When we talk about recovery from addiction, a key concept is willingness. Ask yourself, what was I willing to do to get that drug? Drive in a snowstorm to somewhere miles away in hopes that you might be able to score? Call everyone and anyone you know who might have a line on where you might find what you’re looking for? If you’re an addict like me, you know what I’m talking about. Now take that same quality and apply it to your recovery. How far are you willing to go to find a new way to live? What are the “yea, buts” that get in the way of your recovery? You know, “YEA, I want to recover BUT you can’t expect me to do that!” Are you willing to commit to making as many meetings as it takes to get a handle on the basics of recovery? Are you willing to take a risk and ask someone to be your sponsor? Are you willing to give up the people, places and things that were a central part of your using life? Taken all at once, such questions can seem overwhelming but we don’t have to do it all at once. We work, one day at a time, to become willing to do the things that can return us to life and give us a chance to escape the misery of addiction. If we can can become willing, the rest will follow.
Before recovery, humiliation was something we thought meant the same as humility. Frequently ashamed of behaviours, using addicts see themselves in as negative a light as most of society sees them. Maybe for a time, the addict thinks they are “cool” because they are users, standing outside the mainstream of society, radicals who know something that all those straight people have missed out on. As the shame and degradation become more and more apparent in the addict’s life, however, the voice of condemnation eventually becomes louder. The alternatives are to use more in hopes of shutting out that voice or, if you can hear the message of recovery, seek a new way to live. When the addict first seeks recovery, chances are they carry a great deal of shame. When the word “humility” comes up, they hear “humiliation”. Eventually, though, as recovery builds in the life of the addict, they come to see that true humility is recognizing that we all have flaws and have done many things of which we are ashamed but that, at the same time, we have good qualities that we can be proud of and that we can use to help us rebuild lives. Eventually, we see that humility involves acknowledging our flaws even as we embrace the things we are discovering about ourselves of which we can be proud. We’ll never be perfect, but that’s okay. One day at a time, we’ll continue our quest to be better.