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i will look and listen to the experience of others for the answers i need.
yes it is true, the longer i stay clean, the more i seem to have to learn. not necessarily about staying clean, but certainly about life itself. the ole bromide, that i am certainly apt to use for a number of reasons, “the longer i stay the less i seem to know,” is quite true and appropriate for me.
once upon a time, i certainly knew everything, or at least i thought i did. that period of my life that started in active addiction, finally ended after i had finally accumulated quiet a few days clean. that was the same time, my proverbial head got pulled from my a$$, as the saying also goes and i woke up out the state of blissful ignorance, i had striven so hard to maintain. yes thinking that i knew everything about recovery and acting on that knowledge, kept me in a state of ignorance and as i look at others in the same phase of their recovery, i see how blissful they really are and can apply that to my own recovery path, in retrospect.
there are some, who never want to own that they are addicts, and still speak of the “the disease” AS IF IT IS SOME ALIEN INVADER OR OUTSIDE INFLUENCE. that attitude protected me form all sorts of realizations and recriminations, for the longest time, and i get why others would want to be blissful;ly unaware of their part in their their ongoing addiction. that layer of denial, kept me from applying the third disturbing realization into all areas of my life, and i could “treat” each of the manifestations of my addiction, as a symptom of this disease, instead of an inherent part of the whole me. part of my vision of the man i want to become, is becoming whole. as an addict in addiction, i learned how to separate and compartmentalize, my personality and psyche, based on my perceived needs at the time. owning that i am an addict, and as an addict, everything i see, do and touch, is colored by and filtered through the part of me i call addiction, allows me to learn from what is going on around me, as well, as inside of me. no longer is addiction some mysterious black-box, that fills me with dread. i may not know why or how, addiction works, BUT i can see its effects on my life and how i affect others, and learn from those interactions. i can stop worrying about what goes on inside the box., and accept that it just is. it simplifies and yes amplifies my life in recovery, as i no longer have to protect my fragile ego from the realization that the FIRST STEP, actually asks me to make.
now, and only now, can i be teachable, because i have the need to see, what others do, in their daily lives and what i can do, to apply their experience to mine. even those who are still lurking in the shadows that their feigned passions, is a cover up for their attitude that they know all that they need to know about addiction and recovery. intuitively, what this leads to is, that i need no longer share, just to hear the sound of my own voice. i need no longer parrot back the party line and hide behind a façade of being everything to everyone and carrying more clout than i really do. no longer, do i need to be every man and hide the sins and stains of addiction, past and present from my peers in the room. yes i can be whole and walk with pride, that today i am an addict, who knows just enough to be dangerous, but is willing to learn a bit more, because there is quite a bulk of knowledge i have yet to possess.

∞ DT ∞