I know that for the many years that I used alcohol and drugs I always found some reason that my substance abuse was someone else's fault.
It was because my father was an alcoholic.
It was because he beat my mother when he would get drunk, and set a bad example for me when I was a child.
I drank because I was raised in a poor environment by poor parents who were not very well educated.
After I started getting arrested for crimes committed so that I could obtain drugs and alcohol then I would blame it on the system.
"The police just have it in for me," I would say. I said that to my mother one time when she asked me why I was always getting into trouble. And that's what I told her: "the police just want to mess with me, they have it in for me."
But I never told her that again after she asked me why they didn't have it in for her.
A long time ago people could could see through my façade of blaming others for my behavior, of not wanting to be responsible for myself.
But I'm here to tell you today, after having been sober for nearly 1/3 of my life, that there's only one person who's responsible for our recovery: and that person is us. I'm the one responsible when I crack open a bottle of whiskey. Or pick up a bag of dope.
I'm the one who was responsible when the jailhouse doors slammed behind me. I'm the one who was responsible when I lost a job, or got divorced, or got fired from my job.
And it was all because I didn't want to quit drinking and doing drugs and live a normal life like most of the people I knew.
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