The blame game

I have heard in rooms of recovery the tendency to blame the disease of addiction, family members, supervisors, ex-whatevers, or even the government for bad personal decision-making or poor behaviors. This indicates an unwillingness to either admit to or accept responsibility for your wrongdoings. You must accept and embrace your role in the negative parts of your life, even if the part you play is simply a refusal to really deal with them.

The acknowledgement of addiction as a disease isn’t for the purpose of giving you a built in cop-out; it is to help you to understand that your particular method of acting out is but a symptom of a deeper mental and spiritual illness that must be addressed and treated aggressively.

Unflinchingly admitting your mistakes and being willing to be accountable for them is maybe the most difficult and crucial thing that I must strive to do on a regular basis. 12-step work helps you to realize the hand you play in every situation. There are but a few times in life wherein the blame for a negative event lies solely somewhere else. In my active addiction I was an absolute master at convincing myself that everything bad was anyone’s fault but my own and refusing to admit the severity of my mistakes in the rare instances I would actually own them.

No power in existence can force you to open a bottle and drink, or pack a bowl or cut out a line. No one can put a pill down your throat or force you to overeat (real life isn’t like the movie “Seven”). Porn doesn’t magically appear on your computer, nor does gossip force its’ way out of your mouth.

Until a person is willing to be accountable to themselves for the bad choices they have made or continue to make, no real progress can be made. The first step is absolutely to stop the behavior, but that’s just the beginning. Not drinking is not enough. You have to accept and understand that your real problem is you and your warped, twisted way of thinking. This problem must be addressed in order for you to have any real hope at true happiness.

Stop blaming others. Stop making excuses. Stop copping out. Stop doing everything the easy way. There’s no easy way out of this. You got yourself into this, and you must make significant changes to your daily mentality to even begin to get out. You will need to seek and accept help from mentors, friends and your higher power, but you must be ever vigilant over your mentality. You alone are responsible for your thoughts, words and actions and you will be the only one who must account for them.