When we get into the rooms of recovery or find the help we need with a therapist, social worker, a family member or within the faith-based community, we know while we were using and abusing drugs and alcohol, we have lived a life of getting away with things. This has been the case for some of us more than others. People who love us unconditionally and people who hate us for what we have become in our addiction, make us aware of this more than we care to remember. In recovery however, this becomes our "to do" list for making amends.
How do we pay it back, make it right and make the people we’ve taken things away from whole? We know, forgetting about it and just moving on is not enough. Clearing the path to a clear conscience is a humbling experience. Not everyone wants to see us succeed or is ready for us to come back into their life to make amends and right the wrongs. That is why we must remember that forgiveness is a process that in some cases can take a lifetime.
If we go on the path of making amends and we try to find the way back to a clear conscience, in the process we discover something else. We discover the hurt that drove the addiction and we discover how and why we buried it deep inside ourselves. Sometimes parents cause this hurt when we are small children and sometimes strangers or those close to us inflict pain and instill fear in us that we never let go of, until we learn how to ask for help.
Sometimes we were victims and this later made us victimize others. Drugs and alcohol use and abuse fuel our rage and in this clouded rage we wrongly try to make others understand our pain and desperation. Drugs and alcohol bring about behavior that leaves us blind to understanding exactly why we act the way we do. Other times we let go of a joyful life because we do not have the tools to cope with what happened to us. In either situation, our perpetrators and drug dealers have us where they want us and while they know we are afraid of what drugs have done to us, they now become the people who try to control us so they can keep doing us harm and taking things from us.
In recovery we learn to understand these circumstances in ways that are thorough, so that we can assess these events and find maturity and peace within ourselves. Letting go is a slow and personal process but we find that by helping others and by making a difference in our community, the healing process back to a natural self, reflects well on our character. We know we have arrived in recovery when we exercise a disciplined sense of conscience each day, for the benefit of others and the betterment of ourselves.