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is an interesting place to start writing about goodwill. this could drop into a writing about motives and my lack of **pure** ones, but that is a topic for another day. what i **heard** this morning, was more of an immediate **gut** reaction sort of thing, rather than a deliberative process. intuition vs deliberation, as it were. something i said yesterday, is coming back to me and is germane to this little discussion this morning.
over the course of the past few days, i have said that if i still was battling the desire to use after all this time clean, i would have just used. what that translates to is that IF the promise of FREEDOM had not been fulfilled for me, there would be no reason for me to stick around. one could go to my motives for saying that and one would discover, at least for me, that the reward ⇛ not having the desire to use, is certainly worth the effort ⇛ living the program. the next right thing, therefore is picking up from where i left off yesterday and moving forward with me life. i have heard it said by more than one of my peers, that service to the fellowship makes them feel “good” and the feelings lasts for more than the twenty minutes,m getting high did. i cannot fault them for that, but it got me thinking about how service, mine specifically, fits into doing the next right the for the RIGHT reason. i am serving to boost my esteem and feel “good” using that service a some sort of replacement for what getting high once did for me? am i serving my fellowship to seek the approval of my peers and as a result of that approval, approve of myself and my life? oops, there i go, into motives already and perhaps motives and the right reason are not inseparable after all. what is more than likely the case for me, my gut reactions are the result of my deeply rooted motives, for good or bad, and what i think is intuitive is actually reactionary. which goes to the point that i really do not have as much freedom as i like to think that i have. addiction hard-wired certain triggers and responses into me, and recovery just alters how those response are manifest.
ARGHH! 😭 😱 😵
quite the rabbit hole i went down there. i know there are theories of behavior that insist all that i do are hard-wired responses to stimuli and that freedom of action is a delusion. i can say this to that, this morning i made the choice, that no matter what, i am not going to use. this morning i admitted i was powerless over addiction and asked the POWER that fuels my recovery to provide me the means to stay clean today. this morning i will be present and accept the opportunities i am presented to stay clean and be a better version of me. i cannot say if this is a behavioral reaction to an endorphin cascade and quite honestly i do not care. what i am certain of, because of the recovery program i choose to live, i GET to make that choice today, and that choice is the next right thing to do and the reason may or may not be the right one. for me, i make that choice, because i happen to like where i am, especially when i do not need to do a little drop of poison, just to get out my front door.
whether or not i am doing the next right thing to get a chemical reward or because it just is, does not matter this morning., what matters i that when presented with a choice, some of the time, i can make the decision based on the principles i have been taught and not out of selfish, sel;f-centered, self-will, just for today.

∞ DT ∞