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is what led many of them to seek help in the first place. for me? well my denial system was so well-entrenched that the help i sought was to get out of jail, rather than fix my broken life. the only thing broken, in my opinion at the time, was my involvement with the 20th Judicial District, everything else was just fine.
to be clear, it was not that i did not have any damage in my life, no wreckage that needed to be cleaned up, it was that i was incapable of seeing that damage, accepting the fact that my life was a wreck and i was powerless over all sorts of things, not the least being my addiction. for me, it took time and step work to see that i had even caused any damage, as i rationalized and justified away the behaviors and acts i did, to feed the part of me i call addiction. when i finally got to my very first NINTH STEP, i certainly was, as the reading put it: “the Ninth Step is exactly what we want to do.”
many of those amends from that first list are still are without any direct resolution, as the object of the amend has disappeared. for some, to do those amends would open up old and ancient wounds and as willing as i was to make the amends, these fall under the category of doing more harm. even my recent EIGHTH STEP had one of those.
what i have been taught, is that amends are NOT to soothe my troubled conscience, nor are they a means of shifting the pain to someone else. they are all about learning how to live, without causing harm and changing the manner in which i behave. in fact, those amends on that very first list, as a class, made an enormous change in how i behaved, and each subsequent list, changed me in ways that have allowed me to enjoy the side-effects of living a life in recovery. material gains, self-esteem, relationships and so much more. anyhow, i need to work on one of my recent amends today, or at least do the assignment given to me by my sponsor that will allow me the freedom to move into the NINTH STEP and beyond. it is a great day, to be free from my past, and although i no longer carry the burden of shame and guilt over what i have done, i can never forget, what happens when i choose to live a life of just abstinence, or even worse active addiction, it is those so-called living amends that pave the road to becoming the man i have always wanted to be. so off to the trenches i go.

∞ DT ∞