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Growing in Christ Jesus, and Sobriety....

This guy's blog is great! http://privilegedaddictwriter.blogspot.com/

 Relapse Is NOT Part of Recovery


     The cliche' goes, "Relapse is part of recovery."

     This sort of waiting room wisdom is exactly the kind of nonsense I had to toss out of the window in order to recover from addiction. Adopting this type of attitude, accepting relapse, and letting yourself off the hook is a recipe for death. One obvious reason why such a platitude is so harmful is because addicts LOVE this slogan. Dead giveaway. They love knowing that relapse is part of their recovery, that they can always get jammed if need be. Ridiculous. What a deranged avenue for addicts to rationalize using.


     This pile of bullshit is brought to you by the powers that be, the mainstream addiction authorities, the status quo of treatment centers, academics, doctors, therapists, social workers and wannabe addiction specialists & counselors who have decided what we are to believe about addiction. I like to call this, 'academic addiction' - that is to say, addiction understood and declared by those who have zero experience, those who sit in classrooms, convinced they know everything, even more than the addict himself, even more than the addict who has suffered, changed, and recovered entirely. Indeed, removed academics are cerebral narcissists. They really believe they know it all, and they have peddled this twisted notion that relapse is somehow part of recovery.

     This clever slogan is meant to brainwash you, folks. Think it through for a minute and don't let it. 

     Um, relapse has nothing to do with recovery. That's the whole point of recovery: YOU DON'T RELAPSE. Why? BECAUSE IT'S WRONG. Because you've given up the right to use and to continue hurting others. And presumably because you've recovered, which, even though you've been told the opposite, is entirely possible.

     But hey, we are all free to be enslaved by the belief that we will never truly be okay, that we will always be struggling, that we will forever be teetering on the edge, that we are constantly at risk to relapse. This is the best shit that the status quo can come up with, pamphlet cover catch phrases...? 

     "Relapse is part of recovery." LOL.


     "Hey, don't worry kid, relapse is part of recovery... so if you go off the deep end, steal all your mom's jewelry, speed-ball for a month straight, destroy everything and rip your family's hearts out all over again, don't sweat it. No big deal, kiddo, because relapse is part of recovery. Here, let me put my arm around you and embrace you. Just make sure to call us up for another round of detox, treatment, therapy sessions and methadone, all subsidized by the impoverished taxpayers you've been stealing from as an addict for the last 15 years."

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AA Speaker of the Day

Tom B. "Emotional Sobriety"




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AA Basics
Basic Ideas from the Good Book That Dr. Bob Considered "Absolutely Essential"
https://silkworth.net/pages/dickb/article8.php

A Study of Basics in Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, the Book of James, and 1 Corinthians 13 that appear to be directly related to the essentials in A.A.’s spiritual program of recovery developed in Akron between 1935 and 1938

Both of A.A.’s founders said that the Sermon on the Mount – (found in Matthew 5, 6, and 7) – contained the underlying philosophy of A.A. Moreover, Dr. Bob stated many times that A.A.’s basic ideas came from their study of the Bible and that the Sermon on the Mount, the Book of James, and 1 Corinthians 13 were “absolutely essential” to the early A.A. spiritual program of recovery.

In the years since A.A.’s founding in 1935, there have been endless attempts to compare A.A.’s Twelve Steps with any number of verses in the Bible—often verses that were neither mentioned nor studied by the Pioneer AAs. Yet, while he said he did not write the 12 Steps and had nothing to do with writing them, Dr. Bob said the basic ideas came from the Bible. And again and again, Dr. Bob mentioned James, Corinthians, and the Sermon as containing the heart of the A.A. program. Despite these statements, I have seen no study of the principles or basic ideas in the three mentioned segments of the Bible that attempts to correlate them with the Twelve Steps themselves.

For me, as one who has poured over A.A. history dozens of times in the past fourteen years, who has studied and practiced the Twelve Steps, and who has taught the Big Book Step instructions to at least 100 men, the parallels with the Big Book fairly leap from the Bible to the Big Book. I can’t say that the following verses were ever quoted in one place by either founder in connection with all the Steps; but I can say that the verses were quoted many many times by those pioneers and later AAs who mentioned the Bible in connection with the Steps and, with Dr. Bob, declared the verses to be “absolutely essential” to the pioneer A.A. program.

I believe you can get the real Biblical flavor of the Twelve Steps as they originally flowed from the Bible-studying Christians in Akron and from the lips of Reverend Sam Shoemaker, Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in New York. I also believe the verses will put to rest much of the private interpretation and speculation as to what the Steps really mean.

[Because the following verse quotations were prepared for, and used by some authors who wished me to present the verses from the New American Standard Version of the Bible, the language is that of the NAV, except where otherwise indicated. This is done even though the King James Version was used almost universally in early A.A.]

The Twelve Steps and the Correlative Bible Verses from James, Corinthians, and Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount

Step One – Temptation (the problem); Defeat (the cry for help); Resistance (the solution); and Abstinence (the “must”)

From the Book of James:

James 1:12-16:

“Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him. Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren.”

James 4:7-8:

“Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”

[See also 1 Peter 5:8-10: “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you”] 

An Early A.A. Description of Defeat by Bill Wilson:

“No words can tell of the loneliness and despair I found in that bitter morass of self-pity. Quicksand stretched around me in all directions. I had met my match. I had been overwhelmed. Alcohol was my master. Trembling, I stepped from the hospital a broken man. Fear sobered me for a bit. Then came the insidious insanity of that first drink, and on Armistice Day 1934, I was off again” (Big Book, 1st ed., p.17)

Step Two – Believing in, asking of, and receiving from, our Creator: His Help and Healing!

James 1:5-8:

“But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.”

James 5:14-16:

“Is any among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. Therefore, confess your sins one to another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.”

Matthew 7:7-8, 11 – (a part of the Sermon on the Mount):

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. . . . If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!”

Bill Wilson (who began as a self-described conservative atheist) describing his willingness to believe and his own “leap of faith.”

“Upon a foundation of complete willingness I might build what I saw in my friend [Bill’s friend Ebby Thacher, glowingly sober, ‘made the point blank declaration to Bill that God had done for him what he could not do for himself.’ His human will had failed. Doctors had pronounced him incurable. Society was about to lock him up. Like myself he had admitted complete defeat]. Would I have it? Of course I would! Thus was I convinced that God is concerned with us humans when we want him enough. At long last I saw, I felt, I believed. . . . How blind I had been” (Big Book, 1st ed., pp. 20-22).

“I remember saying to myself, ‘I’ll do anything, anything at all. If there be a Great Physician, I’ll call on him.’ Then, with neither faith nor hope, I cried out, ‘If there be a God, let him show himself.’ The effect was instant, electric” (Bill W. My First Forty Years, Hazelden, p. 145).

Step Three – The Decision to Entrust your life to God’s care

Matthew 6:9-13 – (part of the Sermon on the Mount):

“Pray, then, in this way: Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”

Matthew 6:25, 31-33 – (part of the Sermon on the Mount):

“For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? . . . . Do not worry then, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or “What shall we wear for clothing?’ For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

James 4:10:

“Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.”

Bill Wilson’s “surrender” to God as Bill understood Him:

“There I humbly offered myself to God, as I then understood Him, to do with me as He would. I placed myself unreservedly under His care and direction” (Big Book, 1st ed., p 22).

“There was utter confidence. I felt lifted up, as though the great clean wind of a mountain top blew through and through. God comes to most men gradually, but His impact on me was sudden and profound” (Big Book, 1st ed., pp. 23-24).

“I’d been incapable of faith and so, God’s help. . . out of no faith, faith had suddenly appeared. No blind faith either, for it was fortified by the consciousness of the presence of God. Despair had turned into utter security. Darkness was banished by cosmic light. For sure I’d been born again” (Bill W. My First 40 Years, supra, p. 147).

Read rest of Article by Dick B @ https://silkworth.net/pages/dickb/article8.php


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Hil's Health Tip

(Thank you Janie for the inspiration from the amazing real chemical free cucumber)

http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=42

 Cucumber
Fresh cucumbers are a somewhat unusual food when it comes to our eating habits since we are accustomed to enjoying them without removal of their seeds. This custom is an outstanding one in terms of its health benefits! Cucumber seeds contain a wide variety of phytonutrients, including both carotenoids and flavonoids. In one recent study, a small group of participants with mildly elevated blood fats consumed dried cucumber seed extracts on a daily basis over a period of six weeks. Results from this study included a variety of positive outcomes. Participants experienced decreased total cholesterol, decreased LDL cholesterol, decreased triglycerides, and increased HDL cholesterol. Of course, eating fresh cucumbers with their seeds intact is different than consuming dried cucumber seed extract. However, since the study participants consumed 500 milligrams of dried cucumber seed extract during the study, and since a dried cucumber seed (mature and large in size) weighs approximately 25 milligrams, we're talking about the equivalent of a relatively small number of seeds. So from a practical standpoint, this health-supportive amount of cucumber seeds seems easy enough to obtain from enjoyment of fresh cucumbers. We suspect that our website serving size of 1 cup (the equivalent of 1 small diced cucumber) would typically approximate this amount.

While still in its early stages (and mostly based on animal studies), research on cucumbers has been focusing more and more on alleviation of problems related to blood sugar regulation. When our blood sugar levels remain too high over a long period of time, one commonly developing problem is excessive production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive carbonyl species (RCS) that can damage cell structures and body components. Increased intake of cucumber holds promise as a step for significantly lessening this overproduction of ROS and RCS. Researchers believe that a wide variety of phenolic compounds in cucumbers are likely to be involved in this potential health benefit, including its many flavonoids and triterpenes.

Fermented foods - a staple in human cuisines since the very first civilizations - have become increasingly popular in the marketplace and included among many sought-after choices are fermented cucumbers. Though labeled as "pickles," cucumbers sold as pickles in the grocery have often not been fermented. Instead, they have been submerged in a very acidic liquid (usually vinegar). By contrast, fermented pickles are typically made by combining cucumbers with water, salt, and bacteria and giving the bacteria the right amount of time convert various substances in the cucumbers into different compounds. Studies on intake of fermented foods show a variety of potential health benefits, especially for the digestive tract. If you enjoy cucumbers in their pickled form, we encourage the selection of pickles that have been fermented. These types of pickles are usually easy to spot because the word "fermented" appears on the label.

While cucumbers are not as famous in the health world as some of their fellow vegetables (like cruciferous vegetables), it would be wrong to underestimate their health benefits and especially their phytonutrient content. While best studied in cruciferous vegetables, recent studies have identified the presence of several key lignans in cucumbers that had been more prominently associated with cruciferous vegetables (like broccoli) or allium vegetables (like onions or garlic). We now know that cucumber lignans include lariciresinol, pinoresinol, and secoisolariciresinol. Similarly, cucumbers are now known to contain phytonutrients that are members of the terpenoid family including cucurbitacins A, B, C, D, and E. All of the above phytonutrients have the potential to lower risk of oxidative stress and chronic inflammation. Decreased risk in these areas is also associated with decreased risk of multiple chronic diseases, and especially risk of certain cardiovascular diseases and certain cancers.


Antioxidant & Anti-Inflammatory Benefits of Cucumbers
Among all of the phytonutrients listed above, the vast majority have been shown to have antioxidant and/or anti-inflammatory properties either directly or through their influence on enzymes or metabolic pathways. For example, cucumber extracts inhibit the activity of cyclo-oxygenase 2 (COX-2), a well-studied pro-inflammatory enzyme. The activity of antioxidant enzymes - including superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), and glutathione peroxidase (GSH) - has also been show to increase in the bloodstream of participants who consumed cucumber power. Cucumbers also contain fisetin - a flavonoid that has been of special interest to researchers not only because of its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties but also because of its potential for risk reduction in the case of certain cancer types. While cucumbers contain fisetin in a lower concentration than onions, strawberries, apples, or grapes, they are still an important source of this flavonoid.

The antioxidant benefits of cucumbers have also been studied in the context of type 2 diabetes. The metabolism of individuals diagnosed with type 2 diabetes can sometimes become subject to changes that involve excessive formation of reactive molecules in certain cells. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive carbonyl species (RCS) are two such molecules that can be formed in excessive amounts. Several recent studies have shown the ability of cucumbers to help reduce production of ROS and RCS.

While still in its early stages (and mostly based on animal studies), research on cucumbers has been focusing more and more on alleviation of problems related to blood sugar regulation. When our blood sugar levels remain too high over a long period of time, we see increases in ROS and RCS that can damage cell structures and body components. Increased intake of cucumber holds promise as a step for significantly lessening this overproduction of ROS and RCS. Researchers believe that a wide variety of phenolic compounds in cucumbers are likely to be involved in this potential health benefit, including its many flavonoids and terpenoids.