Blog entry for:

about the steps, pondering their meaning, and analyzing their effect is not sufficient for most of me. it is quite true, like most of my peers, i have some native intelligence. i have a pretty fair grasp on reality and can most of the time can accurately predict the consequences of my actions, “good” or “bad.” i also tend to believe that IF i think about something for long enough and with enough passion and fervor, i will arrive at a solution, even if that something is step work or applying spiritual principles. i have an out, however, as part of my daily routine, is writing these little missives to the interwebs. i can certainly say that my experience when it comes to putting to bits and bytes, is not equal to pen and paper, it certainly is one way of getting rid of the grunge that fills my daily life.
once upon a time, i was certain that my recovery was all about the use of substances and that perhaps i would need a separate path of recovery for each of my “addictions.” i was not an addict, rather i had an “addictive personality,” and if i was truly going to recover, i would need to seek multiple paths to reach my goal. i got caught up in what i THOUGHT was the problem and when i finally started writing about that i realized i was so wrong and off base, that i could hardly believe it, what i needed was a new perspective and a different base of comparison. once i finally “got” that i need not be “clean and sober” and that it really was not all about what i used, i could finally move forward into recovery. i really did believe that this was all about substances and had no clue that what i was really trying correct was not my use of drugs or the various sets of behaviors that i used to deal with what was missing within me, working with and listening to my peers these days, i get that what and how i used and behaved is not the issue.
the other part of what i am “thinking” this morning is about how i trick myself into thinking i am doing a good thing, by trying to reinvent what is already there. it is quite easy to look out in the world and see what i think is missing. i grow impatient when things around me are not changing into something better, as fast as i think they should and i want to reach out and take control, after all i have twenty five years of experience in active addiction and if only i know about what that was going to do to my life, maybe i would have stopped a long, long time ago. i could sincerely convince myself that would have been the case, when in actuality, if some old dude, and i mean if someone in their twenties had told me when i was sixteen that i might be an addict, i would have told them how full of shite i thought they were and go back to your rocking chair you ancient fVck. the issue as i see it it, was not a lack of information about how dangerous substance abuse could be, as i was quite certain that i would never do any of those drugs. that same attitude chased me right to the end. as long as i could get off of and avoided those drugs, i was good to go. it took about three years of hanging around the program before i FINALLY got it through my thick skull, that education and information was not the answer, that what i took was not the problem and that abstinence and looking at all of me was only the beginning.
there are many around me are trying to change thew world, and i applaud them for their efforts. when they often lack is that changing the world can only be accomplished when they themselves start to change and become the people they always wanted to be. i may have been a slow learner or just fVcking stubborn, so the length of time it took me to reach the real jumping off point in my recovery, may not translate to others. what i do know, is that until i wrote about what was really going on with me, i was clueless and certainly full of all sorts of great “ideas” about how to change the world. when i finally woke up to what i was doing, it was almost too late to establish myself as a peer in my local fellowship. for me, it was better to spread myself out, so not one soul really ever saw all of me and that nearly killed me. it is a good day to be clean and a better day to be certain that i will be writing about what i am powerless over, in the context of this new set of steps, very,very soon. i have certainly thought about it enough 😆.

∞ DT ∞