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"Your Greatest Possession"

"Cling to the thought that, in God's hands, the dark past is the greatest possession you have?the key to life and happiness for others. With it you can avert death and misery for them." ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, The Family Afterward, pg. 124~

?The dark past is your greatest possession?. What??? You may ask that same question. To understand this you must understand that experience is the tool that you must rely on if you are going to stay sober.

Your past is important, yet we also remember that we cannot live in the past, we can only share that past with others so they can understand that they do not stand alone in the way they feel. Being that the statement says it is ?the key to life and happiness for others?, you must understand that we have to share the truth about our dark past for it to be effective.

In the Doctors Opinion page xxvi it states ?Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false?. So we must possess the ability to be able to differentiate these things that we are so ready to share with others. To share falsehoods only furthers the confusion that is already taking place with-in the circle of people who have to be subjected to it.

You may ask how it is that your dark past can possibly avert misery and death for someone in whom you share it with? Well it seems to me that if we can share the dark past of our lives with someone who does not fully understand the truth about how destructive acting selfish and self-centered can be, then if they are willing to LISTEN, the effectiveness of such sordid tales may just save them from walking down the same path. In the case of the person who has already walked that path, they too can benefit from us being able to take them by the hand and leading them to a better way of life.

See with people like us it is just that way. We have to be able to relate to one another to be able to understand the truth. That is why it is very hard for someone who has never drank to be able to relate to someone who has. They just do not understand where alcohol has taken some of us.

I remember when I first attended rehab, there was a councilor who seemed out of place from all the rest of the councilors. It seemed to me that he had a hard time relating to everyone that was the trying to rehabilitate. It wasn?t until I asked him about what brought him into wanting to be in such a trade that I came to understand the problem. He had never touched a drink or a drug in his life. He had all the schooling that one could possibly imagine, but he had not been to the school of hard knocks. That lack of experience was a detriment to his effectiveness. Believe me when I say that the addictive personalities in that room picked up on that like a pack of wild dogs. We tore him up!!!

So in being able to notice something like that we can now understand that we as alcoholics are even more effective in helping others than a trained professional. Well let?s look at it this way. We are trained professionals. We have been trained in the school of alcoholism!!!!
--Ed C.