I just got triggered by the story of a new comer and while his inventory  was taking me back into my pre-program history I started to member my most well oiled tool...Gratitude.  Coming from where I came from...inside the disease at the age of 9 and not even knowing the word,,,how it was said and what it meant or spelt was strange land for me and full of denial.  I could come to realize that the program would come to be familiar and in time I would get it myself from listening to other tell their stories face to face.

I remember thinking often among other thins, "There but for the grace of God do it" often times I wouldn't be satisfied by that realization because I also came to understand that suicidal - risky behaviors was part of how I lived.  Therefore it is a fact for me that I'm on borrowed time from the day my HP placed me In recovery and got me to sit, stay, listen, learn and practice.

I just reviewed some early lessons of the character of the alcoholic being that of a risk taker which in large amounts directly describes how I lived my life made my choices and arrived at my consequences..

One of my best recovery friends who has the same time span in AA as I speaks so very adamantly that under his own will he will never drink again...he will never submit or surrended his sobiety and life over to another drink and only his the will of his  Higher Power.  I understand his desire and will.  That is the same willfulness as mine.  At the same time he knows that I have never lost the compulsion or...the thought force of alcohol in my mind.   I don't pursue the drink and haven't followed up on the compulsion before since getting alcohol free in recovery.

It is not so strange to me as before when I didn't have the experiences which we passed on to me by other elders about what they do when the compulsion arose.

At my morning meetings while he was speaking adamantly for his sobriety I was remembering only the two elders which came to mind in my early recovery both of whom went back out ...one at 9 years and the other at 19 years.  The one at 19 years sobriety, much loved, sponsored and as a sponsor was dead in a couple of days while the other was discovered inside of a week.

I don't obsess on this information and I do hold it to the front of my awareness and I have come to realize the brain, my brain especially, when it goes into compulsive thinking will not need me to participate or attempt to change the thinking.  During this period of illness I have gathered the experience, for me, that it is true.  My brain becomes "locked on" to a pattern of thinking and remains that way unless I can having something  greater than interfere with the process.  It often does not lock into drinking though it has at times done so relatively lately.  I guess my set of justifications are still intact and  my "other" self still need the references which come from my insane past.   I am surely on borrowed time and know that my HP has put me here as a reason just as It has my recovery brother.

I never say never and can stand us side by side.  Sometimes I think I scare him with that share and I'm I smile because also for me...The compulsion isn't a drink.

Thanks for letting me share.    

y his Higher Power