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using right to the end, i make no secret about that. yet here i am, several thousand days later, still clean and still doing this recovery gig. it might seem an odd lead in to a blog about shame and secrets, but one will have to bear with me as i get to the point. not only did i enjoy using right to the end, i led a secret life after i came to my first meeting and before i finally was sentenced to abstinence. for me, there was absolutely no shame or guilt in leading that double life, claiming clean-time, spouting off chapter and verse of recovery literature and using whenever the opportunity came barreling down the pike. in fact there was a certain thrill when i considered that i was “getting away” with something and appearing to be what i was not.
these days, as my busy life and some choices i make keep me from being physically present for meetings in my local fellowship, i often wonder if i am not living my life in a similar mode. appearing to be a recovering addict, when one sees me, but living a life of active addiction, save for the using part. i can go round and round with this notion. justifying why i am doing what i am doing, the reality is however, i am not as active in my local fellowship as i was a year ago and it could be easily interpreted as the beginning of the long slide out of the rooms and back to the using life.
it is no secret that i find meetings, at time, boring, mundane and lacking any content that affects me directly. it is also no secret that i have the resources to “vote with my feet” and attend the meetings that speak volumes to me. the real fact is that when i am dissatisfied with what i am not “getting” from any particular meeting, i am being entitled, selfish and self-centered. even worse, maybe what i need is there, but i am blocking the message by looking at the messenger, i am putting personalities before principles. it is also no secret that i am an avid participant in carrying the message to my incarcerated peers, and even though i say i do not want to have that effort lauded and spoken about, there is certainly a part of me, that relishes the attention and fawning that some of my peers get into, when they speak of the service i perform. my DESIRE to be seen as something more does not seem to have diminished one jot, since i started “coming around the rooms.”
ah, but i am my biggest critic and as i reread what i have pounded out, i can hear the voice of the part of me i call addiction, weaseling its way into my conscious thoughts and driving a wedge between me and my life in active recovery. those whispers to a scream lead down a dark path towards abandoning what i has given me the freedom to be here, in this far from perfect life. i do see the symptoms of becoming “recovered” popping up all over my life, even though i quietly exercise my program of recovery. what i see is the signs of me separating myself from the pack and starting to seek another way and i am not quite sure that is a good or bad thing. i do know this, today i will be at my home group and hang with some of my peers, who are actually my friends. as to what happens as the day progresses? well that chapter has yet to be written, for certain, i will go have a nosh, a meeting and summit Mt Sanitas, what happens next has yet to be written or planned for, just for today.

∞ DT ∞