OKaysez

 

I am currently reposting all 100 previously posted blogs that contain what I've learned about staying sober. Because AA has continued to work for a drunk like me since 1981, I know it can work for you. And I can promise you'll have some real adventures along the way!

                                                Keep Coming Back!

             If you wish to contact me personally with your comments, my email is: o.kay.dockside@gmail.com

Made a Decision

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                                Slip'n and Slid'n.

        There are two types of pain in the world.  Pain that hurts you.

                               And pain that changes you.

 

In 1960, one of AA's founding members shared his thoughts about those who return to drinking after having been sober a while in AA. He wrote the following:

Slips can often be charged to rebellion; some of us are more rebellious than others. Slips may be due to the illusion that one can be 'cured' of alcoholism.

Slips can also be charged to carelessness and complacency. Many of us fail to ride out these periods sober. Things go fine for two or three years - then the member is seen no more.

Some of us suffer extreme guilt because of vices or practices that we can't or won't let go of. Too little self-forgiveness and too little prayer - well, this combination adds up to slips.

Then some of us are far more alcohol-damaged than others. Still others encounter a series of calamities and cannot seem to find the spiritual resources to meet them.

There are those of us who are physically ill. Others are subject to more or less continuous exhaustion, anxiety, and depression. These conditions often play a part in slips - sometimes they are utterly controlling.

 In my own case, and purely by the grace of God, I have not had a drink of alcohol since I attended my first meeting in Alcoholics Anonymous. That fact makes me blessed, not superior.

The thought of having a slip scares the hell out of me, because I have learned from the slips of others that our disease of alcoholism progresses whether we are drinking or not. We will never return to the happy early days of our drinking, we return almost immediately to an advanced stage of alcoholic hell.

Sadly, however, I have witnessed many AA members who have not been as fortunate as I have been.

 I have had dear friends in the program who picked up a drink to suffer another period of "research" on the horrible effects alcohol has on those like us. 

A few of them died from it, including a wonderful man who kept me from picking up a drink many times in those hard early days of my own recovery. 

Some of those who "slipped" did make it back to the rooms. None, however, returned to tell us how great it was to be back out there drinking again. All of them had just added more new horrors to their previous horror stories about our disease.

I, too, (like every recovering alcoholic) have been close to picking up a time or two during my recovery, but I'm so grateful I did not. Hearing those horror stories probably played a big part in that. It's one more reason to continue going to meetings, to hear - and see - that harsh reminder of what awaits us when we do not.

There's a recurring theme heard from those who have returned to AA after drinking again. They invariably say: "I slipped after I stopped going to meetings."

Never forget we in AA have a chronic terminal illness. Other chronic terminal illnesses (like many cancers, kidney diseases, diabetes) all require very painful treatments involving needles and horrific medical procedures. 

Our primary treatment for our deadly disease is to get our ass to a meeting!

And we can SEE the results of our treatments in the faces around us in meetings. 

Group members often arrive with frowning faces to share stories of their horrible day. But, by meeting's end, they are smiling and joking with other members about how their day now doesn't seem quite as bad after all.

There's an old AA saying we might want to write down; right up there on the wall in big letters will be fine!

                       "Meeting Makers Make It!"