Blog entry for:

will not stop until they WANT to stop, no matter how hard i may try to convince them that they are destroying themselves and the lives of those around them. being one of those who has been known to carry an addict or three across the course of my recovery, it was still a shack to my bleeding heart liberal side, when i realized it is not me who gets to make the decision of when enough is enough, for someone in active addiction. of all the words, phrases, clichés and paragraphs in this reading, the one that stood out to me this morning was all about HOW i live my life and NOT about what i say, and allowing them to see through my actions and behaviors what a life in recovery could be for them.
honestly, i am no longer that bleeding heart liberal, even though my service efforts may appear to be liberal-ish. i believe that there are a great many addicts who are incarcerated not because they are a persistent and imminent danger to society, but because they are trapped in active addiction and have taken to criminal acts to feed their addiction. as a result i carry a message to a population that very rarely wants to do what is necessary for them to change and have very low expectations of what i once considered a measure of success in this effort. what i had to learn to do, is adjust my measure of success. where once i believed that i was successful if one of these addicts got out, showed up and learned to live a life of recovery, now i measure it by are they paying attention to how i am carrying myself, and do they express an honest interest in changing their lives. one thing i have learned as a result of my service is that just as county lock-up is filled with those who “didn&39;t do it” everyone wants to recover while behind the walls. that tiny piece of cynicism destroyed my liberal notions and has been percolating through mu being for quite a bit of time. it keeps me from burning out and blaming myself for outcomes i have very little, as in absolutely ZERO, power over, whether an addict will come to recovery and stay.
my activities today revolve around putting some resources into that effort and although i may WANT someone with whom i have been working with,m to stay clean, i know that is not in my power, and the reading reminds me of that situation. it just may be, that just for today, the only person i can keep clean, is me, and i canot even do that without the POWER that fuels my recovery. so off to the real world to see how i can carry whatever message i have today.

∞ DT ∞