We have to pay particular attention to how honest and truthful that we are in Recovery, holding ourselves to crazy high standards in order to ensure the best possibilities for ourselves and our future.
Why?
Because active addiction requires a lot of consistent dishonesty.
One of the only areas left that an addict can manage maintaining any level of consistency with is being dishonest.
The substance that we are addicted to tells us all of the many reasons why it is okay to utilize all of the manipulative techniques that we use.
It all makes sense at the time & all feels completely legit and necessary.
*Here are some ways addiction perpetuates lies.
An addicted person will:
-Lie to themselves.
They will believe the lies about their present condition, their abilities, self-worth, value, potential or need to change; minimizing, rationalizing or intellectualizing what their lives have become.
-Deny the need for help from any force more powerful than themselves.
Often, an the addicted person denies a need for any outside help whatsoever, claiming to have control over their choices, or lives. Others, (like myself) mock the idea of a God at all- especially one that could help them.
-Lie to others.
When the drug completely takes over their person, and devours and chips away at any human decency that they have left, interpersonal relationships that may have once been important to them-suddenly don’t mean anything and become expendable selfish resources and nothing more.
Nothing really matters anymore at a certain point, besides their own desire to use. Lies, manipulation, cheating, stealing, and all other small, big or dangerous lies fall into this category. All of these things ruin the relationships that we may have had with others, whether personal, casual or business related relationships.
*Here are some ways that any Recovery program requires truth.
Recovery will:
-Ask us to get honest with ourselves.
For the first time in a long time, we will look into a mirror and see a person.
We will see what we have become and we have to decide to swallow that hard truth and begin work right there, from where we are at that moment. We decide to dedicate ourselves to not changing the truth of our lives or the choices that we have made up until that point…but we dedicate ourselves to creating a new truth about ourselves.
We commit to vigorous honesty in our thinking and evaluating our daily actions, mistakes, and victories; and we will to work in 24 hour increments.
-Ask that we recognize that we cannot help ourselves and we need help.
In order to do this, we have to be honest.
We have to take an honest look at where we are, and how we got there. For me that meant that without God’s help or direction – this is where we ended up. Without His power to look up, we didn’t have any hope or strength left to start this Recovery process.
We have to willing to admit that we have to look to His power and seek His strength in order to be able to work and handle working a program that is so raw and requires so much honesty, like the one addiction recovery asks for and requires. And like many other things in recovery, it’s paradoxical. By accepting that we are powerless, we find power.
-Help us to learn to be honest in all of our interactions and dealings with others.
As we begin to understand and value the importance of honesty with ourselves and with God, we will see how this can change and possibly repair our relationships with others.
Whether or not we are able to ‘fix’ broken relationships won’t be as important as the benefits that we will gain as human beings in Recovery, as we do the right thing-one person, one interaction, one conversation and one situation at a time.
That is all that we can do, but there is tremendous healing and potential for personal growth as we go through each day intentionally and honestly. Our integrity begins to rebuild within our inner parts and we start to believe that we are in fact, respectable and *worthy members of society. We begin to see that we can change and we can make decisions that we don’t even expect from ourselves.
We begin to allow that first seed of Hope to grow, and we see that if we keep working even a little each day- great things start to happen.