We admitted

Thought for the Day

When we came into A.A., the first thing we did was to admit that we couldn't do anything about our drinking. We admitted that alcohol had us licked and that we were helpless against it. We never could decide whether or not to take a drink. We always took the drink. And since we couldn't do anything about it ourselves, we put our whole drink problem into the hands of God. We turned the whole thing over to that Power greater than ourselves. And we have nothing more to do about it, except to trust God to take care of the problem for us. Have I done this honestly and fully?

Meditation for the Day

Liquor used to be my friend

Thought for the Day

Liquor used to be my friend. I used to have a lot of fun drinking. Practically all the fun I had was connected with drinking. But the time came when liquor became my enemy. I don't know just when liquor turned against me and became my enemy, but I know it happened, because I began to get into trouble. And since I realize that liquor is now my enemy, my main business is keeping sober. Making a living or keeping house is no longer my main business. It's secondary to the business of keeping sober. Do I realize that my main business is keeping sober?

Meditation for the Day

Do I want to keep sober a lot more than I want to get drunk?

Thought for the Day

As we look back on all those troubles we used to have when we were drinking, the hospitals, the jails, we wonder how we could have wanted that kind of a life. As we look back on it now, we see our drinking life as it really was and we're glad we're out of it. So after a few months in A.A., we find that we can honestly say that we want something else more than drinking. We've learned by experience that a sober life is really enjoyable and we wouldn't go back to the old drunken way of living for anything in the world. Do I want to keep sober a lot more than I want to get drunk?

Meditation for the Day

Foolish

Thought for the Day

In the past, we kept right on drinking in spite of all the trouble we got into. We were foolish enough to believe that drinking could still be fun in spite of everything that happened to us. When we came into A.A., we found a lot of people who, like ourselves, had had fun with drinking, but who now admitted that liquor had become nothing but trouble for them. And when we found that this thing had happened to a lot of other people beside ourselves, we realized that perhaps we weren't such queer birds after all. Have I learned to admit that for me drinking has ceased to be fun and has become nothing but trouble?

Meditation for the Day

Give love

Thought for the Day

We got a kick out of the first few drinks, before we got stupefied by alcohol. For a while, the world seemed to look brighter. But how about the letdown, the terrible depression that comes the morning after? In A.A., we get a real kick: not a false feeling of exhilaration, but a real feeling of satisfaction with ourselves, self respect, and a feeling of friendliness toward the world. We got a sort of pleasure from drinking. For a while we thought we were happy. But it's only an illusion. The hang over the next day is the opposite of plea sure. In A.A., am I getting real pleasure and serenity and peace?

Meditation for the Day

A sober life

Thought for the Day

Drinking cuts you off from God. No matter how you were brought up, no matter what your religion is, no matter if you say you believe in God, nevertheless you build up a wall between you and God by your drinking. You know you're not living the way God wants you to. As a result, you have that terrible remorse. When you come into A.A., you begin to get right with other people and with God. A sober life is a happy life, because by giving up drinking, we've got rid of our loneliness and remorse. Do I have real fellowship with other people and with God?

Meditation for the Day

God's help

A.A. Thought for the Day

When we were drinking, we were living an unnatural life physically and mentally. We were punishing our bodies by loading them with alcohol. We didn't eat enough and we ate the wrong things. We didn't get enough sleep or the right kind of rest. We were ruining ourselves physically. We had an alcoholic obsession and we couldn't imagine life without alcohol. We kept imagining all kinds of crazy things about ourselves and about other people. We were ruining ourselves mentally. Since I came into A.A., am I getting better physically and mentally?

Meditation for the Day

UNITED WE STAND

We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed. 

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 30 

I came to Alcoholics Anonymous because I was no longer able to control my drinking. It was either my wife's complaining about my drinking, or maybe the sheriff forced me to go to A.A. meetings, or perhaps I knew, deep down inside, that I couldn't drink like others, but I was unwilling to admit it because the alternative terrified me.

Keeping sober

A.A. Thought for the Day

Keeping sober is the most important thing in my life. The most important decision I ever made was my decision to give up drinking. I am convinced that my whole life depends on not taking that first drink. Nothing in the world is as important to me as my own sobriety. Everything I have, my whole life, depends on that one thing. Can I afford ever to forget this, even for one minute? 

Meditation for the Day

FIRST, THE FOUNDATION

Practicing the A.A. program is like building a house. First I had to pour a big, thick concrete slab on which to erect the house; that, to me, was the equivalent of stopping drinking.
 
But it's pretty uncomfortable living on a concrete slab, unprotected and exposed to the heat, cold, wind and rain. So I built a room on the slab by starting to practice the program.
 

What makes A.A. work?

Thought for the Day

What makes A.A. work? The first thing is to have a revulsion against myself and my way of living. Then I must admit I was helpless, that alcohol had me licked and I couldn't do anything about it. The next thing is to honestly want to quit the old life. Then I must surrender my life to a Higher Power, put my drinking problem in His hands and leave it there. After these things are done, I should attend meetings regularly for fellowship and sharing. I should also try to help other alcoholics. Am I doing these things?

Meditation for the Day

You are so made that you can only carry the weight of twenty-four hours, no more. If you weigh yourself down with the years behind and the days ahead, your back breaks. God has promised to help with the burdens of the day only. If you are foolish enough to gather again that burden of the past and carry it, then indeed you cannot expect God to help you bear it. So forget that which lies behind you and breathe in the blessing of each new day.

Personality Change

"It has often been said of A.A. that we are interested only in alcoholism. This is not true. We have to get over drinking in order to stay alive. But anyone who knows the alcoholic personality by firsthand contact knows that no true alky ever stops drinking permanently without undergoing a profound personality change."

We thought "conditions" drove us to drink, and when we tried to correct these conditions and found that we couldn't do so to our entire satisfaction, our drinking went out of hand and we became alcoholics. It never occurred to us that we needed to change ourselves to meet conditions, whatever they were.

As Bill Sees It

1. LETTER, 1940

2. TWELVE AND TWELVE, p. 47

ACCEPTING SUCCESS OR FAILURE

Furthermore, how shall we come to terms with seeming failure or success? Can we now accept and adjust to either without despair or pride? Can we accept poverty, sickness, loneliness, and bereavement with courage and serenity? Can we steadfastly content ourselves with the humbler, yet sometimes more durable, satisfactions when the brighter, more glittering achievements are denied us?
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 112

After I found A.A. and stopped drinking, it took a while before I understood why the First Step contained two parts: my powerlessness over alcohol, and my life's manageability. In the same way, I believed for a long time that, in order to be in tune with the Twelve Steps, it was enough for me "to carry this message to alcoholics." That was rushing things. I was forgetting that there were a total of Twelve Steps and that the Twelfth Step also had more than one part. Eventually I learned that it was necessary for me to "practice these principles" in all areas of my life. In working all the Steps thoroughly, I not only stay sober and help someone else to achieve sobriety, but also I transform my difficulty with living into a joy of living.

Daily Reflections

Distorted

Thought for the Day

As we look back over our drinking careers, we must realize that our lives were a mess because we were a mess inside. The trouble was in us, not in life itself. Life itself was good enough, but we were looking at it the wrong way. We were looking at life through the bottom of a whiskey glass, and it was distorted. We could not see all the beauty and goodness and purpose in the world because our vision was blurred. We were in a house with one-way glass in the windows. People could see us but we could not look out and see them and see what life meant to them and should mean to us. We were blind then, but now we can see. Can I now look at life as it really is?

Meditation for the Day

During my drinking years, my one and only concern was to have my fellow man think highly of me. My ambition in everything I did was to have the power to be at the top. My inner self kept telling me something else but I couldn't accept it.
 
I didn't even allow myself to realize that I wore a mask continually. Finally, when the mask came off and I cried out to the only God I could conceive, the Fellowship of A.A., my group and the Twelve Steps were there.

God's guidance

Thought for the Day

Our drinking fellowship was a substitute one, for lack of something better. At the time, we did not realize what real fellowship could be. Drinking fellowship has a fatal fault. It is not based on a firm foundation. Most of it is on the surface. It is based mostly on the desire to use your companions for your own pleasure, and using others is a false foundation. Drinking fellowship has been praised in song and story. The "cup that cheers" has become famous as a means of companionship. But we realize that the higher centers of our brains are dulled by alcohol and such fellowship cannot be on the highest plane. It is at best only a substitute. Do I see my drinking fellowship in its proper light?

Meditation for the Day

OVERCOMING LONELINESS

Almost without exception, alcoholics are tortured by loneliness. Even before our drinking got bad and people began to cut us off, nearly all of us suffered the feeling that we didn't quite belong. AS BILL SEES IT, p. 90

The agonies and the void that I often felt inside occur less and less frequently in my life today. I have learned to cope with solitude. It is only when I am alone and calm that I am able to communicate with God, for He cannot reach me when I am in turmoil.

True gift of recovery

The last few years of my drinking and using sure were ugly. It had stopped working long before I got sober, but I had failed to realize it. Instead, I obsessively pursued oblivion, and all those things I said I would never do passed by as quickly as do the stories of a building to a man who has just jumped off. Hurtling toward real oblivion, I had lost all self respect, self control, and was about to lose my life.


As I sat in meetings during early recovery, I used to hear people talk about hanging out with their "lower companions." This brought to mind all the 'nowhere' people I had taken to hanging around with, too, and I was disgusted that I had stooped so low. I'll never forget the shock I felt when my sponsor pointed out that I had been their lower companion as well. Boy did that put me in my place.

Change

I used to say that stopping drinking was easy – I did it hundreds of times. After a particularly bad drunk, I would wake up with that sick hangover and demoralizing memories of what I had done. Then and there I swore off alcohol. Sometimes I lasted a week or longer, but ultimately I would end up with a drink in my hand. Stopping drinking was easy; staying stopped? Well…

When I got sober in the rooms, I told my sponsor that I already knew how to not drink, what I didn’t know was how to live without always wanting to. He told me the key was changing who I was inside, so that the new man I became didn’t want a drink any longer. Why don’t I just change my eye color, I thought; how in the world am I going to accomplish that? He said we would do it one day at a time through working the Twelve Steps of recovery.

AN OPEN MIND

True humility and an open mind can lead us to faith . . . TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 33

My alcoholic thinking led me to believe that I could control my drinking, but I couldn't. When I came to A.A., I realized that God was speaking to me through my group. My mind was open just enough to know that I needed His help.
 
 A real, honest acceptance of A.A. took more time, but with it came humility. I know how insane I was, and I am extremely grateful to have my sanity restored to me and to be a sober alcoholic. The new, sober me is a much better person than I ever could have been without A.A.