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responsibilities, is certainly a daily learning process, for me. one of the most helpful skills i learned in active addiction was blame-shifting. over the course of the decades, i honed my ability to deny any responsibility into a fine art. i used to take great pride in living a life of plausible deniability and being able to drop the **see what you made me do** bomb on a micro-second*s notice. when i came to the rooms and even after being clean for a bit of time, i quickly learned that IF i looked at addiction as some sort of demon that possessed me, i still had that out, **after all, what do you expect of an addict.**
ironically, i was working with one of the men that calls me his sponsor yesterday, and this was a topic that came up. i see that the part of me that i call addiction, “likes” denying any responsibility for anything in my life, unless it will lead to “looking good” in the eyes of others or somehow boost my self-esteem. as a result, when i do a “good deed” i want someone else to see me doing so and commenting on it. there is no altruism when i view the world through the eyes of that part of me, every “positive” action NEEDS to be broadcast ;loudly and widely and the “negative” needs to be buried under millions of tons of rubble, hidden forever from public view. living life in that manner, is part of the pattern of behaviors i brought with me to recovery. being familiar with that set of behaviors, means that even with a minute clean, they are still part of my repertoire and end up most days being something that is addresses in my daily inventory. defects are defects, but i have the necessary information to change my default reactions into considered responses.
ah, but there is certainly good news for this recovering person today, IF i consider where i am and how i got here, i can see that denying my responsibilities will not further that learning process. i AM responsible for my recovery. if i can accept that notion, than i can no longer shift blame to deny what i am doing. today, if i accept that responsibility, it means i NEED to open my mind and listen to what i am being told by my peers in all the places i encounter them. it means that just for today, i NEED to pay attention to the world around me and learn to apply what i am learning to what happens around me. it is not the “addict” that walks the Earth today like some sort of energy-sucking monster, creating havoc in his wake, but it certainly could be, if i abdicate and deny that i am RESPONSIBLE for all sorts of things, including but not limited to my recovery, just for today.

∞ DT ∞