Blog entry for:

the freedom to live as i choose.
once upon a time, in a land that feels far, far away, i lived my life in default, and believe i was living a life that i chose and no one ever made any choices for me. that life was dictated be my needs, the first and foremost being: THE NEED TO GET HIGH. all else was secondary, food, shelter and companionship, were afterthoughts and deferred until i met my primary overarching need. denial and dishonesty disguised reality and cloaked me in a warm and quite comfortable cocoon of blaming others and the world in general, for my lack of success and ambition. although active addiction was not like that at first, it quickly morphed into that life and there i was for the better part of a quarter century, allowing life and the world around me to make choices that i was unwilling or incapable of making myself. the nice part was, it was never might fault, because circumstances or others chose for me, so it was theirs. there are moments in my life today, when i long to return to that simpler existence and allow life, my employers, my friend and my family members to make decisions for me, while i check-out for a bit and let the world spin as it will. that desire is always fleeting especially once i realize exactly what it is i am asking for: imprisonment, resentment and a life of unmet expectations.
i was about to go on with an observation of the behavior some of my peers exhibit, especially when they leave the structured environment of incarceration. they struggle with the concept of choosing and it has been my experience that unless they find a way to add the structure they need back into their lives, they will choose to use. i get that, but it does not lessen the pain i feel when i lose another friend or peer to the return of active addiction, but it strengthens my resolve to live a program of active recovery today.
today, i am choosing to sit here and write this, instead of flying over to Boulder to start my work day. i am choosing to hand out and take a test that i can pass today, without any studying, worrying or manipulation. the choices i have made every day for quite a few in a row, allows me to walk in, drop a sample of my bodily fluids off and be confident that there is nothing in them that will preclude me from failing that particular test. just as i can move from job to job, so i can move throughout the rest of the world. once i felt constrained by the circumstances. it was not my need to get high that kept me down, it was life in general, and as long as i could play the downtrodden martyr, i could justify using a little bit of this or that, to remove the sting of not going anywhere. i used to make a joke that i liked taking a certain substance because i could trip off to everywhere without leaving the living room. the brutal irony of that joke was a metaphor for my life. i hallucinated that the life i was living in active addiction was full, fulfilling and exactly what i wanted. that life was a shallow existence that i had become inured to, using was both the cause and the cure, and i survived. when i start romanticizing about those long lost days, i often forget how lonely, isolated and socially disconnected i was. i forget having to eat a $0.25 box of generic mac and cheese, that i had purchased with a check that was certain to bounce, day after day, just because that was all i could afford. i forget the amount of effort it took to feed my need and the amount of effort it took to keep the separate compartments of my life, separate. today, i choose not to have any of that life back again. today, well today i choose to be more than just another using addict, and understand the consequences that choice does bring. for me, it means that i choose not to get sick, because there is a combination of substances that is attractive to me. today, it means not acting out, because i have to hide what i am. today it means i get to live a life, full of fVcking choices and make them one after another, until today is done. it means that the end of my day, i GET to review those choices, their attendant consequences, and decide whether or not it was worth it and what if anything i need to change tomorrow. most of all it means that i need to trust the connection i have built with the POWER that fuels my recovery and walk in FAITH that whatever comes my way may actually be what is best for me, and that if in pay attention, i can find whatever i need to weather the storms of life on life's terms.
so off to pee in a bottle, tra-la-la!

∞ DT ∞