:The AA Blog

My boss shut the door to my office and sat down across the desk from me. It wasn’t a meeting I was expecting; closing the door put my anxiety level on alert.

Four weeks earlier, 2 days before Christmas, he had told me that the company was letting four people go and that I was one of them. It caught me off guard, although I wasn’t surprised, the timing and suddenness was out of my control, and I still have control issues. As he delivered the bad news the only thing I could think of was The Serenity Prayer and things I had learned in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I sat there repeating the prayer over and over, not really hearing what he was telling me about my severance pay and entitlement to Cobra Health Insurance.

As I began to pay attention, I heard pain and discomfort in his voice and I saw real compassion from him. This is a man I despised, a man I had prayed to God to help me love him because that is what I was taught in the rooms of AA. I had wanted to leave this job for a couple of years, but couldn’t because I was afraid of the financial insecurity. Everything I couldn’t do for myself, God was doing for me at this moment. I realized that I had to comfort him and love him, which is what the 12 Step had taught me. It was time to “Walk the Walk”.

I couldn’t believe what happened next. As we sat there discussing my separation from the company, I offered to assist in the transition. Since he was going to manage my accounts, I suggested they retain me as an independent contractor for a month and I will introduce him to all my contacts, update him on the status of each and finalize any pending contracts. I am going to help him replace me. I have become a decent human being. We agreed to this temporary arrangement, now I am getting a severance check and a commission for the month. Thank you, God.

We worked together for the next four weeks, traveling my territory, and meeting with my clients, assessing field conditions, coordinating our installers and spending time together. Our discussions ranged from business to religion. We had discussions I have never had with a co-worker, let alone my boss. It was all quite natural and informative, especially the talk about prayer and faith. We are of different religions, but the sharing was more about our belief in God and reliance on prayer. I learned to love, admire and respect this man that I had resented for several years. My journey with the 12 Steps as a guide had taught me tolerance and acceptance. My life was getting better and my trust in God was instrumental in all I did. The relationship I had sought was developing beyond my wildest dreams.

As the month drew to close, I was also working on my writing, going to meetings, discussing new opportunities and staying in the moment. I was not concerned about the future; I trusted God and believed that if I continued to do the right thing it would work out. It wasn’t a “Pink Cloud” type of trust, I knew that it might be difficult at times and I was sure there would be some adversity, but I believed that opportunities would be presented that would take my journey in a direction that would be for my good. The page would turn and I hadn’t any idea what would be presented to me. It was OK.

Back to the present, my anxiety level is up, and my boss has sat across my desk from me, closed the door to my office and begins to speak. “We would like you to stay, your relationships with your clients and our Field Manager are strong, and we need you to continue doing what you do. The company’s prospects are good and we think you can help us grow. I can’t do what you do and there are other areas I can concentrate on to help grow the business”, he said. I wasn’t unemployed. They had asked me stay.

This is all the result of the 12 Steps and my relationship with God. The fellowship and God have taught me that if I practice these principles in all of my affairs and be of service to others, the promises will come true. I believe, “if you work it it works.

I am going to the county jail tonight to carry the message to a bunch of men who are looking for a solution. I have to be diligent about this way of life, it is about what I can do for others and trusting God. “Thy will be done”.

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By Cliff B

That question is being asked by a lot of alcoholics lately. What happened to our high success rate? 30 & 40 years ago, we were keeping 75% or more of the alcoholics who came to us for help. Today, we aren’t keeping even 5%. What happened?
What happened to that wonderful A.A. Group that was around for 20, 30 or 40 years? There used to be 50, 75, 100 or more at every meeting. It is now a matter of history; gone! More and more groups are folding every day. What happened?
We hear a lot of ideas, opinions and excuses as to what happened but things are not improving. They continue to get worse. What is happening?
Bill W. Wrote,In the years ahead A.A. Will, of course, make mistakes. Experience has taught us that we need have no fear of doing this, providing that we always remain willing to admit our faults and to correct them promptly. Our growth as individuals has depended upon this healthy process of trial and error. So will our growth as a fellowship.
Let us always remember that any society of men and women that cannot freely correct its own faults must surely fall into decay if not into collapse. Such is the universal penalty for the failure to go on growing. Just as each A.A. Must continue to take his moral inventory and act upon it, so must our whole Society if we are to survive and if we are to serve usefully and well.
(A.A. Comes of Age, page 231)
With so very few finding lasting sobriety and the continued demise of AA groups, it is obvious that we have not remained willing to admit our faults and to correct them promptly.
Seems to me that the Delegate of the Northeast Ohio Area, Bob Bacon, identified our mistakes and our faults when he talked to a group of AA’s in 1976. He said, in essence, we are no longer showing the newcomer that we have a solution for alcoholism. We are not telling them about the Big Book and how very important that Book is to our long term sobriety. We are not telling them about our Traditions and how very important they are to the individual groups and to Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole. Rather, we are using our meeting time for drunkalogs, a discussion of our problems, ideas and opinions or ‘my day’ or ‘my way’.
Having been around for a few years, and reflecting on what Bob Bacon had to say, it would appear that we have permitted newcomers to convince the old-timers that they had a better idea. They had just spent 30 or more days in a treatment facility where they had been impressed with the need to talk about their problems in Group Therapy Sessions.
They had been told that it didn’t make any difference what their real problem was, A.A. Had the ‘best program’.
They were told that they should go to an A.A. Meeting every day for the 1st 90 days out of treatment.
They were told that they shouldn’t make any major decisions for the 1st year of their sobriety.
And what they were told goes on and on, most of which are contrary to the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous!
Apparently, what they were told sounded pretty good to the A.A. Members who were here when the TC clients started showing up at our meetings. And a lot of the A.A. Members liked the idea of the treatment centers because the centers provided a place where they could drop off a serious drinker, if he/she had insurance. That eliminated some of the inconveniences we had been plagued with before; having to pour orange juice and honey or a shot of booze down a vibrating alky to help them ‘de-tox’.
When A.A. Was very successful, the folks who did the talking in meetings were recovered alcoholics. The suffering and untreated alcoholics listened. After hearing what it takes to recover, the newcomer was faced with a decision; ‘Are you going to take the Steps and recover or are you going to get back out there and finish the job?’. If they said they ‘were willing to go to any length’, they were given a sponsor, a Big Book and began the process of recovery by taking the Steps and experiencing the Promises that result from that course of action. This process kept the newcomer involved in working with others and continued the growth of our Fellowship. Our growth rate was approximately 7% and the number of sober members of Alcoholics Anonymous doubled every 10 years.
With the advent of the rapid growth of the Treatment Industry, the acceptance of our success with alcoholics by the judicial system and endorsement of physicians, psychiatrist, psychologist, etc. All kinds of people were pouring into A.A. At a rate greater than we had ever dreamed possible. Almost without realizing what was happening, our meetings began changing from ones that focused on recovery from alcoholism to ‘discussion or participation’ types of meetings that invited everyone to talk about whatever was on their mind. The meetings evolved from a program of spiritual development to the group therapy type of meeting where we heard more and more about ‘our problems’ and less and less about the Program of Recovery by the Big Book and the preservation of our Fellowship by adhering to our Traditions.
What has been the result of all this? Well, never have we had so many coming to us for help. But never have we had such a slow growth rate which has now started to decline. For the first time in our history, Alcoholics Anonymous is losing members faster than they are coming in and our success rate is unbelievably low. (Statistics from the Inter-Group Office of some major cities indicate less than 5% of those expressing a desire to stop drinking are successful for more than 5 years; a far cry form the 75% reported by Bill W. in the Forward to Second Edition). The change in the content of our meetings is proving to be death-traps for the newcomer and in turn, death-traps for the groups that depend on the “discussion or participation” type meetings.
Why is this? The answer is very simple. When meetings were opened so that untreated alcoholics & non-alcoholics were given the opportunity to express their ideas, their opinions, air their problems and tell how they were told to do it where they came from, the confused newcomer became more confused with the diversity of information that was being presented. More and more they were encouraged to ‘just go to meetings and don’t drink’ or worse yet, ‘go to 90 meetings in 90 days’. The newcomer no longer was told to take the Steps or get back out there and finish the job. In fact, they are often told, ‘Don’t rush into taking the Steps. Take your time.’ The alcoholics who participated in the writing of the Big Book didn’t wait. They took the Steps in the first few days following their last drink.
Thank God, there are those in our Fellowship who have recognized the problem and have started doing something about it. They are placing the focus back on the Big Book.
There have always been a few groups that would not yield to the group therapy trend. They stayed firm to their commitment to try to carry a single message to the suffering alcoholic. That is to tell the newcomer that ‘we have had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps and if you want to recover, we will see that you have a sponsor who has recovered and will lead you along the path the 1st 100 laid down for us’.
Recovered alcoholics have begun founding groups that have a single purpose and inform the newcomer that until they have taken the steps and recovered, they will not be permitted to say anything in meetings.
They will listen to recovered alcoholics, they will take the Steps, they will recover and then they will try to pass their experience and knowledge on to the ones who are seeking the kind of help we provide in Alcoholics Anonymous. As this movement spreads, as it is beginning to, Alcoholics Anonymous will again be very successful in doing the one thing God intended for us to do and that is to help the suffering alcoholic recover, if he has decided he wants what we have and is willing to go to any length to recover, to take and apply our Twelve Steps to our lives and protect our Fellowship by honoring our Twelve Traditions.
There is a tendency to want to place the blame for our predicament on the treatment industry and professionals. They do what they do and it has nothing to do with what we in Alcoholics Anonymous do. That is their business. That is not where to place the blame and also is in violation of our Tenth Tradition. The real problem is that the members of Alcoholics Anonymous, who were here when the ‘clients’ began coming to our Fellowship did not help the ‘clients’ understand that our Program had been firmly established since April 1939. And that the guidelines for the preservation and growth of our Fellowship were adopted in 1950. That they must get rid of their new ‘old ideas’ and start practicing the Twelve Step Program of Alcoholics Anonymous as it was given to us. That until they had taken the Steps and recovered, they had nothing to say that needed to be heard except by their sponsor. But that didn’t happen.
To the contrary, the old timers failed in their responsibility to the newcomer to remind them of a vital truth, ‘Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program.’ We have permitted untreated alcoholics and non-alcoholics to sit in our meetings and lay out their problems, ideas and opinions. We have gone from, ‘Rarely have we seen a person fail’ to ‘Seldom do we see a person recover’.
We now know what the problem is and we know what the solution is. Unfortunately, we have not been prompt to correct the faults and mistakes which have been created by what would appear to be large doses of apathy and complacency. The problem we are trying to live with is needlessly killing alcoholics.
The Solution? The Power, greater than ourselves, that we find through our Twelve Steps promises recovery for those who are willing to follow the clear-cut directions in the Big Book.
Do you want to be a part of the problem or a part of the solution? Simple, but not easy; a price has to be paid.

Cliff B.

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My journey in recovery has taught me that I had to learn the difference between love and lust.

The spirituality I seek has lead me to the following concept of love that I seek:

My Ideal Love Life: To have a relationship that exists in total enjoyment of each other and to want to do for each other unconditionally. To love openly, expressively and with total giving, and to care for her without expectations for me. To want to be with that person from my heart, not my loins. Sex is part of it, but not lust.

My vow to my spouse:I vow to love you with total enjoyment and to want to do for you unconditionally. I vow to love you without criticism, openly, expressively and with total giving. I pledge to care for you without expectations for me. I pray that together we can find all our answers with faith in our hearts. May God grant us serenity, and may we know his will.

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We received many comments in the last few weeks and it is greatly appreciated.

I love being engaged by all of you, even those that don’t agree.

Unfortunately, this novice deleted all your comments by accident. I was trying to

approve them and did it incorrectly.

If you would send them again, they will be posted.

Peace and Love, Marc

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From:100 Blessings Every Day

…You shall have no other gods before me. -Exodus 20:2-3

There is a saying around A.A. fellowship meetings that if you make your #2’s your #l’s, you lose your #l’s. It is the program’s way of saying: Maintain your priorities. For us, the #1 priority is to avoid false gods. Notice that the edict does not command belief in God. Free-willed beings can­not be commanded to believe anything. Believe in a Higher Power or believe nothing, but no false gods. Anything we view as the highest good, be it money or sex or chemical sub­stances, is as idolatrous as a ten-foot statue.

Living to use and using to live, we worshipped a sub­stance with a devotion that led us to hell. In recovery, our #1 priority must be recovery. Anything that we place ahead of it puts our recovery at risk. By refusing to bow down to drugs, we are free to turn toward a Higher Power of our understanding.

The difference is as profound as that between slavery and freedom, as significant as that between evil and good, and as clear as that between life and death.

The text says, “No other gods but Me.” Stop bowing down to anyone or anything else.

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Humility

 ”To be humble is not to make comparisons.” In response to modem narcissism’s extolling of “Me First” and “Number One,” humility does not necessarily suggest an attitude of “Me Last’ (although that would provide a more appropriate starting-point for spirituality). What humility does counsel is that such comparisons are dangerous and foolish; the problem with both “first” and “last” as goals is that both are extremes. As A.A. co-founder Bill W. advised literally thou­sands of alcoholics: “Our problem is that we try, even demand, to be ‘all-or-nothing.’ “. Human Being is to be nei­ther all nor nothing.

Within Alcoholics Anonymous the term used to signify the opposite of humility is grandiosity, and A.A. meetings glitter with stories, humorous perhaps, only to those who can identify with them-illus­trating the pitfalls of high-flown pomposity.

There I was, the brilliant market analyst who was going to make a million bucks by the age of thirty, only I didn’t have the time to put my scheme into practice, because I was lying on the bathroom floor in my own drunken vomit.

With my background, and schooling, and connections, not to mention my brilliant diplomatic skills, I knew that I was des­tined to be the greatest statesman of the twentieth century but as time went on, all that I seemed capable of doing was sitting in my darkened living room and reaching out, time and time again, for the bottle.

I knew, without any doubt whatsoever, that I was God’s greatest gift to women, this age’s greatest lover, if only I could remove my arms from their embrace around the toilet bowl.

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Prayer brings us clos­er to Our Higher Power.  Making prayer and meditation part of your life is up to you.

Each day of our lives, we are presented with the freedom to choose between good and evil. While The Spirit of the Universe’s knowledge is certainly different than our own, a perspective on time beyond our com­prehension (for in the Universal mind past and future con­verge on the present), our choice coexists with Universe’s knowledge of it. To make the right choice, we have to be in touch and in tune with our Higher Power. Prayerful communication, regardless of method, is a way.

When you don’t pray, you don’t enter into any kind of a dialogue with a Higher Power. Instead, you dis­tance yourself. It’s your responsibility to enter into this dia­logue. You are free to choose, of course. I did.

Open up your heart to prayer. Words will come. Dance. Sing. Pray. Or be silent.

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A righteous person may fall seven times, yet rise again.

-Proverbs 24:16

 Someone once said that you’re successful if you get up one more time than you’ve been knocked down. It is said that success is not about accumulating things, but about overcoming our inclination toward evil.

Success comes in persisting past setbacks, in getting up again. Nobody is perfect and no sane person enjoys pain. Nevertheless, because of fear of failure, many people stop trying. And there is no way to succeed without really try­ing.

We took a great many risks during our active alcoholism­ perhaps unwittingly-but we took them. Now, we should take healthy risks in recovery. Calling someone for the first time, reaching out to someone, letting our guard down, coming back after a slip-these are all examples of taking a chance on recovery, and that’s the one bet that can payoff beyond your wildest dreams.

You only fail in recovery once you stop trying. The win­ners in the program are the ones who keep trying even on the days they don’t feel like trying.

Take a chance on someone’s recovery. Reach out and make a friend. But not before you work on your own.

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