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

I stand by the Door

I Stand by the Door
By Sam Shoemaker (from the Oxford Group)

I stand by the door.
I neither go to far in, nor stay to far out.
The door is the most important door in the world -
It is the door through which men walk when they find God.
There is no use my going way inside and staying there,
When so many are still outside and they, as much as I,
Crave to know where the door is.
And all that so many ever find
Is only the wall where the door ought to be.
They creep along the wall like blind men,
With outstretched, groping hands,
Feeling for a door, knowing there must be a door,
Yet they never find it.
So I stand by the door.

The most tremendous thing in the world
Is for men to find that door - the door to God.
The most important thing that any man can do
Is to take hold of one of those blind, groping hands
And put it on the latch - the latch that only clicks
And opens to the man's own touch.

Men die outside the door, as starving beggars die
On cold nights in cruel cities in the dead of winter.
Die for want of what is within their grasp.
They live on the other side of it - live because they have not found it.

Nothing else matters compared to helping them find it,
And open it, and walk in, and find Him.
So I stand by the door.

Go in great saints; go all the way in -
Go way down into the cavernous cellars,
And way up into the spacious attics.
It is a vast, roomy house, this house where God is.
Go into the deepest of hidden casements,
Of withdrawal, of silence, of sainthood.
Some must inhabit those inner rooms
And know the depths and heights of God,
And call outside to the rest of us how wonderful it is.
Sometimes I take a deeper look in.
Sometimes venture in a little farther,
But my place seems closer to the opening.
So I stand by the door.

There is another reason why I stand there.
Some people get part way in and become afraid
Lest God and the zeal of His house devour them;
For God is so very great and asks all of us.
And these people feel a cosmic claustrophobia
And want to get out. 'Let me out!' they cry.
And the people way inside only terrify them more.
Somebody must be by the door to tell them that they are spoiled.
For the old life, they have seen too much:
One taste of God and nothing but God will do any more.
Somebody must be watching for the frightened
Who seek to sneak out just where they came in,
To tell them how much better it is inside.
The people too far in do not see how near these are
To leaving - preoccupied with the wonder of it all.
Somebody must watch for those who have entered the door
But would like to run away. So for them too,
I stand by the door.

I admire the people who go way in.
But I wish they would not forget how it was
Before they got in. Then they would be able to help
The people who have not yet even found the door.
Or the people who want to run away again from God.
You can go in too deeply and stay in too long
And forget the people outside the door.
As for me, I shall take my old accustomed place,
Near enough to God to hear Him and know He is there,
But not so far from men as not to hear them,
And remember they are there too.

Where? Outside the door -
Thousands of them. Millions of them.
But - more important for me -
One of them, two of them, ten of them.
Whose hands I am intended to put on the latch.
So I shall stand by the door and wait
For those who seek it.

'I had rather be a door-keeper
So I stand by the door.
I had to share this! Thank you Ed for passing it to me!

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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

Honest with Themselves

"Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves." Alcoholics Anonymous Chapter Five

We deal alot with reservations around here, the idea of closing doors and leaving nothing open for alcohol to sneak back into our lives. It is paramount in recovery that we make certain that one is finished for good an for all. This post is going to, in a round about way, bring into focus the idea that there should be no reservations while pointing out the one true reservation that stands in the way of a person achieving recovery.

For arguments sake here is a Contextual Definition of a reservation: 

"There is no way I could stay sober through the loss of my husband."

This statement, though powerful and intense, has ultimately left the door open for alcohol to find it's way into the member's life in the tragic event of the loss of her husband. This is a reservation. 


With that said, the Bog Book of Alcoholics Anonymous is very clear about reservations...mentioned in chapter 3, they have used the word must in telling us that we absolutely need to be rid of reservations or any lurking notions.

" If we are planning to stop drinking, there must be no reservation of any kind, nor any lurking notion that someday we will be immune to alcohol." Alcoholics Anonymous Chapter Three

Now, practical application of this reservation removal is another issue all together. While being necessary to maintain permanent sobriety, it may take years and sometimes decades for all of the doors to be sealed shut and for alcohol to remain outside. We begin in early sobriety with things as simple as going to work, taking a paycheck, going to bed at night, all without the use and abuse of alcohol. As we progress further into our sober lives and our daily routine is free from booze, we move into the more difficult items, deaths and funerals, marriage and weddings, loss of jobs, health issues...we see other members trudge through great difficulty and we are given hope, slowly the things we though we could never stay sober through slip away and we drop the reservations. 

Now, as mentioned at the top of this post there is one reservation that is a go, no go in alcoholics anonymous. If one is unwilling or unable to be honest with themselves and to maintain that honesty throughout their sober life, then one cannot achieve permanent sobriety. Staying away from a drink a day at a time requires that we be honest with ourselves and thus the statement, "If I am not honest with myself I will drink", is paradoxical because it is both a reservation and an absolute. 

Close the doors...and the windows. 

 

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Posted in alcoholic, alcoholics anonymous, honest, program, Recovery, resercation, sobriety

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