When I tell you I'm an addict...

[Bruce M.]

My good friend Mark L., a stand up recovery comedian, talks a lot about how we think,…”first thought wrong”. He makes a clear distinction of a normal person’s thinking , and the rest of us. It is not that normal people are better, it just means “most”. Most people don’t think like us that are recovering from addiction. How I identify with others a lot of times, is how I have similar thoughts of life. What follows is a great example of how we think. Can anyone identify?


When I tell you I’m an addict, I tell you….

I’m an ego maniac with an inferiority complex, with low self esteem.

I judge my value by whom I’m with, or whom I know, or how much or how little I have, or what I can get you to believe about me, rather than what I believe about myself.

I don’t like to share anything unless its yours. My idea of friendship is to steal all your stuff, and then help you look for it.

I don’t understand any part of the word no, or wait. I want what I want, and I wanted it yesterday.

I have two emotions, homicidal and suicidal (good and bad). My two favorite days are yesterday and tomorrow, because I have a real hard time staying in today.

I’m a master of the complex, and overwhelmed by the simple.

I’m an emotional dyslexic. I do everything backwards. I can hide in a crowd, I can hide in plain sight, alone in a crowd. I say what I don’t mean, and mean what I don’t say. I seek material answers to spiritual questions. I will show you, by killing me.

I have a disease that talks to me in my own voice. Tells me I’m terminally unique, and that I’m not like anybody else

I think I have diplomatic immunity from the laws of the land. The words “wait to be seated, handicap parking, express line 10 items or less, take only as directed, do not mix with alcohol”, don’t apply to me!!

Pain is my greatest teacher, I can’t take any ones word for anything. I still have to touch the stove to see if it’s hot. I have to touch the paint to see if it’s wet. I have to open the door to see why it is closed. I have to pee on the electric fence to see if it’s really electric. Then I want you to feel sorry for me when I find out that it is. I’m a victim by choice.

When I’m alone, I’m in dangerous company. I think the price is the prize, that I confuse powerless with permission. My yets become my agains.

I have been in neighborhoods where angels wouldn’t go, but the most scariest place I have walked is this place between my ears.

I tell you I have a secret,—- that secret!! That taking a drug would make it all better. I was the last one to find out, and everybody else already knew.

I can tell you all that stuff, and haven’t had to explain one bit of it. No explaination necessary. I don’t have to explain: DESPAIR, HOPELESSNESS, BEING BROKEN, FEELING FORESAKEN BOUND FOR HELL.

When I tell you I’m an addict, you just know!!!————–Anonymous

Love and Respect, Bruce M.

[Jen]

Wow I may be new here but I gotta say funny as it is.... let's be careful with that kind of thinking! Sounds more like Borderline Personality Disorder to me (not that there's anything wrong with that!) If I believed all that s*#t about myself I'd go ahead and start drinking again!
Peace, Jen

[Bruce M.]

I was never given that diognosis before. I have never been a borderline anything. Maybe I should check that out. I just know that for myself my thinking is not like "most", meaning I don't think like most people do. I am very aware and ok with that. I use my support as a filtering system. My thinking alone doesn't dictate my actions today

[mike]

Jen said:

Wow I may be new here but I gotta say funny as it is.... let's be careful with that kind of thinking! Sounds more like Borderline Personality Disorder to me.
Peace, Jen

==========================================
And so a point is made.
So many long term drug/alcohol do have their whole way of thinking altered.

Always a good thing to 'put youself out there' and welcome feedback.

[Mark S]

Although (I think) I understand why you made this post, and I too (this is why) think it is important to really remember what condition I was in when I first stopped using drugs. I do remember, I encourage others in recovery to remember too. But, in reality, there was nothing funny about that condition.

The growth I can claim (my recovery) gives evidence to just how different I am today from that desperate, broken, beaten addict that somehow found himself in a recovery meeting knowing (errantly) that it wouldn't work either. For me, I need to talk about "the today" when speaking about "back then." I don't want to identify with "then." I want to have changed since "then." The perspective I need is to assign value to the way I am living today. Denigrarory identifications with no mention of what, or how much, has changed is like participating in a drugalog, or romancing the "stone".

That said, I too once was all that (above) ... and more ... many of which aren't that witty or punny, just pitiful. Today there are only moments where any of those (or other) statements are true for me. When they become true, even for an instant, it is a warning sign that I need to change what I'm doing, ask ol' HP for help, strength, and direction, and reach out in the physical world as well, by getting my a$$ to a meeting, or by reaching out to someone I know that is in recovery, someone who can help me get out of that stinkin' thinkin'.

Today, when I speek at a recovery meeting all I talk about is recovery, my experience and struggles along that path. I don't "need" to share about how I thought or acted, what or how much I used, while I was getting loaded. Everyone there already knows how to do that, or be that. We come to those meetings because we want to be different from that. We come to meetings to hear about new ways and means, new healthy perspectives. For me "...what it was like ..." means what it was like when I got here, (got clean) not what it was like out there (using). The message of recovery in NA is that any addict can stop using and find a new way to live. That "new way" includes my current thought patterns, "using" was to cover up or compensate for my feelings, the result of my thought patterns.

The NA Basic Text states, "... whose ends are always the same, jails, institutions, degradation, and death." That speaks about those who continue on that path of self-destruction. I no longer wish to "truely indentify" with that past degradation.

[Jackie Greenfield]

Great post! I can relate....too much! :)
Perfect in our imperfections.... perfect in our brokenness.

This is the one that still baffles me....


I’m a master of the complex, and overwhelmed by the simple.