There's an old (and indelicate) adage in the rooms of recovery that says, "You can't save your face and your ass at the same time." For many of us this is a big decision, for when we used we were most often concerned with saving face, and when in recovery, saving our ass. But the need to choose still lingers.
A friend of mine came to me and talked about whether or not he ought to stay on his antidepressant medication. He said he didn't want to be "like those people who stay on medication for the rest of their lives." In effect, he was saying that he wanted to save face by not being like those he looked down upon and regarded as someone who did not fit his self concept. He did not want to accept his illness for what it is...a biologically driven problem that needed the best medicine possible to ease the pain it caused. Fortunately, the man makes the decision to stay on his medications every day so as to ease the mental pain and allow himself to come to the table of recovery to enjoy its bounty.
It is often said that we have choice now that we are clean and sober, and it's true. But, we do not have the choice whether to use or not. That is a foregone conclusion if left up to me, the addict: I will get high if you give me the choice. No, the choice is whether or not I believe (Step Two) that I have power in my life today to make the right choice to stay clean. There's a big difference. Part of that choice is whether or not I believe that I will survive life on life's terms and prevail over the problems that want to drag me down far enough that I abandon the hope that I will not use. The other part of this is whether or not I choose to have hope in daily recovery.
The whole idea behind whether or not someone like my friend takes his medication hinges on this belief that he will survive no matter what comes his way. That depression is in his life is something he needs to come to accept so he can choose to apply the proper remedy and move on, trudging to his happy destiny, as Bill W. would say. To have symptoms even when he takes his medicine is one of the confounding problems with thinking, for it makes him think that the choice to take medication is not working, so why continue. What I think he misses is how much worse he would be - and how the notion of choosing would never come to his mind - if he did not take the medication. He needs to believe that concept so he can continue to stay as healthy as possible and solve life's problems with the help of his Higher Power.
These choices can blind us to the real problem. Fundamentally I know that, as a recovering addict, I have a disease that will constantly tell me I do not have it. I will sometimes tell myself that I do not deserve this disease and that I am different that others to the extent that I cannot have in my life those positive things that make life meaningful. My thinking was bent, warped and twisted for many years and, today, what I think of as choice about problems is really the product of those years of mental turmoil. I have to guard against thinking that I have all the answers, remain humble and teachable, and constantly renew my relationship with my Higher Power so I can feel the hope for recovery every day. My Higher Power wants me to choose things that save my ass, not my face, and I need to continuously remind myself of that. I say it a lot, but, so long as I follow that way, I have nothing to fear.
All the best, Roger W.
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