I see the up & coming sauce rookies lots, and I’ve tried to give a little insight to them after sharing that I’m an alcoholic in recovery… So amazing that the words just don’t ring to them. Doesn’t apply. I often think back of my drinking career and wonder if I would have taken it to heart? Probably not, like most I had to hit my wall and be willing to ask for help.
So grateful the fellowship scooped me up!
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This chapter was delayed a week with the inability to post pictures last week, so I’m going to post some extra reading this week and we’ll finish out the chapter next week:
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Thank you for putting these up Mandi 
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You are very welcome! 
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For me, when I read the chapter more about alcholism, it just confirms for me that I am an alcholic and to stay sober I have to take action. There is a solution and a spiritual toolkit laid at our feet in this program, but I have to be willing to take the action being asked of me for results, and continue to do so for lasting results.
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How true and agree. As I journey through sobriety in AA I am continually amazed that the AA program suggests exactly what needs to be done to get sober and remain sober. It does take work and sometime work I want to avoid. The success is there for anyone who wants to follow the program.
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This chapter reminds me of the low I had to hit in order to be willing to work on the steps and follow the guiding of a sponsor. I was utterly without power on my own, and my lifelong search in and out of religion for a higher power left me convinced that though there might have been a First Cause around the time of the Big Bang, there was no divinity, no agency above humanity and certainly not one that cared about any particular individual.
I was an altar boy who stole the communion wine, and then I became a teen leader of religious retreats in high school possibly as a way to establish some popularity but I was a seeker, and then a year of seminary which became one of the acceleration points of my drinking (they had a basement bar with draft beers for a quarter, for crying out loud!) and when I met the love of my life. With a drinking habit and a girlfriend, and crappy grades, they kicked me out. I didn’t stop there. About 3-4 years later, with another woman who was my first wife, I joined a Pentecostal type church for the emotional warmth. When they tried to counsel me over my drinking up the champagne fountain at a church member’s wedding, I left. I severed my last tie with religion a few years later, when we divorced and the church of my childhood would not grant me an annulment, but told me I was not a member in good standing and would be committing major sin by attending services if I pursued another romantic connection. All the while, I was dabbling in other religions, reading books about them.
From the age of 27 on, I was a confirmed atheist, and such a bad alcoholic that I had to go to AA. That started 18 years of wanting to want to be sober, brief periods of abstinence following the consequences of my drinking that usually led to my attending AA for a week or a month, mostly drinking before or after meetings. I did go to an inpatient rehab with AA afterward and stayed dry 9 months. But I was going to AA for the fellowship and to maybe convince myself that I didn’t belong there, if that makes sense. I was floundering through life, trying unsuccessfully to stay out of trouble with drinking and also failing to recapture the good glow during drinking except for maybe a half hour after I got about 2-3 drinks in and then would always always drink more and overshoot the mark, ending up slow witted, befuddled, blacked out and acting out as a reaction to my inner state and baser nature.
During my last arrest, I had the spiritual experience, a simple message from the Divine that everything is gonna be alright. That was enough to get me to go back to counseling and back on Antabuse. When I had unexpected side effects from the medicine, I hit an emotional low that I had not experienced before. The knowledge that if I was off the meds I would drink, and I most sincerely did not want to drink, and I knew that if I drank I would go to jail for months or years, that knowledge was like a gut punch. I knew also that the only time I had felt remotely comfortable in abstinence was going to AA. I want to stay dry and not lose my mind. I had acquired at least one Big Book along the way, and I re-read the story of AA #3. There is a line in there that I interpreted as “Any fool can stay sober for 24 hours”. And I decided I was that fool, and that I would go back to AA and see what’s what. At my first meeting back, I heard a man tell my story, and I made another good decision - I asked him the next day to be my sponsor and I decided to do what he told me to.
The court system and Department of Corrections were my first and most physical representations of a higher power. They did not want me to drink and had the means to make sure that happened. Greg, my first sponsor, was another manifestation of the divine who carried the AA program to me and demonstrated how a wounded and flawed person could experience redemption. I became acquainted with the book “24 hours a day”, by an AA member and for AA members, that reflects the influence of early 20th century spiritualist practices, and introduced me to my concept of a higher power. The higher power is what is outside the box of space and time that I am living in. I know there is something outside the box, but not what it is directly. It is the stream of goodness. It is the Way Things Are Meant To Be. It is the sum of all human spirits that have ever been and ever will be.
Lack of power is still my dilemma today, but I have had the answer to that dilemma for a one day at a time as long as I cleave to it.
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Thank you for sharing my friend, I’m so glad you are here!
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Yes!!! Soooo much this!
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This month’s Grapevine magazine is an issue for atheists and agnostics and freethinkers. It’s very eye-opening to me - those folks have at times been badly mistreated by the god squad. How they write about spirituality is also revealing to me, and affirming.
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Do you subscribe online or with paper copies? I’ve looked at both but can’t decide which option I want. I love paper copies of things! But I do a lot online too.
Is everything ok? What is causing you to feel unsafe and not valued here on the forum? That is if u feel ok to talk about it 
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Aww, I’m so sorry you feel this way love. I only tend to stick to a few threads these days but I am SO glad you chimed in! I am soooo grateful to hear what other people find useful, we truly are in it together. I hope you stick with us love, your presence IS appreciated!
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Oh I’ve heard of that one but haven’t listened! I should give those a try. Thank you!! The 4th step prayer is a good one. Reading in here can be good too, but I tend to stick to the AA threads lately. It helps me stay focused on my recovery daily instead of getting distracted, which is easy enough for me to do lol. Keeps me on the beam!
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I’m a paper guy, I save them up and then pass them on to the corrections committee. It’s one of the few periodicals they can have in a prison - it’s approved content and there are no staples in the issues.
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