July
“I couldn’t stomach religion, and I didn’t like the mention of God or any of the other capital letters. If that was the way out, it wasn’t for me.
” …(B)ut I ran into a personal crisis which filled me with a raging and righteous anger. And as I fumed helplessly and planned to get good and drunk and show them, my eye caught a sentence in the book lying open on my bed: ‘We cannot live with anger.’ The walls crumbled – and the light streamed in. …I was free …This wasn’t ‘religion’ – this was freedom!”
– Alcoholics Anonymous, 3rd Edition, 1976, Ch 4 (“Women Suffer Too”), pp 227-8.
Today, if I continue to reject terms like Higher Power or God, let the force stronger than myself be given another name – freedom! Freedom to take back control and refuse bondage anymore to alcohol, to short-circuit guilt, resentment, anger, fear, loneliness and self-pity, to emerge from my self-imposed isolation. Freedom to begin again, this time with the determination for a life that is better, that is minus all that physical, emotional and spiritual damage stemming from compulsive and addictive drinking. And chances are that the stronger force I call freedom will someday become my Higher Power. And our common journey continues.
Today, if I continue to reject terms like Higher Power or God, let the force stronger than myself be given another name – freedom! Freedom to take back control and refuse bondage anymore to alcohol, to short-circuit guilt, resentment, anger, fear, loneliness and self-pity, to emerge from my self-imposed isolation. Freedom to begin again, this time with the determination for a life that is better, that is minus all that physical, emotional and spiritual damage stemming from compulsive and addictive drinking. And chances are that the stronger force I call freedom will someday become my Higher Power. And our common journey continues.
Step by step. – Chris M.
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