Hello everyone I have been sober just over two years and I'm really struggling with life at times. Life is much more manageable but I am nowhere near where I would like to be. The spiritual part of AA never came easy for me, anxiety seems to rule my life at times. Any advice?
Welcome to MIP Jonhnny, ... glad to have you with us ...
For guidance to be given in this case, I think we'd need a little more info on where you are in working the steps ... do you attend regular meeting every week and are you an active member in a local AA 'home group' ??? ... My last time working the steps, It got intense ... and at step 3, it got a little hairy... I knew for me to stop drink'n, I needed total honesty and to turn EVERYTHING over to a Higher Power of my choosing ...
Once I completed steps 2 and 3, I proceeded to work the rest of the steps as quickly and thoroughly as possible ... somewhere in the process, a mountain lode of garbage was lifted from me and my anxiety disappeared ... with total and complete 'acceptance', I lost all reasons, mostly excuses, to hold resentments against others ... AND I learned to put zero value on what anyone else 'thought' of me ... that freed me to be who I was without one care what-so-ever ... (if you like me?, .. fine .. if not, that's fine too ...)(it's not my problem unless I insist it be ...) ...
And, until I know more about you, the only other advice I can give right now, is for me, I made a habit of saying the serenity prayer 'frequently' throughout every day until I learned to 'live' the AA principles of recovery ...
Love ya man and God Bless, Pappy
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'Those who leave everything in God's hand will eventually see God's hand in everything.'
At a time that I questioned the spiritual part of the program working for me I was asked, "What other part is there" and so I have to learn what spiritual meant in wider terms. One of the terms that spiritual now means for me is "intention". What is my intention for my life and then to consider that a consequence of what I do or plan on doing. Decisions and consequences. My relationship with my HP is good and my HP still leaves me with responsibility for changing the things I can. I don't get so restless and irritable and discontented as often as I use to...maybe just in reaction for short periods of time which get healed with the lessons we have learned on acceptance...page 439 of the 3rd edition for me. Besides I learned too that R.I.D. was a matter of choice where my sponsor would caringly say..."Stop it". Keep coming back.
My experience is similar to Pappy's and Jerry's. I can remember talking about the spiritual "side" of the program before realising that the program has no other side, it's all spritual.
In a similar way I thought AA was a self help group that would teach me how to "not drink one day at a time" when it's real purpose was to bring about a profound change in my reaction to life, through a thing called a spiritual experience, which would remove the drink problem completely.
Once the initial housecleaning is done, I learned to live life one day at a time in a way that maintained a reasonably fit spiritual condition. The result is best described in the tenth step promises.
"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. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality - safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition."
