Blog entry for:

i will go on with my recovery.
the reading speaks to not using no matter how bad i may feel, what it does not address is the other side of the spectrum, not using no matter how good i feel. although this may seem like a stretch, and perhaps it is, what i have seen in my brief recovery experience, is that once some addicts start feeling good, they drift away from the program and end up relapsing. living life, where the pain has been so greatly reduced, tricks me into to believing all sorts of nonsense. stuff like maybe i am not an addict at all. or now that one substance is legal, somehow, i can use without making my life unmanageable. that my uncontrollable drug use, the most obvious symptom of my addiction, was a result of the legal and moral constraints, rather than something within me. following that line of reasoning, i used to be a rebel! it even gets more ridiculous as the reasoning continues, since i am no longer rebelling, than my use becomes more about pleasure than anything else, and i did not clean to live a miserable existence, so a bit of pleasure from time to time, in this form, may actually be a healthy choice. so recovery provides me the means to use, rather than to stay clean.
what i take away from this whole line of thought, is that for me, using is not just about changing the way i feel. sure, that may have been the primary reason, i used, or at least i can tell myself that. when i go there, than i am struck with another realization, if i did not use to change the way i felt, most of the time, why did i use? so i have caught myself in a cycle of circular logic, similar to the whole chicken or egg argument. which came first, use or addiction? and the circle gets tighter and tighter, the logic more and more twisted, until i convince myself that because i have not used in over so much time, somehow i am not an addict any more. it is all about the substances and not about me, and i find myself in another mode of thinking, namely i am powerless over this substance or that, and those substances and not addiction make my life unmanageable.
well, just for today, i accept that it is not what, how much or the delivery method, that was my problem. it is something in my nature that is my problem and IF i want to keep feeling good, and i do, than i NEED to stay on the path that was chosen for me, all those days ago. it is not the drugs that make me an addict, it is the addict that makes me unable to use drugs in a recreational and social manner. in other words, more than likely i was always an addict just waiting for my cherry to be broken.
so as i walk into today, i am ready to accept the fats, that addiction is part of my life, and recovery is what i have chosen for my path today. legal or not, mind and mood altering substances WILL lead me back to a life as an active addict and that is not an end game i choose to follow today.
off to the showers and into the tasks that are still piled upon my desk.
it is a good day to be clean.

∞ DT ∞