with us for years or listening for your very first time, you're welcome here. And you're encouraged to participate. This is not just a podcast, this is a community. If you want to read it just for today, if you want to share it on the just for today episode, join a book study, be a part of the dialogue, welcome, we'd love to have you. Reach out to us, you can chop it up on the Facebook page or the podcast number, which that'll come directly to me. But either way, if you have the desire, jump on in and we got you. Please know this, it never cost anything to listen to any of these episodes. We don't charge, we don't make any money from doing it, we don't pay our guests to come on. This is truly 100% a labor of love.

1:00Every episode is created by addicts in recovery who are eager to participate and grateful to be of service. And we won't have it any other way. As we focus on that magic six letter word, others, we collectively believe if one person benefits from our efforts, including one of us, then without a doubt it's all worth it. Alright, so here we go. This podcast is a commentary and discussion of narcotics and anonymous literature intended to enrich the recovery experience. This is not, alright, let's double us, double down on this. This is not a replacement for sponsorship, step work or participation in any other form of the fellowship. Please use this podcast as an additional resource as we continue to grow together. The anonymous podcast does not represent NA. We are not affiliated with NA as a whole. We are simply addicts seeking recovery, nothing more, and for sure, nothing less. Now let's get started. Hey y'all, I'm Reagan, I'm an addict.

2:10My clean date is November 21st, 2024, and I attend meetings in Columbia, South Carolina. This is the just for today for March 15th. Starting a part of, the get-togethers after our meetings are good opportunities to share things that we didn't get to discuss during the meeting. Basic text page 95. Active addictions set us apart from society isolating us. Fear was at the core of that alienation. We believe that if we let others get to know us, they would only find out how terribly flawed we were. Rejection would be only a short step away. When we come to our first NA meeting, we are usually impressed by the familiarity and friendliness we see other recovering addicts share. We too can quickly become a part of this fellowship if we allow ourselves to. One way to start is by tagging along to the local coffee shop after the meeting. At these gatherings, we can let down the walls that separate us from others and discover things about ourselves and other NA members. One-on-one, we can sometimes disclose things that we may be reluctant to share at the group level.

3:10We learn to make small talk at many of these late-night gatherings and forge deep, strong friendships as well. With our newfound friends in NA, we no longer have to live lives of isolation. We can become part of the greater whole, the fellowship of narcotics anonymous. Just for today, I will break free of isolation. I will strive to feel part of the NA fellowship. Thanks for letting me serve. Hi, welcome back everyone. Smart to 15th, feeling a part of hanging out with Stephanie R. Stephanie, can you let the folks know your clean date and where you attend meetings? Give your home group a shout out. Hey guys, I'm Stephanie. I'm an addict. My clean date is October 13th, 2024. My home group is Traditions Matter, which meets in Clinton, Indiana on Mondays from 7-8 PM. And we already discussed that you're about an hour from a homey. Yeah. An hour from my friend Darryl, what's up Darryl, an hour away? All right, Stephanie, let's jump into it. You ready? I'm feeling a part of. What do you think? It was really good reading for me because I tried to get, you know, I've got 16 months

4:14and before that, I tried for about three years to get clean and go into meetings. And what I would do is I would just go to meetings. I wouldn't talk to anybody. I wouldn't hang out. I, you know, I felt even though, you know, obviously we shared the addiction, like I felt isolated and I was doing that, you know, to myself for the most part. So, you know, reminding me that, you know, what really helped in my recovery this time is that I feel connected to my home group and I feel connected to the people in a, like, my fellowship stuff is really important to me because I wasn't, you know, talking to anybody before after the meeting. I wasn't, you know, using my phone numbers, like I was supposed to. And you know, that kept me sick for a lot longer than I really needed to be. What was going on then? Like, was it, you know, have you identified like, hey, you know, what were those blocks

5:14that was keeping you from doing that? Yeah, so it really, it really was like, you know, in the reading where it says that fear was at the core of the alienation, you know, I didn't want to get to know anyone. I had this big wall built up around me that said that if I did, everyone was going to know that I was, you know, the things that I believed do on myself, I was weird. And then, you know, like, you know, I couldn't, yeah. And, you know, on my recovery journey and, you know, going through meetings and talking to other members and sharing and, you know, also in my personal stuff where I, you know, go to therapy and things, I've discovered a lot about myself. And even though, you know, those things that make me different, you know, everybody has those. You know, not there are other people in the meetings who are, you know, have ADHD or, you know, things like that, whatever it is, whatever it is, whatever it is that makes you different, it doesn't mean that everyone's going to look at you like, you know, what are you doing

6:17here? Really, I don't want this person to be a part of my home group, like that's not how it is. But, you know, in my life, I had told myself that, like, if you let anyone see who you really are, they're going to not want to be around you. So I closed myself off, you know, and isolated. Dude, I can't tell you how deeply I relate to that. Like I'm talking about like on, oh, man, and I wonder how many of us, like, still walk around, like even being clean for a while, you know, so like it's 16 months or, or, you know, 20 plus years, and like, in like, no one, oh, there's pieces of me, you know, that just remains unlovable, you know, and isn't it sad, it's saddening, you know, to think about that? Yeah, and it's, you know, it's so hard because when you look at yourself, you are not giving yourself any compassion. But if it's another person in the place that we're in, you know, the first thing I would

7:20tell them is that you're enough, you're worth it, you're lovable, but trying to tell that to ourselves is, you know, just something we can't do for whatever reason. I mean, there's a lot of guilt and shame and... Yeah. There were some of my homies who tell me like treat my friend good today, you know, meaning me like, you know, they're telling that to me, so I'm like the first thing. And I think that's really cool to do that on my, on the mirror and there, and, you know, in my bathroom, it says, I have three like sticky notes, it's like, I'm lovable, I'm enough in self-compassion. So I get to look at those things, you know, and just like doing some things to try to be intentional about like, hey, I'm lovable, you know, I'm enough, have some compassion about myself, things like that, but you're exactly right, man. It is, I can much, if you or any of my homies come to me with, you know, X, Y and Z, they can do something really crazy, and they do sometimes, you know, they'll go to me with some crazy shit, and I hit them with love, man, I love you.

8:20All right, listen, you know, what are we going to do about this, you know, let's chop it up. Me? Yeah. Oh, I'm a piece of shit, you know, depending on the season of man, it's like, oh, I'm the worst of the worst, I deserve bad things, you know, this and that. Yeah, nobody could possibly have done something that's horrible, that's this thing that I've done, and they're not going to love me if they find out that I did this or whatever. And, you know, it's just like everything that I, my sponsor, she is great because anything that I've ever told her, she looks at me and she's like, oh, I can relate to that. Like, I've had an experience like, there's nothing where she's been like, I don't know if I can be your sponsor anymore. This is the craziest, like, no, that's not what happens. Like, somebody's going to be able to relate to you, like, you are not too much. You are enough. Like, it is, it is good. Bro, and we will find anything about ourselves to make us not a part of, you know, and I think that's like the, maybe not specifically like, benching throughout the reader, but I

9:24think it's in the spirit of, it was like, we're really good at, you know, identifying your older than me, your this, your that, you know, whatever, like that will separate, you know, us from one another, we're like fine tune to see that shit. Yeah, so your disease is like sitting there looking for a way to figure out how to make you feel like you don't belong because isolation, when I was in treatment, the big thing that, you know, they would harp us is, you know, you know, connection is the opposite of addiction. Like, when you feel loved and included in a part of something, then that helps you stay clean so much, so much. Yeah, and yeah, and anything that we, we find like here, a funny one is, is, and I share this anytime I give my story, usually like when I give my story or something like that, I'll talk about this, but, but, you know, like, as a, as a kid and stuff, or not like my

10:27body, my anatomy is like, my, my left nipple goes this way, okay, right? I know, right? It's, it's funny, right? You know, it is. And then my right, so it goes in and my right nipple, sometimes it'll go in, sometimes it'll go out. It's very temperamental. You know what I'm talking about, right? So, bro, my whole, I, I felt, especially as a kid, I felt like, you know, I'm the only person who's, who's anatomy is like fucked up like this, and I felt very alone. I was afraid to take my shirt off, playing shirts and skins, basketball was a big thing back in them days and stuff like that. If I hated myself, man, do you know, so, so a few years back, I got my nipples pierced and, and, you know, to take care of that, you know, and so a couple of things, Stephanie, check this out. I'm hyper focused on like my anatomy and like my nipples and stuff, you know, the, the, you know, the moment they got pierced, I didn't have to deal with that anymore, right? It was on to like my smile, it was on to something else that wasn't, that wasn't, that wasn't, so that's one thing. So, it's never going to be to where, to where I'm not, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm at this

11:31perfect like state of, you know, Nirvana with myself, and I'm fine with that, okay, cool. So I learned that, like, there's nothing I can do, like, outside to fix me. The second thing is, when I share about this, I've been, I've, I've, I've, I was at a, I was speaking at a, I think it was like, it was a camp out or something like that up in, in Virginia, okay? And some dude, so I was talking about it, it's a dude goes from, from, you know, from he's sitting in there and I start talking to him, yo, I have three nipples, okay? The whole fucking place, so we're laughing at it, it's just so fun. And then speaking somewhere else, man, if someone came up to me and said, yo, me too, I can't believe how many, you know what I'm talking, and that's something, I know it's like a little bit silly and something like that, but it's fucking real though. Yeah, it's crazy. Like, you're thinking, well, why, how would anybody else be fucked up and kind of the same way as me? And there's a bunch, no matter what it is. Yeah, and it's in its cool, man, it's, it's freeing to be able to, you know, and that's

12:34kind of like a funny example, but, but, you know, whatever that, whatever it is, that's putting those blocks up between us and the fellowship or us and, and the people around who can help us, it's important that we talk about that. It's important that, you know, that we have the, the, I guess, maybe trust in HP or trust in in a, really, you know, even if we're not like it in our program towards like, all right, I trust HP is going to, you know, work it all out, like, can you trust us? You know, that's happening, like, can you, can you just, can you look around, can you trust us enough to know that we got you? Yeah, for sure. I mean, like, I said, my, like, my fellow addicts, like, that's the whole, you know, the whole thing, like, we, we're, there's for each other and no one can understand an addict, like another fellow addict. So, all right, thank you for spending your time with us today on the anonymous podcast.

13:39So whether you're enjoying listening quietly or, you know, maybe, maybe you're having this desire to participate, just know that you're, you're welcome, 100% you're welcome here. This is a safe space because addicts show up, willing to share, serve, and, um, and looking for ways to, to focus on that magic six letter word, others. Until next time, I'm your host, Douglas L. Namaste, and God bless.