Weekly AA Thread - Week of April 20 - 26

[Doggygirl]

Weekly AA Thread - Week of April 20 - 26

Chief;598564 wrote: Thanks everyone....

And, DG.....a HUGE congratulations on 11 months! I'm proud of you....

Don

I thank you for kicking my ass back to the wagon last year!!

DG

[Chief]

Weekly AA Thread - Week of April 20 - 26

You're quite welcome......I'm on day 2......feel free to return the favor if I need it....

Don

[okydoky]

Weekly AA Thread - Week of April 20 - 26

DG....Congrats on 11 months!
At the meeting I went to yesterday, my sponsor talked about her last binge (5 years ago) and that she looks at it as something that had to happen to get her where she is today. She wrote a letter to herself describing in detail how terrible that day was and keeps it in her wallet.
Chief, I'm sorry for what you are going through right now but I hope it helps a little to know that you are helping so many (including myself) by opening up about it.

[cpn1004]

Weekly AA Thread - Week of April 20 - 26

Hang in there Chief.
Phil

[Winefree]

Weekly AA Thread - Week of April 20 - 26

Chief, thanks for sharing your story. I am struggling with my new sobriety and hate to think I can never drink again. I have been asked to consider if this is truly a disease, than how can you consider drinking as an option. My counselor says take it ODAT, but also gave me an example of another person who had a similar relapse after thinking they could take just one or two.
You have gone 20 months which is truly awesome.
You will do it again, I am sure. Give AA a try, I have gone to 5 mtgs in the past 5 days(2 on 1 day) and this is coming from someone who said they would never give it a try. What have you got to lose?

DG GOOD for YOU and congratulations......that is a far off goal for me.

[cymru]

Weekly AA Thread - Week of April 20 - 26

Good morning all.
Chief..I managed over 4 years alc free, then one night decided to have a drink, and boom, within hours I was straight back to where I had started, only this time it got worse and worse. My philosophy before quitting last time was that if I removed the alcohol from my life, then everything would be rosey. I never delved into why I drank like i did in the first place. For me it was simple. With alc I was an arsehole, and without it I was fine. Since starting AA, I have discovered that there was so much more in my life that I hadnt dealt with. Had pushed deep deep down into me. I was sober, yes. And I was happy at times. But, I was using other things to make me happy. In my case, it was money. I had a great job, and spent all my money on nice cars, clothes, house etc to make me happy. I was spending ridiculous amounts of money, and putting on a show for everyone, that I was 'The Man' Ego, ego, ego. Of course, it came to a point when the perfect life I had set for myself had a bump in the road, and guess what? I drank.
Today, I live a very simple life, I ask to have all these character defects to be removed from my life, and I have something I never had before. Peace of mind. I am happy to be me. I dont have the money, the flash cars and clothes that made up my 'happiness' before, but I have a loving family and good, honest friends. I am no longer that 'actor', trying to be someone and something I am not.
A happy, sober day to all. x

[Doggygirl]

Weekly AA Thread - Week of April 20 - 26

Good morning all!

Okey - that is a good idea about keeping a written record of a BAD memory close at hand. Sometimes my pea brain likes to soften up the ugliness of my drinking quite substantially. I try to keep my journal handy these days for writing down thoughts as they come, but keeping a written record in my wallet of a bad one seems like a good idea. (oh, the hardest part will be picking which bad one!)

It's Day 3 Chief! No booze for you my friend. :b&d: No time like the present for sobriety. Consider your ass kicked.

Cy, I really like your message. The circumstances you describe about sort of shifting your focus from one external thing (alcohol) to another (clothes, car, etc.) hits home for me. I am still nowhere close to a place where I am completely unhidden. I'm not hiding in a bottle right now, but I still hide behind things. And ego is always mixed up with that. Is it possible to share a little more about how you came to the realizations that you did, and how you went about the changes? (I might be asking a difficult question in terms of trying to summarize it in a post! or maybe not...)

Winefree, someone said something in a meeting yesterday that rang a bell with me. Not so much in my "now" but I wished I had heard it back when I was pondering the "am I an alcoholic or not?" questions. "It's not how much or how often you drink, it's what drinking does to you that matters." That sort of clears the clouds out of the standard questions for me.

Hate to be abrupt but time has gotten away from me and I have to leave. I will be back later! I liked the "Walk in Dry Places" and "Keep it simple" readings today! Daily Recovery Readings

DG

[gyco]

Weekly AA Thread - Week of April 20 - 26

ive said it before, WOW , very intense,i had to join in,but all try to keep it brief,i actually read the thread, from the beginning to the end,in stead of visa versa,hahahaha,AA on M W O,anything in life is possible,i am happy to see its working for you folks,i like what chief said tho,i cant beleive what happened,the 1st one,that my friends is the 1st rule iof AA,not to take the 1st drink,anyone can say there alchoholic, and the 2nd part of the 1st step states unmanageable ,the hole foundation of AA is to wonder out and experience a new life without a crrutch,in our case it happened to be AL,i wont dabble steps 2 to 12 , or the traditions,theres an old saying in AA,if it works ,dont lose it,and i beleive in the last story,the gentlemen in the AA book quotes ,AA does not teach us how to handle our drinking, it teaches us how to handle sobriety,and last but not least i beleive it was bill who seen bob, then they constructed the book,which took 4 years i do wish all well gyco

[retteacher]

Weekly AA Thread - Week of April 20 - 26

Don: I had my g-sons overnight so couldn't be at MWO for an afternoon & evening. Please see if you can get up the courage to find an AA meeting & try it. Just go onto the AA website. It's made all the difference to me. Yes, MWO has been invaluable, but the face-to-face meetings are incredibly powerful. I'll check back later. The house looks like a bomb hit, & I need to get it straightened out, but I'll be back later or tomorrow. Mary

[dlw]

Weekly AA Thread - Week of April 20 - 26

Well Don, Time for us to go down the path together- One more time- maybe we'll get it right this time! The worst day for me is day 1 - the hangover thing kills me- that's today. Tomorrow with be better! But your doctor is right- it's a war- 1 winner, 1 loser. And I don't want to be the looser. I have to much at stake= my family, business- and my LIFE. I am close to the MWO family today-
You are my hero Don- you were one of the first inspiration posts I received when I joined MWO in October.
DG CONGRATS TO YOU- what a great job!

[retteacher]

Weekly AA Thread - Week of April 20 - 26

Don & Everyone: I'm back. Re AA meetings: The speaker meetings are interesting...everyone's progression is different & if I compared myself to some of the speakers (you're not supposed to compare...you're supposed to identify), I'd have said that no way am I an alcoholic. However, I am an alcoholic. It's not how much you drink, it's how the drink effects you (heard this at a meeting). I just kept going to meetings even though I wanted to bolt out of the room a few times (I still do sometimes). I haven't "joined" a group yet, but there is one I particularly like. All the meetings are different, & I like some more than others, but I ALWAYS take something away when I leave. Enough said about AA!

I have drunk over my mother & father. They are old & frail, & it's difficult to see them the way they are, particularly my mother. However, they have had a long & mostly happy life, & I'm doing the best I can for them.

Take care of your sobriety. I am taking care of mine, tenuous as it is. I think that awful incident I had in Feb. was a real bottom for me. I hark back to it often, because I DON'T want to forget. You won't forget that awful binge you went on either. It's one of the ways I counteract the alcoholic voice in my head (also known as stinkin thinkin).

Don't hesitate to come back here to this thread & share. I'll be anxious to hear about your first few meetings. If it doesn't work out for you, that's OK too.

Mary

[retteacher]

Weekly AA Thread - Week of April 20 - 26

DG: Congratulations on 11 months sober. That is so big. Mary

[Doggygirl]

Weekly AA Thread - Week of April 20 - 26

retteacher;599229 wrote: DG: Congratulations on 11 months sober. That is so big. Mary

Thank you Mary. I was thinking about this today. Now that I keep daily company with so many people who have 10+ and 20+ years of sobriety (in addition to other newcomers like me) I realize how really new to sober living I truly am. It took me a life time to develop all the personal characteristics that supported my alcoholic drinking. (the lies, manipulations, excuse making, etc. etc. etc.) I think it will take a lot more than 11 months time for me to become the person I have the potential to be. I am grateful to have come this far with the help of everyone here and now at AA. I still have a long way to go but I'm excited about the journey.

Given the disarray you described at home, you and the g-kids must have had a GREAT time last night!

Hello gyco - always good to *see* you. I agree with your point of view that AA teaches us how to live in sobriety rather than how to not drink.

Thank you dlw for the props but 11 months is but a very small drop in the bucket of life. I'm sorry to hear about your relapse. Good for you and Don both for taking a lot less time than I did to crawl back on the wagon. I don't ever want to go through that again. We can do this.

It is so easy to foget (or gloss over, or minimize) the risks associated with drinking certainly for me, and I think for any alcoholic level drinker. dlw, you mentioned business and family. Those are not small things. Those are the things that probably matter the very most to many of us. They are certainly high (if not at the top) of my list. And then there is life itself. A guy at today's meeting who has many years of sobriety now talked about the folks he watched relapse, who didn't live to tell about it. Alcohol kills people. I think back now and can't believe that I actually felt so hopeless that I considered suicide. More than once. I can't believe I ever even thought that way. But I did back in my alcoholic haze. There is a lot at stake for each of us.

I'm glad to be here and sober today! Able to enjoy the sunshine and think with optimism about life and it's many possibilities.

DG

[dlw]

Weekly AA Thread - Week of April 20 - 26

Well Said
God, Please watch over all of us.
We need your strength and guidance!

[Chief]

Weekly AA Thread - Week of April 20 - 26

I went to my first AA meeting this afternoon. It was an Open Discussion meeting and the topic was spirituality. The whole meeting was interesting.....I didn't know the format or anything so I mainly just listened. When it was time to introduce myself I just stood up and said "I'm Don, I'm an alcoholic, this is my first meeting, and I'm not sure what the hell I'm doing and don't even know what "The Program" was..." Everyone seemed to get a kick out of that....

But it was very interesting just looking around the room and seeing the very different people from all walks of life that all had something in common. There were kids in their 20's as well as adults in their 40's,50's,60's....but you could look into each persons eyes and relate. We all had a common bond.

The spirituality talk was interesting. The leader said that 95% of the people who come into AA have a problem with that until they realise your higher power is whatever it is to you. One guy who has been sober 11 years said his was Good Orderly Decisions (GOD). Other people said how they have learned to turn it over to their higher power even if they weren't sure what that was. They said the key to success in AA is surrendering the fight......not give up....just surrender the fight to your higher power and be WILLING to work the program. There were people who smelled of alcohol from last night and there were people who have been sober and in AA for 25 years......quite a group.

The meeting seemed to fly by and after it was over 2 guys came up to me to chat. One of them gave me a copy of the Big Book and a list of names and phone numbers of all the men who were at the meeting today. They told me about another meeting that's men only and is specifically about studying the Big Book and the AA program....they said that would be a good place for me to start. I think I'll check it out.....

All in all, it was a good experience.....not what I expected. I was always anti AA but listening to DG and Mary here got me interested because I think alot of those 2 ladies.

So, I will continue this journey......the face to face contact does make a difference.

After the meeting I went running.....it was good because I got to think and sort things out.

Time to take my supps and get through the rest of Day 3......only 4 hours to go ( for some reason I use 9pm as my marker).

Oh, and there was alot of talk about going through the steps to find out WHY you want to drink. It's like you guys said...it's not all about stopping drinking, it's about living without drinking.

Think that's all for now.....Thanks everyone....

Don