WHAT HAPPENED?

[MajestyJo]

Not sure, but I find the message is diluted. The focus was on what was and what qualified people to come into the doors of recovery, with little talk about what it was like to be new, what we did to stay sober by not just talking about going to meetings, but about the Steps, applying the Principles, and taking our program outside of the doors of the Fellowship and applying them to our lives, at home, work, and in the community.

For me it was service, until my health prevented me to continue what I was doing, then I was introduced to recovery online. The result was 15 web sites from the material that I received from others, and things that were shared with me. I had to have a place to put them, because they enriched my journey, and I felt I was responsible to share with others.

Recovery is a simple program for people who tend to complicate it. DO NOT PICK UP AND USE IN TODAY, no matter what. There is help and resource that you can get if you wish to recover. As a friend said, she read self-help books for years, then she went to a Big Book Study and found that all she had been looking for was in there.

The Big Book was for identification for me because I was in major denial about being an alcoholic. I knew I was an addict, and it took time for me to get rid of the blanket of denial. I used alcohol like I used everything and everyone in my life.

AA was my basis in recovery and yet when I repeat Step One, in my head, I always say USING instead of drinking. I drank and used to other peoples health with detriment to my own. I swallowed a whole lot of crap, taking on what was not mine and had a lot of false pride, responsibility, and issues that were not my own. I can remember as a child, my mother saying to me, LOOK AT WHAT YOU MADE ME DO. I did not know that I did not have the power to prevent her from doing anything.

For so many years, it was my disease talking. When I came into recovery, I was enlightened and empowered to do what I need to stay clean and sober and I no longer had to act out in my disease, project my stuff onto others, and not take on what was not mine. Boundaries, detachment, Steps and Traditions, and so much more gave me the tools to stay clean and sober in today. What I did 20 years ago, does NOT keep me clean and sober in today. For me, I can not have one without the others.

Thanks for letting me share.