Blog entry for:

to willfully ignore the **voice** of addiction. first and foremost, i do NOT hear voices, of any sort, running through my head, and i am quite sure the **voice** spoken of the in the reading is metaphorical. speaking for myself, and only for myself, nor do i **hear** the **still quiet voice** from within during my daily practice of STEP ELEVEN. now that i have the preliminaries out of the way, i certainly can move on.
part of the issue i take with “voices” goes back to a time before i finally “got” and accepted who and what i really am. there was a time when i thought of and spoke of, addiction being some sort of foreign invader, alien in nature and influencing me in hushed and quiet tones. as long as i thought of addiction as being outside of who i am, i could never do anything more than plod through my existence, just not using, no matter what. i was fortunate that one evening, a member of another fellowship, popped over to our meeting and spoke of their disease as part of who they were, rather than something that had been attached to them bu force, sucking the life energy out of them, one day at a time. although the reading was about the “TRUTH” what they shared that night, started a chain reaction within me, leading to my acceptance as addiction is part of me. it probably has always been a part of me and i am quite certain it will be there when i die. the disturbing part of that integration is that when i see addiction as a part of me, what i then hear is: “i want myself dead, but i will settle for getting loaded.”
when i stop looking at addiction as a separate and quite malignant force from outside, the true nature of what recovery is all about, is revealed to me. it is my omnipresent, internal dialogue that the part of me i call addiction hijacks. it is my DESIRE that the part of me i call addiction stokes. in this sense i am my own worst enemy and the best foil, with the help of my peers, for the destruction that addiction still wreaks in my life. when i choose to be something more than just another addict running amok in mere abstinence, i get so much more out of the program of recovery, i choose to live today. no longer do i separate out parts of me to “treat” or ignore, because i am addiction as well as recovery. as the disparate parts of myself, become whole, i get to see what is really going on, at least for me. moire importantly, i can share what allowing myself to become more whole does for my life and allow my peers to see their addiction as whatever they choose to. for me, the easier softer way is to treat all of me, regardless of how painful and disturbing the realization that i am my addiction may be. on that note, i think i will take all of me, down the road to work, so all of me can get paid, once again and continue to live with a roof over my head, in a climate-controlled space and with a belly full of breakfast, just for today.

∞ DT ∞