Essentials Of Recovery

Created to carry the message of recovery to all addicts. Whether the addiction is alcohol, drugs, food or any other addiction the program of recovery is the same. I am a recovering alcoholic of over twenty-seven years, a day at a time of course and I believe my primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve recovery. Remember seven days without a meeting makes one weak. Sign up to get emails.This Blog is NOT IN ANY WAY affiliated to either A.A. or N.A. Help to stop drinking.

Friday, 9 June 2023

Diane C. - Recovery Speaker

Daily Reflections

LIVING IN THE NOW

First, we try living in the now just in order to stay sober — and it works. Once the idea has become a part of our thinking, we find that living life in 24 hour segments is an effective and satisfying way to handle many other matters as well.

-LIVING SOBER, p. 7

“One Day At A Time.” To a newcomer this and other one-liners of A.A. may seem ridiculous. The passwords of the A.A. Fellowship can become lifelines in moments of stress. Each day can be like a rose unfurling according to the plan of a Power greater than myself. My program should be planted in the right location, just as it will need to be groomed, nourished, and protected from disease. My planting will require patience, and my realizing that some flowers will be more perfect than others. Each stage of the petals’ unfolding can bring wonder and delight if I do not interfere or let my expectations override my acceptance — and this brings serenity.

Just for today

Old dreams needn’t die

“Lost dreams awaken and new possibilities arise.”

Basic Text, p. 91

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Most of us had dreams when we were young. Whether we dreamed of a dynamic career, a large and loving family, or travels abroad, our dreams died when our addiction took hold. Anything we ever wanted for ourselves was cast away in our pursuit of drugs. Our dreams didn’t go beyond the next drug and the euphoria we hoped it would bring.

Now in recovery, we find a reason to hope that our lost dreams could still come true. No matter how old we are, how much our addiction has taken from us, or how unlikely it may seem, our freedom from active addiction gives us the freedom to pursue our ambitions. We may discover that we’re very talented at something, or find a hobby we love, or learn that continuing our education can bring remarkable rewards.

We used to put most of our energy into spinning excuses and rationalizations for our failures. Today, we go forward and make use of the many opportunities life presents to us. We may be amazed at what we’re capable of. With our foundation of recovery, success, fulfillment, and satisfaction are within our reach at last.

––––=––––

Just for today: Starting today, I’ll do whatever I can to realize my dreams.

Twenty-Four Hours A Day

A.A. Thought For The Day

We finally came to the bottom. We did not have to be financially broke, although many of us were. But we were spiritually bankrupt. We had a soul-sickness, a revulsion against ourselves and against our way of living. Life had become impossible for us. We had to end it all or do something about it. Am I glad I did something about it?

Meditation For The Day

Faith is not seeing, but believing. I am in a box of space and time and cannot see spacelessness or eternity. But God is not within the shell of time and space. He is timeless and spaceless. He cannot be fully comprehended by our finite minds. But we must try to make a union between our purposes and the purposes of God. By trying to merge our minds with the mind of God, a oneness of purpose results. This oneness of purpose puts us in harmony with God and others. Evil comes from being in disharmony with God and good comes from being in harmony with Him.

Prayer For The Day

I pray that I may be in harmony with God. I pray that I may get into the stream of goodness in the universe.

As Bill Sees It

2. pp. 136-137

Walk in Dry Places

Do I feel uneasy?
Serenity

When facing difficult situations, we can expect to feel a certain amount of discomfort. What’s more often a problem for compulsive people is being tense and apprehensive even when things seem to be going well.

Although many explanations are offered for this unpleasant feeling, the solution is to be found in the 12 Steps. The more secure we feel in our program, the less apprehension we’ll have in facing the problems of living. With the program as our foundation, we will continue to develop more self-assurance as we go along.

We may not immediately find this self-assurance, yet we should not hold back from normal duties and responsibilities. Most of the world’s work and accomplishments are undertaken by people who do not necessarily feel confident and self-assured all the time. Why should it be any different for us?

Whether I feel confident or not, I’ll do my best today. I know that my fellowship, my program, and my Higher Power are fully supporting me.

Father Leo’s Daily Meditation

IDEALS

“Every dogma has its day, but ideals are eternal.”

–Israel Zangwill

For too long I lived in a box of rules and dogma. Life had to have definable answers and everything needed to be structured. Then the answers didn’t seem to work. Nobody seemed interested in the answers I was giving. The world had moved on!

I realized that life had to be lived, not simply talked about. Having the answers to questions that nobody was asking (including myself) seemed a waste of time. I was uncomfortable. I was living in the past.

Spirituality is reality. It is okay to benefit from a tradition and then move on. I was not disloyal or a traitor because I had changed my mind. God and truth live in a changing world and if we are to grow, our perception of ourselves and life must change. Today I can accept this.

Give me the willingness to change in my life.

Keep It Simple

Anyone can blame; it takes a specialist to praise.

—Konstantin Stanislawski

Are we blamers? We sure were blamers when we were using alcohol and other drugs. Then everything was someone’s fault. Some of us did our blaming out loud. And some of us blamed others silently.

It’s harder to praise than to blame people. Faults stand out like street

signs, but the good things about people may be harder to see. We can see the good in people when we slow down, watch, and listen.

Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, help me pay attention to people around me. Help me praise them.

Action for the Day: Today, I’ll list three people who mean a lot to me. I’ll write what I like about each of them. I’ll talk to them and tell them what I wrote.

A Day At A Time

Reflection For The Day

Some of us, new in The Program, couldn’t resist telling anyone who would listen just how “terrible” we were. Just as we often exaggerated our modest accomplishments by pride, so we exaggerated our defects through guilt. Facing about and “confessing all,” we somehow considered the widespread exposure of our sins to be true humility, considering it a great spiritual asset. Only as we grew in The Program did we realize that our theatrics and storytelling were merely forms of exhibitionism. And with that realization came the beginning of a certain amount of humility. Am I starting to become aware that I’m not so important after all?

Today I Pray

May I learn that there is a chasm of difference between real humility and the dramatic self-put-down. May I be confronted if I unconsciously demand center-stage to out-do and “out-drunk” others with my “adventure” stories. May I be cautious that the accounts of my addictive misdeeds do not take on the epic grandeur of heroic exploits.

Today I Will Remember

I will not star in my own drunkologue (or junkologue).

One Day At A Time

PROMISES

“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”

-Oscar Wilde

Before program, I would dwell in my mistakes. Experience, feh! I was all about self-abuse and feeling rotten about mistakes. My mistakes would certainly lead to overeating, since there was no other option in my mind. Even with years of therapy – with the same therapist – I still used eating as a soothing tool for those times when the mistake was enough to send me into a tailspin. Time and time again people would tell me I was too hard on myself, or that I should just relax and smile. Another mistake for me to internalize — I couldn’t even make a mistake right. I wonder now if I sometimes looked for things to call mistakes so I’d have a reason to feel as rotten as I did most of the time. Having been abused as a child wasn’t enough, blaming other people for my pain never satiated me.

In my first OA meeting, I heard the promises and I started to feel something melt away. Some of the shame and self-pity evaporated into the room of men and women who also felt this lack of satisfaction. A room of men and women loved me because I struggled with the same addictive behaviors. I don’t think I’d ever been loved for my weakness, and there is something powerful in that. When I make a mistake, I can think about my friends in OA who tell me that there is no wrong way, just another way.

One day at a time …
I can know that there are people who love me because I share in their weakness, and I can read the promises to realize that recovery is possible.

~ AJ

Elder’s Meditation of the Day

Every part of this country is sacred to my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove has been hallowed by some fond memory or some sad experience of my tribe. Even the rocks, which seem to lie dumb as they swelter in the sun along the silent shore in solemn grandeur, thrill with memories of past events connected with the fate of my people.

—Chief Seattle, SUQUAMISH

Native people say the Earth is sacred. Some places on Earth will feel more sacred than others. You can often feel the sacredness of these places because of what has happened on them. If you do a ceremony on a certain place and return later, whatever happened before will still be there to help you. Even if someone you didn’t know did something on the Earth and you come along later, the powers will be there to help you. This is why the Earth is sacred and these special places are sacred spots.

My Creator, let the powers of the sacred places help the people today.

Today’s Gift

We never know how high we are ‘Til we are called to rise; And then, if we are true to plan, Our statures touch the skies.

—Emily Dickinson

We are all capable of far more than we think we are. It’s in the tough times, however, that we discover the depths of our strength, and it’s then that we know that some power has enabled us to do what we thought we could not. Whatever we call that power, it is there for us when we need it.

To do what seems impossible, all we need to do is ask for the help we think we need. And we can look within, too, and summon our whole selves to the task at hand. With all that going for us, how can we fail? And when the tough work is over, we’ll look back and know we’ve grown from the experience. And yes, our statures will have touched the skies.

When I am faced with a tough task, how do I respond?

The Eye Opener

Our reason is the creator of all our conditions of life, whether they be legitimate or illegitimate. We think ourselves into stormy and turbulent living just as surely as we think ourselves into peace and serenity.

Our stinking drinking was as much a product of our stinking thinking as was our stinking thinking the result of our stinking drinking.

Hazelden Foundation

Daily Tao / 160 - SUPERSTITION

The voices of ghosts are so familiar,

They whisper to me every day.

You, so young and rich,

Make assumptions with absolute assurance.

I vacillate between superstition and tradition.

You don't need to question.

Tradition is the oral delivery of rites and customs from generation to generation. Superstition is belief inconsistent with what society generally considers true and rational. When tradition and superstition become bound together, it is a sign of trouble. For example, a woman was once taught not to wash her hair on anybody's birthday. Whenever she protested this, the answer was "Don't question!" Years later, she learned that in the old country, letting one's hair down was a sign of mourning and thus inauspicious on a birthday. What was etiquette in one generation became superstition in another.

Those raised with traditions and superstitions are often torn between the extremes of biculturalism. Their inbred beliefs conflict with current knowledge and quickly changing culture, creating doubt and uncertainty.

There has to be informed revision to all tradition if it is not to degenerate into superstition. The true substance of any tradition will take new form without compromising its inherent character. If not, it will just become the outmoded beliefs of old people, and it will fade into ghostly whispers.

Daily Zen

Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: it transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural and spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity"

---- Albert Einstein

Walk In Dry Places

Friday, 9 June 2023