IT DOESN'T HAPPEN OVERNIGHT

The most common alcoholic fantasy seems to be: "If I just don't drink, everything will be all right." Once the fog cleared for me, I saw - for the first time - the mess my life had become. I had family, work, financial and legal problems; I was hung up on old religious ideas; there were sides of my character to which I was inclined to stay blind because they easily could have convinced me that I was hopeless and pushed me toward escape again.
 

Standing For Something

In our active addiction, we were prepared to compromise everything we believed in just to get our hands on more drugs. Whether we stole from our families and friends, sold ourselves, or lied to our employers, we were ignoring the values that mattered most to us. Each time we compromised another dearly held belief, another chunk of the mortar holding our characters together fell away. By the time many of us came to our first meeting, nothing was left but the ruin of our former selves.

We will locate our lost values as we carry out our first honest self-examination. But in order to rebuild our characters, we'll find it necessary to maintain those values, no matter how great the temptation to shove them aside.

I will look beyond the character defects of others

How easy it is to point out the faults of others! There's a reason for this: The defects we identify most easily in others are often the defects we are most familiar with in our own characters. We may notice our best friend's tendency to spend too much money, but if we examine our own spending habits we'll probably find the same compulsiveness. We may decide our sponsor is much too involved in service, but find that we haven't spent a single weekend with our families in the past three months because of one service commitment or another.
What we dislike in our fellows are often those things we dislike most in ourselves. We can turn this observation to our spiritual advantage. When we are stricken with the impulse to judge someone else, we can redirect the impulse in such a way as to recognize our own defects more clearly.

I look to God for the gift of inspiration

The influence of a beautiful, helpful, hopeful character is contagious, and may revolutionize a whole town.
  —Eleanor H. Porter

We have met certain people who inspired laughter, hope, or changes in us, or those close to us. We look forward to seeing them. We leave their presence believing in ourselves, aware that we can tackle whatever problems had us immobilized. That special gift to inspire is ours for the taking, too. The inspiration comes from God.