The mountaineer

Just one chance is no chance at all.

A guy I met panhandling outside of a downtown coffee shop was telling me about the one chance he had at going clean.

He had scored a bed in a room with three other men at a treatment facility for 30 days. Only one condition. If his randomly administered urine test should ever come back positive for dope, he's out.

A one-strike policy. No pressure.

He made it to 22 days. Then one morning, he was told to pack his bags. He had cracked. And literally pissed away his chance at redemption.

It shouldn't be like that. When I came home to go clean, there were no threats hanging over me. I don't know how many strikes I had. Maybe it was limitless. In fact, the only rule was that I had to be kind to my mother.

It soon became clear in the days ahead that not only did kindness come naturally when I wasn't motivated by a need to get high — but doing drugs came to represent the ultimate unkindness. It hurt my mother's heart. And with every passing day, I understood how much I wanted the opposite.

Speaking of days, we eventually did away with them too. No more writing a number on the mirror.

11 days clean! 12… 13… Whatever.

We realized that if you don't sweat the days, a lapse becomes more manageable. For one thing, it's easier to forgive yourself, knowing that you haven't just wrecked your one chance at going clean. Every day is your one chance. All the dominos don't have to fall.

It might even make that lapse less all-out carnage and more controlled. In that sense, a mistake could be seen as a kind of harm reduction. It might even save your life.

Maybe that's something to keep in mind for people who support addicts in their recovery. A zero-tolerance policy is a zero-sum game. It leaves no space for the reality that is the addict's experience.

Going clean is the spiritual equivalent of climbing Everest. It's easy to lose your footing. It's human.

That guy I met outside of the coffee shop went into recovery with good intentions. But in the face of pressure and ultimatums, he lost his footing.

He didn't fail his recovery. We failed him. And sadly, he'll endure a long, cold winter for that.

But maybe tomorrow, he'll marshal the kind of courage that eludes most mortals and square off against that mountain again.

Maybe we'll give him the grace to fail. And maybe one day, he'll find the grace to reach the summit.