When one alcoholic/addict shares with another alcoholic/addict

[MajestyJo]

From "How It Works:"

"Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to
the agnostic, and our personal adventures before
and after make clear three pertinent ideas:

(a) That we were alcoholic and could not
manage our own lives.
(b) That probably no human power could have
relieved our alcoholism.
(c) That God could and would if He were sought."

c. 1976, Alcoholics Anonymous, page 60

Love this, Steps 1, 2, and 3 Waltz. I came, I came to, and I came to believe.

As a dear friend reminded me, it says 'could' doesn't say 'would' restore me to sanity. i prayed for my sense of humour to be healed and he wanted his to remain the same.

[MajestyJo]

Thought for the Day
Wednesday, AUGUST 15

From the book: Twenty-Four Hours a Day

Thought for the Day

"Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. Commencing to drink after a period of sobriety, we are, in a short time, as bad as ever. If we have admitted we are alcoholics, we must have no reservations of any kind, nor any lurking notion that some day we will be immune to alcohol. What sort of thinking dominates an alcoholic who repeats time after time the desperate experiment of the first drink? Parallel with sound reasoning, there inevitably runs some insanely trivial excuse for taking the first drink. There is little thought of what the terrific consequences may be." Have I given up all excuses for taking a drink?

Meditation for the Day


"Where two or three are banded together, I will be there in the midst of them." When God finds two or three people in union, who only want His will to be done, who want only to serve Him, He has a plan that can be revealed to them. The grace of God can come to people who are together in one place with one accord. A union like this is miracle-working. God is able to use such people. Only good can come through such consecrated people, brought together in unified groups for a single purpose and of a single mind.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may be part of a unified group. I pray that I may contribute my share to its consecrated purpose.

I can't forget where I came from. My disease is just waiting for a week spot, an opening of any kind, be it mental, emotional, spiritual or physical to job in and catch us at a weak moment and we end up talking OURSELVES into a drink.

Sd need meeting to remind us. It is good when we get neawcomers to remind us, that could be me.

[MajestyJo]

During the sixties the old-timers referred to a prayer as the "Seven Magic Words of AA"

And now the story behind the story:

It was the Saturday before Mother's Day 1935. A gentleman from NY named Bill Wilson was staying at the Mayflower Hotel in Akron, Ohio. He had come to town for a business deal that had gone sour.

He was in the lobby of the hotel feeling angry and depressed as he heard the tinkling of glasses and music coming from the hotel's bar.

*He wanted to drink* after being sober for six months.

He prayed "God, don't let me think this way" as he went to the phones, found Dr. Bob.............................and the rest is history.

Over the decades, in the history of AA, this story has gotten lost.

During 1974 while in Akron, Ohio (not on Founder's Day), myself, my wife and my sponsor (Papa Frank) met one of the first 100 members of AA He verified the authenticity of the above story.

Boy, talk about ammunition (bullets).................God, Don't Let Me Think This Way!

Tiger

My drug of choice in the moment, be it people, places, or things, is but a symptom of my disease. The problem is me. I don't have a drinking problem, I have a thinking problem.

[MajestyJo]

"Disease and Choice"

We try never to lose sight of the unchangeable fact of our alcoholism, but we learn not to brood or feel sorry for ourselves or talk about it all the time. We accept it as a characteristic of our body---like our height or our need for glasses, or like any allergies we may have.

Then we can figure out how to live comfortably---not bitterly---with that knowledge as long as we start out by simply avoiding that first drink (remember?) just for today.

A blind member of A.A. said his alcoholism was quite similar to his blindness. "Once I accepted the loss of my sight," he explained, "and took the rehabilitation training available to me, I discovered I really can, with the aid of my cane or my dog, go anywhere I want to go quite safely, just as long as I don't forget or ignore the fact that I am blind. But when I do not act within the knowledge that I cannot see, it is then I get hurt, or in trouble."

"If you want to get well," one A.A. woman said, "you just take your treatment and follow directions and go on living. It's easy as long as you remember the new facts about your health. Who has time to feel 'deprived' or self-pitying when you find there are so many delights connected with living happily unafraid of your illness?"

To summarize: We remember we have an incurable, potentially fatal ailment called alcoholism. And instead of persisting in drinking, we prefer to figure out, and use, enjoyable ways of living without alcohol.

We need not be ashamed that we have a disease. It is no disgrace. No one knows exactly why some people become alcoholics while others don't. It is not our fault. We did not want to become alcoholics. We did not try to get this illness.

We did not suffer alcoholism just because we enjoyed it, after all. We did not deliberately, maliciously set out to do the things we were later ashamed of. We did them against our better judgment and instinct because we were really sick, and didn't even know it.

We learned that no good comes of useless regret and worry about how we got this way. The first step toward feeling better, and getting over our sickness, is quite simply not drinking.

... Anyone who wants it is welcome to a "free trial period" of this new concept of self. Afterward, anyone who wants the old days again is perfectly free to start them all over. It is your right to take back your misery if you want it.

On the other hand, you can also keep the new picture of yourself, if you'd rather. It, too, is yours by right.

---From Living Sober, page 9-10

[MajestyJo]

do not have a drinking or drugging problem in today, I have a thinking problem. A thought that can take me to either the right or wrong action for me in today. What worked for eons and eons, no longer serves it's purpose in my life.

[MajestyJo]

From the GV book

In early recovery, I was told that I had to take the first half of Step One 100%, I often wondered why they didn't say the whole of Step One.

Then I had a big awakening, my life is unmanageable when managed by me. There are still times that my life can be unmanageable, but thanks to the program, I can pick up the tools, get honest, surrender, accept, open my mind and let my thought out and another's in, and be willing to do what it takes to recover.

I AM NOT THE POWER. My best thinking got me to the doors of recovery. My way doesn't work. I am powerless over my disease, and that of others, whatever their disease might be. Some times we don't see them as such, and we think because we have our own disease, they might be right and we are wrong. They just might have their own disease, even if their dis-ease, is to fix me.

[MajestyJo]

I qualify for both sides of the street. Alcohol is a drug. My son is my present qualifier, in the past are my mom, dad, and ex-husband, along with 2 sponsees who died from their disease, and a sponsee and an old boyfriend who died sober.

I no I am an addict, my drug of choice was more. I used alcohol like I used prescription drugs (dried-up alcohol), food, work/busy, an OPs (relationships, family, and sponsees). I was in denial for a long time before I could admit to being an alcoholic. I am an alcoholic and I am powerless over alcohol and food just like Snoopy.

One is too many, a thousand isn't enough.

[MajestyJo]

How Alcohol Causes Depression

It has been proven that alcohol causes depression. Depression is ongoing feelings of hopelessness, sadness, unhappiness, and causes a bleak outlook on life. And when you are suffering from depression you can't be at the top of your game. It is hard to function in high gear when you are fatigued and are experiencing a general lack of interest, also caused by depression. It may also be important to point out here that depression causes anxiety. So many who suffer from depression will also have episodes of anxiety.

Since alcohol is a known depressant, it stands to reason people with depression shouldn't drink. This applies to people suffering from manic depression as well. Studies have shown that doctors miss diagnosing correctly roughly 65% of people who are depressed.

The depression caused by alcohol actually starts with your physical body. First, alcohol lowers the serotonin and norepinephrine levels in your brain. These chemicals are the chemicals that give you your good feelings - a feeling of well being, and they help you to feel normal. The anti-depressant drugs were designed build these chemicals back up. After a long drinking career, since alcohol can take these brain chemicals down to ground zero, it can take a long time for the anti-depressants to bring these brain chemical levels back to where they need to be.

Alcohol also temporarily nullifies the effects of stress hormones. This is why after drinking you feel worse than ever, because alcohol depresses your nervous system and your brain. A study was done that followed people who were only drinking one drink a day and after these people stopped drinking for 3 months, their depression scores improved. And that is only at one drink a day, so it is easy to imagine the impact the kind of volume an alcoholic takes in every day can have.

Alcohol all but wipes out every vitamin in your system after a drinking session. A folic acid deficiency will contribute the brain aging and in older people, dementia. The folic acid deficiency also contributes to overall depression. Further, the alcohol in your system also breaks down and speeds the elimination of antioxidants in your blood. Antioxidants are critically important to our health because antioxidants fight free radicals and free radical damage causes diseases and aging. Our immune system actually creates the antioxidants which then neutralize the free radicals.

Alcohol can activate a gene that has been linked to depression and other mental issues. The result of this activation can cause not only depression, but seizures, and manic depressive episodes as well.

Although the majority of problem drinkers associate depression with their mental and emotional states, the fact is this kind of depression originates in your physical body's response to drinking alcohol.

ezinearticles.com/?How-Alcoho...ion&id=1294741

This probably came from here, but found it on another site. Good for a reread.

When you think it is the winter time blues, it could be your disease raising it's ugly head. Could be some of both. Always a good time to go back to basics.

When you find yourself grousing someone else out or your beating up on yourself, it is time to go to a meeting and pick up the phone and talk to your sponsor and complain to him/her. A sure sign for me is when I find myself cussing in what my mother use to call French. When a good Christian lady says, "Pardon my French, you know it is bad."

[MajestyJo]

Choice

from: "A Day's Plan"

"Every day I ask God to kindle within me the fire of His love, so that love, burning bright and clear, will illuminate my thinking and permit me to better do His will. Throughout the day, as I allow outside circumstances to dampen my spirits, I ask God to sear my consciousness with the awareness that I can start my day over any time I choose; a hundred times, if necessary."

© 1990, Daily Reflections, page 80

This is a solution that has worked many times for me over the years. A day can start any time, each day is a new beginning, so have a great one.


It never ceases to amaze me how people can make the decision to stay stuck, to continue acting out in old patterns, and allow themselves to slip into depression and self-pity and not take action before it gets to the wallowing stage. This program is one of freedom. I don't have to live that way anymore.

So many people don't know they have choices, sometimes ignorance is not bliss. Yet I have found myself back there lately, at least I am able to recognize it and have the tools that I can pick up and help myself get out, and a God to not only to show me the way, but give me the courage, strength and wisdom as to what I need to do.

I know I didn't know how to have fun. I didn't know how to "lighten' up" and not take life so seriously as it says in Tradition Four. I didn't know how to let my inner child come out and play, let alone anything about giving her permission to do so. Life is for living and enjoying it. I was asked in early recovery, what makes you happy and I didn't know.

I didn't know I could choose the reactions, the actions and the moods, etc. that I had toward people, places and things.

Written in part in 2004.

This may be a duplicate but the thought spoke to me.

[MajestyJo]

We are granted freedom of choice. It took me a long time to choose recovery. I was so busy blaming others for my problems, that I had no idea, until I had pushed everyone away, that the problem was me. I had no one left to point a finger at.

Who would want to choose, which one you wanted amongst these adorable critters? Making decisions are not one of our strong points. It is something we never had to do before. Our drug of choice always made our choices for us.

The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.

- John Dewey

The relationship builds after we make the choice. It wouldn't matter which one we chose, the love is found as the connection grows and more choices are made.

If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.

- Robert Fritz

We can limit ourselves by our choices. When we ask for God's will, all things are possible. Many times over the years, I have asked, "Are You sure about this?" It was me that was unsure. I had to learn to utilize the gifts that He bestowed on me. I am so grateful for the people He put in my path that taught me and guided me on my journey, who directed me towards making healthy choices, things that were good for my body, mind and spirit.

[MajestyJo]

So many times we blame others for our choices. My mother use to say, "Look at what you made me do." My husband would say, "Well I wouldn't have done that if you had only done what I asked."

In recovery, I no longer have to give up my power. When I surrender my day to my Higher Power, I can make healthy choices. I can tap into the Source and live my life to it's fullest, not marking time, waiting for other, more importantly, not waiting on others, when it isn't good for me.
I need to help and give to others, yet I need to give nurturing and care to myself. I can't give away what I don't have.

Life is often how we look at it!

Have fun, enjoy your day. Make a choice to let your Inner Child come out to play.

Share the love, remember to give and receive.

For so many years, I lived my life through others. If they would only do what I 'told' them to do or 'thought' they should do, what a wonderful place my world would be.

I hinged my world onto theirs and my happiness depended on them and I put my life on hold, waiting for them to see the light.

I manipulated, conned, hinted, etc. my way into a soul sickness that was just as unhealthy as theirs were. It was no longer about them, it was about me.

I had to turn my thinking and obsessive ways over to my Higher Power and ask for help. I had to learn to work the slogan "Live and Let Live" into my life. The key word "Live" my own life and let them live theirs.

I would try to control my actions and thoughts, when in fact, all I had to do was turn them over to my Higher Power and through Him/Her, learn to live a better way of life.


It not only made me sick trying to control my alcoholic/addict, it made me sick, trying to control my own life.

I didn't realize that control was an illusion and as much as I thought I was in control, it just wasn't so. I had to learn to turn things over to my Higher Power and allow things to unfold as He would have them be.

I did the foot work. I had the dreams and ideals, yet often they were not reality and often if I had gotten them, what would I have done with it!

I have to chuckle when I go to buy a Lotto 649 Jackpot. If it is over 3 million $s, I tend to doubt whether I should buy one, what if I won it? I can see keeping a M$ for myself and giving one each to my sister's but after that, really don't have much use for all that money. What if I decided I could now 'afford' to drink and keep myself in the style I would like to become accustomed to. Would all that money change my priorities? That is a scary thought.

It isn't about the A in my life, it is about me and my attitude and my thinking that can get me into trouble. Best to turn it over to my HP who is much more qualified to handle it.

I am granted freedom of choice in today. It is what I do with that choice that makes a difference in my life today.

[MajestyJo]

Space to explore

"No one can find his work, what he really wants to put all of himself into, when everything he does he is made to do by others. This kind of searching must be done freely or not at all."

-- John Holt

We all need space -- free from demands, deadlines, expectations and judgments -- to explore who we are and what life is all about. Free time, with absolutely no agenda, is rich with potential. How can we grow if we have no space and freedom to dream?

"Deny children -- or anyone else -- the chance to do ‘nothing,’ and we may be denying them the chance to do ‘something’ -- to find and do any work that is truly important to themselves or to someone else."

-- John Holt

I realize that I was never allowed my space and I didn't know how to make a decision for myself. We can't know what we have never been taught and we pass on our shortcomings to our children. We did the best we could with what we had, but sometimes, we fell short of who we would like to be.

A friend once told me that I was an easy 'mark' and I had to change those old behaviors and habits.

[MajestyJo]

When I visited my friend tonight, her son came in to see her. You just never know when you are going to get a chance to carry the message.

I found myself saying, "You can't expect to know what you have never been taught." I was also able to give my little spiel on acceptance. I don't have to like it, but I do have to accept it or I stay stuck.

[MajestyJo]

"Watch your thoughts, they become words;
Watch your words, they become actions;
Watch your actions, they become habits;
Watch your habits, they become character;
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny. "

- Tom Robbins -

Picking up substances that were not good for me

Running away from the reality of my life and everywhere I went, I took me with me.

I used relationships so I could focus on them instead of me. I depended on them to fill the emptiness inside and give me the happiness and fulfillment I wanted but didn't think I really deserved.

For so many years I blamed others for the problems in my life and I believe I was a product of my environment. I always wanted to fit in and belong and did many things that were not healthy choices. I lost my spiritual values and integrity as a result of habits I picked up along my way, and my destiny finally brought me to the doors of recovery. It took me a long time to get here, I was lucky the door was still open. Even luckier, that I lived to walk through it.

What you put out, comes back to you. I believe a thought is a prayer. Sending good thoughts to everyone this holiday season.

[MajestyJo]

This is why I can't compare. Even holidays in recovery are best left in the past.

Just have to remember to take my God with me.