Hardships

" But you don't understand!" we spluttered, trying to cover up. "I'm different! I've really got it rough!" We used these lines over and over in our active addiction, either trying to escape the consequences of our actions or avoid following the rules that applied to everyone else. We may have cried them at our first meeting. Perhaps we've even caught ourselves whining them recently.

So many of us feel different or unique. As addicts, we can use almost anything to alienate ourselves. But there's no excuse for missing out on recovery, nothing that can make us ineligible for the program,not a life-threatening illness, not poverty, not anything. There are thousands of addicts who have found recovery despite the real hardships they've faced. Through working the program, their spiritual awareness has grown, in spite of or perhaps in response to those hardships.

Grateful for the rewards

We live our program in one day portions - and our actions today have immediate consequences. For instance, if we listen to a brother or a sister in the program, we may be enriched and the other person strengthened for today's challenge. We don't have to confront every temptation of life on this day - only the portion we can handle. Our old insanity would have us predict the entire story of our future from today's limited viewpoint. But our spiritual orientation guides us to restrain ourselves. We simply live in this moment.

Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic

A.A. Thought for the Day

"Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. Commencing to drink after a period of sobriety, we are in a short time as bad as ever. If we have admitted we are alcoholics, we must have no reservations of any kind, nor any lurking notion that someday we will be immune to alcohol. What sort of thinking dominates an alcoholic who repeats time after time the desperate experiment of the first drink? Parallel with sound reasoning, there inevitably runs some insanely trivial excuse for taking the first drink. There is little thought of what the terrific consequences may be." Have I given up all excuses for taking a drink?

Meditation for the Day

Concealment and secrecy

Concealment and secrecy have been second nature to some of us. We may have felt that our masculinity kept us loners. Perhaps we said we were covering the truth for someone else's good. Maybe we could not bear to expose the truth because we feared the consequences. For some of us a lie came more automatically than the truth. Now we are learning to be open with our friends, and we are finding the healing effect of fresh air for our secrets.

Consequences

“Before we got clean, most of our actions were guided by impulse.  Today, we are not locked into this type of thinking.”

Basic Text, p. 90

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Ever been tempted to do something even when you knew the results would be disastrous?  Ever thought about how much it was going to hurt to do what you were tempted to do, then proceed to do it anyway?

It is said that there are consequences to every action.  Before we got clean, many of us simply didn’t believe this.  But now we know exactly what it means.  When we act, we know there will be consequences to pay.  No longer can we decide to do something in ignorance when we know full well that we won’t like the price we’ll have to pay.

There’s a prize and a price.  It’s okay to act despite the consequences if we’re willing to pay the price, but there’s always one to pay.

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Just for today: I will think about the consequences of my actions before I take them.