Blog entry for:

can be used to extinguish the small flare-ups that happen from time to time. looking out the windows, at this foggy morning and digesting the events of the past week, as well as what is being said, i am simply amazed by how some prominent and not so prominent people use a tragedy to advance their agenda. be warned i am about to go off on a tangent and it may note be pretty. if you really look at things, gun control would not have stooped someone from carrying a gun into a school. one might argue, that if all the teachers had been armed that this gunmen may have killed far less, but that is just as ludicrous. the only thing that would have ensured total safety for anyone, is the quiet rest of death. life is full of random events, crazed people, zealots and people holding grudges that are burning away their sanity. there really is NO WAY to prevent random acts of unspeakable terror, except to lock everyone up in tiny little cages and let them out one at a time. trying to make sense of such events, by saying stuff like, “there is no much violence in our schools because we have removed GOD,“ is just as ridiculous.
it is as it is. these are the times we live in, and enforced morality through religious notions never in the past, prevented tragedies of this scope, it was that we just did not hear about them, nor we given a platform to spew all of our trite theories, pat answers and clichéd knee-jerk reactions. do not get me wrong, i feel for the sad for the families of the victims of this horrific event, but spending hours upon hours of airtime analyzing what happened will not help them through their grieving process, all it does is make the rest of us voyeurs in their shattered world.
so returning to my little world, thinking about, theorizing about and complaining about whether or not i am complacent, makes me complicit in the personal tragedy that relapse would be for me. on a personal note,i have heard and participated in enough postmortem debriefing sessions, with returning addicts, that I KNOW, what it is that took them out. it is a growing dissatisfaction, with what they need to do to stay clean today. yes, going to meetings, reading the literature, sponsoring, step work with a sponsor, service to the fellowship and daily conscious contact with a HIGHER POWER, all consume a great deal of time. as i stay clean, the immediacy of what it meant to be in active addiction is lost, it fades into the background noise and gradually i drift away from doing what kept me clean in the first place, all those days ago. nothing, and i repeat NOTHING happens in a vacuum. just as some unstable people slip into a place where a heinous act, feels like a great idea, so does using become the solution for me. as i drift away down the path away from a life of recovery. each piece of my recovery program, i decide i no longer have the time or resources to practice in my life, takes me that much closer to the insanity of active addiction. i really hate it when the relapsing addict comes back into the room, saying that all they lost was their clean-time, and we all nod our heads in agreement. i certainly wish i had the nerve to stand up and expose that for the twisted lie and rationalization that it is. it is something we allow them to believe so that they feel better, even though it is a lie. chances are, that if that lie is not exposed through conversations with their sponsor, that they will drift quickly into complacency and be picking up yet another white key tag. the harsh truth is they relapsed through conscious choices they made every single day before they picked up. they had very little recovery the moment before they sued, because they allowed themselves to believe that somehow, they had this program down and did not need to do the very things they did, way back when, to stay clean. as cold as it sounds, i wish there was a way to spiritually bitch slap them into the reality of what they did and exactly where they are, in a battle with themselves between the forces of active addiction and active recovery, and that battle NEVER stops, until we do.
why am i writing this, with such passion this morning. it just may be, that i detect a creeping malaise of dissatisfaction with what i NEED to do to stay clean today, being present in my life. there just may be a bit of smoke, and i am doing my level best to extinguish it before it starts the inferno that is relapse for this addict.
it is however time to wrap this tirade up and look to what i can do to stay clean today, first and foremost, i will not pick-up no matter what, and if i get to the point where that starts to sound like a good idea, i will ask the POWER that fuels my recovery to give me the power to stay clean in that moment and the following one, and the following one, until the idea passes. i have FAITH, that i will get what i NEED, all i have to do is ask. AND ACCEPT THE HELP THAT I AM GIVEN!
so it is off to the showers and into this foggy morning i venture, secure in the knowledge that i do not have to relapse today.

∞ DT ∞