Made A Decision

I was never a social drinker. I was an anti-social drinker. - Roger L.

 

Living Sober Takes Practice

When we have for years turned to mind-altering-chemicals for dealing with life  - with alcohol being our big one - we don’t jump ship into sobriety easily. It takes time and practice to become comfortable with the very different high quality lifestyle sobriety offers us. 

We PRACTICE these principles in all our affairs.

 

In the beginning we have no idea how to even live a life without lots of high drama. We will often create situations to produce it just to elevate our comfort level.

 

We might start fights with our neighbors, gossip at work, shake our fists (or fingers) at other drivers, and angrily exit meetings - with or without leaving tire rubber in the parking lot. 

I know this, because I’ve done all of this - and much more. But as long as we don’t drink over any of it, it’s OK. Because we will learn - over time - that a life without high drama contains serenity. And serenity will truly - eventually - become our goal!

 

Newcomers often speak of the beauty in life they are now just noticing … of the butterfly on the neighbor’s window, the magical full moon, the diamond-like sun-sparkle on sea water … things never noticed when lost in our disease. 

But it can become hard to see the butterfly when we pick a fight with our neighbor. Nor will the full moon shine as brightly when sleep eludes us because of that quarrel. 

As for that sparkle on the water? Silver quickly turns to pewter when our vision darkens in anger. 

 

So we learn to look at our own behavior. 

What happened? Where did I go off track? Was I intolerant, impatient, self-centered, or afraid? 

Did my own confused emotions cause this problem to escalate? 

These are the kinds of things we learn to identify - and correct - as we trudge along our sober path. 

Happier sober lives are built by adopting new attitudes - step by step. When we develop - with practice - the daily use of the 10th step and begin to examine our part in our problems, we're well on our way.

Dr. Bob once said, I don't think we can do anything very well in this world unless we practice it. And I don't believe we do A.A. too well unless we practice it … that was not easy for me, and I assume that it is difficult for everyone else.

Our sobriety is worth the work. If A.A.’s co-founder himself struggled to practice his way into a new life, I don't think we should be too hard on ourselves when we find we may have to struggle a bit now and then, too. 

My disease of alcoholism once insisted that I drink whether I wanted to or not. Drinking was the insanity that dominated my life and ruled over my making any healthy choices for myself. My life had become unmanageable. It took A.A. to set me free.

In spite of the great increase in the size and the span of this Fellowship, at its core it remains simple and personal. 

Each day, somewhere in the world, recovery begins when one alcoholic talks with another alcoholic, sharing experience, strength, and hope.

Big Book of A.A.

Because A.A. has continued to work for a drunk like me I know it can work for you. I also know you will have a lot of fun along your sober way, because I certainly have!

 Keep Coming Back!

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Made A Decision

Courage is fear that has said its prayers.

                               Fearless and Thorough

How It Works is read at our meetings and, inside that lengthy reading, we hear: 

We beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas, and the result was nil - until we let go absolutely.

Well, there’s another of those puzzling messages that baffled me in the beginning, but I (slowly) came to understand it means we must get our hands off our problems - and all our old methods of working them out - and hand them over to that greater power, the One that actually knows what to do about them. 

It took me a damned long time to learn how to do that. My first sponsor once gave me a mug with these words on it: “Everything I’ve surrendered has my claw marks all over it.” (My first sponsor knew me very well.)

We alcoholics are a stubborn lot. Even in the face of repeated failure we will continue to launch our tried and untrue attacks at situations that have never once yielded to those same old solutions.

The clearest example for us to remember is the way we held onto the idea that WE would ultimately get our drinking under control. 

WE didn’t need help with that. 

WE would eventually be able to do it. 

Only after years (even decades) of suffering were WE - now desperate for help -  finally able to recognize, and admit, we were unable to do it alone. 

Enter A.A. - where despite oldtimers begging us to be fearless and thorough from day one in our recovery, WE often continue to keep a stranglehold on the idea that WE will find the solution to whatever is troubling us.

 Oh sure, I was willing to hand over my problem with alcohol, but only when it became obvious a Higher Power had actually handled that problem for others, so I figured my HP might even be willing to do it for me.

But I wasn't any too sure my HP could or would handle all my other fears and worries. So I held onto them tightly, convinced I could figure them out on my own, despite working one step after another all designed to pry my hands off them. 

We continue to repeat what we don’t - or won’t - repair. 

“There are two things alcoholics really, really don’t like - 

 (1) the way things are and

 (2) change.” 

Changing ourselves takes effort. 

Being a victim is easy - at first - but it doesn’t wear well. 

If we want God to remove our character defects we have to stop doing them. We must at some point give up our resistance to growth. 

(Hint: Sooner rather than later works best.)

We are called to change, because only when we surrender our pride and ego can we win. It becomes a bit easier to do when we start to realize everything our Higher Power sends our way is for our soul’s benefit. 

We grow when we let go. 

When we let go of our habitual thoughts and behaviors we will finally get onto the path to  becoming who we are meant to be. 

That earlier self-help guru, Norman Vincent Peale, once wrote:  If you want things to be different, perhaps the answer is to become different yourself.

And a quote from an old Grapevine magazine reads: We neither ran nor fought. But accept it we did. And then we began to be free.

I would love to tell you I figured this all out in the blink of an eye just by applying my keen intellect, but if I’ve learned nothing else in A.A., I’ve learned to be honest. I don’t actually suffer from a keen intellect, rather a quite sluggish one. It took more than one painful, frightening and even dangerous life “lesson” to get my attention that change was even necessary. 

One lesson involved my letting go of something I didn’t want to lose. Like most alcoholics I wanted what I wanted, when I wanted it, and what I wanted was not what my Higher Power wanted for me.

 Yet I hung on and on until I actually reached the brink of suicide, that permanent solution to a temporary problem. 

It took an A.A. miracle to help me to surrender in that instance and I’ll always be grateful it arrived. But any of us stubborn alcoholics are capable of that kind of behavior when we want something, or someone, that our Higher Power knows will ultimately destroy us. 

I had been a member of A.A. for a good while before I ran headlong into the realization I wasn’t the star of my little life show; my Higher Power is the star. 

It was my Higher Power who got, and keeps, me sober. It is my Higher Power who sends me the lessons I need to become a happier and saner me.

It is our collective Higher Power who gave us the astonishingly wonderful program of Alcoholics Anonymous, our safe place to learn how to live long enough to actually become joyous, happy and free. 

The path to that life is to practice our program just the way it was written ... then to keep doing it. 

As a qualified graduate of the school of hard knocks, with a doctorate degree in stubborn thinking, I am overly-qualified to beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start of your recovery. 

Because living the Program of A.A. is truly “the easier softer way”.

 

Made A Decision

                   Here's a Question for You ...

      What have you done for AA -

or for a still suffering alcoholic -

today?

Have you had a thought today about others still out there caught in the hell of

our disease? 

I try to, but it's only because it was once sharply brought to my attention. 

It happened in the building I was living in.

My apartment back then, when I was much younger, was a busy place. People

in recovery dropped by regularly for coffee and A.A chats. I had sponsees there

doing step work. I held weekly studies on books that had helped me in my

own recovery. 

But one day an ambulance arrived out front. 

The paramedics were searching for a man who lived in my building, but I didn't

know him. His apartment number, however, was from "around back," so I

directed them there.

In due course the paramedics wheeled a stretcher from the back apartment to

their ambulance out front. 

On the stretcher was a living skeleton, a rack of bones covered with tight yellow

skin, topped by an enormously swollen belly. 

My neighbor. 

Dying of alcoholism.

So there I was, Little Miss A.A., living The Promises while my neighbor was

quietly drinking himself to death just a few doors away.

How about your neighbor? 

Is he or she dying of alcoholism? 

Do you know?

 

More importantly, do you care?

Because of my own apartment experience I learned to pay closer attention to the

people living near me. And I let people know I'm in recovery from our chronic

terminal illness whenever I think that information might be helpful. 

As it says in our Big Book: 

Near you, alcoholics are dying helplessly like people on a sinking ship. If you live

in a large place, there are hundreds. High and low, rich and poor, these are

future fellows of Alcoholics Anonymous. 

Among them you will make lifelong friends. You will be bound to them with new

and wonderful ties, for you will escape disaster together and you will

commence shoulder to shoulder your common journey. Then you will know what it means to give of yourself that others may survive

and rediscover life.

You will learn the full meaning of 'Love thy neighbor as thyself.' 

That's as true - maybe even more so - than when our Big Book was written.

So what can we do?

 We can invite doctors, nurses, police officers, social workers, and others to our

open meetings. We can provide those same people with A.A. brochures.

We can answer their questions. 

Our groups can hold Fourth Step workshops. 

We can also host other kinds of workshops offering information about A.A.,

where speakers share about service, our steps, our traditions, The Importance

of Meetings, A.A. literature, and so much more.

Our groups can also offer public workshops where non-alcoholics can attend

and hear a couple of A.A. speakers, an Al-Anon speaker, and then to have

a question and answer session for those in attendance.

And we, as individuals, can carry the message to that person in tonight's

news - the one now headed to jail after causing a fatal accident while drunk.  

My home group had business cards printed to hand out or leave where they

might do some good. They read: 

"If you want to drink, that's your business. If you want to quit, that's ours ...

A.A, has helped millions of people stay sober for nearly 100 years."

 (And then it gave contact information). 

I recently heard about people in A.A. who were repelled and repulsed by a wet

drunk who showed up at their meeting. Can you even imagine that?

That drunk was there to show everyone what we were like (and can be again if we pick up a drink) - so that those there

could help him become the sober person he was meant to be. 

That's Our Job!!!

My sobriety - and yours - is given us just for today and is "contingent on the

maintenance of our spiritual condition."

 That means prayer, meditation, step work, book studies, meetings and giving

our sobriety away to someone who needs it. That's how we get to keep it, people.

The seats in A.A. are never empty. Lost members are soon replaced when

God points another newcomer in our direction, a person perhaps more

willing in sobriety to do the job we've been given to do.

I was fortunate in early recovery to be taken on a lot of 12-step calls where I

often got to see late-stage alcoholism up close and personal.

I hated those calls at the time, but I'm very grateful for them now. 

It was there I learned those of us who have escaped drinking - just for today -

are uniquely qualified to pull others out of the jaws of our ugly disease.

But all of us can, and often do, coast along on our own sobriety, skipping

meetings, not calling our sponsor, not being willing to do service in our

group ... truly skating along on thin ice. 

We are not ever cured of our cunning, baffling and powerful disease.

Not paying attention to the basics of our recovery every single day is truly playing with fire.

Our lives before A.A. weren't pretty. Lives of baffled defeat never are.

Those of us given a second chance at life in A.A. are the lucky ones.

Most drunks never even get inside the door for their first meeting. 

But coasting in our recovery for too long leads many of us back to drinking.

That wake-up call sometimes does the trick and we, with new understanding,

return to fully embrace our miraculous program. 

But some of us don't make it back, because for us to drink is to die.

Every recovering addict is a miracle. Many of us should have been

dead long ago. We have been given a second chance at life and the

promises of A.A. guarantee us a good one -

as long as we continue to give our sobriety away to others.

Helping others is the foundation stone of your recovery.

A kindly act once in a while isn't enough.

You have to act the Good Samaritan every day, if need be.

Alcoholics Anonymous 4th Edition

One of my good A.A. friends, a man with 30-plus years recovery, says he

gets choked up with emotion every time he hears the "Responsibility Pledge"

read in a meeting. 

Here it is:

"I am responsible. When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help,

I want the hand of A.A. always to be there.

And for that: I am responsible."

My friend takes that pledge seriously. 

I do, too. 

Every single sober one of us owes a debt of gratitude to A.A. that we can

never repay no matter how long we live. 

So my question remains: 

What have YOU done for A.A. - or for a still suffering alcoholic - today?