Today's Inspired Topic:
Spirit
Mentioned first 164 pages 21 Times in the BB...Here are a few..
"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 worth while. 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." Pg 66
"This thought brings us to Step Ten, which suggests we continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along. We vigorously commenced this way of living as we cleaned up the past. We have entered the world of the Spirit. Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. This is not an overnight matter. It should continue for our lifetime. Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. Pg 84
"Some of the snags you will encounter are irritation, hurt feelings and resentments. Your husband will sometimes be unreasonable and you will want to criticize. Starting from a speck on the domestic horizon, great thunderclouds of dispute may gather. These family dissensions are very dangerous, especially to your husband. Often you must carry the burden of avoiding them or keeping them under control. Never forget that resentment is a deadly hazard to an alcoholic. We do not mean that you have to agree with your husband whenever there is an honest difference of opinion. Just be careful not to disagree in a resentful or critical spirit." Pg 117
"We are careful never to show intolerance or hatred of drinking as an institution. Experience shows that such an attitude is not helpful to anyone. Every new alcoholic looks for this spirit among us and is immensely relieved when he finds we are not witch burners. A spirit of intolerance might repel alcoholics whose lives could have been saved, had it not been for such stupidity. We would not even do the cause of temperate drinking any good, for not one drinker in a thousand likes to be told anything about alcohol by one who hates it." Pg 103
"Abandon yourself to God as you understand God. Admit your faults to Him and to your fellows. Clear away the wreckage of your past. Give freely of what you find and join us. We shall be with you in the Fellowship of the Spirit, and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the Road of Happy Destiny. May God bless you and keep you - until then." Pg 164
"We don't use this as an excuse for shying away from the subject of God. When it will serve any good purpose, we are willing to announce our convictions with tact and common sense. The question of how to approach the man we hated will arise. It may be he has done us more harm than we have done him and, though we may have acquired a better attitude toward him, we are still not too keen about admitting our faults. Nevertheless, with a person we dislike, we take the bit in our teeth. It is harder to go to an enemy than to a friend, but we find it much more beneficial to us. We go to him in a helpful and forgiving spirit, confessing our former ill feeling and expressing our regret." Pg 77
"And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone - even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality - safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.
It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do, for alcohol is a subtle foe. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our activities. "How can I best serve Thee - Thy will (not mine) be done." These are thoughts which must go with us constantly. We can exercise our will power along this line all we wish. It is the proper use of the will.
Much has already been said about receiving strength, inspiration, and direction from Him who has all knowledge and power. If we have carefully followed directions, we have begun to sense the flow of His Spirit into us. Pg 85
Hil's Blah
And many more reference to Spirit in BB and 12X 12...To say this is anything but a Spiritual Program would be false. I was listening to Joe and Charlie yesterday "if the newcomer is driven out by the word God, not to worry-whiskey will drive him right back in"
When I was at the end end...like for real this time...Nothing, espicallicaly the mention of God, would have kept me out. When anyone is drowning, fighting for life, they will alway call to God...I don't care how much of a atheist or agnostic they think they are. They will call to their Father-like any child would call to their parent when in pain, scared, frighten....DYING
When we modified our program by edging God out and replace Him with fellowship, we watered down our spiritual program. This is a spiritual disease which requires a spiritual solution. If the main component of the solution has been cut out-if we are just using half the ingredients in the recipe (half measures availed nothing) if fellowship or a door knob is your HP, then you will relapse or have crappy sobriety. Period.
If the word God offends you, I feel sorry for you-Dr. Bob
That people are dying in AA because we don't want to "offend" anyone...That should offend us all.That the dry drunk misses out on what it feels like when the Holy Spirit move through you, uses you when you are Working with Others because they don't work with others...
They have 10 years sober and they are on Step 3?!? Everyone in the fellowship that knows that, is responsible....especially if they allow this person to speak /share in AA in meetings, about AA program and hasn't even worked the program and don't call them out on it.
Maybe they aren't even alcoholic...Maybe they just like hanging out in the meetings, hearing themselves talk....while the real alcoholic, the dying alcoholic, is waiting to hear about the solution...and we let Joe go on and on about coming back and keeping it green-he has just become the reason she doesn't hear the Spiritual Program of Action, relapse and dies...because we allow it.
I am spiritually awaken. I do have the Holy Spirit inside me. I don't struggle not to drink. I wouldn't settle for anything other than that...None of us should. I will make a full commitment to Jesus Christ who got me sober that I will never deny His power by denying someone the opportunity to receive Him and permanite sobriety because I didn't have the courage to say God-Jesus...That I would let even one of His children fall by the wayside because I failed to give them truth because I was worried about offended them. They will be a hell of a lot more offended dead.....Yeah, I'm not going to Him of my books!
The Spirit of Truth
Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.
John 14:17
But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:
John 15:26
Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.
John 6:13
We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.
1 John 4:6
Todays Action
- Learn more about AA history going back to the Oxford Group who carried the message to Rolland who carried the message to Ebby who carried the message to Bill who carried the message to Bob..who carried the message to us! We are the carries of this message-are we sure we are carrying the right one...on just a watered down version of the one that was giving to us??
- Make a list of things I want to do to grow in my sobriety
- Glorifying God through out the day and telling at least two people who got me sober...
Podcast of the Day
Peter M. 7th Session Winter Series 2018 12 Step House
The Privileged Addict (Love this guy!)
Comment Response on Dopamine & Working With Medicated Addicts
" I'm posting this comment response because it was too long for the comment section, as I continue to get emails from the therapist contingency asking about dopamine, not to mention the recent onslaught of concocted science regarding the organic or constitutional neurochemistry of drug addicts and how drug-seeking behavior is not only rational and justified but in fact just a "sincere" and no doubt heartwarming effort to achieve normal levels of certain neurotransmitters. Excuse for a sec me while I go beat my head against a wall. Plus I just read an article in the NYT propaganda machine about some poor 6-year old child on both adderall and the anti-psychotic, risperdal. Let me tell you that our doctors and elected officials who sanction this kind of poison as well as the parents who passively follow orders without a single neuron firing (no pun intended) are nuts, or at the very least grossly misguided and negligent.
*
Yes, indeed. Thanks for reading and reaching out. And you're certainly right about the fact that addiction crosses all lines, as all drugs act on what neuroscientists refer to as the dopaminergic "reward" system of the brain. There are some rather distinct differences between the drug action of certain classes of drugs. Opiates, for instance, tend to produce greater degrees of physical dependence as they act on the mu and delta opioid receptors, as opposed to the localized kappa receptors, and essentially shower our CNS with relief, allowing for some pretty vicious physical withdrawal.
However, these bio-chemical details are actually what cloud the judgment of many clinicians, but that said, you'd be right, physically speaking, to tell your clients they are all addicted to dopamine. And of course, the statement will most likely be met with total indifference, or perhaps some feigned interest at best.
A larger problem are the scientific presumptions we make regarding treatment, such as the implied notion that a lack of dopamine must be met with a more dopamine, and even healthier actions that raise dopamine levels... when the truth is that increasing dopamine production is not a solution, and is actually one of the primary causes of addicts failing in recovery.
For one, it is exactly the wrong frame of mind, which is to continue to find ways to feel better in sobriety. It is precisely our addiction to comfort that must be dissolved in order to accept life as it is, on life's terms, as a human being that suffers from time to time.
Two, it fails to address the crux of the mental component of addiction, the reason we cannot stay stopped, which we can refer to as the mental obsession. Addressing addiction scientifically fails to remove our condition of insanity, a condition that may sit latent for months, even years, and then suddenly we go and pick up again for no reason at all.
This is where you get all of that "relapse is part of recovery" bullshit, which fails to understand addiction or how to treat it. I became recovered suddenly as did hundreds of others I know personally. That is, as a result of taking a set of specific actions, the obsession disappeared, or rather, the mind was restored to sanity. None of us suffer from thoughts to use drugs or drink alcohol, and in fact we now repel those things which seek to push us away from God. Most clinicians do not understand that it is the mind, not the body that propels drug use. It is repeated thoughts and ideas that do not respond to ration or reason that cause an addict to pick up. It is not the body of an addict, his genes, or some fictional trigger outside of him. It is his broken and insane mind. There is a chip missing.
So the reason I'm okay is because the obsession is gone. As well, I choose to put my relationship with God above all else. And the reason why I'm not just sober but also successful in life is simply the result of hard work. Addicts who refuse to work hard (in all facets) will fail. Nothing outside of the addict is responsible for them becoming addicts, and nothing outside can fix them. Same is true for people who fail in general.
There are no grey areas. There is no "recovering." We're either okay or not okay. Sane or insane. Chip restored or chip still missing. Power or no power. Completely recovered or not at all. It is all or none for us given the condition of insanity, aka the broken mind.
So considering addicts are essentially preoccupied with self and self-comfort, the trick is to be okay without depending on some adjusted homeostasis, if you will - the condition of needing above-normal amounts of dopamine to be okay.
Finally, I personally would never work with with anyone who was smoking pot, let alone on suboxone. That combination guarantees your client is high as shit (which I'm assuming isn't news to you), and therefore, nothing can be accomplished, in my view. I've read some parent bloggers who say that we must help medicate addicts while they undergo therapy and learn how to think straight, but the statement alone is so ridiculous on its face. There is no thinking straight when an addict is medicated. And even then, the mind of an addict is generally so warped and twisted that we must usually begin to act our way into right thinking and not the other way around, as CBT would have you believe.
My experience is that really bad addicts must have some sort of profound spiritual experience to fully recover, some sort of transformation or conversion, whether sudden or gradual. These experiences often defy scientific theory and yet, they are real. Many such experiences have been documented, as in William James', The Varieties of Religious Experience."