Recovered Alcoholic

Are all members given the opportunity to speak at meetings and to participate in other group activities? I know that we all have been given the same opportunity to speak, participate, serve and sponsor.  I think that some of our members may use the format as a "on the side" platform, meaning they have face to face home groups or zoom home groups. I used that as my excuse for many years not to serve this group, or participate in business meetings-and that's not cool considering that this email group has been vital in my growth, sobriety and overall recovery.  Without guilt trips or pressure, I highly suggest those who aren't actively speaking, participating, serving or sponosing in our group, consider giving back to the group and charging this battery that is still a wonderful resource for those who are not comfortable on camera through zoom, chats and cannot attend face to face meetings for whatever reason. I love this for...

  We know that while the alcoholic keeps away from drink, as he may do for months or years, he reacts much like other men. We are equally positive that once he takes any alcohol whatever into his system, something happens, both in the bodily and mental sense, which makes it virtually impossible for him to stop. The experience of any alcoholic will abundantly confirm this. These observations would be academic and pointless if our friend never took the first drink, thereby setting the terrible cycle in motion. This says to me that no matter the amount of sober time I have in the program, that if I willingly drink alcohol because "I think", or have any lurking notion that I can drink again or react normally to it, I will be off to the races- and just like that and the nightmare I was entangled with for all those years would be on again.  Therefore, the main problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind, rather than in his body. If you ask him why he started on that last ...

“Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.” From page 85 in the 12x12:   "After taking this preliminary trial at making amends, we may enjoy such a sense of relief that we conclude our task is finished. We will want to rest on our laurels. The temptation to skip the more humiliating and dreaded meetings that still remain may be great. We will often manufacture plausible excuses for dodging these issues entirely. Or we may just procrastinate, telling ourselves the time is not yet, when in reality we have already passed up many a fine chance to right a serious wrong. Let's not talk prudence while practicing evasion."   My initial amends process was careless, half assed and could have caused more damage than good...why?...because my motives were completely selfish and self seeking. God bless my first sponsor, but she wasn't able to really guide me at the time and kinda just left me  dangling  at Step...

I didn't know how to apologize, let alone amend, through the lens of guilt, shame, resentment, fear or survival. I would either beg, debate or blame or justify all of my antics with the logic of: "if they didn't do ___, then I wouldn't have had to do___" or the dreaded "if onlys" and that would only come after the soul crushing hangover where I did feel genuinely horrible about whatever I did-only to have ego reconstruct the day after the hangover (or in sobriety it can be an emotional hangover) and after I got the temporary relief of them deciding to not leave me or fire me; and it would start justifying and rationalizing my behavior again and then repeat the same process. The internal battle and outsourcing personal accountability takes its toll on the body and the mind all as well as the spirit. Onee I learned to process life events in my initial workings of the Steps, I could then start to grasp the full picture clearly-not just my pain, but that ...

   Both you and the new man must walk day by day in the path or spiritual progress. If you persist, remarkable things will happen. When we look backward realize that the things which came to us when we put ourselves in God’s hands were better than anything we could have planned. Follow the dictates of a Higher Power and you will presently live in a new and wonderful world, no matter what your present circumstance. BB pg 100 The path of spiritual progress is uplifting. It just feels good when everybody is on the same page and or at the very least, open to progressing toward God. Some of us are day walkers, the seekers, spiritual progressors, enlightened, soul awakened, conscious of God and wanting to do God's will- who walk among the and converse with the dead, the hopeless, the ungrateful and tormented, the stagnant, stuck, comfortably numb, vampiric, seeking to please the world or their whims and desires... though I walk through the valley of the shad...

  "Thy will, not mine be done" is an act, or action of faith. Faith, when practiced, ultimately turns into Knowing. Knowing is when you begin to truly enter into conscious alignment, not just awareness, and start to operate in real coherence with your HP.  When you just know something there is no struggle and you cease fighting everything and everyone-including God. So just like everything, the more I practice something, the better I get at it, until it just becomes a part of me.  I practiced my disease and defects for 37 years, and not only were they a part of me, some were deeply ingrained and rooted in me and every decision I made- not saying I don't still have defects, what I am saying is that at 37 I learned a new way to operate in this place.  AA taught me that instead of running on self will that were again rooted in fear and defects, to seek God's will instead. The more I practiced this, the better I got at it.  I had t...