i found a way out of active addiction and a new way to live. i did not come to the rooms expecting either. i did not believe i was an addict or that i needed a new way to live. i was only here to get off paper and return to my old life. read more: tinyurl.com/ycyjh337
pain is pain, no matter who i am or where i am in my recovery. i do not often finds myself waxing poetically over my "first world problems," as like to call them. it is quite true that for the most part, my problems pale in comparison read more: bit.ly/4baXNeH
by learning to show up without anger, resentment, or fear, i GET to mature as a person who lives in the real world. more than once i have heard it said that my emotional, maturity process stopped the first time i got high and did not resume read more: bit.ly/4rsAymI
shedding my denial and embracing reality, is certainly a task i can undertake today. if course the problem with denial, is that i never know i am in it, until way after the fact. these days, read more: bit.ly/46JdqJ5
free to simply be. why am i an addict? do i really need a HIGHER POWER? how does this program work? who or what can i blame for my addiction? why should i take responsibility for the manner in which i live? questions, questions, questions! read more: bit.ly/4sbL3Mp
to be fully alive, awake, and honest about who i am is a gift to me and from me. the part of me that carries all my cynicism, balked at this as my seed this morning, as it felt way to touchy-feely and Kum-By-Yah. read more: tinyurl.com/3bacmwns
grasping my opportunity to ease the pain of living through spiritual principles. last night i finally asked the question that i have had the desire to ask one of the men that calls me their sponsor for a minute or so: how close are you to read more: tinyurl.com/yc3uejha
vigilance does not equal control, it is an awareness i practice daily to remind me of the severity of addiction. i have peers in recovery, some with more clean time than myself, who live in abject fear of relapse and spend what seems to be every read more: tinyurl.com/5ehkwwx2
keeping my commitments is what matters to the people around me. i have to admit, way back when, the only reason i took any sort of service commitments was to be a bit more free from the legal constraints read more: tinyurl.com/4dj3e6vj
opening the door to my recovery, through the admission and acceptance of my powerlessness. there are days when i do not feel that i am powerful and perhaps on those days, i may actually be correct. read more: tinyurl.com/a76cwpbk
i can be confused about what the it is that i am turning over, who or what i am turning it over to, and what turning it over is in the first place. i walked into the cigar store this morning and availed myself to a deal that the company read more tinyurl.com/3pnvvpev
helping others find what i have found is certainly one of the ways i can practice a bit of gratitude in my life today. i was going to start this off by speaking about the men i sponsor and changed my mind at the last minute. what they do or read more: tinyurl.com/4uedfwvy
i do not have to understand this program for it to work. okay, the third time is the charm, i have been sitting here struggling with how to get this rolling and kept getting stuck by what is going around me, read more: tinyurl.com/e23c9b4z
i continue to treat addiction with vigilance and perseverance, keeping hope alive to deepen and sustain my recovery. i am not one of those who creams his jeans every time my source material speaks about HOPE. quite the contrary, read more: tinyurl.com/ynkxdnsd
if intimacy is a spiritual principle i value and a quality i want to bring to my relationships, then i need to practice it. i will not go into the confusion that this term caused way back when, but i know today intimacy is not about sex, read more: tinyurl.com/bddruajp
putting an end to my needless, self-inflicted suffering, is not a topic i consider an a daily or even a weekly basis. when it popped up today in the annual rotation of my source material, i was a bit dumbfounded and certainly not all that read more: tinyurl.com/43fztmws
if generosity is an antidote to fear, then when i give freely, my heart is filled. i am not so sure about that, but i will certainly go with that flow and see where it may lead me this morning. at the meeting yesterday, read more: tinyurl.com/y9afs248
i will loosen the reins today and become flexible enough to accept the grace that comes my way. today, i am in a good space and am enjoying a coffee and cigar as i write this out. my source material was all about being flexible to accept what read more: tinyurl.com/4vce8x35
addiction can transform me into a master of self-deception. the whole superior gig of last week, is certainly a case in point. i had gone to the place of feeling less than those around me. read more: tinyurl.com/37n4cpvf
the job of finding a new way to live is a lifelong project i chip away at each day. my source material was all about being open-minded, which not something with which i entered recovery. as a matter of face, i was more than sure that this read more: tinyurl.com/eruzn36h
i can be much more comfortable in an old rut than on a new plateau. today, stepping out of that old rut means allowing myself to actually feel like a retired guy and not rush through my morning, just to get it done. as much as i think that read more: tinyurl.com/mtfmvy94
judging another is frequently rooted in discomfort with my own behavior. my dip into the familiarity of the superiority pool over the past few days, is a reaction to my fear of being irrelevant and a non-productive member of society. read more: tinyurl.com/5n8nbmu9
practicing selflessness gives me relief from self-obsession. i have to admit, that i once believed that selflessness meant that i needed to be a doormat. i thought since self-obsession was a bad thing, i had to behave in the exact opposite read more: tinyurl.com/yj5b63cx
my outlook on life is way more expansive. it is quite true that in active addiction my life had a very narrow focus: getting and using and finding the ways and means to get more. the amount of time and energy i put into that way of living read more: tinyurl.com/5eupw8he
when i discover myself dreading the future, i can work on living responsibly today. what does that mean for me today, after the many, many times, i have written on this particular topic -> living in the moment? for me, it means learning how read more: tinyurl.com/2s3ndbdx
when i look only at myself, i can be obsessed with what was taken away from me or what i never had. better put, to paraphrase a good friend: when do i get MINE! as a cynic, and i certainly own that i am one, i find source material that speaks read more: tinyurl.com/383p6k8f
today i truly can say, that i am well on my way to loving the person i have become in recovery. once upon a time i would have said of course i love myself, but then i got clean and the veil of denial slipped from my eyes read more: tinyurl.com/3dk4tbsk
moving from a self-seeking life to a life based on spiritual principles requires me to change profoundly. another day off the ranch and another day looking at a part of my life i take for granted. read more: tinyurl.com/43nh5pfj
i can start over whenever i need to, is certainly a lesson that i have learned as a result of working a program of recovery. even when i was in active addiction, i was not one to blow my life up, just to start over. no my life was a train wreck read more: tinyurl.com/3hrzrfz9
how i express unconditional love is not uniform from addict to addict or from day to day. as i walk through most days, i am not brimming with kindness, brotherly love and optimism. read more: tinyurl.com/48bs5faa
