Blog entry for:

an accident. i was about to go off about how all the relapses i have witnessed were **planned** out far in advance of the actual event. yes, blaming the **volunteer,** rather than having unconditional support for the struggling addict. that harsh judgement is a response to the disrespect i have been getting in whopping doses from some of those in my life. i am beginning to **feel** like i expect respect, whether it is earned or not. i am beginning to see that, like me, others lack the social insight on how to behave when they are given a HUGE break. i can justify and rationalize my burning discomfort with a litany of sins against me, but in the long run,. who does it really hurt and where will it lead? IF i want to live an active program of recovery, than i am the ONE who NEEDS to make a decisions to let go of my pile of shite and all the POWER that fuels my recovery, to do what IT will with that stuff.
that same model of my my current behavior, is not among my peers in recovery today. that is entirely on him and not on the recovery community. when i look at his path, i realize that i could have stuck in that same trap. i see myself “flying a sign” on a street corner, begging for a smoke in front of a convenience store and sleeping under a bridge, just because i cannot accept that recovery is an “all in” sort of lifestyle. as i drifted towards my bottom in those days between my clean date and my eventual acceptance of who i was and what i needed to do, i can see that i had already laid the plans for my relapse and if the events of that trip had come a day earlier, i would have used without any regard of the possible consequences. that jarring experience as i consider it today, from the comfort of decades clean, was easily the closest i came to actuality using, even though i really did not feel like using. i might have looked at that trip as a “test” of my will against the ravages of active addiction, but it was not anything of the sort, it was my excuse to use and even though i came back clean, there was certainly a part of me that wondered why i did not partake of the “what happen in NJ, stays in NJ” paradigm.
this morning as i complete one of the amends to myself, i can see that my reservations all deal with the “curse” of long-term recovery. i expect others to behave in a manner consistent with living a program of active recovery, even if they are not not quite there yet. i have “heard” every justification and rationalization in the book and can see how with just a twist of a word or two, it can apply that pile of excuses to myself. i may have no desire to use today, but there are more than a few behaviors i can readily partake of, to punish those around me. the life of spreading my misery, is certainly part of the set of behaviors i accumulated in active addiction and am quite familiar with, even to this day. IF i want to live my program, i NEED to let go of that litany of trespasses against me and be better that i was yesterday, just for today.

∞ DT ∞