Blog entry for:

is a conscious decision and as such, is a choice i make, when i am awake and present in the here and now. when i was using, i stumbled through my life, half-awake and looking at every decision as being rigged against me and trusting absolutely no one, as i had taken lessons from my school of hard-knocks, of trusting the wrong person, time after time. life was simpler, IMHO, when i trusted no one, made as few decisions as possible and always had a scapegoat ready to roll. getting clean was not a process that i had any trust in and staying clean and learning to live a program of recovery was not a decision i was willing to make, back in those dreary days of my recovery (not) journey. learning to trust has become an ongoing process for me and one that no longer includes testing others by exploding “trust bombs.”
as i listened to my heart this morning, in the quiet space that was a bit more expansive than usual, what kept coming up was how in the world did i ever survive in a world where i trusted no one and nothing. as germane as that question may have been at one time, it was a bit disconcerting that it kept coming up to the surface this morning, especially after being clean for a minute. i did have a using dream last night, at least a desire to use and seeking out something to scratch that itch. perhaps the dream and the notion of what it was like, way back when, are related. that seems almost logical, but as i have come to believe, there is very little that is logical in the world of addiction and how the part of me i call addiction interacts with the world.
once i surrendered to the fact that i was going to “feel” a bit of my “ancient” history and trust that i “had to” hear that this morning, the quiet came again and i “got to” sink a bit lower into that void.
the oddest thing about the last twelve hours or so, is there was no dread or regret in my using dream and looking for something, anything, just felt like the next right thing to do. now that i am fully awake and have my “wits” about me, i can take the lesson as me needing to trust something more than myself to stay clean today. that POWER, as abstract as it may be, is only part of my life, if i CHOOSE to allow that POWER to work in my life. there are a few things that i certainly know today. the first being, that i am an addict and i am powerless over addiction. followed with the idea that i can get the power to stay clean today, only IF i CHOOSE to surrender my will and my life into the care of the POWER that fuels my recovery. what i resisted for so long, was the choice to trust a program of recovery that worked for millions of other addicts that are just like me. once i chose to trust and have a bit of FAITH in the program, my life began to fall into place and these days, even with a bit of drama, i am grateful that i can trust enough to face another day clean and live a program of active recovery, just for today.

∞ DT ∞