Piety and Virtue

June 5, 2008

“Let’s not confuse virtue with piety”, wise words from a good friend of mine in Houston. In a place of recovery where everything seems addictive, that simple sentence can mean so much. Just because I am in recovery doesn’t mean I have to quit smoking, or eating, or any of the other things I love to do. Another day fast food free and still no sign that it’s going to get any easier. Sure I am spending less money, learning to cook, and becoming “domesticated”, but am I really happy. I mean isn’t Amanda at the drive-thru going to miss our late night exchanges of piping hot trans fat? I guess to her I was just another pretty face looking to get a fried fix at 225 on a Friday morning. Does this mean that I shouldn’t go into fast food places unless I have a valid reason for being there? Similar to the way that AA’s aren’t supposed to be in bars unless they have a valid reason? God this is getting insane. I am not addicted to fast food. I just quit it for an addictions class. For five freaking weeks I cannot eat a god damn hamburger. How is that hard? I guess when you attempt to apply not so much the steps of AA but all those unstated rules to an addictive behavior such as eating too much fast food you just end up sounding completely insane. Which I guess is an accurate representation of where I currently am at.

Oh and another new development in my recovery, apparently I was an ACOA (adult child of an alcoholic) and didn’t even know it. I have 22 of the 29 characteristics that most have. You only need 10 to be considered an ACOA. I find this odd because my parents never really drank around me, so where did I learn this behavior? I assume that my parents, although they didn’t really drink around me, are still ACOA’s because of their parents, and because of this passed down those traits without even involving alcohol. So, piety virtue and ACOA, what a nice summer bouquet of recovery; maybe next week I can add even more big words that I don’t understand to the mix.

If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done. -- Ludwig Wittgenstein