Sharing and Caring

[MajestyJo]

Control is what I call the "C" word. Not only because it is part of the three "Cs" but because I couldn't comprehend the word powerlessness until I substituted this word.

All my life I tried to control, to be in control, and all my life no matter what I did, I got hurt anyway.

Control is an illusion. The one it hurts the most is me, yet like my days of using, it hurts those around me. My intentions were good, I thought my motives were good, I didn't know I was trying to play God with other people's lives, including my own.

I tried controlled drinking for many years. It didn't work. Even if I didn't have more, I always thought more, and I was never at peace. In my relationships, I was always looking for love and attention, and there just never seemed to be enough. Today I know that what ever I took, it couldn't have possibly filled up the emptiness within me. I was empty, with no self-love and all I took fell on fallow ground.

When I try to control my life, it leads me back to insanity. It takes me away from God and back into active addiction. Even if I don't physically pick up my drug of choice, my thinking can go before me.

Denial gets in the way of my full recovery. It keeps me sick and prevents me from finding the total acceptance of my disease. Unless I can take the first half of this step 100% I open myself to relapse.

Many say relapse is part of recovery. Relapse is part of my disease. You have to have something in order to have laspes or slips in your thinking which takes you back drinking.

Denial allowed me to keep an open door with one foot in recovery and the option of putting the other one back to living on the edge, back to the caretaking of others and not taking care of myself, back to looking for some person, place or things to blame for my life and my decisions.

Recovery is all about me. When I deny that fact, I stay sick. It doesn't matter how many people around me are using or what they are using; it is my reaction and how I deal with these people that is the problem, unless I can find the solution. The soluton for me was the Steps. Learning how to apply them to my life. To heal, to grow, to find the real me, and not live through other people's concept, ideas, projections, identities and find my own truth.

In today, I am an addict. I used people, places and things to escape reality and to help me cope with life. One day at a time, I do get better. I am a recovering addict whose drug of choice can still be more....

Each morning I have to take this Step. I am powerless over people, places and things and my life is unmanageable when managed by me.