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my defects of character affect my will and my life and accepting that maybe i want something different. it is quite true, i have defects of character. it is also true, that i am more than a collection of those defects and i am able, through the recovery process, redirect the behaviors that arise from those defects. recently, my desire to be in “control,” which arises from one or more of those defects, has been keeping me from moving forward in my recovery. i have already written about that, and suffice it to say, i have yet to write out an inventory that details how powerless i am. i am not some sort of recovery guru and have no high ground upon which to perch and i do GET, that my choice not to do the work i have in front of me, will not make me any better, nor will it simply evaporate into thin air. it is not laziness, although that would be a wonderful foil, but rather lack of self-worth ⇝ i simply do not believe i am worth the pain it will cause. and so it goes in the big world ⇝ my pain free life is not achievable and will eventually and quite inevitably cause the sort off damage to myself, that i have been trying to avoid.
moving forward this morning, in the past few weeks, i have had the privilege of speaking to some of my peers, who believed that they should try some “controlled” using. they got out of the death spiral, or never really entered one, through their own force of will, which i certainly have to applaud. speaking to them, was like talking to rocks, as for everything i said, they had a counter, a deflection, a justification or a rationalization. they were willing to go this far and no further and seemed to hoped i would understand, and i certainly do, i celebrate their terminal uniqueness and certainly hope they find a path that leads to something more. for this addict, however, what it cemented into my mind, is that i need not go there. i do not have to live a lie, even if i am getting away with doing so. i do not have to say i am “co-dependent,” when i am actually addicted to a sick and twisted relationship. i can be honest enough with myself and those whom i trust to allow myself the freedom to try something new and completely different. i do not need to see myself as “complex” in order to put distance between myself and my peers and although i have been noodling around in dangerous territory lately, i am quite sure that i will not be able to use even legal substances successfully. i do not believe moderation is part of my make-up and inevitably i will be caught in the death spiral of active addiction.
the lesson i am taking away from hearing those others tell me about where they were and are, is that i am no different than they are, no better and certainly no worse. it is not what i used or what substance i relapse on, that is the issue, as for me beer and heroin are just two of the many choices, i can choose to use, no different on the scale of things, than any other substance. just because one is legal, does not make it okay for me to use. when i make arbitrary decision of where some substance should go on the scale of “badness,” i am laying the ground work for my next use, and building my reservation, because then i can say: “well, at least it was not…”
today? well today, i am grateful for knowing and accepting that anything i put in front of my recovery i will lose. that does not mean that i always live by that notion, but knowledge is a stepping stone to wisdom. today i choose to be a bit wiser than i was yesterday, armed with a whole boatload of new diversions for allowing myself to see the truth. it is true i have heard it all, but now i have a few new twists on the same old story to polish up and add to my repertoire of denial, obfuscation and self-deceit. armed with that knowledge i guess it is time to hit the showers and head on out to make the freaking donuts.

∞ DT ∞