“We are not cured of alcoholism.” (Page 85, Big Book)
It’s alcoholism, not alcohol-was-m.
There’s a danger, when one makes progress, of thinking that the problem has been solved permanently, whether the problem is alcoholism or the problem of the spiritual malady and building a relationship with God.
When I was 20 years sober, a friend said, “A very good start!”
He was right. It was a start.
A sponsor once said that the first ten years are the early years.
When I got beyond that, he started saying that the first twenty years are the early years.
One’s never entirely out of the woods.
Alcoholism resurges; the ego resurges; and everyone one knows technically goes out of the window.
“I saw that will power and self-knowledge would not help in those strange mental blank spots.” (Page 42, Big Book)
There are times at any length of sobriety when:
“all our score cards read ‘zero’” (Page 29, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)
And when one’s stock falls dramatically:
“The ticker still clattered. I was staring at an inch of the tape which bore the inscription XYZ-32. It had been 52 that morning.” (Page 4, Big Book)
Beware, therefore, talking about one’s early days when one’s in one’s first few years, as though everything’s done and dusted and one does not have any of those pesky difficulties anymore.
Pride comes before a fall, and the fall, when it comes, is swift and merciless.
Better hold onto those relationships with others, because you’ll need them.
Parading, in AA, one’s enmities, one’s affronts, one’s petty little grievances, one’s sidings for and against, one’s loyalties, one’s so-called wretched boundaries, does no good at all.
Precisely those people who one finds so offensive will be necessary on the journey ahead, so best to make amends now, accept amends offered, get over it, and get on with, with the 3 Ds: discretion, diplomacy, and decorum.
I need everyone in AA, and no one need ever know if—temporarily and wrongly—I have the hump with them.
No one is ever have-the-hump-with-able.
Rather than being lost in the past of others’ past behaviour—even if that past was eight seconds ago—I come back to the ever-present Child of God in each person.
Roll on.
I am best sticking to the present, not the past tense.
The ego will grab hold of the solution and think it can use it without God. Clever, suave, sharp-witted, deadly.
The truth is, every day I’m reminded I need God, and I have nothing to bring to the table except my nothingness.
Then God’s answer to me is the other people in AA—all of them.