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.
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”
~ John Donne
For years I thought that I was alone; lost isolated and afraid. Today I understand this to be a symptom of my alcoholism, an aspect of my disease. Alcoholism is “cunning, baffling and powerful”; it is a mystery that we have only begun to understand. One thing we know, the disease, the “ism” of alcoholism, involves more than the act of drinking. Feelings of inadequacy, isolation and fear keep us from recovering until we discover the spiritual strength to confront the disease in our lives. The initial risk of “letting go” and trusting others is an essential part of the recovery process.
When we discover that we are not alone, then relationships and hope are reactivated; life is worth living again.
O Lord, I believe I am part of this world and an important part of You.
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The average person has so much trouble in finding a satisfactory faith simply because the mind has difficulty visualizing a force so powerful as anything but a very complex thing. He thinks he must understand it in order to acquire it and use it.
When we eat a meal we believe that we shall digest it and that we will be strengthened and sustained by it. Yet few of us know the mysteries of the digestive functions, but we get just as much sustenance from our meals as those who do.
We therefore eat our meals on faith and we would probably ruin our digestion if we tried to figure it out.
Copyright Hazelden Foundation
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8 July “You are going to learn the most important lesson – that God is the most powerful thing there is.”
–Mathew King, LAKOTA
The Medicine Wheel teaches that there are two worlds – the Seen World and the Unseen World, or the Physical World and the Spiritual World. We need information from both of these worlds in order to live our lives in a harmonious way.
The most difficult way is to figure things out by ourselves and leave the Great Spirit out of it. When we do this, we are making decisions with information only from the Physical World
can be called reliance on self. If we ask the Creator to help us, we then get information from the Unseen World or the Spiritual World. The Spiritual World is where we get our power. When we do this, we are God-reliant. Being God-reliant is the same as being on the Red Road. Great Spirit, whisper the secrets of the Unseen World in my mind’s ear.
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” …(W)e deal with alcohol – cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too much for us. But there is One who has all power – that One is God. May you find Him now. ‘Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked His protection and care with complete abandon.” – Alcoholics Anonymous, 3rd Edition, 1976, Ch 5 (“How It Works”), pp 58-9.
Today …”with complete abandon.” If indeed I stand “at the turning point,” I may be there because the ideas, methods, ploys and “half measures” I used to “control” or stop my drinking clearly didn’t work. And because I haven’t come up with a better idea, what is there to lose by surrendering “with complete abandon,” surrendering to the First Step, that “(I am) powerless” and to a power greater and stronger than alcohol – and myself? Moving in the Program “with complete abandon” is no “easier, softer way,” certainly. But going on and holding onto what I have tried and what has failed is guaranteed to make my way progressively harder, maybe eventually fatal. Today, I surrender “with complete abandon.” And our common journey continues.
