At my email from DA-Recovery

Wise Advice from vfr44@aol.com

Accepting step one is the foundation to finding recovery. I see many addicts in different recovery areas wanting recovery but still not accepting powerlessness over the addiction. One recent example comes to mind. On a Debtors Anonymous list a person writes in: "I'd rather accumulate more debt than have my phone shut off. I need to change my thinking."

This is how it is with many addicts. A refusal to live within their comfortable means and a refusal to accept and practice Step 1. We are still playing god with debt, alcohol, food, drugs, gambling, sex, clutter, etc. The turning point with step 1 is when we would rather "accumulate recovery" instead of accumulate more addiction, then we have turned the corner. It is so easy to live outside our means and "charge it" to some later day. We start small and end up big...in big debts.

Part of the problem is that the right choices might be distasteful to our ego, so we go with what the ego likes. Other times we have not hit a low enough bottom to wake us up with a jolt of pain. Many of us let our mouth or brain dictate our tastes to us, but as it has tuned out these tastes have hurt us in the long run. Yes, as this person pointed out we need to change our thinking. We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that we used when we created them.

One thing about being powerless? We are only powerless when we have no recovery program and our addiction works us on its terms. Once we have recovery program, we have the power to work the addiction on the programs terms and the addiction can stop working us ion its terms.

V (Male)

For free access to my earlier posts on voluntary simplicity, compulsive spending, debting, compulsive overeating and clutter write: vfr44@aol.com. Any opinion expressed here is that of my own and is not the opinion, recommendation or belief of any group or organization.