Blog entry for:

... attend this many meetings, or live my life to suit these people in order to remain a member. but how fast i forget, because after all it is not how i feel, it is how i look! really, that silly Billy Crystal character still has a voice in my head, and the most insane thing about it, is that i listen. there may not be a Sergeant-at-Arms in the rooms of my fellowship, but sometimes the opinions of those i share the rooms with are more than enough to keep in line. after all, i am am not doing correctly, who is going to want to hang with me, and if no one hangs with me, i will get lonely and if i get lonely what is the point, i did not get clean to be miserable, so i might as well use.
so the insanity of people-pleasing goes right to how i behave ion meetings and around other members of the fellowship, sometimes. when i am sane, i care very little what other people think about how i work a program and the irony is that, those are the times when i seem to get new sponsees, or other members want to hang with me or i am actually invited to go along.
so what is this addict to do? cave to the part of me that wants to separate me from the pack and take me down a road to using again, or listen to the voice of the part of me that wants to recover? the choice looks quite simple and there is without a doubt a single correct answer. yes this is one of those binary BLACK-WHITE decisions, but one that looks oh so complicated and oh so confusing when i am in the midst of coming to a conclusion.
my mind has wandered a bit, but the reading does bring up how insane i can be even when i am doing what i need to be doing to live a program of recovery. it also brings me to converse of what the final conclusion of the reading was, namely that if i do not want what i see other members having then i do not have to work a program like they do. so when i stumble across another member in my service career who has oodles of time clean, but seems to have to be something, i can ask them what they do to live their program and avoid those actions at all costs. what i have discovered, is that members like generally are self-sponsoring. without a sponsor, how can i work the steps and become more than i was yesterday?
so yes, the program allows me muh creative freedom in how i work it, but for me, what i have discovered is that i NEED to attend at least TWO meetings a week, call my sponsor on a WEEKLY basis, ask for the POWER to stay clean and GRATEFULLY acknowledge the source of that power at the end of my day, and do my best to live up to the spiritual principles that i ahve been given. those members who do not do all that? well all i know is that is the minimum for this addict to stay clean and to continue to thrive in my recovery. other members may not like the results of my growth, but it is HOW I FEEL and who the fVck cares how i look in their eyes. that is the sane way for this addict to live and i think i will do so just for today.

∞ DT ∞