Blog entry for:

not a moral dilemma.
i have written many times about how uncomfortable i am with the term disease and how it used with respect to addiction. more and more, i find myself, sharing publicly, strictly down the party line, using that exact term, without hesitation or regret. what is happening, i suppose, is that i have come to grips with the fact that, possibly, just possibly, what i say may carry a bit of weight with someone who is new to recovery, and it is easier to help keep them around when i do not go on some hair-splitting semantic witch hunt.
yes i do have trouble using the word disease here, in my semi-private musings, but here i do not care. what i do know, is that when i use the word addiction with others who share both my affliction and the treatment for said affliction. they know what i am talking about. they understand the symptoms, the obsession, the compulsion, the self-centered entitlement, that seems to run strong in most of us. it is the other 85% WHO HAVE DIFFICULTY UNDERSTANDING, and perhaps for them, the disease concept is a good enough explanation. after all, from my brief experience with recovery and my vast experience with active addiction, i see many traits that are common in just about every unique addict i have ever encountered. that commonality, cannot be explained by environment, nurture, or culture. as a result, there are very few explanations left in the bucket, the easiest one is the nature argument, which translates into layman terms as disease.
so with a flick of the wrist i am sick again and not bad, which is not a bad situation for me to be in today, even though i hate thinking of myself as diseased and treated by society as if i was a leper. addiction is far less contagious than leprosy and yet the damage i did in active addiction was far greater, and i certainly did deserve to be shunned and shunted away to some dark corner to take the “cure.” i am grateful that i belong to a fellowship who has the exact opposite notion, that not only should i not be shut away, i should quickly re-enter society and start to make my way as soon as i am physically capable. the other tenet of this program of treatment is: that without constant vigilance and attention to my program, i WILL return to the undesirable state of active addiction. unlike the antibiotics that cure leprosy, i cannot stop taking m y cure, if i have any hope of staying the course of addiction.
it is however time to get rolling. as fall like as today is, i am not falling into depression over the change of seasons. it is a good day to be clean and even a better one to be exercising my right to a better way of licving.

∞ DT ∞