What is Recovery today?

Along the sober path and at various stages of my sober life, this question has had varied meanings. Asked of me just last night I was able to answer very concisely. In our basic text it states that we have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. I believe that this hopeless state of mind and body is the mental obsession (the mind) and the physical compulsion (the body). It has been not only my experience but also my belief that we can recover from alcoholism, however we will always suffer from that much deeper issue the book refers to as the internal condition.


We are brought into the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous with a soul sickness, a deep and profound longing for God. However, we are unable to reach out to the spiritual nature of AA without first removing those things which stand in the way of our connection to our "power greater than ourselves", the first and most obvious of these things is Alcohol.

We remove this block by first building a life changing foundation which helps us to not take a drink a day at a time, through the process of the 12-steps we have a guaranteed spiritual experience that carries with it sufficient force to remove the obsession to drink. Coupled with that is a profound personality change that launches us into recovery.  Before long the drink problem has been removed and it is on now to those other things which stand in the way of our relationship with God, we through the 12-steps will identify these items in 4 and 5 and ask for them to be removed in the coming housecleaning steps.

It is this ongoing maintenance of our spiritual program along with the willingness to continue to grow along a spiritual path that keeps the internal condition at bay. Let's not forget that the sudden return of the internal condition as a result of a failure to grow often leads to a drink as we cannot live in that place without help.

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Posted in alcoholics anonymous, aloholics, God, life, mental obsession, soul, spiritual, spiritual malady

An AA Education...

Spiritual experience of the more educational variety gains a whole new perspective when long time slipper meets the rehab of their dreams and becomes an AA guru....

Or so the story goes...If you Google Treatment Facilities the the list is long and exhaustive, if you simply switch to an image search the game changes and you are pleasantly greeted with a whole host of aerial shots of Waste Water Treatment Plants.

What do these two things have in common with one another?

I say they have more in common than what you might think. Both bring in the dirty, the beaten and the unusable and through a process that is baffling to most spit out something that is of use to society.

That process is God, and it must not be confused with some sort of change brought about through an increase in educational status by way of group therapy or lots and lots of reading. I am a product of treatment, it was and will continue to be the most expensive trip to an AA meeting I ever take. They filled my head full of knowledge, they attempted to take me through some steps and teach me about triggers and reasons why I drank and how to avoid those thing in the future, but at the end of the day, despite all of the fancy names and top notch people and good food, they took us to an AA meeting, because they are no better at treating alcoholism than the local Denny's.

The reason we drank was alcoholism, we drank as the result of an internal condition, which looks to the professional community to be a lot like bi-polar...though it is not, and this internal condition can only be treated by means of a spiritual experience. The ground work can be laid at one of these facilities, they dry out a drunk, pump them full of vitamins and good food, get them rested and into better health and then they bring them to us...why? Because for as long as society can remember, there has been nowhere to send a drunk, until AA came along they looked us away to rot in institutions.

We must be careful in our meetings that we don't allow ourselves to be misled by the professional community and their attempts at healing alcoholism. They have been tasked with something we don't want to have to do. They are expected to produce results $XX.XX = sobriety and that is simply not the case, but if you through enough information at the problem, facts, figures, slogans, etc...then it will cloud the issue long enough for you to cash the check.

The cure for alcoholism, the only thing that has been found to work consistently for the last 70+ years has been the spiritual program of action that we call Alcoholics Anonymous. Let's bear in mind always that the book clearly states that we have found a solution on which we can all agree, that means that we needn't stumble in the dark for what might work any longer, we need only do what we have been told to do.

Take a minute to visit our sponsor at www.thetokenshop.com

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Posted in AA, acoholism, action, alcoholic, alcoholics anonymous, alcoholism, direction, God, path, Recovery, sobriety, spiritual

Serenity ...

That I shall find a peace such that I have not known before...here it is likely as time moves forward I will not know this peace again either. That is the thing about time, it changes and with it the ebb and flow of our ever evolving emotional and spiritual perspective.

It is likely that I will be at peace again when I leave here, at least I hope so...seems to me that our goal here is to place ourselves in a position of maximum use to God and our fellows.

I believe today that I will be given the strength that I need to carry on, but not indefinitely. We have a natural rhythm of charging and discharging our batteries. Once one gets to know themselves intimately, we begin to here the call. Just as a car pulls into a filling station to continue on the journey, we too must top off our tanks.

I have long felt pulled and recently, within the last several years, understood that pull. I am soothed by water and recharged in the warm salt air. Things move a little differently here, there is ice cream available 5 days a week between 11am and 3pm, but only if the wind doesn't blow too hard. We only bring what we need and nothing more, everything must be carried over and thus has an intrinsic value not otherwise known on the mainland. We are learning to live without, and McDonald's....I don't miss you!

Truly blessed to be here and giving credit where it is due...

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Posted in fellowship, God, intimately, peace, serenity, spiritual

Part 1:The Spiritual Malady...

"Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves."
 page 45 The Anonymous Press Study Edition of Alcoholics Anonymous

Alcoholism is a Soul Sickness and it is only fitting that the crux of the problem is where we begin our discussion. Suffering from a spiritual malady, the active alcoholic is cut off from the very thing they need in order to sustain life, the energy and grace that comes from our creator. Pride, selfishness, and self-centeredness are the very things that block us from this sunlight of the spirit.

It can be well established that we drink because we are alcoholics, we suffer from an internal condition that makes it nearly impossible to live with-in our bodies without some form of distraction, such as alcohol. However, our founders stumbled upon something that until that point had been widely ignored or overlooked by both the religious and medical fields. They found that a spiritual solution which removed those things which blocked us from God would in point of  fact treat the internal condition and in doing so allow us to live comfortably with ourselves.

Where we had once been powerless, power flowed in, we had become channels of God's power, testaments to his mercy and grace and doers of his will. All of these things remain possible as long as we are able to remain in the sunlight of the spirit and not dwell beneath the shade of doubt, pride and self.

"Whether such a person can quit upon a nonspiritual basis depends upon the extent to which he has already lost the power to choose whether he will drink or not."
page 34 The Anonymous Press Study Edition of Alcoholics Anonymous

I was not prepared for a spiritual solution when I was brought to the fellowship, nor was I willing to immediately accept that the only hope there was for me was to admit defeat, surrender my life to God and start doing his work. However, I was told early on and have since come to understand that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous that we know is designed to do primarily one thing...take a suffering alcoholic who is walking away from God and pick him up, turn he/she 180 degrees so that they now walk towards him.

Lastly I wish to say this, while it is not my place to diagnose anyone with alcoholism, I know today unequivocally that if you do not need the spiritual solution we have to offer, in other words you can stop on your own...you are not an alcoholic. If you can change your lifestyle, get a new set of friends, buy a fancy car or get slapped with enough probation and one of these things makes you stop...you are NOT one of us...

"There was a tremendous urge to cease forever. Yet we found it impossible. This is the baffling feature of alcoholism as we know it - this utter inability to leave it alone, no matter how great the necessity or the wish."
page 34 The Anonymous Press Study Edition of Alcoholics Anonymous


There is it...If you have passed into the realm in which there was no return through human aid...you need God...

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Posted in acoholism, alcoholic, alcoholics anonymous, aloholics, fellowship, powerless, pride, self-centeredness, selfishness, soul, spiritual, spiritual malady

Understanding

"We have entered the world of the Spirit. Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness."  

Alcoholics Anonymous  page 84

The above statement makes the bold assumption that the reader has in fact rigorously adhered to our stringent spiritual way of life and has had, as a result, an experience which has placed them in the realm of the spirit. If the reader has not reached said point then you missed something along the way.

How many times have you heard this little statement at a meeting?

"The longer I am sober, the less I know."

Don't you wonder about those people? My sober experience increases, nearly exponentially, with each passing day. I know things today that I didn't know 5 years ago that have made it possible to help others in a way I never could have imagined. This again is an extreme example of false pride and eludes to the idea that we can easily level the playing field in AA to allow everyone to be liked, understood and ultimately respected. But this idea of a level playing field is counter to the way our fellowship was designed in which new people followed us down the path, doing what we did to get what we got.  It is vastly important that someone have gone before us and that the path be laid out and we cannot snub our noses at sober time.

Take this for example:

Let's pretend for a moment that a loved one is sick, they are suffering from a congenital heart defect that is going to require open heart surgery. They come to you for advice on where to seek treatment and which doctor they should choose. Do you advise them to go to the local community college and volunteer to allow some surgical techs to open them up? Absolutely not, you point them in the direction of the best treatment they can get from the surgeon with the most experience. 

So let me ask you this, why is it that when a guy with 20+ years of sobriety shares in a meeting we allow another member with 2 years to argue with them?

Now I will leave you with this...in the spiritual world there exists a paradox in which the closer one draws to God the smaller they see themselves before him and as one's knowledge grows so does the understanding of just how little they know. However the amount they didn't know is always decreasing, the awareness of how much that is should always be increasing.

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Posted in AA, alcoholics anonymous, effectiveness, life, path, pride, sober, spiritual, understanding

Night Fell!

The Night Fell...

 There is a thickness to the night which I haven't felt in years. Reminiscent of those early days of recovery in which there felt to be no safe place, I seem trapped by recent events. The horror of my loved one's recent suicide attempt, the realization of the gravity of the act and the circumstances leading to it, is staggering.

I often find myself awake late hours, distraction brings static which in turn brings a soft relief to what is the inevitable time alone with my thoughts.

I am 9 years sober, I have been to some great therapists in my day, I am spiritually fit and aware of what is happening to me. None of this takes away the chill that runs through my spine when the phone rings...because the phone rang, 3 times the phone rang that day, and it was always someone who wouldn't call me..."There's been an accident!"

No, there had been no accident, there had been a plan and the only accident was God's grace and mercy which saw that plan fail. However the damage was done, at least the lasting emotional trauma. The dreams are there, the haunting images and the sounds...all very real!

We are taught to love through action and forgive. I have been shown, by the fellowship I call home and the people who surround me. I have been taught a nearly involuntary reliance upon God in times of need. I seem to turn to him without thought or provocation, rather instinctual. It is there in the quiet of the night that I find solace in him, it is there as the demons seep in that I am meet with the warmth and light of the spirit.

I no longer suffer from a mental obsession, it was rather startling to me that I had passed into a new phase of recovery one in which the thought of drinking and the thought of not drinking were both nonexistent. Early in my sober life the thought of drinking was prominent, especially when things in my life became trying or troubling...However, as I stayed sober I became aware that these thoughts would come much later and then not at all...but there had always been a thought about drinking or not drinking, whichever the case, alcohol was at the front of my mind.

Humility is …

"Perpetual quietness of heart.

It is to have no trouble.

It is never to be fretted or vexed, irritable or sore; to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me.

It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised, it is to have a blessed home in myself where I can go in and shut the door and kneel to my Higher Power in secret and be at peace, as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and about is seeming trouble."

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Posted in alcoholic, God, humility, love, mental obsession, sober, spiritual, suicide

Road to Recovery

"God has given me the ability to walk through trials with grace and dignity."

I am very grateful for the strength I have been given, the perspective I have, and the foundation that has been laid. This post will be less about my opinion and more about my experience. 

I have, throughout my sober life had trials laid before me that I believe have been designed to bring me closer to God. I am, in hindsight, able to see his hand in all of the details leading up to and including the very trial I have to pass through.

I have not always had this faith, in fact I have spent much of my life, sober and before, believing that I was controlling it all. Today, this faith I share with those around me is like the warmth of a familiar blanket when there is a chill in the air. It brings comfort from the presence of God in my life when all around me is pain and suffering. Much the same way a small child clings to their favorite blanket or stuffed bear, this is not immediately instinctual but rather a learned behavior that has come from pain or fear and then relief or comfort. You do that enough times and you develop a faith.

Perhaps that is all very childish, perhaps I should reach into the very premise that we are engaged here and now in all out spiritual warfare, that our sober struggle, and yes it is from time to time a struggle, is a battle on an spiritual plane. We have to die a death to self and in doing so we are in a sense "reborn" to bring comfort to the sick, food to the hungry, and shelter to those in the cold. We have ultimately been saved so that we can do God's work. If you believe in the presence of God in our lives, then you cannot deny the existence of  a competing force or power, that in sobriety pulls us from God's will and away from the work that has been laid before us. We struggle daily with the removal of selfishness in an effort to become better aligned with His will, but when we are misaligned the battle begins.

But what you might ask does this have to do with staying sober? Well, our daily reprieve is based upon the maintenance of our spiritual program. We are also called to grow along spiritual lines, increasing in faith and understanding of this faith allows for us to remain continuously sober.

Coming up....I will be inviting some of our readers to share their story, short inspiring bits about lives spared and souls saved!

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Posted in AA, death, faith, God, perspective, sober, spiritual, suicide, understanding

HALT

HALT

Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired....now what?

It might have been a treatment center, or a well meaning member of the fellowship who first developed this conditional method of self awareness. Whoever it was, I am certain it was well intentioned, and at the time it was very intuitive. I am, however one that believes that we must remove the conditions on sobriety, in other words, we have to close the doors. If we are to tell ourselves that "if" this or that happens we don't know if we will stay sober, this or that will inevitably happen and we will be in the fight of our lives...see we already said we would drink!

Don't get me wrong, I am not bashing the concept, it was well meaning and I believe the original intent has been long lost. Our emotional and spiritual well being are intrinsically associated with our physical health. We have to remain vigilant, that we do not lose track of taking care of ourselves. Many of us were accustomed to taking poor care of ourselves in active addiction. Basic care of our physical selves was often neglected and as such we suffered. We went days without showers, missed meals, shunned others and seldom slept. Whilst our physical health declined, as did our emotional state and our spiritual world collapsed in on us. 

In recovery we are asked to heal all three parts. We also know that none of these parts can recover with out the others being taken care of. Tied together, our spiritual welfare is often tied to our physical well being. It is however one of the last places we look when we are troubled. As a result, other areas of our well being often begin to falter or fail before we look to our most basic needs. The combination of these are often deadly to an alcoholic. My experience is that if I get too hungry, too angry, too lonely or too tired all at once...I get a cold. It is my bodies way of saying...Stop, you have pushed yourself too far and you have had enough. It has nothing to do with taking a drink and everything to do with taking care of me so I can be of maximum service to you!

Please take a moment to visit our sponsor: The Token Shop

 

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Posted in AA, acoholism, alcoholic, alcoholics anonymous, drink, emotions, fellowship, sober, spiritual

Qui tacet consentire videtur...Silent?

He who is silent is understood to consent...

For many of us in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, our very lives depend upon an soft heart, an open mind and the ability to listen to and discern the truth we have so desperately sought.

 There is an alarming trend that has surfaced in our fellowship in recent years...Sponsor/Sponsee relationships in which neither individual shares the honest truth with the other. Out of fear and anxiety over the possibility of having to then be confronted with the truth about themselves, the sponsor neglects to share vital truths with the sponsee. These "suicide" pacts, will become very cumbersome to our fellowship as they continue to cause stagnant spiritual growth among some members. 

This issue has bled over into the meeting rooms and fellowship halls where we allow new-comers and old-timers alike to share about bars and drinking occasions. We are seldom willing to address, publicly or even privately the mistakes another member is making in an effort to help that member. 

It seems we would much rather make them happy than help them to reach a place of spiritual healthiness. 

Our silence is understood as consent, those who cannot, at present moment, differentiate right from wrong are dependent on us to do that for them. We cannot site by idly and hope that someone else will say the "right thing"...sometimes all that needs said is "something"!

Please take a moment to visit our kind host and sponsor:  

The Token Shop

 

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Posted in alcoholics anonymous, fellowship, open mind, spiritual, sponsor, truth

Where are the other nine?

Jesus asked, "Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine?" Luke 17:17

With-in the book of Luke in the Bible there exists a parable in which 10 people afflicted with leprosy are healed or made clean by Jesus. After such point nine of them leave without expressing the deep gratitude they should have for their lives being spared...one remains and for that is rewarded.

Regardless of your faith, one cannot help but draw a parallel between this story and similar ones in Alcoholics Anonymous. 

Much like the like the lepers of the time, active alcoholics are often cast out of society, deemed unclean and cast aside to die drunk. We are delivered through divine intervention to the rooms of AA where we are, through in immeasurable act of mercy, spared from the certain death of alcoholism. Our sobreity is contingent upon the the maintenance of our spiritual program which includes but is not limited to giving back to our fellowship through service, acts of mercy, charity, and the constant display of gratitude. 

However, as with the parable, AA is often stricken  with a case of the "other nines". Those alcoholics who, having found the solution, set off on their own selfish path to satisfy their own whims and desires. Soon they are too busy with life, to comfortable in sobreity, too tired, too sick, too warm or too cold to get out and carry the message. Soon they begin to suffer, the internal condition returns...and a drink looks appealing.

As for the one, "Rise and go; your faith has made you well.". We are called to remain in service, ours is a daily reprieve, and we must continue to diligently carry our message in order to assure that we remain free.

Up next? The Internal Condition!

Take a moment to check out our sponsor: The Token Shop

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Posted in alcoholic, alcoholics anonymous, faith, God, gratitude, message, service, sobriety, solution, spiritual