Blog entry for:

i am not one of those who shares about the **voice of my addiction** or that **my disease lies to me, in my own voice.** i certainly went down that path before, but as i grew my recovery and stopped separating the **addict** from myself, it felt **wrong** to continue to cast my struggles with addiction in that light. something that i said to one of the men i sponsor comes back to haunt me now. i told him that who i am is not what i do. my identity is not based on how i make a living, who i hang out with or the fact that i am an addict. all of those are facets of who i am and the days of basing my self-identity on a single dimension, are behind me. this process stems from a decision i made some time ago, to stop speaking of addiction and its manifestations as some alien being that possesses me. once i took the step to accept that addiction is part of me and that i am the addict, recovery became a whole lot easier to do. it is not as if the fallout of that decision made it any easier to own that fact. there are certainly times when i wanted to blame what i do on the addict that i am. each and every time i hear my voice, starting the story with “since YOU are not responsible for YOUR disease…” i know i am in trouble, as i have already started the process of shifting the blame away from myself. the clue in that statement is the shift in pronouns, if i see addiction as something outside of me, i GET to absolve myself of everything.
back to the reading after that long diversion. it is my own voice and a very comfortable and familiar pattern of behavior that drives my need to “get away.” when i start to break apart the pieces of who i am, i quickly fall into the “what i do” as the foundation of my identity. i see myself doing the next right thing, most of the time, as who i am, and need to find a way to explain away, not doing the next right thing. sitting in the meeting last night, one of the tourists showed up and i was “put off” by the fact they even dared to show up. the fact is, their odious behavior got them banned from a public place, so in my opinion i see them as deigning to grace my fellowship with that same presence. there was no compassion nor did i have any desire to hear what they were going to share. what i failed to do, is to see them as my peer and realize that they had bought their chair in the room, with the same currency with which i bought mine. regardless of “what they did&” they were still an addict in recovery. my only saving grace was that i did not say or do anything that i needed to admit i was wrong in doing. it is true i fired off a text to a sympathetic ear and that was my clue that i needed to change my attitude to one of at minimum acceptance of the fact that i may see more of that person and i will need to allow room in my heart to accept and tolerate them.
the time has come to pack this in and head on off to work. it is a good day to carry my recovery into my daily activities as well as remember that what i do is only a part of who i am.

∞ DT ∞