Blog entry for:

of my peers, one will almost never hear me identify as a **grateful recovering addict.** that does not mean that i am not grateful. it does not mean i am not a recovering addict, for me, a garden-variety addict, i identify without qualifiers as i NEED to stress to myself and my peers, that i am no different than them when it comes to addiction, recovery and where i choose to find the principles that have brought me this far into my new life. do not misunderstand the statement above, i am not casting a judgement on my peers who choose to qualify the word “addict” when they identify, as i am not very good at seeing into the hearts of others to determine their motives. if i do not qualify myself as a “grateful addict,” then how do i share my gratitude in a succinct manner that even the FNG can understand.
that has certainly been an issue for me, across the course of my recovery, even when i was doing my best to be “Miss Merry Sunshine,” and share through the rose-coloured glasses of “sharing for the newcomer.” being a cynic and not all that optimistic about life in general, one might often wonder why i bother to stay clean at all. after all, i can always find a dark and dreary cloud in the clearest of skies. all of that aside, the facts are that i lost the desire to nearly two decades ago and after a bit of time, i take for granted what gift that happens to be. having the desire to use, removed from me for thousands of days in a row has set up all sorts of other gifts that i have earned by doing this recovery gig. sure i have a POWER in my life that fuels my recovery. that POWER provides me the opportunity on a daily basis to get everything i NEED and many of the things i WANT. i still can choose to ignore that feeling in my gut as i move deeper and deeper into self-will and accept the consequences for doing so. there was going to be a very big BUT there, BUT what i heard was that if i choose to negate accepting the consequences for acting out in addiction or self-will, i diminish what i am trying to say. i am grateful for the life that i have built as a result of that very first gift: removal of the desire to use.
i guess, if i stay in that mode and let go of my actions and their consequences when acting out in self-will, i can have a brighter, more optimistic outlook on my life. i may not be the best at expressing how grateful i am to have a program of active recovery, that i CHOOSE to use on a daily basis. i still may see the doom and gloom of the consequences of my bad choices and rail at the unfairness of a POWER that allows me to make bad choices. i forget that when i arrived in the rooms, my choices were made for me,addiction ruled the roost, only to be replaced by 20th Judicial District. when i think back to the days of no choice, and com,pare it to today, where the choices of how to live and walk through each day are overwhelming, i feel that sense of gratitude and i understand that is what i need to be sharing when the gratitude jag is upon me. it is really f*cking nice to be overwhelmed by choices as opposed as constrained to a narrow and often bitter path.

∞ DT ∞