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after all, it is a treatable disease i have, not a moral dilemma. i can be grateful i can recover from the disease of addiction through the application of the Twelve Steps.
well, honestly i did not think i was even bad until i stopped using for real. i just rationalized and justified my behaviors away. i figured that the feelings of being different and alone were just things i would have to live with until the day i died, so i would just use in isolation and escape into television, fantasy, and reading. even after i cleaned up, i did not see myself as bad, morally deficient, or having a disease hat required treatment. those realizations did not sink in until i was at least a year clean. of course, during that period of time i also managed to work all twelve steps, and i had started to finally break down the wall of denial that i had built to protect me from certain destruction.
i could just say that i was a very slow learner, or realize that i spent those first twelve months in the wrong fellowship. as long as i needed to make substitutions for the language that did not apply to me, as long as i had to make allowances for experiences that were not part of my story, and as long as my apparent symptoms were not the same as those with whom i shared my recovery, i was unique, and looking back on that period of time in my recovery, it is quite a miracle that i even managed to stay clean one twenty-four hour period.
i have spoken about the transformation i made in my thirteenth month of recovery before, so i will not belabor that point, since the day i discovered where i really belonged, and accepted that i was just an addict, i have walked a path of becoming the person who i was always intended to be. simple acceptance of three disturbing realizations became a slam dunk and i was finally ready to walk this path to arrest my disease.
that does not mean that i accept the whole disease concept, hook, line, and sinker, 24/7, there are still more than a few problems i can see with that, but they are trivial, and the work of the part of me i call my addict. what i do accept today is that i am and will continue to be a garden variety addict, that craves a life without active addiction. the only means i know of to live such a life is living a program based on the 12 steps as they are presented to me by my predecessors. it is comforting to know that these same 12 steps work for addicts worldwide, and that there is HOPE for this addict, that i can continue to keep the disease of active addiction in remission. it has been a strange and wondrous journey to arrive at this point in my life, and i do believe that in this twenty-four hour period i will do what i need to to foster my progress along this spiritual path, after all, the alternative is unacceptable to me today!

∞ DT ∞