So, I'm early in recovery and slowly feeling my way around... things are happening. 'Progress for sure, but not 'perfection' yet (been 'coming back' to meetings again and again since August but have not yet built up one steady month of sobriety... Had a few slips but I'm committed and trying every angle to make it through another hour, another day and god willing my first thirty days of sobriety eventually...
It is hard... but I've come to the point where I'm feeling the higher power in my life and 'getting' that whole aspect. Faith in general has not been a part of my life pretty much ever - I was not raised in a home with that. Yes, I was Catholic and received the sacraments but it was all just a formality - there was no actual Faith in a higher power, and thus, I grew up more or less feeling like an empty shell... determined and functioning due (I believed) solely to my own will and determination. When good things happened, it was MY doing; when bad things happened, it was MY fault... So for me to now feel this higher power and notice things acutely... WOW!!! It's happening. The obsession has not been removed... that is taking time... but I feel it diminishing and I'm praying every morning for my higher power to remove that.
Also, I now have a sponsor and we are going to start working on the steps. She and I seem like we'll be good together. We shall see... I hate the phone and she wants me to call her every morning AND I know that the phone is a huge part of success in working this program... that part is hard for me, but I WILL go to any lengths to be a sober alcoholic rather than a part time dry drunk and I will call her. I'm grateful to have finally found someone.
As for my higher power at work... for instance, today, I was really in a place where I wanted to pick up - just frustrated, not liking the emotions I was feeling, wanting to numb out... but I told myself just get through the next couple of hours, pray a little on it, and get to the meeting and if I still had this obsession after the meeting, i'd deal with it then... and lo and behold, it was a big book meeting and we're only on Chapter 4... about spirituality... but the sharing that we did, the story of the speaker and the women who shared after the reading, just changed my obsession with getting a drink - for this one night, and strengthened my outlook for tomorrow. Tomorrow is tomorrow, but I got through tonight and it was a challenge but I've managed to do it and I know how great tomorrow morning is going to feel! I'm starting to get very comfortable with the knowledge that waking up after a difficult emotional but sober day is always better than numbing and waking up with self loathing and a hangover... Praying to god to keep that knowledge front and center in my mind every day.
Thanks for sharing. It sounds like you are on the right track. Personally, my higher power/God, does not relate at all to any of my religious upbringing.
Steps 1 and 2 are beliefs we came to accept. Step 3 is into action, daily prayer and turning things over to God even if it just seems mechanical.
In steps 4 to 12 our faith develops, and we grow in our understanding of God/ Higher Power.
Keep on track w/ meetings and prayer the best you can, do the work and great things will come to pass...you will never need to drink again.
Rob
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Rob
"There ain't no Coupe DeVille hiding in the bottom of a Cracker Jack Box."
Thanks for sharing. It sounds like you are on the right track. Personally, my higher power/God, does not relate at all to any of my religious upbringing.
Steps 1 and 2 are beliefs we came to accept. Step 3 is into action, daily prayer and turning things over to God even if it just seems mechanical.
In steps 4 to 12 our faith develops, and we grow in our understanding of God/ Higher Power.
Keep on track w/ meetings and prayer the best you can, do the work and great things will come to pass...you will never need to drink again.
Rob
I'm with Rob here, first of all congratulations, and good awareness
Our literature talks about "The Great Reality" and how it is ALWAYS found within, thing is I have to get "me" out of the way, a highly efficient way to do that is the steps, I have also had limited short term success with hallucinogenics and intense meditation, but when the experience passed, so did "God" as it were, I always returned to -F- things up, the steps give us a method to live that -spiritual experience- on a daily basis
Today you got out of your own head and out of your own way for a few minutes thus had a spiritual experience and immediately felt alcohol was no longer a necessity, this is the fourth dimension talked about as the result of the steps, and why, once having worked the steps, and continuing to work them, alcohol becomes unecessary
it becomes a non-issue, in step 10 it states
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 how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.
this is why the -we- that have worked the steps, the -we- referred to in the Big Book that have worked the steps hammer that point home again and again, work the steps and no longer suffer the bondage of -self-, which shackles are so painful they require us to drink, drug, be sedated, act out in relationships, at work, in traffic, without that spiritual experience, without the freedom of the bondage of self, a return to sedation is inevitable
wouldn't you like the problem just removed?
simple, but not easy, a price had to be paid, we get to smash our ego and send it packing, thus receive freedom of the bondage of -self-, a state of being you describe perfectly
well done
-- Edited by LinBaba on Friday 24th of December 2010 01:31:50 AM
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it's not the change that's painful, it's the resistance to change that is painful
Wonderful mesage of hope and how each day is a renewed chance at a life in sobriety carrying the mesage of hope to those who still suffer..Congratulations,keep coming back and help remind us daily of our journey in a life of sobriety ,incorporating spiritual principles in all our affairs a not easy, but doable task...Have a blessed and productive day and enjoy the holidays lucid,and in your Higher Powers care..
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Selfishness-self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles.
LinBaba mentioned "getting ME out of the way..." I needed to hear myself read that aloud today, as that is the nature of all my bad decisions. What "I" want is always instant gratification, escape, never feeling low, always feeling "good" or "elated"... and when I do feel good or elated, I want to feel MORE elated, more intesified... "tipsy" or "high".
How in the world can I get and stay sober with instincts and desires like this? Only by getting out of the way. Only by giving these urges over to my Higher Power. Again, getting ME ME ME out of the way. I do this best right now by praying praying praying, and getting to meetings. I have been going to a lot of speaker meetings lately, because it forces me to focus on SOMEONE ELSE'S STORY rather than my current feelings, desires, complaints. It seems to work for now.
Thanks much for sharing and may you have a Happy, Sober Holiday.
joni
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~Your Higher Power has not given you a longing to do that which you have no ability to do.
