“Nothing is so bad that a relapse won’t make it worse.”
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 desparate 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 might be.
The stories we hear in meetings often shock us. It seems hard to believe that some members could have harmed themselves in such ways. We hear about arrests, bankruptcies, loss of family and home, lost jobs, violence, jail, physical injury - the list goes on. Most of us said to ourselves, "I never was that bad. Maybe I don’t really belong here."
Our sponsors and fellow members quickly straightened us out. We were comparing our histories with fellow members. We were told to IDENTIFY with the stories, not compare. Some of us were lucky that worse things hadn’t happened to us while we were drinking. We we’re reminded those things hadn’t happened to us “yet.” If we relapsed, the “yets” were waiting.
“Today, I’ll remember to identify, not compare. I don’t want to relapse and go through THE YETS.”
