Tag: serve

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Dianne’s Missives August 15, 2026

Thought to Consider…

What does it benefit me to not like another human being?
I’ve only given up one drink… the next one.
A.A. is not something you join, it’s a way of life.
We are not living just to be sober; we are living to learn, to serve, and to love.

AACRONYMS

P R O G R A M = People Relying On God Relaying A Message
H E A R T = Healing, Enjoying, And Recovering, Together
F E A R = False Expectations Appearing Real

Allergy

“We have an allergy to alcohol. The action of alcohol on chronic alcoholics is a manifestation of an allergy. We allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all. We cannot be reconciled to a life without alcohol, unless we can experience an entire psychic change. Once this psychic change has occurred, we who seemed doomed, we who had so many problems that we despaired of ever solving them, find ourselves able to control our desire for alcohol.”

“While alcoholics keep strictly away from drink, they react to life much like other people. But the first drink sets the terrible cycle in motion. Alcoholics usually have no idea why they take the first drink. Some drinkers have excuses with which they are satisfied, but in their hearts they really do not know why they do it. The truth is that at some point in their drinking they have passed into a state where the most powerful desire to stop drinking is of no avail.”

A “DESIGN FOR LIVING”

We in our turn, sought the same escape with all the desperation of drowning men. What seemed at first a flimsy reed, has proved to be the loving and powerful hand of God. A new life has been given us or, if you prefer, “a design for living” that really works.

Besides a seeming inability to accept much on faith, we often found ourselves handicapped by obstinacy, sensitiveness, and unreasoning prejudice. Many of us have been so touchy that even casual reference to spiritual things made us bristle with antagonism. This sort of thinking had to be abandoned. Though some of us resisted, we found no great difficulty in casting aside such feelings. Faced with alcoholic destruction, we soon became as open minded on spiritual matters as we had tried to be on other questions. In this respect alcohol was a great persuader. It finally beat us into a state of reasonableness. Sometimes this was a tedious process; we hope no one else will be prejudiced for as long as some of us were.

Willing to Believe

“Do not let any prejudice you may have against spiritual terms deter you from honestly asking yourself what they might mean to you. At the start, this was all we needed to commence spiritual growth, to effect our first conscious relation with God as we understood Him. Afterward, we found ourselves accepting many things which then seemed entirely out of reach. That was growth, but if we wished to grow, we had to begin somewhere. So we used our own conception, however limited it was.

Growth

“Regardless of worldly success or failure, regardless of pain or joy, regardless of sickness or health or even of death itself, a new life of endless possibilities can be lived if we are willing to continue our awakening, through the practice of A.A.’s Twelve Steps.”

Service

“Service gladly rendered, obligations squarely met, troubles well accepted or solved with God’s help, the knowledge that at home or in the world outside we are partners in a common effort, the well-understood fact that in God’s sight all human beings are important, the proof that love freely given surely brings a full return, the certainty that we are no longer isolated and alone in self-constructed prisons, the surety that we need no longer be square pegs in round holes but can fit and belong in God’s scheme of things – these are the permanent and legitimate satisfactions of right living for which no amount of pomp and circumstance, no heap of material possessions, could possibly be substitutes. True ambition is not what we thought it was.”

Dianne

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Dianne’s Missives June 12, 2026

Thought to Consider…

Alcohol gave me wings to fly, and then it took away the sky.
Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.
When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.
That light at the end of the tunnel may be you.

AACRONYMS

T R U S T = Transferring Recovery Using Steps and Traditions
G R A C E = Gently Releasing All Conscious Expectations
A. A. = Absolute Abstinence

“How many of us would presume to declare, ‘Well, I’m sober and I’m happy. What more can I want, or do? I’m fine the way I am.’ We know that the price of such self-satisfaction is an inevitable backslide, punctuated at some point by a very rude awakening. We have to grow or else deteriorate. For us, the status quo can only be for today, never for tomorrow. Change we must; we cannot stand still.”

Step One: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.
Alcoholics who still had their health, their families, their jobs, and even two cars in the garage, began to recognize their alcoholism. They were spared that last ten or fifteen years of literal hell the rest of us had gone through. Since Step One requires an admission that our lives have become unmanageable, how could people such as these take this Step? It was obviously necessary to raise the bottom the rest of us had hit to the point where it would hit them. By going back in our own drinking histories, we could show that years before we realized it, we were out of control, that our drinking even then was no mere habit, that it was indeed the beginning of a fatal progression.

OPENING UP TO CHANGE

Self-searching is the means by which we bring new vision, action, and grace to bear upon the dark and negative side of our natures. With it comes the development of that kind of humility that makes it possible for us to receive God’s help. . . . we find that bit by bit we can discard the old life – the one that did not work – for a new life that can and does work under any conditions whatever.

READINESS TO SERVE OTHERS

. . . our Society has concluded that it has but one high mission – to carry the A.A. message to those who don’t know there’s a way out.

The “Light” to freedom shines bright on my fellow alcoholics as each one of us challenges the other to grow. The “Steps” to self-improvement have small beginnings, but each Step builds the “ladder” out of the pit of despair to new hope. Honesty becomes my “tool” to unfurl the “chains” which bound me. A sponsor, who is a caring listener, can help me to truly hear the message guiding me to freedom. I ask God for the courage to live in such a way that the Fellowship may be a testimony to His favor. This mission frees me to share my gifts of wellness through a spirit of readiness to serve others.

Fellowship

“We are average Americans. All sections of this country and many of its occupations are represented, as well as many political, economic, social, and religious backgrounds. We are people who normally would not mix. But there exists among us a fellowship, a friendliness, and an understanding which is indescribably wonderful . . . The tremendous fact for every one of us is that we have discovered a common solution.”

We alcoholics are fortunate to be living in a day and age when there is such a thing as Alcoholics Anonymous. Before A.A. came into being, there was very little hope for the alcoholic. A.A. is a great rebuilder of human wreckage. It takes men and women whose personality problem expresses itself in alcoholism and offers them a program that, if they are willing to accept it, allows them not only to get sober, but also to find a much better way of living.

“Remember that we deal with alcohol, cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too much for us. But there is One who has all power that One is God. May you find Him now!”

Dianne

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