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Dianne’s Missives August 7, 2026

Thought to Consider…

At first, I thought the “God thing” was a crutch. Turns out to be stilts.
Take a walk with God. He will meet you at the Steps.
Joy is the infallible presence of God.
We honor the spirit in other people when we listen to them.

AACRONYMS

D E T A C H = Don’t Even Think About Changing Him/Her

Fact

“The explanation that alcoholism was a disease of a two fold nature, an allergy of the body and an obsession of the mind, cleared up a number of puzzling questions for me. The allergy we could do nothing about. Somehow our bodies had reached the point where we could no longer absorb alcohol in our systems. The why is not important; the fact is that one drink will set up a reaction in our system which requires more; that one drink was too much and one hundred drinks were not enough.”

Happy – When We’re Free

“For most normal folks, drinking means release from care, boredom, and worry. It means joyous intimacy with friends and a feeling that life is good. But not so with us in those last days of heavy drinking. The old pleasures were gone. There was an insistent yearning to enjoy life as we once did and a heartbreaking delusion that some new miracle of control would enable us to do it. There was always one more attempt – and one more failure.”

“We are sure God would like to see us happy, joyous, and free. Hence, we cannot subscribe to the belief that this life necessarily has to be a vale of tears, though it once was just that for many of us. But it became clear that most of the time we had made our own misery.”

Out of Self

It may be that problem drinking is, indeed, as some psychological experts say, an ailment characterized especially by egocentricity. Not all alcoholics are egotistical, although many of us have learned to see that tendency in ourselves. Others of us felt inferior most of the time; we felt equal or superior to other people only when drinking.
No matter which type we were, we realize now that we were excessively self-centered, chiefly concerned about our feelings, our problems, other people’s reactions to us, and our own past and future. Therefore, trying to get into communication with and to help other people is a recovery measure for us, because it helps take us out of ourselves. Trying to heal ourselves by helping others works, even when it is an insincere gesture. Try it some time.

It helped me a great deal to become convinced that alcoholism was a disease, not a moral issue; that I had been drinking as a result of a compulsion, even though I had not been aware of the compulsion at the time; and that sobriety was not a matter of willpower. The people of A.A. had something that looked much better than what I had.

Fellowship

“The fellowship I found in A.A. enabled me to face my problem honestly and squarely. I couldn’t do it among my relatives, I couldn’t do it among my friends. No one likes to admit they’re a drunk, that they can’t control this thing. But when we come into A.A., we can face our problem honestly and openly. I went to closed meetings and open meetings. And I took everything that A.A. had to give me. It was at that point I reached surrender.”

“Yes, there is a substitute and it is vastly more than that. It is a fellowship in Alcoholics Anonymous. There you will find release from care, boredom and worry. Your imagination will be fired. Life will mean something at last. The most satisfactory years of your existence lie ahead.”

Dianne

 

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Dianne’s Missives July 31, 2026

Thought to Consider…

Fear is a darkroom for developing negatives.
An obsession: A persistent, recurring idea that does not respond to reason.
It’s not making a mistake that will kill me. It’s defending it that does the damage.
Sobriety gives me what alcohol promised.

AACRONYMS

T R U S T = Try Relying Upon Steps and Traditions
F E A R = Forgetting Everything’s All Right
G I F T S = Getting It From The Steps

“We thought ‘conditions’ drove us to drink, and when we tried to correct these conditions and found that we couldn’t do so to our entire satisfaction, our drinking went out of hand and we became alcoholics. It never occurred to us that we needed to change ourselves to meet conditions, whatever they were.”

New Life

“We die to live. That is a beautiful paradox straight out of the Biblical idea of being “born again” or “in 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.”

“Where humility had formerly stood for a forced feeding on humble pie, it now begins to mean the nourishing ingredient which can give us serenity.”

Small miracles keep offering new opportunities just when I need change and growth. New friends have shown me hidden truths in those sayings that I once found so shallow. The lessons of tolerance and acceptance have taught me to look beyond exterior appearances to find the help and wisdom so often lurking beneath the surface. All my sobriety and growth; mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, are dependent upon my willingness to listen, understand, and change.

We should remember that all A.A.’s have “clay feet.” We should not set any member upon a pedestal and mark her or him out as a perfect A.A. It’s not fair to the person to be singled out in this fashion and if the person is wise she or he will not wish it. If the person we single out as an ideal A.A. has a fall, we are in danger of falling, too. Without exception, we are all only one drink away from a drunk, no matter how long we have been in A.A. Nobody is entirely safe. A.A. itself should be our ideal, not any particular member of it.

The Great Fact

“We realize we know only a little. God will constantly disclose more to you and to us. Ask Him in your morning meditation what you can do each day for the man who is still sick. The answers will come, if your own house is in order. But obviously you cannot transmit something you haven’t got. See to it that your relationship with Him is right, and great events will come to pass for you and countless others. This is the great fact for us.”

A.A. groups exist to help alcoholics achieve sobriety. Large or small, firmly established or brand-new, speaker, discussion or study group has but one reason for being: to carry the message to the still-suffering alcoholic. The group exists so that the alcoholic can find a new way of life, a life abundant in happiness, joy, and freedom. To recover, most alcoholics need the support of a group of other alcoholics who share their experience, strength and hope.

Dianne

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Dianne’s Missives June 6, 2026

Thought to Consider…

Faith dares the soul to go beyond what the eyes can see.
Patience with others is Love, Patience with self is Hope, Patience with God is Faith.
The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking.

AACRONYMS

F E A R = Failure Expected And Received
C R A P = Carrying Resentments Against People

Four Horsemen

“The less people tolerated us, the more we withdrew from society, from life itself. As we became subjects of King Alcohol, shivering denizens of his mad realm, the chilling vapor that is loneliness settled down. It thickened, ever becoming blacker. Some of us sought out sordid places, hoping to find understanding companionship and approval. Momentarily we did – then would come oblivion and the awful awakening to face the hideous Four Horsemen – Terror, Bewilderment, Frustration, Despair.”

“We are like men who have lost their legs; they never grow new ones. Neither does there appear to be any kind of treatment which will make alcoholics of our kind like other men. We have tried every imaginable remedy. In some instances, there has been brief recovery, followed always by a still worse relapse. Physicians who are familiar with alcoholism agree there is no such thing as making a normal drinker out of an alcoholic. Science may one day accomplish this, but it hasn’t done so yet.”

“We Agnostics”

“We used to amuse ourselves by cynically dissecting spiritual beliefs and practices when we might have observed that many spiritually-minded persons of all races, colors, and creeds were demonstrating a degree of stability, happiness and usefulness which we should have sought ourselves. Instead, we looked at the human defects of these people, and sometimes used their shortcomings as a basis of wholesale condemnation. We talked of intolerance, while we were intolerant ourselves. We missed the reality and the beauty of the forest because we were diverted by the ugliness of some of its trees. We never gave the spiritual side of life a fair hearing.”

Prayer

“On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives.”

“To get over drinking will require a transformation of thought and attitude. We all had to place recovery above everything, for without recovery we would have lost both home and business.”

“I was also able to realize that this bonfire of resentment and rage was beckoning me to pick up a drink and plunge in to my death. Then I realized that I had to separate my sobriety from everything else that was going on in my life. No matter what happened or didn’t happen, I couldn’t drink. In fact, none of these things that I was going through had anything to do with my sobriety; the tides of life flow endlessly for better or worse, both good and bad, and I cannot allow my sobriety to become dependent on these ups and downs of living. Sobriety must live a life of its own.”

Fact

“The great fact is just this, and nothing less: That we have had deep and effective spiritual experiences which have revolutionized our whole attitude toward life, toward our fellows, and toward God’s universe. The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous. He has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we could never do by ourselves.”

In A.A. we learn that since we are alcoholics we can be uniquely useful people. That is, we can help other alcoholics when perhaps somebody who has not had our experience with drinking could not help them. That makes us uniquely useful. The A.A.s are a unique group of people because they have taken their own greatest defeat and failure and sickness and used it as a means of helping others. We who have been through the same thing are the ones who can best help other alcoholics.

Dianne

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