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to take responsibility for my recovery is not a concept i was **born** to do. when one peeks at my history, it is evident that denying responsibility through denial, blame-shifting and rationalization was part of my toolbox, and amazingly it worked! time and again i found the ways and means to walk through life, oblivious to the stuff i “needed” to own and cratered to my DESIRE. waking up in the present tense was certainly something i did not want to do, but when i did, i saw that i had diverted myself for long enough, it was time to look for a new manner of living my life, besides just staying clean. as one might surmise, there is a bit of a difference between my clean date and when i finally started working on joining the “real world.” it was tough for me to give up my fantasies about what living life was all about.
what really tripped the trigger for me, was when one of our “visitors” from another fellowship shared about addiction was not some sort of demonic presence that possessed them from time to time and “made” them behave badly. this was an idea that went totally against everything i had thought i heard and had come to believe. the notion that i was the addict and addiction was me and it was me that was attempting to make myself miserable so i could use again, was so earth-shattering that i chose to ignore the very notion, for as long as possible. i have to admit, way back then, and even now, i am “resistant” to an idea that upsets my world-view, and what i really wanted to be, was a victim to my addiction.
today, i fully embrace that addiction is just part of me and when the “voice of addiction” starts chiding me to do something, it is not an outside influence, nor another ̶facet” of my personality, it simply is me. it is when i “hear” that voice, that my responsibility needs to kick in and do something more than i am already doing. honestly, however, i very rarely hear that “voice,” these days. it is not as if i have been cured or the part of me i call addiction has been removed, not by a long shot. what i have come to believe is that by living a program of active recovery, i have melded all the disparate parts of who i was, into becoming the person i am. as i become “whole” i become more responsible for my life, and certainly more responsible for my recovery and i take no issue with that, just for today.

∞ DT ∞