The Ick

Whoa!  I didn't do my readings nor blog yesterday although I woke up at 4:30am.  I worked on editing a speaker tape then burned it to CD for the Spanish Al-Anon meeting.  This was a very time intensive endeavor but it did get done.  Yeah!  I did, however, pray and meditate then send a text stating one of my positive characteristics to my Al-Anon sponsor

Well, while getting ready to go to the meetings yesterday, as I brushed my teeth, I started thinking (which can definitely be a b*a*d thing at times!  LOL) I could probably drink and be okay.  It's been how many years?  And besides, as I'm aging, who cares?  And other thoughts like this.  This is the voice of my disease.  Cunning, powerful, and baffling.  So, when I went to the noon AA meeting, I shared about this happening.  I've been told it's important to talk about this, out-loud, to others in the program of recovery.   One of my dear friends said read page 101 in the so-called "big book" of Alcoholics Anonymous, I turned to it immediately.

"We meet these conditions every day. An alcoholic who cannot meet them, still has an alcoholic mind; there is something the matter with his spiritual status. His only chance for sobriety would be some place like the Greenland Ice Cap, and even there an Eskimo might turn up with a bottle of scotch and ruin everything!"

She also said, "If you take away the alcohol away from an alcoholic, what you have left is the "ic".  Ick.  Jeesh.

So, this morning, I read both June 29th and the 30th:

Day by Day:  June 29"...learn to live day by day...learn to not take that first fix, pill or drink TODAY...much too hard for us to bear thinking  of abstaining for years or a lifetime...Honesty, resentment, sex, tragedy, love, all have to be dealt with on a daily basis.  GOD expects no more of us than to do the things we are able TODAY."

June 30, "...It is a state of mind.  If we are just dry and have not received the spiritual gifts, we will still have unreasonable cravings...a whole new way of life---not just abstinence.  We try to become better people and in the process no longer need to take that first fix, pill, or drink...learn how to live, and no longer crave the very things that were destroying me."

Daily Reflections, p.189, "...learned that concentrating on my own recovery was a full-time process...rippling effect...my primary purpose of staying sober and helping other alcoholics to achieve sobriety."

Dear Lord, As YOU Will.  Love, Carol