Blog entry for:

that can work for any addict who has the desire to stop using, is the simple but not easy program of recovery that i have come to embrace over the minute i have been clean. as skeptical i once was about this gig working for me, i have become a total and absolute convert to the notion that my life without a program of recovery, would have continued to slide down that path into the darkness of oblivion. i have as many outside of the program may quip, drank the “Kool-Ade,” and i have no regrets in regards to that. i know that there is more than one way to stop using, lose the desire to use drugs and find a new way to live, and more power to the thousands of addicts who may have found an alternative. for me, i stopped seeking any other solution, once i realized that this worked and worked well.
i often am asked why i say i have a “minute” clean. it comes from one of the beliefs i once harbored that clean time in the fellowship was part of a social strata and that as i got more of it, i would move up the social ladder to greater respect and deference. what i have come to believe, across the course of my recovery is, that no matter how long i have been clean, i am now and always will be an equal to those with whom i share this program of recovery. do not get me wrong, i still like celebrating my clean date and getting my ego stroked on an annual basis at the meetings i may attend on that day, shit i am still human and i have yet to lose the desire to shine. outside of that annual “love fest” i am okay with just being a garden variety addict who has one more just for today.
i have to admit, that this task of forgiving my Mom for what she did and forgiving myself for taking on the shame and humiliation of what i felt and swallowing those feelings for fifty years or so, is actually having results. i am no longer angry at the drop of a hat and am better able to cope with the stuff that is not going in the way i might desire. today, as i shared at my home group, saying that stuff out loud, there was a sense of relief and a lessening of the burden of forgiveness that has plagued my since her death. i am now in a better place than i have been and am ready to take care of part of my HOA responsibilities. i also am ready to stop giving away my personal power to my niece and a dead woman, as they have had more than enough of the little bit of personal power i do have. it is a good day to allow myself to live in a manner that does not include substances or behaviors that change the way i may be feeling, after all, why else would i stick around for so long, if i did not have a path to a better me.

∞ DT ∞