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my way, seemed to work, back in the day and when thin gs went south, there was always someone or something outside of myself to blame for that result. the months between going to my first meeting and finally getting clean are certainly a great example. my will got me forty-five days in jail, a trip to in-patent treatment, a trip to see the judge, the threat of prison and twelve weekends of sweeping parking lots and breaking up ice. even after all of that, i was not ready to surrender to a program of recovery, but i did learn how to be compliant and look as if i was indeed surrendering. it took being in a basement apartment, thousands of miles away from home, with a using buddy and a sack of drugs that i had bought, to get me to that point. even then, there were more than a few conditions on my surrender, such as the length of time i had left under the thumb of the judge and my belief that i could return to a life where “moderate” was possible for me.
time passes and when i look back on those days, it feels nearly miraculous that i got through that clean and came to embrace a program of recovery. i sit here today, a few days later, wondering what if i had just used that night on the East Coast and skipped my “monitored sobriety” appointment for an additional twenty-four hours? no need to go down that road, as i have seen plenty of my peers who have shown me where that usually ends-up, arrest, jail, re-sentencing, and repeat, ad infinitum.
looking at those days through the lens of self-will run riot, i see that my days these days, still have more than a touch of self-will embedded in them. i still want to influence events to come out the way i want them to, even when i really have no power whatsoever over them. i do know that today is a good day to get my a$$ to my home group, get a five and half mile workout in and train a bit more for my current job. it is a good day to be clean and a good day to surrender to the fact that i need to get better at what i do, if i hope to keep working at this current position.

∞ DT ∞