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recognize my progress, after all, i have been doing this recovery gig, for more than just a minute?! a familiar lament from those who are new in the rooms, and from my lips as well. it is as if, i expect a medal, a certificate of achievement or a glowing review, for doing what the other 85% do, automatically. you know, make homes, have loving relationships, show up for work, use socially and live life with care and concern for others. all that stuff i never learned to do, UNTIL i started to walk this path of recovery. even then, for the longest time, the changes in my attitudes and behaviors were far too subtle to be detected by those outside of the rooms, or so i told myself.
what the REAL problem was and still can be, is that when i am with my peers, i want to come off as some sort of recovery guru, with all the answers and spreading spiritual wellness to all. when i am at work, i want to come off as a team player and someone who has a clue or two of what he is doing. when i am with my family, i want to come off as the “good” one, the one that came back from the brink. all of these different situations or at least my DESIRE to live in these situational personas, is a BIGLY stumbling block to my recovery process. it is contrary to my path of recovery, because it feels as if the fractured person who once was, is still living in my skin. the reading suggests, strongly that IF i want others to notice the changes manifest in my recovery process, i need to carry everything forward into all aspects of my life, in short i need to be me, in all situations. worrying about what others notice or do not, as the case may be, will not advance my progress.
moving along, a couple of things that were shared at the meeting last night, are still reverberating in me. the first was that one of the members shared how they had using “under control,” in fact it was because of their daily, controlled drug use that they were able to take care of bidness. i was struck right between the eyes, by something i had believed for quite some time, that is before my life was so rudely tossed upside down. that is was because of my daily use, that i was capable of living in the real world. i looked past the friends i left behind, i ignored the fact that i was incapable of loving or being loved and used my social acceptability as the measure of successful and controlled using. what i could not see, was that in reality, i was maintaining a lifestyle that was a lie, keeping each of the lives of my fractured self, as separate as possible, for as long as possible. in the end, i can now see, that i was lying to myself about who and what i was, to get what i needed from the world around me. the second notion that disturbed me, was their insistence that their spouse join them in recovery. for them, their marriage and family was more important than finding a new way to live, and recovery was a sacrifice they were willing to make, in order to preserve that illusion of social acceptability. for me, i never even considered whether or not it could be the drugs, and as a result never had the opportunity to make that choice until i was ratted out. i do however, understand that dilemma, and on a daily basis, i choose to put my recovery in front of everything else.
today, i am not someone transformed by the ingestion of a little drop of poison, as i choose to live a differnt way. what i am walking away with, this morning, is that IF i want to continue my recovery progress, i need to let go of how i think i look to others in this venue or that, and just be an addict in recovery, who is doing this gig, just for today.

∞ DT ∞