Blog entry for:

to what? a great question and one i have asked myself, time and again, since i was first exposed to the notion that i was an addict, once upon a time, i saw that admitting i was an addict might land me an easier and softer trip through the justice system. it certainly looked that way when i ended -up with a three year probation and a six month home detention sentence. in order to be freed from their clutches, all i had to do is comply with that and be abstinent from drugs, not including alcohol, for about eleven hundred days, in a row. well i did not even make thirty days before i started using more than just alcohol and i got away with it for another thirty days, as the wheels of justice ground away in the background. jail time, treatment, detention in a half-way house and revocation and reinstatement of my probation were my reward. after getting that through all of that, i still managed to use every now and again, evading my “monitored sobriety” for another ninety days or so, and then i got popped again. this time it was either clean up or face prison time. i made the choice to surrender to the will of the Twentieth Judicial District and got clean, but still was not in “recovery.” that would take the better part of another eighteen months before i made that transition.
fast forward to the here and now. ironically i have no trouble admitting i am an addict and actually believing with my whole self that is true. i also have no issue with surrendering to the fact that i am powerless over my addiction and that addiction makes my life unmanageable. i also have no issue in owning the fact that i rely on the POWER that fuels my recovery, to provide me the strength to stay clean today. perhaps, those first years of my journey were required for me to get where i am today. i do know that there was an alternate path that i could have chosen which might have led to a whole lot more pain and suffering at the hands of the justice system, as i see on a weekly basis, when i carry the message in to my incarcerated peers in recovery. their current situation, might have been my fate, had i not been so naive about how the system works. today, i am grateful for what i have and know that the path i chose, while not always the straightest or narrowest, was the correct one for me.
just for today, i am willing to fight for my recovery and surrender my will and my life into the care of the POWER that fuels my recovery. i “get” to work at a job i find exciting and challenging. i get to enjoy a premium cigar. i get to drink “good” coffee. i got to sleep in a warm, dry home, that i share with a woman i love. most importantly i GET TO make a choice to enhance my FREEDOM form active addiction by living a program of active recovery and i need not worry about whether or not that is a good choice, as i am more than certain it is the best one for me.

∞ DT ∞