Blog entry for:

when i do something shady and keep it on the down-low, there is a certain thrill of **getting away** with something, that reminds me of my days in active addiction. as i have often shared, there is seven months between the time i went to my first meeting and when i finally got clean and if not for my hubris and arrogance, i would have kept using, as i was **getting away** with using and being compliant to the masters that held my leash. i was fooling the justice system and by taking tokens of clean-time i was pretty sure i was fooling my peers in the fellowships i was pretending to be in. be that as it may, the person i was actually fooling was me, and over the eighteen months of forced abstinence and bitter resentments, before i could finally admit to being an addict, i began to get a clue or two, that i might actually want what was being offered to me: FREEDOM FROM ACTIVE ADDICTION.
the thrill of actually fooling someone, anyone, has yet to leave me, these days, however, i recognize it as a symptom of the spiritual malaise that the part of me i call addiction, loves to feed. that thrill is coupled with the fear, that this recovery gig, is sham and i am no better than i was way back when. in fact i often wonder if this is all a dream and i am laying in a vegetative state in some facility being fed by a tube, wasting away, as a result of my desire to do a “big one.” philosophy aside, when i go down this path, i find myself wondering if that is the case, i might as well enjoy the ride and turn this recovery dream into a using dream. how does one really know if they are “living” or if they a merely a flight of fancy? Descartes might just have been correct when he said: “Cogito, ergo sum… we cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt.”
plodding down that path, i can accept that this is my reality, i am clean, i have learned a thing or two and i might even be well on my way to becoming something more than a using addict. which brings me back to the reading. i am not sure what sort of values i had when i got clean. in fact i am not sure if i ever had a strong sense of doing the next right thing without expectations of rewards or acknowledgement of some sort. for as long as i can remember, once the trigger was tripped, it was all about me, my need to get high and do whatever it took to do so. relationships, education, love, compassion and career were easily disposed of, when i needed to get high. over the course of those days, i learned to feign all sorts of emotions, so i could act the part of being human, and i honestly believed i was fooling everyone and of course the only fool in all those days was me.
as i step out to the real world on this Saturday morning, i am quite sure that maybe, just maybe i can work towards my vision of the man i want to be, by being a bit more genuine, whole and self-assured, just for today.

∞ DT ∞