Blog entry for:

all of my personal power, by wailing and whining about how powerless i am. okay, it is true, i came to recovery believing that i was some sort of victim. when i got comfortably ensconced in the fellowship but before i became a member, i used being “powerless” to foster and validate that victim mentality. this has been a battle i have waged for quite some time, withing myself, within the men i sponsor and with the fellowship among my peers. the fact is, i can CHOOSE at any time to stop being a victim of addiction and take personal responsibility for my life.
before io dive into that topic, i need to say, that many of my peers enter the rooms as victims of physical, emotional and sexual abuse. i am not denying that and i am not by any means telling them to “get over it and move on.” they deserve a voice and their own chance to heal the wounds they suffered at the hands of others. i was not abused physically, emotionally or sexually before i got to recovery and yet in my own magnifying mind i believed i was a victim of systemic abuse from society in general. my delusional belief system cheapened the experience of my peers who had actual abuse as part of their lives and today i am here to separate my imaginary persecution from their real life experiences.
yes, when i came to recovery i was quite the victim of circumstances. even though i was an addict, saying those words in open court was a lie in my head and part of what i NEEDED to do, to get over on the unfair and oppressive justice system. needless to say, taking personal responsibility for my life moving forward was not what i had in mind when i got firmly planted in my seat, all i wanted was to get one over on the system and return to the life i thought was so fulfilling.
reading the FIRST STEP and working for the very first time, i was told to inventory everything i believed i was powerless over, and on the first list was all sorts of things that i later came to see were certainly within my power. i quickly shifted from being a victim of the justice system to being a victim of the fellowship, after all, i was not an addict before i walked into the rooms, ”you guys made me one.”
it was not until starting my third round of steps, that i finally saw that although i may be powerless over addiction, i need not be a victim to addiction anymore. when that belief was exploded, i finally started to see how many other places i carried my notion of victimhood to, in fact, that journey of uncovery is gong on still today. i may be powerless over my feelings, i am not however powerless over what i do with those feelings. i am powerless over addiction, but i am not powerless over choosing to act out on my addiction. all of the automagically blaming everything and everyone but me, gets pitched into the bit bucket when i finally choose to take every drop of personal power i have in my life, and exercise it to the maximum effect. when i choose to give it away, by renting space in my head about what the current resident in Casa Blanca may or may not do tomorrow, i lose. when i decide that i am not worth the effort to apply myself and attempt to get what i want, i lose. when i surrender to the inevitable march of time and decide i am “too old,” to try something new, i lose.
this last set of steps was about finding my place in society and the fellowship, uncovering my identity as it were. a pleasant side-effect of that focus, is that i see that being free and knowing my place, comes at a price ➥ i have to take PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY for my life and move past blaming the part of me i call addiction. i need to OWN what i do have power over, surrender to what i am truly powerless over and live in the care of the POWER that fuels my recovery, if i HOPE to get through another day clean.it is a great day to stop being my own victim. it is a good day to acknowledge that although i am powerless over addiction, i can choose to be more than just another junkie, i can be an addict in recovery who wants just a little bit more for his life that mere abstinence, he wants to grow into the person he never thought he could be.

∞ DT ∞