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i should be able to persuade another addict to find recovery. but there are limits to what i can do to help another addict.
the biggest mystery i am struggling with today is how i can be so f*cking spiritual everywhere else, but my own home group. once again i jumped down another person’s throat yesterday, because i am not happy with how the message is being carried by that particular meeting of my home group. what that tells me, is that yes, i have to admit once again that i am wrong, and that it is probably time to stop going to that particular meeting. i see my control issues coming to the surface, and i also know what is the root cause. i do not want touchy-feelie meetings, what i want is RAW recovery, where we talk about the solution of HOW to live in this new way of life, not about how happy or proud i may be of what i have accomplished over the course of my recovery. i am certain that message is being carried there, but i am so caught up in what i think is correct, that i lose any chance of hearing the message, much less being able to rationally apply it to my life.
so what exactly does that have to do with the reading? well, for one, i am trying to force my particular take on the recovery process on a group of addicts who may or may not want to look at things my way. then, i wrap my opinion up in spiritual principles and present the package at the top of my voice. quite a sight for the newcomers whose lives i am trying to save.
my solution is to go take my lumps for my behavior, and walk away from that particular meeting until i am more spiritually fit. perhaps it is even time to find a new home group, where i am not one of the only two surviving members, so i can once again just be one of the members and my voice carries equal weight with everyone else’s. there is also the old solution, that many before me have used, if i do not like what the meetings are offering me as an addict, start a new one. i would hardly be the first oner to go that direction, and it is a path that i have gone down before. it is amazing that the meetings i started with another addict, still are going strong ten years later, thriving in fact, when my motives for starting them were hardly pure or even spiritual.
so if i am powerless over my own disease what the f*ck am i doing trying to exert power over the vehicle which carries recovery to other addicts and allows them to recover the way they wish to? acting-out of course, and choosing to do so in pure and abject self-will. quite a lovely thought for this grey and cloudy day, and a statement that seems to lack any HOPE. well the HOPE is there if you scrape off the bile, at least, twenty-four hours later, i am finally becoming aware of what is going on inside of me, and you know what, i do not like what i am finding. so i guess it is time to get back on the step wagon and call my sponsor for my next assignment. i am becoming humble enough to surr5ender my shortcomings to a POWER greater than me, and let that POWER change me into the man i have always wanted to become.
so off to the showers and into my day, and let me see how little damage i can do today.

∞ DT ∞