This morning I made an effort to be more helpful to my wife by taking all the kids to camp.

I had to take a test today.  When talking to my wife in the morning she reminded me that she had a class in the afternoon.  I thought that it would be best if I didn't take the class.  She immediately insisted that there was just enough time and that I should go. I was grateful to find an effective technique to review for the test.  I went to the testing center at midday.  The test took much longer than expected and was very difficult for me.  I started out by doing an entire page of problems the wrong way and had to erase them all and start over. This was unfortunate because it made me run late and my wife didn't make it to her class.  I was mentally exhausted when I came home.

I offered to pick up all the kids.  When I got back home with them I had a splitting headache and was running on auto-pilot.  In my brain dead state I forgot to go to my class.  I realized this after dinner but it was much too late to go.  I was very disappointed and it bothered me a great deal.  I had to remind myself that it is just a lecture of the same material in the book and that I haven't missed any other classes.  But I need to turn to God now as I can tell it is still bothering me in my feelings.

This afternoon I caught the end of the Dr. Phil show.  In it he was talking about the dangers of tanning to two women who have an addiction to tanning.  One has had something like ten lesions removed and she still does not intend to quit.  He showed them cancer pictures and a cosmetic surgeon spoke and showed them gory pictures of reconstructive surgery.  Then they took pictures of them under UV light and showed them all their skin damage.  After all this the Dr. asked them if they understood the grave nature of this behavior and they said that they did.  But each one said that they knew they were not going to stop tanning.  The strange thing is that they went on to describe how it made them feel.  It occurred to me that the greatest mistake made by those who do not understand addiction is that it is not a matter of knowledge but rather a conditioning of feelings.  It takes a monumental shift of attitude to want to change but then it takes a reverse conditioning to inculcate this new perspective.

I wondered today if addicts could benefit from an inventory of desires, values, ideas, or especially, dependencies.

Thanks be to God.