What a great day! I feel calm and relaxed and am optimistic about what this day will bring. It is certainly a change from the other day when I posted that I was feeling down. I realized that almost every month since being sober that within a week or so before I reach another month of sobriety that something happens which seems to derail me a bit. Overall, each of my months are great--I mean REALLY great. I don't worry, feel anxious, have self-defeating thoughts and I am able to keep things which do happen in perspective. This is something I couldn't do when I was drinking because even the smallest thing would annoy the hell out of me and cause me to drink more. The AA program is absolutely FANTASTIC. Maybe just going to meetings works for some people. Not for this alcoholic. Oh, I did see some changes just by attending meetings and doing some service work like make coffee for the first few months. It wasn't until I got a sponsor and started working the steps where I experienced changes in my thinking on a more profound level. The other day I was so down. This is part of life and living in a imperfect world with imperfect people (myself included), I have to accept this.  I was able to work through it, pray and leave it in God's hands, like I did when I did Step 3 --"Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over the the care of God as we understood Him",  I turned the problem I was having over to God and asked Him to take care of it. That wasn't before I had to run mentally through my Character Defects and figure out what was going on inside me head that was causing me to have the reactions I was having--"fear", "false pride", "overblown ego" and others (Step 4) and when I prayed I had to address these CD's which I was aware of and ask for God again, to remove them.

It is hard to explain the huge sense of relief after I prayed. It changed me so much and I haven't worried since about my "problem". (Gosh, when I think about all the money I wasted on therapists which, although may help some, never seemed to help me that much at all. I was just paying them to listen to me gripe and even had to drink before most all of my appointments to have enough "courage" to open up to them.) When something bothers me I don't have to do nothing about it and settle for my crappy feeling anymore. The feelings of self-pity and thinking my life sucks and I am not "good enough" don't have to weigh me down. It took me two days before I realized I already have the tools I need and when something happens which bothers me at all, all I have to do is "pick them up" from the corner of my mind and use them to see results....not mope around for two days or longer relishing in my emotional pain.

"It works if you work it" and I can confirm that and, although I was skeptical before, The Promises have been coming true for me.

BTY

"If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through."  We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.  We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.  We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among ussometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.

The Big Book, pages 83-84, Alcoholics Anonymous