OMG!! Did I suddenly develop a conscience?

I character assassinated everyone - sometimes verbally, other times with just a look. At the same time I was quite self-righteous and had a sense of right and wrong (twisted as it was); I was right and you were wrong.

I could not see how my behaviors was hurting others, nor did I really care, when I was active addict. Alienating myself from my family; spending night after night teetering with projects (I would make so much noise that I would keep my neighbors awake); whenever there was gossiping going on, I needed to chime in; everyone else had issues, I didn’t.

I didn’t come into recovery and suddenly was changed into Mr. International Moral High-ground. This is an on going process. It’s taking a lot inside work for me to identify certain behaviors and actions that do not align with my values. I remember sometime last year when I spoke to a friend of mine and told him that I felt sick to my stomach because I was gossiping about someone just a few hours earlier. He told me that I was developing a conscience. Something that lost in my using days.

Am I perfect? HELL NO!

There are still some character defects that I need to identify and work daily to arrest them. I catch myself gossiping and not staying contact with my loved-ones.

Staying clean and working on my recovery I get to dig deeper into what makes me to do the things I do and do these behaviors serve a beneficial purpose - More will be revealed - one day at a time.

con·science
[kon-shuh’ns]

noun
1. the inner sense of what is right or wrong in one’s conduct or motives, impelling one toward right action: to follow the dictates of conscience.

2. the complex of ethical and moral principles that controls or inhibits the actions or thoughts of an individual.

3. an inhibiting sense of what is prudent: I’d eat another piece of pie but my conscience would bother me.

4. conscientiousness.

5. Obsolete . consciousness; self-knowledge.

6. Obsolete . strict and reverentialobservance.

Idioms
7. have something on one’s conscience, to feel guilty about something, as an act that one considers wrong: She behaves as if she had something on her conscience.