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The insanity
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 "I went to my hotel and leisurely dressed for dinner. As I crossed the threshold of the dining room, the thought came to mind that it would be nice to have a couple of cocktails with dinner. That was all. Nothing more."

I was thinking about insane thoughts a lot recently. Before three days I saw in facebook photo of one collegue and he was drinking on that photo. And a thought came to my mind that It would be wonderful if I am there and drinking a few beers. This thought was in little time, I mean it wasn't long and it didn't scare me, but I saw how the disease works, again. Whatever I do, wherever I am ... there is always this thought that tells me that it will be good for me if I drink a little. And I remember words of the last talk of dr. Bob that sometimes he still thinks that It will be good to take a few drinks, but he doesn't have reason to think that he will get different results.

 


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In We agnostics is written: "Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves."

And I remember something that one speaker was talking about. He was talking that we, alcoholics have spiritual experience with alcohol. This statement is very powerful for me, because it is true that non-alcoholics don't have such experience with alcohol. I've tried to explain what alcohol is doing for me to non-alcoholics, to my mother, but they just don't understand. They don't understand when I am talking about the effect of alcohol which is so strong and so powerful that transform alcohol to my only power.

Yesterday one drunk driver killed 11 month baby. I am sure that no one is born with the idea to become killer, raper, prostitute, person without home, without friends, thief. I am really sure that no one wants to become these things. But It is strange that most alcoholics become these things. The disease is really strong and serious, because it is killing not only the alcoholic, but other people, too. So I have to take my recovery seriously and to look at my solution seriously, because people die around.

And when the alcohol is not in the picture anymore, I am without power. I can't live without power. It's not unusual that dry alcoholics are in clinics and asylums. It's because they are getting crazy and they are dying. If I want to live I have to do what recovered alcoholics have done and continue to do.

I have all the instruments that I need. I have my best friends - paper and pen. I have sponsor and a little fellowship here, I still have home and family after all the things I've done. They love me and care about me. And I am on the path. And my power comes from God and I am grateful, because He really gaves me all the things that I need.

 


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Decent

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Great post. Never thought of the concept that without alcohol I have no power and my only power has to be drawn from the God of my understanding. A great way to start my morning, along with my cup of coffee. I do connect with the mysterious urge I get after a number of 24 hours to wonder/want a drink. Not so mysterious, I'm an alcoholic. Thank God it doesn't happen very often. Thank God for the program and it's direction/tools and thank God for insightful caring people in the fellowship like yourself, that help me continue to learn and think about living the AA way.

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That's a great post MOH. I love it! I like in Bill's Story where he takes step one...On page 8. He feels the hopelessness...A morass being an entanglement...Or a swamp.

No words can tell of the loneliness and despair I found in that bitter morass of self-pity. Quicksand stretched around me in all directions.

And then he admits he's beaten....

I had met my match. I had been overwhelmed. Alcohol was my master.

I always thought it was interesting that he used the word....Overwhelmed. Till I looked it up.

Overwhelmed: to overpower in thought or feeling

Then he leaves the hospital....He's done a first step....He doesn't know there is a second step.

Trembling, I stepped from the hospital a broken man. Fear sobered me for a bit. Then came the insidious insanity of that first drink, and on Armistice Day 1934, I was off again.

Nothing keeping him sober but fear. I've been there. That doesn't work.

Then as he's sitting at the kitchen table drinking gin and his friend Ebby T. shows up all clear eyed and sober...And tells him he got religion.

But my friend sat before me, and he made the point-blank declaration that God had done for him what he could not do for himself. His human will had failed. Doctors had pronounced him incurable. Society was about to lock him up. Like myself, he had admitted complete defeat. Then he had, in effect, been raised from the dead, suddenly taken from the scrap heap to a level of life better than the best he had ever known!

BB pg 11

And he goes on to admit he's powerless...

Had this power originated in him? Obviously it had not. There had been no more power in him than there was in me at the minute; and this was none at all.

It was when Ebby gave the idea to Bill to choose his own conception of God....He got the second step.

My friend suggested what then seemed a novel idea. He said, "Why don't you choose your own conception of God?"

That statement hit me hard. It melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many years. I stood in the sunlight at last.

It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning.

I saw that growth could start from that point. Upon a foundation of complete willingness I might build what I saw in my friend. Would I have it? Of course I would!

Thus was I convinced that God is concerned with us humans when we want Him enough. At long last I saw, I felt, I believed. Scales of pride and prejudice fell from my eyes. A new world came into view.

BB pg 12

And he finished the steps with Ebby in the hospital. He detoxed and took the rest of the steps. Never to drink again.

At the hospital I was separated from alcohol for the last time. Treatment seemed wise, for I showed signs of delirium tremens.

There I humbly offered myself to God, as I then understood Him, to do with me as He would. I placed myself unreservedly under His care and direction. I admitted for the first time that of myself I was nothing; that without Him I was lost.(step 3) I ruthlessly faced my sins and became willing to have my new-found Friend take them away, root and branch. I have not had a drink since.(steps 4, 6 and 7)

My schoolmate visited me, and I fully acquainted him with my problems and deficiencies. (step 5) We made a list of people I had hurt or toward whom I felt resentment. I expressed my entire willingness to approach these individuals, admitting my wrong. Never was I to be critical of them. I was to right all such matters to the utmost of my ability.(steps 8 and 9)

I was to test my thinking by the new God-consciousness within. Common sense would thus become uncommon sense.(step 10) I was to sit quietly when in doubt, asking only for direction and strength to meet my problems as He would have me. Never was I to pray for myself, except as my requests bore on my usefulness to others.(step 11) Then only might I expect to receive. But that would be in great measure.

BB pg 13

The promises.

My friend promised when these things were done I would enter upon a new relationship with my Creator; that I would have the elements of a way of living which answered all my problems. Belief in the power of God, plus enough willingness, honesty and humility to establish and maintain the new order of things, were the essential requirements.

Simple, but not easy; a price had to be paid. It meant destruction of self-centeredness. I must turn in all things to the Father of Light who presides over us all.

BB pg 13

 



-- Edited by Stepchild on Friday 12th of September 2014 04:36:49 PM

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The insanity of alcoholism.

I've got a few 24 hours in this program, but about a year ago I was driving home from work and the thought popped into my head, "I'll bet when I retire, I can drink". What? Did that come out of my brain? But I absolutely know that is wrong and will never happen. It was like my head split into two and each part was arguing with the other.

I'm happy to report that the thought went away and hasn't returned. I have no obsession or compulsion to drink. I don't even think of drinking 99% of the time.

But why would I ever have thought I could someday retire?

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I am plagued with the same thoughts.  I am always wanting to try drinking.  Most of the time I am able to fight it off though because I am aware of the consequences of "Taking even a glass of beer"  Ive seen enough psych wards in my life and my drinking affects everyone my life touches.  to put it lightly, when im not drinking, its like the world shuts-up.  when I even leave the liquor store its like someone is ready to do the song and dance and the "Baffling" spiritual disease is in swing again!   I would not give in to the cravings, and if you do be aware of the problems that follow.   BoozeWar.



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BoozeWar wrote:

I am plagued with the same thoughts.  I am always wanting to try drinking.  Most of the time I am able to fight it off though because I am aware of the consequences of "Taking even a glass of beer" 


Have you worked the steps yet Boozewar? Because that goes against everything our literature promises us when we do....

And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone - even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame.

BB pg 84

If I had to fight this stuff off...I wouldn't win....They tell us that too.



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MIP Old Timer

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Hello its me wrote:

The insanity of alcoholism.

I've got a few 24 hours in this program, but about a year ago I was driving home from work and the thought popped into my head, "I'll bet when I retire, I can drink". What? Did that come out of my brain? But I absolutely know that is wrong and will never happen. It was like my head split into two and each part was arguing with the other.

I'm happy to report that the thought went away and hasn't returned. I have no obsession or compulsion to drink. I don't even think of drinking 99% of the time.

But why would I ever have thought I could someday retire?


 I like this..



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