Blog entry for:

before i get started into a long and boring missive about how unique i am not and how the program provides the tools necessary to overcome any hardships that come my way, i need to say

Congratulations on EIGHT years clean Jay T
JUST KEEP COMING, YOU ARE AN ASSET TO OUR FELLOWSHIP!

so that being said on with the rest of my musing today.
i wish i could honestly say that i have overcome my feelings of uniqueness and being different. i wish i could say that no matter what the day brings that i believe that i can get through it without wanting to use. the truth is that i sometimes i feel like an alien in the fellowship. last night was a good example. i attended a meeting and one of the members shared his usual stuff and then another member thanked him for saying it. i did not get anything from his share and it truly sounded like something i would hear in a treatment program from a counselor who knows about addiction from their books and studies. i just did not get it and left the meeting wondering if something was fundamentally wrong with me, because i missed something that may important. or perhaps, that i am just so different i am incapable of getting what he was trying to say.
-- so it goes --
this morning my meditation brought this issue back into my mind, not what the fellow member shared, but why the fuck i think i am so unique that i have all the answers and an inside track to this recovery gig. the answer that kept coming is that i want to separate myself form the pack and become once again self-sufficient. after all i have a bit of clean time, i have worked some steps, and i have a few clues to how i work. nothing that thousands of addicts world-wide have not done, but after all i am, well different.
and that brings me back to the topic, i am not different. each of us goes through different phases in our recovery and what is appropriate for me right now may not be appropriate for anyone else today. that is not being different, that is just a function of my life and how i chose to live the program over time. perhaps someday i will be able to listen again to what that member is trying to share and ‘get it’ and then again perhaps not, it really is unimportant. i am the only one responsible for my recovery and if i choose to focus on the differences i will be the one that gets loaded. so back to the first step again, i am powerless over the current symptoms of my disease of addiction and my life is unmanageable, but the POWER THAT KEEPS ME CLEAN can restore me to sanity if i choose to surrender my will and my over into its care!

∞ DT ∞