Blog entry for:

it is more than quite true, at least for me, when i came to the rooms, i had been so altered by my years of using, that what i thought was normal, was just a delusional fantasy that kept me in denial. it is also quite rue, that my return to the human race and human condition has been a slow journey fostered by the steps and working a program of active recovery. despite those two facts, there are times i wonder if i somehow have that all ass-backwards and that what i have become is the anomaly and what i was, was what i was meant to be. the very fact that i am an addict, who has not used for more than a day or two, lends itself to all sorts of different interpretations and my amazingly magnifying mind can certainly take that fact and run with it as well. before i tread down any of those paths, i need to acknowledge another one of my tribe, who has hit another milestone:

John SH.
EIGHT(8) Years of doing this gig,
Just For Today!
Congrats, my friend.

so as an addict, my so-called normal state is to get high. it seems the part of me that i call addiction is hard-wired to seek out that sort of state. it is not that i want to change the way i feel, although that is an excellent side effect. it is not that i want to escape from reality, no matter how temporarily, once again another strong selling point. it is, for me, that i just want to get high. my incessant need to get high, and even higher, drove me to do things that were against my moral fiber, even reprehensible in my eyes and the eyes of the society that i live in. each time i caved in and violated the sense of right and wrong that i was cultured into accepting, i became a little more jaded and certainly more familiar with rolling through the whole exercise of rationalizing and justifying my latest adventure in amorality. bit by bit, i stripped away all that was decent within me, numbed away any sense of concern for others, and found myself actually desiring the state of being increasingly alone. as dark as that may seem, it only starts to scratch the surface of where self-interest took me. i can continue with this exercise in the demonization of who i was, but i am quite certain by now my point is quite clear. i was not any sort of person, i could be proud of being,
so after my little foray into online group dynamics yesterday, i took a hard look at who i think i am today, during my 10TH STEP last night, and was not surprised when i uncovered the fact of my bias against zealots of any type. part of drove my little online adventure in being different was that the group i had been following for so long, is a group of spiritual bullies and the attraction i felt was that of active addiction. here was a place where i could pound people to dust, use the literature of my recovery fellowship to cut them to pieces and be supported by the most vocal part of that community, and for more than just a minute i “liked” that! i had the desire to be accepted as a zealot and do what many zealots do, proselytize to the world their narrow-minded and rigid belief structure, and that is not who i want to be anymore.
recovery, as exemplified by working an active program, means more to me today, than violating my moral standards just to fit in. it si true, today i want to be connected and a part of the world around me, but it is also true that i no longer want to compromise who i am, to do that. just for today, i am learning that being is much more important than being something or someone. just for today, i can see where i have been and make the course corrections to go where i am striving to go, because the program of recovery i follow allows me to do so. it is after all, a great day to be clean.

∞ DT ∞