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what i am learning in recovery applies outside the rooms, is hardly revolutionary or even surprising. as someone who took all that he could and avoided paying anything at all, even the fact that i am contributing to society, in any manner is evidence enough that the path i am walking benefits the world around me. i can be a part of that world, participating on a level i never believed was possible and allowing myself to be drawn in by the wonder of it all. i could go on and on about how integrity, honesty, perseverance and vulnerability have changed my entire life, inside and outside of the rooms, but to what point. there are times when i go down that sort of path and it feels like bragging rather than a simple inventory. i have, in the past, been way too loud about my accomplishments and on the flip side of that coin, did what i could to hide my light under a bushel.
this morning, i am trying to thread the narrow path between those two extremes. i can certainly say that when i got clean and decided to live a program of recovery, i did not believe i needed to change the way i behaved outside of the rooms. i knew that those i hung with, had not changed and many of them still had more than a single grudge to settle with me. i became of two minds for quite some time, as i was well-practiced at that sort of life style. i was all spiritual and did my best to be a model of a recovering addict, in the rooms and around my peers. on the outs, i was still looking for an edge to get an advantage on the world around me. i had come out of the entitlement fog and now was in the grasp of getting what was mine, regardless of the cost, socially or emotionally. as i kept walking the path of recovery, the cognitive dissonance between those mindsets grew and grew, becoming intolerable to me. something had to change and i had come to the conclusion, that something was me. lo and behold, a new day rose in my life and i started to, as the trope goes, “walk my talk.”
i have to admit i am far from anything close to perfect in applying the stuff i learned in recovery, in all my affairs. i backslide when i am afraid of looking bad, ignorant or intolerant. i still want to be acknowledged for all the stuff i do, that those who are not addicted, just do without thinking about it. lest i slip into false humility, it is true that i apply more of these principles in my daily life than i used to. i am just a recovering addict, doing his best to be more than he was yesterday and sometimes just trying not to be any less than two days ago. just for today, doing my best means seeing what is ahead ofd me and facing up to what is coming down the pike.

∞ DT ∞