Blog entry for:

for my disease, i am however responsible for my recovery. the third disturbing realization and part of the source material that deals with being guided by conscience. i can say it took me more than a short minute to actually realize that there were three disturbing realizations, although i latched on to the one quoted to start this exercise in mind dumpery, with both hands and held it in a death grip. it was the very first clause in that statement that really piqued my interest, all of a sudden i had the prefect scapegoat for everything i did wrong. since i am an addict and addiction pervades all parts of my life, i was exonerated, at least in my own head, for the crimes against humanity i perpetrated. i can no longer count the number of times i said: “what did you expect, after all i am an addict,” when i was once again caught with my hand in the cookie jar.
staying clean for a minute and learning to live a program of recovery based on the Twelve Steps, changed that. i finally heard the second clause and accepted that maybe, just maybe that it applied to me. if i wanted what i saw my peers having, then i would have to stop being such a shitty douche-bag asshole and starting owning up to what i did. that, of course, did not happen overnight, but bit by bit, day by day, action by action, i became willing to do the next right thing, even if it meant that there would be consequences that were not to my liking. i have to say, that it sucked becoming responsible for myself for the first time in my adult life, but i also could see that it was the way.
moving into the here and now, i still can be, at times, a shitty, douche-bag asshole, that has yet to be removed from my bag of tricks. no telling if it will ever be gone, and even if it is not, i have the ways and means to ameliorate the harm i do, when i enter into that mode. the fact is, i can also stop before i even get that action, in action, thanks to a strong aversion to having to admit i was wrong, making amends or suffering unpleasant consequences. life goes on and i am a better person that i ever was in active addiction or mere abstinence. i am a better person than i was a year ago or even six months ago, because now my pride does not prevent me from telling on myself. i am responsible for my recovery and for my life these days even when those days are not going the way i wish them to go. it is a good day to live in the sunshine of responsibility and allow myself to be guided by the principles upon which my moral compass has been built upon.

∞ DT ∞