About Me

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I have recovered from the disease of Alcoholism. I believe there is only one person really,.. everybody. And that peace of mind is everything. -So treat your neighbor as you would treat yourself, because your neighbor IS yourself. I think most of recovery is what I would call common sense, but that learning to be ordinary is a true gift very few people acquire. My ambition is to accept everything unflinchingly, with compassion, and therefore be intrinsically comfortable in my own skin, no matter what. I am comfortable being uncomfortable and am willing to go to any lengths to improve my life. I believe the Big Book was divinely inspired, and is extraordinarily powerful. Unfortunately AA's best kept secret a lot of the time. (In my opinion). I just try to do what works, no matter what it is.

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

I just never worry about relapse, or find myself thinking about drinking. (Obedient!) Sponsees are the same..

I have gone for long periods without meetings (after step 9) but I have never found myself worrying about drinking, or finding drinking attractive. I'm not an advocate of dependency on anything, including meetings, but I am aware that for a lot of people in AA, meetings are the places where they 'work their programme' in the form of fellowship. self revealing honesty, asking for help and helping others. If meetings are the ONLY places you practice those things, (!!) then you really ARE stuck without meetings! All I know is if I am practicing CONSTANT THOUGHT OF OTHERS, life is very easy. So many people still have what is called in the big book an 'alcoholic mind' despite attending meetings, and are effectively accidents waiting to happen.

I have found I can often spot the ones that will relapse ahead of time. So much so, that (if they ask me about their recovery) I tell them that I expect them to relapse at some point. Even down to the year! or month, depending. I told someone that quite recently actually. What I'm saying is that I do not find it mysterious when people relapse.

I'm VERY lucky because I stumbled across a method of doing the steps which seems to eliminate any risk of relapse. I know 100's of people who have done it the same way as I did it, and they just NEVER relapse. But that's why I chose to do it the way I did. It might sound trite and arrogant, but until I see just ONE person drink who has done it the way I was shown, I think it would be wrong to imply that there is a risk of drinking by doing it that way.

In fact that's one of the main reasons I've left bits of it online, as I think I was SO lucky to have learnt recovery the way I did. I'm sure there are MANY other GREAT ways of working the programme, but I simply haven't NEEDED to research the success of OTHER step methods as the one I've used up to now seems to work very well. I'm not alone in this, as my old home group contemporaries often express a very similar gratitude when we run into one another, as the longer we are sober, the more we realize how lucky we are.

Old post refs:
An old post called
The 'Alcoholic Mind' Do you still have one?
Listed under the label Untreated Alcoholism which explains a bit about it.
Also the
"Being around alcohol in Recovery" Topic has some stuff about how the big book describes our relationship to alcohol OUGHT to be after step 9.
There are 2 old posts called
After Step 9, How should we be feeling toward alcohol?
And..
Does the BB say that we should avoid alcohol after Step 9?
Which explains it.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you. Leslay W

Unknown said...

I like what you said about being dependent on meetings. i am sort of stuck in that right now. I have money so I dont work, and i dont really do anything other than recovery & got to meetings. Which is great, but I need to get out into the real world more.

Anonymous said...

What a great post. I cannot solely live in the rooms of AA solely. I have a career, a family, Boot camp commitments, and life in between all of that. I know many people that go to 2-3 meetings a day. I cannot do this, but it works for me. I am sober and blooming internally. I have the support of a lovely sponsor that is a mother, a wife, and has to work to support her family . . . 22 years sober, she must be doing something right.

I really appreciate this post here. Thank you. You rock!

twodogsblogging said...

Sounds like you have a book in the making! I'll read it!

Anonymous said...

yoo... cognitively thoughts!

Anonymous said...

итак: шикарно!! а82ч