excerpt from My Favorite Character Defects: The next workbook written by Addiction

Indelible Past: The Sequel

Addiction describes how he uses people's mistaken belief that who they were is who they will always be. One purpose of the workbook is to help people recognize mistaken beliefs that lead to relapse.

Rose wanted to be a ballerina, but she ended up dancing around a pole. She felt exposed when she walked into her first NA meeting. Recovery whispered, “You are not alone, everybody in NA has done things they regret.”

“Yeah, but they didn’t do them naked in front of large groups of drunk men,” I told her. Cruelty is my game.  In a voice that sounded remarkably like her own, I whispered “slut.” 

Recovery sent other people to Rose, who seeing the discomfort on her face, asked her if she was ok. When Rose admitted she was a little embarrassed to be at the meeting, they shared some of their own embarrassments.

“Whatever you have done,” one woman said, “somebody else has done the same.” Rose heard a speaker describe how he sold himself to buy drugs. She heard from a young man who stole from his parents, and a nurse who took painkillers from dying patients. 

After several NA meetings, Rose began to worry less about her past, focusing more on today. I put a stop to her progress. I sent a man Rose recognized from her stripper days to her homegroup. All the feelings of shame came flooding back to her. She never even noticed he was embarrassed too. Before you can say “indelible past,” I had her thinking she was who she used to be, and that she was kidding herself, and that she should go back to being a “junkie” because that was more “honest.” 

Ironically, the innocent little ballerina in her soul had started dancing again. That dancer was the “honest” part of her, not the humiliated woman dancing for money to feed her drug habit.

My Favorite Character Defects: The next workbook written by Addiction is free today https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8MG0S