Blog entry for:

if i am willing to pay the price, but there is always one to pay.
and boy would i love to get through life without any price to pay. i could do anything, to anyone at anytime and not have any consequences nor ever have any worries about correcting my behavior, or cleaning up after the messes i made. but wait one dang second, that is exactly what i was like before i came to recovery. i did what i pleased willfully ignorant to the consequences of my actions. if i got away with it great, if i was busted, well i always could find someone, or something else to cast the blame upon. so it was never , ever my fault, and when all else failed there was that tired old line " i was really high at the time! "
sitting here today, thinking about actions and consequences, i am somehow driven down the path towards entitlements and expectations. when i was in active addiction i somewhere got the notion that i was entitled to all sorts of things, one of which was the ways and means to get high on a continual basis. i had very low conscious expecatations of myself, if i could only get through eight hours of work, not actually accomplish anything -- just do the time, i was doing what i needed to do and i could go out and use myself into a way altered state, and do whatever i wanted to do in the process of becoming wasted. i expected everyone else to take care of my needs and to be at my beck and call. and i actually got quite pissed off when anyone acted contarry to my master plan of the day.
so here we are today, and the reading speaks to me of recognizing the price for my behavior and making a decision as to whether i am willing to pay it. and that is truly a gift, the ability to make a decision based on spiritual principles. true, i may be able to do something that is less than stellar, and not get caught, thus avoiding the obvious consequences, but i have far too many steps behind me to not see what i am doing anymore. even if i delude myself into to denying that i am doing nothing wrong, sooner or later, i will have to review my actions, and while i am in denial, the part of me i call my disease is using my actions to make me pay consequences internally. that part of me likes to use such acts as evidence that i have not really changed, so what is the point of continuing up the path of recovery anyhow.
so the question i have the ability to (can) ask myself today is do i have the desire (want) to act in a certain manner knowing full well that there is a price to pay? and the answer is....
... that depends, but at least i can make a rational decision based on the costs and benefits as i see them before i act, and that is the gift of recovery i get to carry forward from this reading today!

∞ DT ∞