"NEVER BEEN BETTER"

Birthday Night is a celebration every month for those Narcotics Anonymous members who have stayed clean and sober for a continuous year. There was a guy Friday night that celebrated his 19th birthday.
When its your Birthday, you get to pick up a gold coin.
Someone will introduce you from the podium, usually your sponsor.
Then you go up to the podium and address the group. You can talk about how you stayed clean and sober, or what the program has done for you, or what your struggles may have been and how you got thru them..

Last Friday was my first Birthday Night, having had my first year sober.
One of my good buddies gave me a custom made T-Shirt that reads “Never Been Better” before the meeting. I have been running around the last month telling anyone who will listen that I have never been better.
Then the meeting started….and guess who got to go first?

I’m not sure why I got to go first, but I did.
My sponsor went up to the Podium and said
“When this guy came to me 6 months ago and asked me to be his sponsor I wasn’t too sure what to say. But he has stuck around, and done some stepwork and now he is a part of this group now. And if you haven’t met him, well, you are about to now, and you have to realize that he is really loud, and he laughs so hard, and he has this big heart and he has on this shirt and he will probably tell you all about it.
So come on up here Steve!”

And I went running to the podium like some kind of Heavyweight Champion of the World, hands waving and arms flying, kicked my right leg out as I took a left and went sliding up to the podium.

Quite animated, I said:
“Man , I am so excited to be here, I’m more excited than the first time I rode the Texas Twister at Six Flags, and if you aren’t excited as I am about Narcotics Anonymous like me then you just do like I did and keep coming back.
I got support groups everywhere:
I have ‘em in my Blog world, and I can’t tell you how much support I have gotten from people I have never even met, and likely never will.
And I know every cashier, busboy, buffet attendant in town, and they all know my story and when I go to Blockbuster Video and the girl behind the counter says “How you doin’, Bulletholes?” I do a little dance and say “I’ve never been better Baby, how’ bout you” and everybody in the store can hear me and knows I’m there.
And I got a couple kids….do you think they are excited their daddy don’t do any dope?
And I got an X Wife and a sister and friends and family that have finally seen me stop using drugs….Do you think they are excited?
But what I really have that’s done it for me is all you people here at NA…like the literature says, “the therapeutic value of one addict helping another is without parallel”
I get to come here and hear the things I need to hear from other addicts…
And I get to come here and meet people that I need to meet…
And sometimes I get to come here and say some things I need to hear myself say…
And I am just totally psyched on the idea that I did something I did not know I would want to do, that I COULD do, and thats stay off drugs for a whole year...
So somebody ask me…”How you doin’ Steve?”

And someone in the crowd of 150 people hollered out “How you doin’ Steve?”

And I stood away from the podium so everyone could see my shirt, I even pointed to it and shouted at the top of my lungs
“NEVER BEEN BETTER!”

And the crowd went wild!