Blog entry for:

**the therapeutic value of one addict helping another,** i must practice active listening. yeah, quite the no-brainer, not a whole lot for me to add, so i guess i will move along.

Linda L,
i miss you, but it is certainly a miracle
that today you celebrate 11 years clean
Don't go away!.

so what occurred to me yesterday, as i was listening to one of my least favorite topics, hashed and rehashed at the meeting last night, was a thought about the piece of literature, i quoted from yesterday. yes i have to admit, i was less than actively present as the members of the meeting shared one of two experiences with the topic at hand, which could have been easily dropped after the first five shared. i guess i was meant to hear it and as the parade of me-too's went on and on, i realized that maybe i was in a minority in this respect, and perhaps the addict who was still suffering from other problems needed to be told that yes it was okay to go to a professional for outside issues.
enough of that little rant, where i was going this morning, is the duality of human nature as expressed through a serial author of the nineteenth century. the characters while vividly drawn, seemed to be good or evil, noble or despicable, saintly or demonish. however, as the story unfolds, most are shown to be somewhere in between, even the most heinous acting characters, have redeeming qualities and can be seen to be victims of their circumstances, and even the most saintly are murderers. carrying that analogy into the rooms of recovery and those who have been around those rooms, i get the sense that when i pigeon-hole one of my peers, by casting a judgement, i am writing a fiction as twisted as Charles Dickens. yes i hear some pretty ludicrous stuff, of course all of my feelings are valid, even if my thinking is not. feelings are an emotional reaction to the world around me, and need to be respected and acknowledged, not dismissed. i am not a victim of my feelings anymore, as the steps have provided me the means to step back and act differently than i did before. i GET to make a conscious choice to act in a different manner to stuff that still makes me angry and pissed off. the truth, finished or unfinished, is that i am an addict PERIOD! the truth is that anything that affects my recovery is material to share upon in a meeting. and the truth is that even if i find it hard to sit and listen to the same old stuff, over and over again, i am there for a reason, and that is to stave off my return to active addiction. today, well today, i have to run to work and do what is expected of me. that is a GIFT of active recovery and i GET to be part of my solution today and not bailing someone i love out of jail, again!

∞ DT ∞