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the easier it becomes to accept responsibility for myself. so here it is, simply stated for all the world to see: it is easier to accept myself as sick, rather than bad. i get that, and for a long time that worked for me, however what it led to was some very strange attitudes and beliefs that needed to be removed for me to continue on the path of recovery.
when i was first getting clean, the weight of my sins, imgagined and real, was quite the heavy burden for me to bear. shifting blame to a disease called addiction, helped clear some of that weight and allowed me to progress with a program of recovery. as time went on, that little Jedi mind trick, morphed into something quite more and far more dangerous to me than the weight of the remorse of what i had done while using. i began to see the part of me i call addiction as a separate person, an alien invader of sorts that MADE me do things, think things and say things that i DID NOT want to do. i could easily live life as a fractured person, after all that is what i thought i heard and i was not well enough, yet, to stop the blame game. having multiple personalities was nothing new, after all my evil twin Raoul was always present for me to blame for what i did and said when i was high, or looking to get the ways and means to get high. Raoul, Peter Pan, Prometheus, Descartes were all me, in one form or another. having a recovering person and an addicted person within, just simplified matters. working the STEPS, at least the first time and most of the second time, just reinforced that belief, after all i am not responsible for my addiction. quite the loophole, and one that kept me sicker than i needed to be.
today, well as comfortable as the disease concept is, i accept that addiction is as much a part of me as my appendix or tonsils. not that i need either of those vestigal organs to live, in fact that can be removed when they get diseased. addiction is a part of me, and whether i look at it as a disease or a personality trait, really no longer matters to me, it is aprt of the whole person i am becoming and more than likely will never be removed.
sounds quite hopeless, and it would be, if the story ended there. the HOPE come in the form of an active program of recovery. just as the part of me i call the addict, often tells me that ones will be more than enough, the part of me that is recovery counters with a brief resumé of my past history, how one was never enough and how once i got high, my mindset shifted over to getting high again and staying that way. what and how much did not matter, and what i had to do, could be rationalized and minimized away with a liberal application of chemical courage. it is, as if. i never stopped using at all, and i hve seen the effects on my peers who believed otherwise, so why would it be any different for me.
so as i finish writing this, and start to consider what to do now that i have enough coffee in me and have enjoyed a cigar in the morning, i am more certain that for me, self-acceptance means accepting that addiction is part of me, will remain part of me and if i want more than i have, all i have to do is keep applying the principles of recovery, just for today.

∞ DT ∞