Thought to Consider…
Life didn’t end when I got sober . . . it started.“We are not living just to be sober; we are living to learn, to serve, and to love.”The smallest package in the world is an alcoholic wrapped up in just themselves.If you think you have a problem with alcohol, you probably do.
AACRONYMSD U E S = Desperately Using Everything but SobrietyP R I D E= Pretty Ridiculous Individual Directing EverythingS L I P = Sobriety Loses Its PrioritySanity
“Few indeed are the practicing alcoholics who have any idea how irrational they are, or seeing their irrationality, can bear to face it. Some will be willing to term themselves ‘problem drinkers,’ but cannot endure the suggestion that they are in fact mentally ill. They are abetted in this blindness by a world which does not understand the difference between sane drinking and alcoholism. ‘Sanity’ is defined as ‘soundness of mind.’ Yet no alcoholic, soberly analyzing his destructive behavior, whether the destruction fell on the dining room furniture or his own moral fiber, can claim ‘soundness of mind’ for himself.”One of the best things about the A.A. program is the peace of mind and serenity that it can bring us. In our drinking days, we had no peace of mind or serenity. We had the exact opposite, a kind of turmoil and that “quiet desperation” we knew so well. The turmoil of our drinking days was caused partly by our physical suffering, the terrible hangovers, the cold sweats, the shakes and the jitters. But it was caused even more by our mental suffering, the loneliness, the feeling of inferiority, the lying, the remorse that every alcoholic understands.Obsession
“Most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows. Therefore, it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity and death. We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step to recovery.”“A MEASURE OF HUMILITY”
In every case, pain had been the price of admission into a new life. But this admission price had purchased more than we expected. It brought a measure of humility, which we soon discovered to be a healer of pain.It was painful to give up trying to control my life, even though success eluded me, and when life got too rough, I drank to escape. Accepting life on life’s terms will be mastered through the humility I experience when I turn my will and my life over to the care of God, as I understand Him. With my life in God’s care, fear, uncertainty, and anger are no longer my response to those portions of life that I would rather not have happen to me. The pain of living through these times will be healed by the knowledge that I have received the spiritual strength to survive.
A New Life
The new life of sobriety we are learning to live in A.A. is slowly growing on us, and we are beginning to get some of that deep peace of mind and serenity that we never thought were possible. At first, we may have doubted that this could happen to us, but after any considerable length of time in A.A., looking at the happy faces around us, we know that somehow it is happening to us. In fact, it cannot help happening to anyone who takes the A.A. program seriously day by day.In talking to a prospect, stress the spiritual feature freely. If the man be agnostic or atheist, make it emphatic that he does not have to agree with your conception of God. He can choose any conception he likes, provided it makes sense to him. The main thing is that he be willing to believe in a Power greater than himself and that he live by spiritual principles.”Dianne
Dianne’s Missives August 22
Thought to Consider…
I’d rather be better than bitter.
God wants spiritual fruit, not religious nuts.
In A.A., sponsor and sponsored meet as equals.
“The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.”
We SURRENDER TO WIN. On the face of it, surrendering certainly does not seem like winning. But it is in A.A. Only after we have come to the end of our rope, hit a stone wall in some aspect of our lives beyond which we can go no further; only when we hit “bottom” in despair and surrender, can we accomplish sobriety which we could never accomplish before. We must, and we do, surrender in order to win.
We DIE TO LIVE. That is a beautiful paradox straight out of the Biblical idea of being “born again” or “losing one’s life to find it”. When we work at our Twelve Steps, the old life of guzzling and fuzzy thinking, and all that goes with it, gradually dies, and we acquire a different and a better way of life. As our shortcomings are removed, one life of us dies, and another life of us lives. We in A.A. die to live.
“Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. Commencing to drink after a period of sobriety, we are in a short time as bad as ever. If we have admitted we are alcoholics, we must have no reservations of any kind, nor any lurking notion that someday we will be immune to alcohol. What sort of thinking dominates an alcoholic who repeats time after time the desperate experiment of the first drink? Parallel with sound reasoning, there inevitably runs some insanely trivial excuse for taking the first drink. There is little thought of what the terrific consequences may be.”
To one who feels he is an atheist or agnostic, a spiritual experience seems impossible, but to continue as he is means disaster. To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face. But we have to face the fact that we must find a spiritual basis of life – or else. Lack of power is our dilemma. We have to find a power by which we can live, and it has to be a power greater than ourselves.
It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worthwhile. But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns, and we drink again. And with us, to drink is to die.
“We of agnostic temperament have found that as soon as we were able to lay aside prejudice and express a willingness to believe in a Power greater than ourselves, we commenced to get results, even though it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that Power, which we call God. As soon as you can say that you do believe or are willing to believe, you are on your way. Upon this simple cornerstone a wonderfully effective spiritual structure can be built.”
Privileged to Communicate
“Everyone must agree that we A.A.’s are unbelievably fortunate people; fortunate that we have suffered so much; fortunate that we can know, understand, and love each other so supremely well. These attributes and virtues are scarcely of the earned variety. Indeed, most of us are well aware that these are rare gifts which have their true origin in our kinship born of a common suffering and a common deliverance by the grace of God. Thereby we are privileged to communicate with each other to a degree and in a manner not very often surpassed among our nonalcoholic friends in the world around us.”
Dianne