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believe that the FIRST STEP applies to me? if one is looking for some earth shaking confession here, one has come to the exact wrong place. no matter how many times i have tried to disqualify myself from recovery and what STEP ONE entails, i always arrive at the same conclusion, i am freaking powerless over addiction and as a result my life can be unmanageable. seven months of “getting over” on the justice system, pretending to be in recovery, finally got my attention, but only AFTER i had got caught. eighteen months of being &38220;around” the program, pretending to be in “recover” when the best i could actually achieve was abstinence drove me to become a member, but only AFTER i ended up in a room thousands of miles from home, with a pile of one of my favorite substances “calling my name.” for this addict, one might believe that those two little examples were more than enough to get me to live a FIRST STEP, but time and again, i have found myself believing that i had power over some aspect of my addiction and suffering the consequences as a result. as one of the men who call me their sponsor is fond of saying, i will tell myself whatever lies i need to tell myself in order to bolster the notion that somehow i am different from my peers and after accumulating some time clean, i have “learned” how to do this life thing without any sort of program or guidance.
thinking about my peer, who decided that using was the solution to his “issues” and was not able to ask for a ride to detox, i am more than a bit conflicted. the question is, should i have changed my clothes and drove out to get him to DETOX even though we did not ask me to do so? where i keep going was that he was under the influence and not in his “right” mind, so i “should” have made the decision for him, even after hearing him waffle between going and not going. where i keep ending up, after spinning for a bit, is that it is not my job to carry the addict. no matter how bad i feel for him, making the choice and asking for the ability to implement that choice, falls on to him and not me. as comforting as that might have been to me, in days past, even though i know it is the correct action, i do not feel all that good about it, especially when it was in my power to keep the consequences from falling so harshly upon his head and shoulders. when i choose to keep someone from feeling how powerless thay are, i am setting them up for failure, as i may not be able to “rescue” them from their actions the next time.
it is true, i want to change how i feel about this, and i cannot. where i have to go this morning is to accept that not only am i powerless over my own addiction, i am. as i have so painfully learned, powerless over the addiction of my friends, my peers and my associates as well. surrendering to that simple fact of life, will allow me to move forward into this day and see what i need to do, to stay clean, just for today.

∞ DT ∞