Blog entry for:

if i persist in this behavior, i set myself up for the same despair and misery we experienced in my active addiction. the potential for spending my days in recovery feeling like victims is very real. this is and was one my very favorite fall-back positions. after all, it oh so warm and fuzzy, to say things like the ‘devil’ (my addiction) made me do it. although using this particular behavior happens less these days, i still catch myself, at least thinking i shift the blame somewhere else. oh the wonder, oh the joy, and oh the humanity of it all.
when i came to recovery, and i mean when i finally arrived here spiritually, not just physically, and started working my first step, i came to the conclusion that if i am powerless over my addiction, then everything that i ever did was influenced by that, hence i was absolved of any blame and responsibility. but the good addict that i am, i extended that to mean everything i was currently doing, and everything i would ever do, came under the same umbrella, and i was blameless. it was not until my second set of steps, that my sponsor finally made me look at what i was and was not responsible for in my life. not that my first sponsor missed something, or was somehow remiss, i am after all the addict-lawyer, who seeks loopholes, wherever and whenever i can, and after i found this one, i kept it to myself.
how my second sponsor figured it out is beyond me, by that time i practiced and perfected this technique to such an extent that it was ‘automagic’ for me. so each year when i stumble across this reading i feel more than a bit nostalgic for those days way back when. then i wake-up and remember the flip side of this coin. the anger and resentment i felt, as i allowed myself to be and play the victim, to seemingly random and capricious events. it was as if the universe was aligned against me, so making plans, having dreams or any hope, was pointless.
when i finally realized it was me, and not the universe, and that it was my loophole, not the program of recovery that at the source of my discomfort, i finally started to get relief and it was nice to have some power after all. i do have power over how i behave, and over who i let have power over me. it is i, and not them who is ultimately responsible for my behavior. i may not have no power over the events in the real world, i may have no power of the behavior of others, i may have no mpower over my feelings, so i NEED to take whatever modicum of power i do have and run with it.
as it is a day off from pounding the pavement, this will be the only running i will do, so it off to the showers and into the real world, accepting that although i am powerless over addiction, i am not powerless over the way i behave or reeat to anything today.

∞ DT ∞