Doc Anonymous

It was a good day. Got up early, biked to work, saw all of my scheduled patients, got done at a reasonable time, biked to yoga, then biked to an AA meeting that I chaired. Boo-yah! That's a good day. A full day. A day worth feeling pleased about, to be sure. However, if I choose to, I can completely eviscerate the experience of any sense of satisfaction. For instance: I don't really like my job and most days I don't even feel that I am particularly good at it. I could have done so much more for my patients today if I would only spend  more of my free time studying. So why am I wasting my time with yoga when I could be learning how to be a better doctor? And just think about all the time I have wasted being a drunk and a drug addict and now with all of this recovery business, think of how much more time I'll be wasting in meetings and step work that I could spend doing any number of things, and on, and on, and on. The M.O. of the perpetually dissatisfied. For a long time I equated dissatisfaction with possessing high standards. I thought that berating myself for the things I had not accomplished was the way to ensure that I did more. But even if that messed-up strategy had merit, I could never berate my way out of being an addict. So despite the heaps of whiny I direct at my addicted self, the reality is that is my reality. Without meetings, step work, the recovery community, service work, whatever serenity I have achieved quickly evaporates, addiction creeps back in, even material achievements vanish, and I am left unhappy and unhoused. Acceptance is the only reasonable course.