Blog entry for:

to learn in recovery. while at the meeting last night one of my pet peeves was triggered and i almost missed the point my peer was trying to make. i have often said that i am a stickler for language and find it, at times offensive when my peers use the terms “you and yours” when they mean “i and mine.” that language bomb is often used by the newest members who do not realize it is eerily like giving unsolicited advice instead of speaking about their own recovery. even my peers with some time clean, fall into that trap. i can often forgive or given the opportunity suggest a different manner of sharing which actually conveys personal experience. as heinous as getting unsolicited advice about how to work a program from the newest of my peers may be, being lumped into a generalization about all addicts in recovery, when one of my peers goes out of their way to use “we and ours” instead of “me and mine;” feels far worse to me. yes i share recovery with my peers and yes our program is based on the twelve steps. the fact that one of my peers chooses to overthink a step and comes to the conclusion that because defects and assets are closely linked, that removal of the defect, removes the asset as well, does not mean that “we” as a class find that to be “our” experience. i have been told by one of the worst offenders that they chose to use that language to be inclusive, without realizing exactly what they were implying. when given the opportunity, i let them know why they might choose to share about their own personal journey rather that “yours or ours.”
time to climb down from my soapbox and get to the point. when i hear unsolicited advice or feel generalized into something i am not, i start the whole comparison train rolling in my head. i can overthink what i hear, just as many of my peers do and once that train has left the station whatever message they may have had for me, is lost as i sit there and rebut each and every idea i hear, because they are not “like” me at all. i came to the program “different,” and m,any addicts, who like me, are forced by external powers to be here, do not keep coming back, when that pressure has been removed. i have used that fact of my life as a the wedge between who i am and who “they” are. the “they” in this instance being the majority of my peers who came to recovery for other reasons. i have enough trouble “fitting in” for a variety of reasons, the least of which is the story i continue to tell myself about how “different” i am.
i walk with the grace of a bit of clean time today, but i am far from being “cured.” when i allow my self to feel different, for whatever reason, i am walking down the road to perdition. what that means to me, is that when i share, in a group, or one-on-one, i take great pains to make sure i am speaking about my experience and use language that expresses that without a doubt, as my recovery experience is worth more standing on its own, rather than being hidden in unsolicited advice or all-encompassing generalizations. i do not know how WE recover, but we do. i do know what I do to stay clean, just for today and it is my job to let you guys know how it works for me, myself and I.

∞ DT ∞