Blog entry for:

bond of recovery, because i certainly cannot do this by myself, the recovery gig, that is. to be quite frank, i suck at taking advice and i am enamored with dispensing it left and right. more than once freely giving advice has come back to bite me in my a$$, even when it is given to just the men i sponsor. i want to “help” the cliff they are barreling towards and prevent the clusterfVck i see coming, BUT i as i have learned through my own experience, letting them crash and burn, is better than trying to avoid the the looming disaster. they learn, as i have, that what i think may be GOD's will for me, is a spiritual smoke-screen i have erected to cover my self-will rum riot. as it is, my desire to be helpful has never been diminished, but my delivery has, as i saw that as my self-will competing against theirs and in the long run, everyone loses in those situations.
this morning, feeling the bod of the fellowship that stretches back to the beginning was comforting, and i am not talking about what some of my peers call the “parent” fellowship and its many derivatives. quite honestly, addicts were never accepted there and to base my recovery on the notion that one substance or behavior was what took me to my knees, is a dangerous thing for me to do. i could certainly hide out in those other places, even qualify for thirty or more of them, including the ones that speak of co-dependency and relationships, BUT i know that my path lies in the fellowship that took a, seed of an idea and expanded it to be greater than that of its source. i have great respect for all of those other fellowships, as they must work for someone, or they would have shriveled up and died on the vine. for me, as an addict, i certainly know that i am not powerless over any one substance or behavior, and cannot limit my thinking in that respect.
thinking about the bond i have to the tradition of a body of literature that originated in committees of addicts world-wide, fills me with the HOPE, that even when i see someone about to crash and burn, i can bite my tongue and wait to be asked, what i think about it. i also am quite certain that today i do not have all the answers, but the answers are in the EXPERIENCE, STRENGTH and HOPE of my peers, and the literature with which i have been gifted. i may not speak with voice of any HIGHER POWER, but i am guided by the principles that bind me to the fellowship. what was once a NEED ➦ giving unsolicited advice, has been reduced to a DESIRE and i know how to handle desires these days ➦ surrender them to the POWER that fuels my recovery and move along. desire may or may not be self-will, but the answers i “feel” as a result of letting go, i know are not. the trick for me, is knowing the difference between what i think and what i feel, and day by day, i am certainly getting better at that as well.

∞ DT ∞