Some memes

should i be grateful for addiction, my mistakes, and my poor decision making? an excellent question and one that has stumped me time and again, across the course of my recovery journey. the first time i head someone identify as a grateful addict, i thought they may be insane, after all, who could possibly be grateful for being an addict, as it royally sucks. that does not mean that after a few steps and a bit of time, i finally “got” what they were talking about, but i was hardly prepared to ever call myself grateful for being an addict. no way, no how not in a billion years. i was here because i had a legal problem and did not want to trip back into that particular trap again. i could admit i was an addict and was well on my way to conceding to my innermost self i was an addict.
there finally came a day, where i got my first clue, if i was not an addict, i would never have stuck around in the fellowship and if i had left the fellowship, i would have never had a path to recovery and the life i have today. did that make me grateful to be an addict, nope! what it did make me grateful was for the fellowship and the path of recovery upon which i was embarked. closer to the mark, but still a strong miss. i started to see that it may not be my fault that i was an addict, as i did not dream of becoming an addict that late night in boy scout camp when i first got high, but the trigger was pulled and <BOOM> there i was. i loved getting high and for the next twenty-five years chased that feeling. little did i realize that i had just crossed the boundary into active addiction. my thinking went if i was grateful for being an addict,m then i had to be grateful for everything that happened in those year, as all of those events brought me to the doors of the rooms. i was far from grateful for my mistakes, my naiveté, my humiliations and my plain out stupidity. so there i sat, grateful for my recovery, not for how i got here.
this morning as i read my source material, i nearly went down that path again. i know one of the men i sponsor certainly did, as he has been having a shit ton of life on its own terms lately. the quiet of the void, however, took the fact that all my missteps and faux pas, has made me the person i am today, despite how well i practice a program of recovery on a daily basis. if i can no longer live in denial of what i have done then are only two paths, use to soften the past and sweep it under the carpet or keep moving forward with my program to put them all into perspective, and yes, to be grateful for the sum total of my experience, regardless of how good or bad may of it may be. when i take the judgment and shame out of what was, i GET to place into the context of the what is. just for today, this grateful addict, has a path forward to the what will be through the what was and what is.

∞ DT ∞