Blog entry for:

i came to this fellowship because my very best thinking had gotten me nowhere. i must open my mind to experience that works, no matter where it comes from, if i hope to grow in my recovery. but who says i want to grow in my recovery? after all, i am quite comfortable, i have not had the obsession to use for quite some time, and life is going fairly well right now. growing in my recovery might upset the comfortable rut of the status quo. that sort of thinking is what probably took my friend with twenty years out to the life of active addiction and i realize how dangerous it is for me. nevertheless, more frequently than not, might thoughts drift in that particular direction, with little forethought of the consequences, physically, materially, emotionally and spiritually that would manifest themselves if i decided that growing my recovery was not important today.
so although the reading was not necessarily about comfortable ruts in recovery, it addresses an issue that i often struggle with, discounting the message because of the messenger is different from me. as i walk this road, i have discovered that what i think and feel is not that much different from what the members with whom i share my recovery, think and feel. my experience in recovery is not unique by any means, even if i like to think that it is. what i did to get here and what i felt when i finally surrendered to the fact that i am an addict, is not that much different than anyone else. yes the circumstances that brought me to the rooms may not have been played out in every addict’s life, but the consequences on my emotional and spiritual state did play out the same. we were all tired of living the way we were living, and i was ready to try something different.
so what is the hope in that this morning? well for this addict, it means that no matter how different i think i am from those who are in the rooms, when i scrape off the veneer of physical and socio-economic appearances, i am just the same, just another addict who is doing his best to recover from addiction one day at a time. the elegant simplicity of that statement is more than enough hope for me this morning. now off to do some damage and clean up some messes :0

∞ DT ∞