Blog entry for:

to **disqualify** myself from living an active program of recovery. i have seen all sorts of tricks, dodges and chicanery on my journey to get to this place in my recovery. most of them i have used myself in an attempt to disprove any sort of notion that i **need** recovery and am exactly where i **need** to be. my whole point being, that when i was brand new to way of living i was certain i was different and just because i have some days clean, does not mean that idea has been totally dispelled. i have been known to travel with an entourage, that hangs on my every word. i have been known to lie about my clean time or minimize the fact that my clean time was interrupted by periods of using, by my choice. i have been known to feel “disrespected” when the stuff i share stops getting the response i desire. i subject to lapses in sanity, when i think that somehow i am “better” now, based on the material success i have achieved. the list goes on and on. what i am trying to say is that i use the most outrageous means to try and prove to the part of me i call addiction, that it is correct and now i can drift into a life without daily maintenance of my recovery.
even as i peruse what i have put down, i hear a whole lot of comparison and not much identification. i understand that for me, addiction still feels stigmatizing and something to be kept on the down-low. my family members may have stopped asking if i still go to those “classes” as they quaff their beverages and “pop-out” for a little “puff.” to be honest, there is more than a small part of me that desires the opportunity to join them, in either or both of those activities. that is the spooky part of what i heard this morning. how easy it would be to negotiate my way through to convincing myself that after some time, this recovery stuff no longer applies, because now i have some…
as this is my week “in” and i have to make an accommodation or three as to what meetings i attend can hear excuses already starting to be generated. what i am walking away with, as i prepare to go back to work after two weeks or so, out of the office is that it is not the length of time that i have been clean that matters. do not misread that, clean time does count in my book. it is, however, what i am willing to do, to foster my recovery, that i need to be aware of, just for today. sure i will probably not end up high if i miss a meeting or two this week, because of one of the one hundred excuses i can formulate to stay away, BUT, if i choose to ignore what has worked for so long, because these days the most obvious indicators of my condition are barely visible, than it will only be a matter of time before the dire consequences of untreated addiction, take its toll.

∞ DT ∞