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continue enjoying the life i have found, i have to implement a daily program of recovery. yesterday, keeping recovery fresh, today maintaining that program to keep my life on track. those two topics are so similar, that to me, they appear redundant, after all, they both are about HOW i live a program and what i do on a daily basis. it would be nice to say that i no longer need to tend to either of these tasks as i “got” recovery gig down. i have seen what happens to my peers, mas they become involved in their lives and move along. i believe that what they decide, for better or worse, is what they decide. for me, i have found that if i start to pull away from my friends and peers in recovery, i start to think that maybe, just maybe, this time, i can use moderately and not have consequences that are not to my liking. the fact of my life, at least right here and right now, is that i am an addict. as such, it is my nature to avoid responsibility for anything, including the consequences of my behavior. i have seen many of my peers, drift away over the course of my unbroken string of just for todays, some i encounter later on, others i never see again. many of them, come back to the rooms, beaten, broken and desperate for something different, the others? who knows. my point is i feel i am more akin to those who make it back, than to those who do not. so what does that mean to me today?
when i start to think about maintaining my lifer by living a recovery program, i tend to go to the nearly auto-magic actions that have become habitual to me. those are certainly a bulwark against slipping away into the fantasy world of active addiction. as i sit here and contemplate, that over which i have no power, one of the notions that keeps coming up, is that how i perceive the world, through the filter of addiction, seems to be nearly unchanged, regardless of how many step cycles and days clean i have. i can still easily drop into a state of perpetual entitlement, expecting everyone else in the world to get out of my way and shower me with all the gifts and affection i desire. humility, it seems, is not a trait i was born with and as such i can struggle with my relative worth to the world around me. when i am maintaining my program of recovery, doing the auto-magic stuff and CHOOSING to carry my program beyond what i have always done, i realize that i am not entitled to anything, except my seat in the rooms. i see i am not that much different than the other 85% of the human race, i have needs, wants and desires, just as they do. my only foil, to keep desire in check, has been a program of recovery and as i get what i want, i have to remember, that for me, those desires are only present in my life BECAUSE i have an active program of recovery. what my peers do or do not uncover about what they NEED to do to keep their lives on track, because less important to me every day. i go to three meetings a week, because it works for me and i MAKE the time to keep that part of my recovery program. i know how close i am to be a living example of what happens when you take drugs out of the equation and do not fill that void with something else, for me, i become a miserable wretch who inflicts that misery on the world around him, which does very little to boost my esteem, in the eyes of others or even my own.
just for today, i think i will remember who and what i am, and see if i can be just a bit more kind and considerate, after all, living the program goes far beyond the doors of the rooms.

∞ DT ∞