Giving Up Insanity: my biggest fear is that I will accrue some time and think I can go out again with all of the new insight I have gained. I have seen ppl relapse and return much later and more bedraggled than they had expected, and some report that things were fine – for a while. Setting out pre-measured rounds, skipping days --it all leads back to the same old insanity. Staying in surrender seems so much easier than resuming a 24-hour a day management role.
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Walk in Dry Places
No Conditional Sobriety
Admission of Powerlessness
Sobriety in AA is unconditional. This means that there’s never been a reason for drinking, no matter how bad our circumstances may become. As the AA pioneers were fond of saying, “THERE’S NOTHING THAT DRINKING WON’T MAKE WORSE.”
How do we know if we’ve been setting conditions on sobriety? It’s revealed to us in our own thinking. If we believe, for example, that a certain setback such as the ending of a relationship is just cause for drinking, we have made our sobriety conditional.
In such cases, what we need to do is clear up our own thinking on the subject. Maybe further inventory is needed, or perhaps we should let ourselves learn from the experience of others. Self-honesty is also important in getting priorities in order.
The decision to choose unconditional sobriety brings additional benefits in helping us to organize our lives. Once we completely understand that sobriety is all-important, it becomes easier to make other decisions that bear on keeping sober. We find ourselves choosing the ideas and activities that enhance sobriety, while rejecting other things that could threaten it.
I’ll never waver in a moment from my relief that I must continue to seek sobriety…… unconditionally. There is nothing that could ever justify my taking a drink.
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According to my experience, the principal characteristic of genuine happiness is peace, inner peace.
–The Dalai Lama
Don’t go through life, GROW through life.
–Eric Butterworth
Look for opportunities to speak words that help and heal.
–Roy Shaver
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THE “NUMBER ONE OFFENDER”
Resentment is the “number one” offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stem all forms of spiritual disease, for we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 64
As I look at myself practicing the Fourth Step, it is easy to gloss over the wrong that I have done, because I can easily see it as a question of “getting even” for a wrong done to me. If I continue to relive my old hurt, it is a resentment and resentment bars the sunlight from my soul. If I continue to relive hurts and hates, I will hurt and hate myself-. After years in the dark of resentments, I have found the sunlight. I must let go of resentments; I cannot afford them.
From the book Daily Reflections.
Copyright © 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Walk in Dry Places
What causes a binge?
Understanding honesty.
In the foggy world of drinking, we were sometimes confused about cause and effect. A person might think of a binge as having been caused by a fight with his or her spouse. The real truth, however, is that he or she provoked the fight in order to get out of the house to launch a drinking spree. It was really the need to drink that caused the fight, and not the reverse, as the alcoholic believes.
We must always understand that the compulsion to drink is the root cause of every binge. We may blame certain things that seemed to trigger a drunk, but it is always our own compulsion that gives force to such an action. Nonalcoholics have the same human experiences we do, but such things do not cause them to have binges.
Seasoned AA members are trained by their experience to detect and defuse these false causes. “There are excuses but never good reasons for drinking,” they say. We always drink because we want to drink, not because another’s actions forced us into it.
Once we’ve established real sobriety, we also learn to identify the excuses and devices that helped us blame our binges on other people and conditions. We learn that we are always responsible for maintaining our own sobriety.
I intend to get along with everybody today and to meet all conditions and circumstances in a mature manner. Nothing can trigger a binge but my own desire to take a drink.
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“Minutes are worth more than money. Spend them wisely.”
–Thomas P. Murphy
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The value of life lies, not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them: a man may live long, yet live very little.
–Michel de Montaigne
It is not length of life, but depth of life.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
To give without any reward, or any notice, has a special quality of its own.
–Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Things turn out best for the people who make the best out of the way things turn out.
–Art Linkletter
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I’m sure I’m not the only one whose sponsor asked them to look up the word “brainstorm”. It means: a violent disturbance of the mind, as well as our common modern usage of everyone throwing out ideas for consideration as a group. One great gift of the program has been a more intentional way of speaking, not just by looking up words, but also by limiting to ESH and not giving advice or stating ‘facts’ without citing sources. Restraint of tongue and pen. And of typing.
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See with your heart not with your eyes for beauty lies everywhere.
The mind reasons. The heart knows.
Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
–Martin Luther King Jr.
God, help me take guided action, then surrender to your will. Help me remember that true power comes from aligning my will, intentions, and
desires with you.
–Melody Beattie
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