Blog entry for:

certainly one of the hardest paradoxes i have ever come across. oh sure with nearly sixty-seven hundred days clean, i am coming to grips with it, but it still rings in my head with and enormous “HUH!”
mulling this concept over in my head, i can see that as i stayed clean, because i just ceased fighting, i began to understand more and more what this notion was all about, and the freedom it allowed me, just for today. in my little chat with my sponse the other night we spoke of my journey to this place in my life, or more accurately to that place, as i have once again moved along in my journey of days clean. time and again, back when i was getting clean and at various times across that journey measured by days, i wondered if i really was an addict, and looked for the evidence to make that fact go away. in other words, i once again picked up the fight and started working towards freeing myself of the onus of recovery. i will not sugar-coat anything, the fact is, recovery is hard work, and often it can look like addiction, active or passive, looks a whole lot easier to do. ditching my responsibilities, pretending that my employers OWE me a living, believing i am entitled to support from my government or expecting the world to treat me as if i am someone special, all come back and for me are classic harbingers that i have begun the slide out of active recovery. that entire t5reasure trove of bad ideas certainly makes my life look a whole lot easier and out of that flows the notion, well if all of that is true, than i am not an addict and a little trip to a perfectly legal substance store will dispel that notion once and forever. after all, if i can do just a little dab of dis or dat and not end up with a needle in my arm, i must not be an addict. and the beat goes on!
once again it comes down to this notion, IF i want to live a life free from active addiction, then i must stop trying to fight the notion that i have any power over addiction. when i was using, i was not the “quitting” type. i never tried to stop, but i did change favorites, delivery methods and the whens and wheres of using. the fact that today i choose not to use, was never a consideration for me, back in the day, i just used,m that was all there was to it, and i did not feel the need to explore it any further. it was in as sense a surrender to addiction, without naming or considering what how my life was affected. the fact that i am clean today, by choice, put me in a group of extraordinary people, my peers in recovery. those men and women have never lied to me about what to expect, although from time to time, i hear them sugar-coat and peer through the rose-coloured glasses of “sharing for the newcomer.” that of course, is how they have decided to practice the 12TH step, me? well i am just starting that journey all over again fro the fourth time. i know this going in, i do not want to share any different than i am: gritty, cynical, and a realist. i could walk around with my head in the clouds, but the POWER that fuels my recovery, has not seen fit to turn me into a lotus-eater. i am who i am, and i get to be who i am, today, because i surrender to the fact that i am powerless over addiction and leave at that quite simply understandable fact.
it is time to wrap this up and ease on down the road to work and everything my day holds. life is good today even if i have to cease fighting the notion that i am an addict and am powerless over addiction.

∞ DT ∞