For Newcomers

FOR THE NEWCOMER

"First Meetings"

    In the beginning, it is awkward walking into a meeting, not knowing what to expect and feeling very vulnerable. It is important to remember that everyone in the room had to start with their first one, also. Hopefully you walk into a meeting where people are laughing and having fun and are friendly, making you feel welcome. If this is not the case, you may want to visit another one the next time.

    If people are presenting sobriety as boring and glum, they have missed the whole program and it would be wise to keep looking around for other meetings. You should hear some hope and how life is so much better sober. Someone should be offering you their phone numbers and talking to you about alcoholism or drug addiction depending on the fellowship. If you do get some phone numbers, don't feel like you are bothering them by calling them. They gave you their numbers because that is how the program works. We help each other by sharing our experience and how we got sober and are staying that way. 

    Ask questions. This is your life. If you can't stop on your own and you can't stay stopped, you must have needed something different or you would not have come to a meeting. If one person is not very friendly, go to another one for help. A person that has had a life changing experience will be more than willing to spend time with you. Ask people how they got better. Stick with the ones that say they had a spiritual experience as the result of the steps. The ones that tell you to just not drink and keep coming back to meetings and your life will get better  may not be an alcoholic of the hopeless variety and their information may harm you rather than help. If you do have the illness of addiction or alcoholism, meetings will not treat this. Meetings are a place to come find someone that has found a solution and is willing to share that solution with you. We can get support at meetings but they do not heal the illness. We have a physical, mental and spiritual illness that only a spiritual experience can cure.

    By all means keep coming back to see if you actually have the illness and find someone with a solution. If you want to find out whether you are an addict, alcoholic or both, ask yourself these questions and think about your answers (don't answer quickly). Think about your past experience: 

Can I stop once I start? Alcohol? Drugs? Both?

Can I control how much I take? Alcohol? Drugs? Both?

When I honestly want to, with everything on the line, can I stay stopped? Alcohol? Drugs? Both?

When I am not drinking/using do I feel restless, irritable and discontented, like I am missing something inside?

If so, do I honestly want help and am I willing to go to any length to get it?

As hopeless as it may seem, there are many of us who were just as hopeless at one time and we found hope and have been led to a happy, sober life by following the directions we were given by people just like us. It works, but we have to be willing to make the effort to get it.    

HOW FREE DO YOU WANT TO BE ?

     After some time in recovery, carrying the message, sponsoring people, speaking every now and again, there comes a day, or moment, when I ask myself, " Am I really who I say I am? Do I present to the world my stage character of the day or moment? Or am I just real?" For those of us who have sat down and really considered this question with some thoroughness, it can be a humbling experience. 

     Writing some inventory, using the middle paragraph on page 52 as a guide, can be helpful in seeing the unmanageability that has built up in my life as the result of the reconstruction of the ego. Following up with a new look at how to get past this "current agnosticism" with a new experience with the second Step , a "current" look at how I am running my life on self will, playing God, then following up with a recommitment and taking the position described on page 62. Praying a new prayer leads me right into inventory so that I can get more freedom, finding that, yet again, blockage has built up, blinding me from the truth. After sharing this with a spiritual guide and seeing beliefs and defects that drive my self will, I can take these to God and make any amends necessary to be free again or more free, as the case may be.

   A really good case of humility and cold hard truth can be the catalyst for some real growth - growth necessary for ongoing recovery. I can't transmit something I don't have and I will transmit what I do have. If I do not continue growing, I will run out of spiritual food and begin to lead the double life . This can happen so subtly that it can barely be noticed. Having let up in later recovery, becoming complacent and methodical, I never see this coming. It is so important to keep reaching for fresh and new ground in Steps 10 and 11, while being accountable to a guide, teacher or sponsor. Equally important is continued work with others,sharing my experience so that we can stay in fresh light on the path. 

They say that if you put a frog in boiling water he will jump out, but if you put him in water and bring it to a boil slowly he will die before he realizes it. So it is with us, as we slowly become complacent and fall back asleep. Darkness creeps back in ever so slowly, we can die a slow death without ever picking up. Our disease is progressive and so patient - a subtle foe! We may not see it coming. Regular inventory and accountability along with daily meditation keeps us honest and aware. Honesty and awareness keeps us real, avoiding the double life. Staying awake is much easier when we are not so sleepy. Lack of discipline makes us spiritually sleepy. Out of bitter experience, it is much easier to stay spiritually fit than to pay the price.    

Darkest Days now Shining Bright

                                                      

 In my darkest days of addiction hope had become. a mirage in a desert of despair. Like everything else that had ever meant anything to me. I held on to one thing that never left me. The 2 little girls that only wanted a father present in their life. Through all the homeless, surviving barely, walking side by side with death every day hoping he would take me, the thought of them never completely went away. I knew they really had no father as it was, but held the tiniest hope that maybe one day they would. Every day I woke up wherever I was, I wished I wasn’t. Never really knowing would this ever end ? Could this ever end ? Does anyone really choose this way? would anyone really choose this way ? The beginning never looked like the end. The end never looked like the beginning. Both were true! Where was God? How do you surrender? Why can’t someone save me ? 

              When did God come to me ? When did I come to God ? Where was God the whole time ? I looked everywhere but inside. But I guess at least I was searching. So it must have been “in the last analysis”….  The gift of desperation was received. How could you tell ? When I put my whole recovery first and everything - everything, else after, something happened.. I made commitments to my  recovery come before work, relationships, family, fun , everything, just so I could breath and not have to have chemicals to exist. None of this was easy but neither was the life before. What is freedom worth?

         My hope today lies deep inside and shines so bright that it illuminates out from me so others can see and receive hope. Those 2 little girls have become beautiful women and have families of their own. They now have a father present in their life that is always a phone call away and completely present when we talk. The pain of the past may not be gone but the joy of the present is the more obvious focus these days. Amends to them consisted of focusing on my recovery first and foremost so that I could become a father, then being present in their lives and letting them in on my life of recovery. As I become more God conscious through growing spiritually and continue to make myself available to those in need, life grows all around me. My passion burns to stay on the firing line so that those hopeless addicts and alcoholics have somewhere to turn to find hope. Now waking up is full of light regardless of the circumstances. Love and light and awareness..

 Shining bright !

Self or Solution

When did “self” become the greatest and most popular discussion topic in meetings?

I believe that when “Love and tolerance” became say what you want and take our meeting hostage, we lost our primary purpose. Now in many meetings topics range from “who has a topic they want to share? To “This is what happened to me today.’

Meanwhile what about the guy or girl that has walked in by God’s grace to find a solution for his/her drinking or drug problem ? How is listening to your problems helping them find a solution to theirs ? What’s ironic is that a book was written 73 years ago containing a solution to alcoholism (also works quite well when followed for the real drug addict ). So we disregard the book with 73 years of proven success to share how bad it was or throw slogans around like “keep coming back’ and “don’t drink no matter what” that has no success for the “real addict/alcoholic’. The only thing this does is drive up the sales of more white chips and silver chips ! Oh, and helps to contribute to our already epidemic proportional death rate among addicted people who cant seem to recover. Could it be possible that more solution based meetings where the topic shared is one of hope out of the first 164 pages of the big book could lead to more real addicts and alcoholics finding a solution and rediscovering life instead of dying ?  Could more meetings where the primary purpose is still carrying the message that worked so well for so many years be the solution ? I believe so. How ? By changing formats in groups to focus on the “original” message that was carried when the big book was written. By teaching our newcomers that come in that if they want what we have, which is recovery from alcoholism/addiction,then they will follow directions to get it. If they don’t, then we will be here for them when they do.

  It is pretty clear that we cannot make anyone do things our way, that would still be playing God. However, as a group conscious who’s authority is a loving God, formats can be written so that meetings go back to sharing the solution and not “self”. There are many groups doing this and little by little changing the rate of recovery even if ever so slightly. The people that are of the hopeless variety and need a message of depth and weight will stay in these meetings because they are being fed and their spirit knows it. The hard drinkers and people that want to talk about their day will either be drawn to change and stay or leave and go back to the social club meetings. Either way the hopeless ones will find hope and the message will stay true. My home group was started with 4 members and had to move locations during the first year. It was an unpopular thing to keep the topic on the solution out of the big book and make sure people sharing adhered to the topic. We were not well received at first. We now have somewhere around 15 dedicated members and our regular meetings average in number around 25 to 40 people. It is amazing to see 80% of the people reading out of the big book and sharing their own experience and hope pertaining to it.

   We know it works. There is past experience and now recent experience across the country that confirms this. The question is, Who will take a stand and get in the trenches with those of who stand for what we believe in ? The tide is turning back toward solution based meetings. Alcoholics/addicts are getting “recovered”. We can be part of the solution or part of the problem. What is your choice to be ?

                                                                                        Thank’s, Glen ‘7/12’