Addiction recovery: No Glamor, No Awards

It is Academy Awards night. red carpet, glamor, and awards. Robert Downey, Jr. is nominated for an award tonight. Win or lose he is already a major winner. Last year it was Amy Widenhouse who received all the attention during the Grammy Awards. she was nominated and won a Grammy, but her biggest award is pending.

What Robert Downey, Jr. and Amy Widenhouse have in common is their addiction to drugs. Despite Widenhouse's Grammy, Downey has the biggest award. He is clean.

Hollywood often glamorizes addiction. Stars often get a tremendous amount of attention for their addiction troubles. But for the great majority of addicts there is no glamor and there will be no awards nor any publicity and notoriety.

Addiction recovery is a tedious process in which for most the only award is going to be reward that comes from being clean. A personal and private battle fought not in the press or on "Page 6". A struggle in which while there may be many setbacks there is hope that at the end of the day the disease will not prevail.

Work hard. The glamor and the awards are greater than you can possibly know. There is little in life that could have more meaning and that could yield a greater since of pride than beating your addiction.