Blog entry for:

that staying clean is not paying off, and that thinking stirs up self-pity, resentment, and anger. after a quick sweep of the dog poop and looking at my fantasy football teams, i am ready to work this particular topic to death. yes, i certainly go to the place where i feel like in am not getting what i “deserve,” in my recovery. recovery is hard work. i meant if i knew way back when, what i know today, my choice to take recovery over incarceration, may have been totally different. i was certainly naive about what that choice was going to do to my life, and having foreknowledge of what recovery was going to cost me, well in that state of mind, ii would have made a very poor decision, as i was certainly a slackard and severely lazy. that being said, wait for it, a bit of a rainbow here, i am GRATEFUL that i made a misinformed choice, as my life took a direction that was beyond my wildest dreams.
as my sponse has shared in public about how much money is enough: ALL OF IT, so it is with the material, spiritual and emotional gifts that recovery and working a program, bring to my life. is seems i have an insatiable appetite for the good life and still moan the fact that it is not handed to me on a silver platter, just by having the desire. the message i heard, was everything that everyone has when i got to the room, could be mine as well. i took that to mean that if i stayed clean, i would be richer, better looking and certainly more popular. that part may be true, the part of that i missed and still haunts me, is that ONLY happens IF i do what they did. yes i want the gifts and do not want to do the work. that attitude forks into entitlement and victim-hood. that my friends is the rub.
i am entitled to success, money, power, popularity and emotional stability, because i stopped using and that is what the other 85% get, or at least when i am looking at the world through the eyes of the part of me i call addiction. just not using, is somehow supposed to result in a ginormous payoff and it was supposed to happen the minute that i stopped using. entitlement, coupled with a lack of patience contribute to the belief that this stuff just does not work for me, so why should i bother?
therefore i am a victim, and as such somehow deserving of special consideration and attention. simply put, i did not ask to be an addict, i lost years of my life to active addiction, hence i was and still can be a victim of addiction, one of the millions for whom getting high every single day is the only thing that matters. how, after a quarter of a century, living that lifestyle am i supposed to be grateful for that load of sh!t?
i hear the voice of those attitudes, all the time, especially from those who have been “around” the program for some time. i understand that belief, and the only way i can counter it, is by taking the suggestions offered up in the rooms, and this very reading: strive to be grateful for what i have. as sad and as cynical as it may sound, when i sit on the edge looking in, i deny myself the opportunity to fill the void in my soul, with the gifts of recovery. i lack the willingness to do something about my situation and in due course, i will get miserable enough that i will use again. the fantasy that the part of me i call addiction likes to play out, is that somehow, my appetite to get high has changed over the course of the days i have,, and i will be able to partake in a socially acceptable manner, without the consequences that were manifest in my life, when i first noodled around with the idea, that it may be the drugs. of course, it was never the drugs, drugs just prevented me from seeing who and what i was, and finding a different manner of living. today, especially, it is still not about the drugs, it is all about addiction and how that continues to play out in my life. yes, i can moan the fact that i am an addict, and do nothing but medicate my uncomfortable feelings away, either with drugs or behaviors, or i can be grateful that i have allowed a program to work the changes in my life, that have set me on the path of becoming someone i never believed was possible, even when i was just coming back from the edge.

∞ DT ∞