Responsible recovery
“.. we accept responsibility for our problems and see that we’re equally responsible
for our solutions.”
Basic Text, p.94
Some of us, well accustomed to leaving our personal responsibilities to others, may
attempt the same behavior in recovery. We quickly find out it doesn’t work.
For instance, we are considering making a change in our lives, so we call our sponsor
and ask what we should do. Under the guise of seeking direction, we are actually
asking our sponsor to assume responsibility for making decisions about our life. Or
maybe we’ve been short with someone at a meeting, so we ask that person’s best
friend to make our apologies for us. Perhaps we’ve imposed on a friend several times
in the last month to cover our service commitment. Could it be that we’ve asked a
friend to analyze our behavior and identify our shortcomings, rather than taking our
own personal inventory?
Recovery is something that has to be worked for. It isn’t going to be handed to us on
a silver platter, nor can we expect our friends or our sponsor to be responsible for
the work we must do ourselves. We recover by making our own decisions, doing our
own service, and working our own steps. By doing it for ourselves, we receive the
reward.
Just for today: I accept responsibility for my life and my recovery.