I’m not exactly sure how this post will transform itself into anything logical or entertaining but I’m going to swing the bat, nonetheless.

As a recovering alcoholic, it is very important that I try to keep my life on the “up and up”.  Essentially, this means that I am to be an honest, accountable, responsible, and a relatively kind person each and every day.

You can imagine, as a human this task that sounds simple, really isn’t.  I do not accomplish these goals every day of my life.

Many times, I have to go back to a situation and “clean it up”.  For example, an altercation with another person in which I raise my voice in anger must be addressed at some point, and hopefully corrected.  It isn’t so much for the other person as it is for me on a personal front.  I choose to follow this direction because my life literally depends on it.

Not to say if I lie or say something mean I will rush to the nearest bar and gobble down all the alcohol in the place, or rob a pharmacy for all of their narcotics.  No, that’s not it at all.  The main reason for me to try and “check myself” regularly is that the disease of alcoholism is cunning, baffling, and powerful.

One of the biggest things I’ve learned from my comrades in alcoholics anonymous is that resentments are the number one offender.  Essentially, if I form a resentment against another person and do not “clean it up” most likely I will get drunk.  If I do not continue to work the steps or respect and manifest the traditions in my life on a current basis, I will get drunk.

For me to get drunk, means that I will die.

Will I die immediately, or will I live another 50 years and die?  I have no answer for that.  Most likely I would not die immediately.  I can guarantee however, that I will begin dying ever so slowly, from the inside.  Towards the end of my drinking/addiction I was already dying from the inside.  I remember thinking that putting a gun to my head would have been so much easier than the life I was living, dying on the inside.

This is just one aspect of my recovery, there are many other things that I have to address in order to not only stay sober, but “sober minded”.  I did not get sober just to quit drinking.  At the time, I thought that was all there was to it.  Quickly, I learned this would become my design for living.  And that would mean I had to change everything in my life that I’d grown accustomed to using as defense mechanisms, basically my defense mechanisms that no longer served me as a sober person.

Resentments are a huge danger, the whole issue of relationships are precarious.  I am of the belief that our relationships with other people are the hardest thing that we’ll ever experience as we roam this life.  I’ve written before on this topic, you can read that here.

One of THE hardest things I’ve done in recovery is to look at myself, taking an inventory, discovering the patterns that repeat and attempting to clean that stuff up and move beyond it.  I cannot speak for other people that are not addicts, but in therapy on some level, how it is that they can do the work that they do.  I would guess their reasons are similar to mine, and I often wonder if it feels like a life or death situation for them as it feels for me.

I’ve been guilty of taking this too responsibility thing too far, to make myself as the reason everything is wrong in your life, their life, and my own life.  This would mean I was using the methods I’ve learned in recovery the wrong way.  In fact, it’s usually referred to as an ego problem.   The meaning of ego changed for me in recovery, I learned that my ego comes out in everything I do.  Especially if the scales are all on one side of a situation.

If you have known me for any length of time, you’ll notice a ridiculous habit I have of taking the blame or fault for everything.  This is not a good habit, it serves me no purpose and it’s taken me a very long time to acknowledge it, then to address it, and finally to change the behavior.

One of the important lessons I’ve learned in sobriety is that if there is something wrong with me, it is up to me to correct it.  If I find myself engaged in arguments, disagreements, or believing that the world is “out to get me” it is up to me to try and correct this.  The common denominator in the equation is me.

If I argue and fight with every person in my neighborhood, all of my family (including my extended family), that might be a sign that perhaps something in me needs to change.  Does it mean that I’m a terrible person?  No, it doesn’t.  It simply means that I am human and humans are filled with faults.  We’ve been led to believe that as humans we are not really “allowed” to make mistakes.  And, if I can prove to you how wrong this other person is, and can you believe what they did to me I can continue living a life with blinders on.   When I am wearing my blinders, I don’t have to make any changes to myself, I don’t have to face the truth that I have something in me that needs to be corrected.

Despite my recovery, or the therapy I still fall prey to this human behavior.  I will plead my case to you, convincing you that this other person is an absolute monster and you must hate them because of what they did to me.  It almost seems that this is the human law, an acceptable practice in our society to be a victim for your entire life, blaming everyone else for your problems.

This is absurd, due to the fact that no other person can actually change us unless we give them that permission.  More than not, this is an escape route for a person rather than facing themselves and cleaning up their lives.

My goal is not to appear more mature, or that I have it all worked out.  (My ego would like for you to buy that, but my sober mind knows better.)  The force that drives me in this direction is the knowledge that if I do not continue to follow my recovery, I will die.

Telling someone that I am sorry for yelling at them, or if I lie to someone and then go back and admit I’ve lied in the attempt to “clean it up” is a small price to pay in order to stay alive and relatively happy.  Our steps are not exclusive to addicts and alcoholics, they can be used by anyone who is in need of “the directions”.  (Not to be confused with, “our way is the only way” that you find in some religious circles.)

Even after being sober for seventeen years of my life, I still struggle with these things.  I can tell you that my struggle is nothing compared to what it used to be.  I have a design for living that fits for me, and most days I am grateful.

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