Some memes

one clear marker of my restoration to sanity, and it is certainly a good place to start. the problem with abstinence, at least for me, was that for a long time i thought it was enough. that sort on insanity nearly got me incarcerated again, or worse spun back down into active addiction. what i mistook for self-respect was actually pride, ego and bravado. i believed that i did not need any sort of recovery, all i needed was the golden ticket out of the justice system. when i reached the point where using and not using were equally abhorrent to me, i surrendered to the fact that i am an addict and it is quite possible that those “weirdos” and “freaks” in the rooms, actually had a better way to live. that was the beginning of the long and very arduous journey towards more than a modicum of self-respect.
as i sat in the circle yesterday, before the meeting, i heard one of the newest members, tallying up their various clean dates. they then e=went on into a treatise of why various substances affected then differently. their theory was that is was due to their ancestry. i just listened and chalked it up to someone who was not quite willing to dive into the program and was overthinking everything about addiction. during the meeting one of my peers shared that they too, were wondering about the causes of their addiction and whether it was genetic or cultural. i have been down both those paths, wondering why i am an addict and how i became one, when i never used physically addicting drugs more than once, in my using career. after what seemed centuries but was actually only a matter of months, i found out hat i really did not care, as the how and why i am an addict is far from relevant to live a life of active recovery.
once i finally let go of the what, why and how of being an addict, i started to see myself as something more than the collection of labels that described me. sure i was still an addict. i have defects of characters and act out on my shortcomings, BUT, and yes it is a big one, that does not make meany better or worse than others. self-acceptance works, hand in hand with self-respect. as i accepted that it was more than likely the best version of me today, i grew comfortable in my own skin and started to find the ways and means to treat myself with respect. i know today, that without a doubt, abstinence is not enough to live the life i have been given, but without it, nothing else is possible, just for today.

∞ DT ∞