Blog entry for:

well, different.
you know, no one ever promised anything about HOW my life would become, if i stayed clean and worked a program. they did promise me FREEDOM from active addiction and nothing more. when i hear others sharing about how they are not getting what i have, in material sense, i have to remind, often quite bluntly, that what i have is the RESULT of the path i have applied to my once desperate existence. when i see a friend, “circling the drain,” i cannot promise them anything more than FREEDOM from active addiction, and some days that sucks. the fact that someone like me, can do this gig, day after day for many days in a row, is certainly evidence that this gig works. the friend i wrote about a year ago? in the wind as far as i can see. i still remember the strain of his refrain, that no one in the recovery community was willing to help him out. it is interesting to me how someone who is distant, disrespectful and judgemental behaves when not a single person lives up to their over-entitled expectations. it has been my experience that is i want respect i have to be respectful. if i want to gain material possessions, i need to go to work. if i want friends, i have to open up and be a friend. if i want those ion my life to do for me, what i cannot do for myself, i need to stop keep a running total of how much i have done for them. if i want others to stop judging me, i need to behave better. it really is as simple as all of that. the amazing part of that notion, is that i have lived it and have seen the consequences that arise from behaving my way into better thinking.
a case in point, once more a cop gets slapped down for abusing his power and the law enforcement community wonders why the populace does not trust them and wants evidence of every single interaction with them. i can tell you it is BECAUSE their peers continue to abuse their power, steal money and possessions or beat the snot out of anyone who does not roll over and play dead for them. it is sad when society has reached the place that they do not trust the very people they pay to protect them, and yet it is a perfectly understandable conclusion to their lack of respect for the the people they are paid to protect. it is the same with me. if i abuse my power, remain distant arrogant and aloof, and disrespect my peers, i certainly will not win friends or influence a whole lot of people.
i cannot state that my recovery path has grown steeper and narrower as i stayed clean, but it certainly has grown different. in fact the longer i stay clean, the easier it is to stay clean. my experience has been that i rarely even think about using and when i do, it never rises above an idle thought. when i hear my peers sharing that they think about using every single day, i do throw a judgement. i judge myself against that standard and start to see myself as different, and the next thought is, because i do not, i must not be an addict. like the fraction of bad cops, running amok, i see myself as justified in making a spurious decision or two, because after all, i am different. there starts my journey into the cesspool of “circling the drain.”
what it comes down to, at least for me, is can i live in FAITH and HOPE today. the cynical side asks why would i want to, after all , the world is a dangerous place, the NSA and the FBI want to know everything about me, Daesh is taking over the world, the cops are going to beat me up for a speeding ticket and every one is out for themselves. this is where the road becomes steeper and narrower, it is not in my recovery, but in my own head. i have to decide i do the next right thing, because it is the right thing to do, whether or not anyone catches me doing it. i stay clean because i enjoy the consequences of not using and one of those consequences is that the desire to use has left me. i live an active program of recovery because when i do, the world is an incrementally better place.i could go on, but what i am trying to say today is that for me, an addict in recovery, it is the program of active recovery that makes my life tolerable, acceptable and yes even enjoyable, despite my best efforts to poison it. recovery is the vehicle that i use to maintain what i have and move forward and just for today, i can be better than i was yesterday.

∞ DT ∞