Posted on 12/11/2004 5:37:20 AM PST by RobFromGa
If only it were that easy to always define the responsibility! It's often 'I was only following orders' until you discover your habit has you in your own little Nuremberg! Sorry to say, I'm as yet awaiting the hangman...
very inspiring, I can do it again. TY!
this is my exact pattern as well! I don't know about you closetFreep, but it's just too much for me now. It's too much, face it. A ping couldn't kill us...
What's a DH? dear husband? if so, I pray for DH's continued resolve to keep his eye on what's really important in life! God bless you, FReeper!
very instructive...
I used to know and use so many of these successfully!
But did you ever have an abnormal affinity for Rum Cake?
Congratulations, and thanks. Please add me to your ping list. I'm not great at replying, but I do read them.
The only thing more deadly than alcoholism is academe/Liberal/Leftism. Suicide all the same.
Be Careful! Rigorous self-examination can lead one to drink again.
Chapter 2. If You Suspect You Might Have a Drinking Problem
As I said previously, I am sharing it in the hope that it might help someone else to solve this problem and change their life. There is also a another reason for sharing my experience, it is my way of giving back some small part of what has been given to me by others. If I can help one person to find the peace that I have found by helping them to explore their addiction, it will have served its purpose. And writing this is a way to help crystallize my own thinking on what has worked for me, and what has not.
If you are out there and worried about your drinking, the first piece of advice I gave yesterday was to make a decision to stop drinking for at least a long enough time to make a final decision about whether to quit for good. At this point you only need to admit to yourself that alcohol is something that you cannot manage as well as you would like, and that you are going to do something about it.
I will again make the disclaimer that this is MY experience, and I do not have so much pride as to think that I have one way that will work and that all others ways are wrong. Now back to our story, where I had made the decision to quit and I was in the first 30 days of sobriety (Rush was still in his rehab center).
Nothing much eventful happened through Thanksgiving and Christmas, and I was spending a lot of time reading about goal setting and self improvement, and I was a different person through those holidays. I actually did not have any urges to drink and it was a wonderful season.
Near the end of the year, I was talking with a friend who I knew from past experience was in AA. He knew I had quit drinking and he asked me whether I had been to an AA meeting. I told him that I hadn’t and that I didn’t really feel like it would do anything for me. He told me that I should keep an open mind about it and that I might find value there.
He told me something that stuck with me. He said that I appeared to be doing well in my sobriety but that I was not out of the woods and that I would never be 100% safe. He told me that I needed to build up a layer of resistance around myself that was so thick that the worst possible scenario of events would not cause me to resort to drinking. My paper-thin resolve was not going to be enough to see me through this problem.
I disagreed with him somewhat, because as an alcoholic we tend to know everything, and be right about everything, but I did make a goal for myself after the new year to attend an AA meeting.
So, on January 6, I went to my first AA meeting at a place near my house. It was pleasant enough and the people at that meeting were friendly. For the first time, I was able to tell my story to a group of people who understood exactly where I was coming from. It was stunning that you could be so open and free with things that you would never tell another living soul, and yet here you are in a room full of strangers and you spill out part of what is inside you. And there are others there that nod their heads, and hug you and give you encouragement because they have been there before you.
I made a deal with myself that I would go to at least 30 meetings over the next 90 days and see what I could learn. I live near Atlanta, so I decided to go to one of the main AA places, and I found a group of people that are from all walks of life, on a given day 50-100 of them. This became my home group and I have been to a lot of meetings.
I would strongly urge any person who feels they have a problem with drinking to attend an AA meeting in their area. There are many types of meetings, in my experience there is a short reading for the day from one of the AA books, and then you just go around the table and share your thoughts on that topic. If you don’t feel like talking, you pass, simple as that. In the group that I am in, there are people there who have been coming for twenty-five years or more and they have seen it all.
There are many things that I received from the people I met at AA.
First, and most important to me, I lost a sense of loneliness that I had always carried but not known that I was carrying. Let me explain. This is not the kind of loneliness that comes from being alone. I always had people around me, and I was not alone physically. I was alone in my problem. I did not realize fully that my drinking problem is a “normal” thing for millions of people, and that I was able to grow from their experiences as well as my own. I did not need to lose my family to hear that story repeatedly. I did not need to lose my job, I could hear others explain that pain to me from all walks of life. I did not need to go to prison—I talked with people who are just out of prison.
I also talked to people who were just like me, in that they did not hit a hard “bottom”. This is both a curse and a blessing because some will say that you need that terrible pain seared in you to keep you from thinking you have been “cured”. So, the first thing I got from AA was the knowledge that I am not a freak, that I have a problem shared by many, and that everything that I have done wrong isn’t close to as bad as it could get if I start drinking again.
Just hearing the emotional stories of people who had quit, and who are now coming back to AA and admitting that they had started drinking again is enough for me to build my armor against a relapse. I learned that one can learn through the experiences of others as it pertains to alcohol, and there is intense value in doing so.
The second main value that I got from AA is spiritual growth. I had not given any real thought in over twenty five years to God, and my relationship to him. The AA program is built upon the concept of a Power greater than ourselves who helps us with our problem. I have always believed in a Creator and so this part I was OK with.
Now let me say right now that, at least at the AA meetings I attended, there is no one going around checking up on people and keeping tabs on what step you are on, and how well you are doing. In that respect, this is a self-paced program, you move at your own speed, you pick out what works for you and you leave the rest for later. That was my approach. I did not dismiss anything out of hand as incorrect-- I just looked for ways to apply what they were saying to what I believed.
It is time for me to do some other things this morning (I think I will go to an AA meeting) so I’ll close for know. Sometime soon, I’ll write the next part of this. Thanks for reading this far…
RobFromGa
Note: Someone asked about Non Alcoholic beers. I stayed away from them for the first six months, but then I saw President Bush drinking one on his campaign plane, so I figured what the heck. In the past eight months, I have had probably four occasions that I have drank three or four of them and it has not been a problem for me so far. I have not brought them home by stocking the fridge with NA beers and chugging a twelve pack every night. I also do not go to bars and drink them while everyone else gets plastered, that would be tough to handle for me. But if I am in a setting where a few NA beers are appropriate, I drink them and I don’t think it has harmed me. Your mileage may vary.
In the final analysis, you're in charge, nobody else is, and you can punch that hangman in the nose anytime you want to. Good luck!
re AA see #251
BTTT
Thanks for the ping
My problems are to a large extent due to 'me' being in charge.
When I humble myself and surrender control to my Creator, real solutions appear.
I do the leg work, but leave the over-all plan to One wiser than me.
Thanks. I needed that.
I disagree.
The Fourth and Fifth Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are the initial recovery steps. With these we take a moral inventory of ourselves, being as honest as we capable, and we share that inventory with someone else.
Most alcoholics repeat these steps many times in their sobriety because honesty comes in stages. Most of us are incapable of complete honesty when we first get sober.
We cannot work on the problems until we can identify those problems. That is the purpose of the "fearless moral inventory".
We don't chastise ourselves for the the things we have done, anymore than we would beat ourselves up for having a big nose. The things we have done is part of who we were as practicing alcoholics.
We accept that we were spiritually bankrupt, and it's time to put our spiritual account in order.
Early on in my sobriety, I had a very valuable tip from my sponsor:
He said, "Look in the mirror several times a day and say, 'I love you'". As silly as it sounds, it worked.
We must destroy that wall of self hatred before we can love anyone or anything.
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