I know my insights aren't unique, but I had some thoughts recently that I thought others might find helpful. :)
After a recent relapse, all my AA friends asked me, "What happened?" I had seemed to be doing really well. I thought it was a funny question, because of course there were external causes that had put me in a bad emotional place -- promising job interview cancelled, roommate situation that I was excited about falling through, not sleeping, stress about the holidays, etc. etc. -- but of course none of those were the REASONS why I drank.
I drank because I am an alcoholic and I failed to pick up the phone and call one of my AA fellows or my sponsor before buying that bottle of wine that I decided I could just have one or two glasses of.
That's ALWAYS going to be the "reason" -- all the extraneous stuff is just an excuse. Life is always going to provide us with plenty of annoyances and disappointments. Part of recovery is about dealing with those in constructive ways rather than going back to using.
Just a thought for myself next time I'm frustrated/disappointed/stressed with a particular situation.
so glad you are back, 12 steps. i know i can come up with some very creative ways to think about drinking, but it all comes down to how badly i want recovery and am i willing to "anything" to stay sober. and today i am willing to anything that will keep me sober. big hugs jj/sheila
Thanks, GG. I've learned in AA that a relapse ends with the bottle. For me; it starts by not maintaining my spiritual condition. Maintaining my Spiritual condition is working a solid, consistent program of AA: Prayer, Sponsor, Meetings, Steps & Service Work; including helping others. My sobriety and recovery have to be my number 1 priority.
If I don't do the above; I get irritable, restless and discontent. My spritual condition deteriorates and my old thinking starts to slowly creap back into my life. The tools I've used in the past seem to be just out of reach. I look for ease & comfort from something and I can't find it. Finally; my diesase convinces me it's a good idea to take a drink. This time will be different. The knowledge of the wreckage of the past doesn't seem so bad. Then; it's back to what's familiar and that's drinking.
TwelveSteps wrote:I drank because I am an alcoholic and I failed to pick up the phone and call one of my AA fellows or my sponsor before buying that bottle of wine that I decided I could just have one or two glasses of.
That's ALWAYS going to be the "reason" -- all the extraneous stuff is just an excuse. Life is always going to provide us with plenty of annoyances and disappointments. Part of recovery is about dealing with those in constructive ways rather than going back to using.
Just a thought for myself next time I'm frustrated/disappointed/stressed with a particular situation.
GG
There it is, that's the crux to me, I call them "the stories" but the upshot is when my mind opens up it's mouth to talk to me it's lying, that little voice in my head, the one with all the "reasons" and the "stories" is my ego, and that's what so desperately wants relief, now the truly baffling aspect of this is watching how much drama my ego actually creates on it's own, not just "attaching" to existing drama but literally manifesting pain and hurt and drama, the ego is 100% delusional
by blaming others, with sex, with food, with alcohol, with "acting out" with resentments, pride, lust, greed, sloth, these are all just vehicles of "The Story" or "Reasons" as you put it, and if I believe my "stories" or "reasons" THAT'S what selfishness and self centered is
The steps teaches me to access a different part of myself, that our more religious members call "God Consciousness", that others call intuition, whatever we call it if we are still enough and clear away enough of our minds "white noise" we can access this power greater then ourselves that we find inside
The way I was finally taught to differentiate between the two actually was through work, what I do is incredibly dangerous, and there is a point in every day when I am terrified, when I am blowing the top of the tree out, and my boss said there are 2 types of fears, one that's just my head and it's yelling at the top of it's lungs, but it's a liar, there is another fear, a quieter fear that is based in the belly that says "there is something wrong, if I do this I will be injured or something will go wrong" and the trick to being a good climber was learning to differentiate between the two fears, one is a delusion and the other is self preservation.
The same is true of sobriety
On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives. Under these conditions we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all God gave us brains to use. Our thought- life will be placed on a much higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives.
In thinking about our day we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision. We relax and take it easy. We don't struggle. We are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for a while. What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of the mind. Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely upon it.
Keep your mind quiet while doing this and I guarantee it starts making sense
-- Edited by LinBaba on Tuesday 28th of December 2010 02:25:46 PM
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it's not the change that's painful, it's the resistance to change that is painful
Dang! That much height makes my feet feel funny. My idea of self preservation is to stay out of trees. And off mountain rock faces, and avoid aeroplanes and ... but interestingly enough, when I was still drinking/using I got to go out on the roof of the first World Trade Tower when it was just being built, and the roof just had a little open rail all around and a frightfull wind. And what did this fool do? Dance around the edge like I could just fly on over to New Jersey. No God acknowledged on my part, but apparently He was lurking around to assure a better future for me than I could ever imagine.
I guess the direction here concerns me a little bit. Twelvesteps relates that a number of stressful occurrences put her in a bad emotional place. I think we all agree that it would have been a good thing to have called another AA member or sponsor rather than picking up.
But could another solution be to avoid getting into a bad emotional place to begin with? Obviously it's difficult to control our immediate response to job stress, living issues, and nutty families. But is spiritual growth supposed to take us to a place where much of that stuff just doesn't bug us the way it used to? Are we supposed to ask what our Higher Power say about the situation, and follow that guidance? Just some thoughts.
I ask because my job takes me to Asia sometimes, where I often encounter stressful situations, plentiful booze, and AA contacts that are few and far between.
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Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God's.
zzworldontheweb wrote:But is spiritual growth supposed to take us to a place where much of that stuff just doesn't bug us the way it used to?
Yes
for a number of reasons, although MikeB nailed it perfectly in his share
One: We don't create or "manifest" nearly as much "crisis" when we are sober
Two: When Life DOES happen, as it has been known to do, we have clear cut instructions in steps 10-12
Such as what I wrote earlier and:
When we retire at night, we constructively review our day. Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid? Do we owe an apology? Have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once? Were we kind and loving toward all? What could we have done better? Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time? Or were we thinking of what we could do for others, of what we could pack into the stream of life? But we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse or morbid reflection, for that would diminish our usefulness to others. After making our review we ask God's forgiveness and inquire what corrective measures should be taken.
As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day "Thy will be done." We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions. We become much more efficient. We do not tire so easily, for we are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves.
It works it really does.
We alcoholics are undisciplined. So we let God discipline us in the simple way we have just outlined.
Faith without works is dead, so prayer alone without action is meaningless is how it was explained to me, but my experience is if I am following the instructions straight out of the Big Book for steps 10-12 after working 1-9 and the situation is such that I have to go without a meeting for awhile, I'm fine as long as I follow those instructions
If I rely on meetings or calling my sponsor to stay sober I am relying on a human power, and one day that will fail me, as all human powers always do, if I am relying on my relationship with my higher power as I met through the steps, as long as I follow the steps, I am fine without meetings, reliance on meetings to stay sober is a fairly new thing as far as AA goes, reliance on a higher power is what this program was designed for and it contains clear cut instructions on what to do in case of not having a meeting handy, or even having a meeting handy
Tools like calling our sponsor and hitting a meeting every day are nothing but the duct tape and bailing wire of "Recovery" or Sobriety, they are fine as a short term "fix' to help hold me as I get through the steps, but once I hit step 10, as long as I follow a few simple rules:
we continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along. We vigorously commenced this way of living as we cleaned up the past. We have entered the world of the Spirit. Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. This is not an overnight matter. It should continue for our lifetime. Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. We discuss them with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone. Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help. Love and tolerance of others is our code.
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 how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.
It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do, for alcohol is a subtle foe. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our activities. "How can I best serve Thee, Thy will (not mine) be done." These are thoughts which must go with us constantly. We can exercise our will power along this line all we wish. It is the proper use of the will
For example, let's look at St Dean Pete, he's been traveling a LOT these last few months, been boating, skiing and snowed in, I guarantee he missed a few meetings here and there, and what does he write in to report, but good things, fun things, even getting snowed in was "no big deal" because he has integrated the program of Alcoholics Anonymous into part of his "being", he didn't have a buch of "the sky is falling drama, he had FUN.
Time takes Time but there is a result, there is progress, one that doesn't always include huddling in a group of other people frightened of our disease in the parking lot doing push ups, in the AA of the steps, we are people who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless condition of mind and body
-- Edited by LinBaba on Tuesday 28th of December 2010 08:07:16 PM
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it's not the change that's painful, it's the resistance to change that is painful
WE, OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, know thousands of men and women who were once just as hopeless as Bill. Nearly all have recovered. They have solved the drink problem.
We are average Americans. All sections of this country and many of its occupations are represented, as well as many political, economic, social, and religious backgrounds. We are people who normally would not mix. But there exists among us a fellowship, a friendliness, and an understanding which is indescribably wonderful. We are like the passengers of a great liner the moment after rescue from shipwreck when camaraderie, joyousness and democracy pervade the vessel from steerage to Captain's table. Unlike the feelings of the ship's passengers, however, our joy in escape from disaster does not subside as we go our individual ways.
This part here describes the power that exist when we as alcoholics gather in meetings. But it says that it is not enough.
The feeling of having shared in a common peril is one element in the powerful cement which binds us. But that in itself would never have held us together as we are now joined.
This part here describes the power of the spiritual experience, that is our common solution.
The tremendous fact for every one of us is that we have discovered a common solution. We have a way out on which we can absolutely agree, and upon which we can join in brotherly and harmonious action. This is the great news this book carries to those who suffer from alcoholism
Without the spiritual experience that comes from taking and living the steps, I would be just like linbaba said, " huddling in a group of other people frightened of our disease in the parking lot doing push ups, " I dont go to AA anymore to get anything out of a meeting anymore , I did In the begining, I had to. I have to go to meetings to give, and when I do, thats when I get. Through the spititual experience of the steps , I have recoverd from a hopeless condition of mind and body. It does take time, and work, and commitment, and a willingness to take an ass kicking from my emotions, and not treat my alcoholism with alcohol, but rather treat it with alcoholics anonymous.
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Since it cost a lot to win, and even more to loose, you and me gotta spend some time just wondering what to choose.
You are right there is never a justifiable reason for us to pick up the 1st drink, only excuses.
In all my years sober I have noticed that pretty much all relapses revert back to 2 things.
90% Self pity. (look to rule 62)
10% Things are going well, I have done a great job keeping sober, I deserve a drink.
(This is usually a result of resting on laurels, getting out of God and into self. We give ourself credit and start playing God again, forgetting what got us sober to begin with)
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Rob
"There ain't no Coupe DeVille hiding in the bottom of a Cracker Jack Box."
zzworldontheweb wrote:But is spiritual growth supposed to take us to a place where much of that stuff just doesn't bug us the way it used to? I hear your point but it also takes time and work in recovery to get to that point... in the meantime, we need to keep at the forefront our strategies to deal with stuff that bugs us without picking up a drink.
