Blog entry for:

today, BY LIVING the steps, i am PART of it.
TRUST the process
have FAITH in the process
ALLOW the process, to work in your life.
i have been hearing those lines and all the various permutations of those ideas, since the day i first walked into the rooms. in those early days, long before i was ready and willing to stay clean no matter what, those words could have been spoken in some ancient dead language, as they had absolutely no meaning to me.no wonder it took a trip through jail, two separate treatment regimens and the threat of prison to finally get clean and be ready to recover. even so, it took an additional 13 months before i landed where i needed to be and some time after that before i grudgingly accepted that maybe, just maybe there was something to this process i kept hearing about over and over again.
so what exactly is this process anyhow? the reading speaks directly to that question, why life itself! i get that on an intellectual level, but for me it goes far deeper and i have to break it out into some separate components, in order to grasp it on an emotional level.
there is first and foremost the physical process of life. i was born, i grew up and i will die. those are the facts and that process is undeniable. there is the process of addiction, that interrupted the process of life and never allowed me to mature into a normal adult, although of course, one may argue that as an addict in waiting, as it were, i more than likely would have never completed that process of life anyhow. active addiction froze that process at the spot where it was, when i picked up for the first time and inexorably turned me into a creature who's primary NEED was to get high to shelter itself from the process of life. that need rose higher than shelter, than food, than reproduction or any of the other NEEDS that humans as class may have.
coming to recovery, halted that process, for the most part, and jump started the process of maturing into an adult human being, with needs and responsibilities. recovery keeps that process in abeyance, but never removes it from the background, as hopeless as that may sound, that too is a fact of life.
so trusting the process of life, or of addiction, is certainly not a comfortable place for me. i NEED something else to place my FAITH, something that integrates those two processes and allows for me to become who i have always wanted to be. for me, that process is an active program of recovery, through the 12 steps of the fellowship that has removed the desire to get high from me, and allows me to live free from active addiction. the process of active recovery, is evident in my life today and although i am not one that jumps on the FAITH bandwagon with any ease, i can safely and honestly say, that today i have FAITH in the active recovery process as it has been given to me. with that FAITH comes acceptance and yes even allowing myself to be swept up into the process, without knowing where i am going. i can let go and allow the changes to be manifest in me today and even more so, welcome those changes without the need to resist, refute and generally rebel against something i do not understand. and i do not understand the process of active recovery. oh i know the mechanics, i see the results, but the process in and of itself, is a black box, that i do something and out pops something else. for some reason, this is not disturbing to me, in fact it is comforting, because i know that IF i had some understanding about how this works, i would be inside there tinkering with the process and more than likely mucking it up pretty bad.
i may not trust the process of life, as right now i am not happy about that final outcome. i DO NOT trust the process of addiction, because i KNOW what that will do, if allowed to run unchecked. so that leaves me with only the process of active recovery, to place my FAITH in, and i am content and grateful to be able to do so, today.
with that in mind the time has come to get out and run (sort of) for the second day in a row. that NEED or DESIRE has been reawakened and i will go particpate in it, at least today. i want to be more in some respects and less in others, all of this is the result of the active process of reecovery that i can embrace in my life today.

∞ DT ∞