31 March 2025: Attitude

“to possess ourselves of the right attitude in which to proceed” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

“It works, if we have the proper attitude and work at it.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

When I’ve got a situation that is snagging my attention, I ask God for the right attitude, the right way to look at it.

I can then wait for spontaneous revelation (which usually comes, drip-fed during the minutes and hours that follow) or read or listen to find useful ideas to adopt in the place of mine.

My ideas are not just dropped but are eliminated by substitution of new, better ones.

“Though old buildings will eventually be replaced by finer ones, the new structures will take years to complete.” (Chapter 9, Big Book)

“‘Have you a sufficient substitute?’ Yes, there is a substitute, and it is vastly more than that.” (Chapter 11, Big Book)

What’s your experience?

30 March 2025: Constantly

“‘How can I best serve Thee—Thy will (not mine) be done.’ These are thoughts which must go with us constantly.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

“Step Eleven suggests prayer and meditation. We shouldn’t be shy on this matter of prayer. Better men than we are using it constantly.” (Ibid.)

“We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day ‘Thy will be done.’” (Ibid.)

“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” (1 Peter 5:8)

The reason it says ‘constantly’ is because self (the ego, the adversary, the devil, the lion) is constantly prowling.

What’s your experience?

29 March 2025: Problem

“My friend promised when these things were done I would enter upon a new relationship with my Creator; that I would have the elements of a way of living which answered all my problems.” (Chapter One, Big Book)

“We have been talking about problems because we are problem people who have found a way up and out, and who wish to share our knowledge of that way with all who can use it.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

Someone said they woke up thinking about all their problems. If I think I’ve got a problem, I’ve got a problem, and the problem is thinking that it’s me who has a problem. If I have a problem, it is really God who has a problem. It is not mine. It is God’s. My only problem is the belief I have a problem. I get rid of my problem by recognising that it is God who has the problem. Now that I recognise that God has the problem, I recognise that God also has the solution, and since God has the solution, God does not even have the problem. So there is no problem.

What’s your experience?

28 March 2025: Show; Know; Grace

“We thank God from the bottom of our heart that we know Him better.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

“Show me now Your way, that I may know You and that I may find grace in Your sight” (Exodus 33:12)

Take the Steps; know God; find grace—the power to stay sober.

What’s your experience?

27 March 2025: Just four

“... we could will these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn’t there” (Chapter Four, Big Book)

There are only four things I can’t do on my own. Just four.

Stay sober
Do the right thing
Shut up
Stop thinking bad thoughts

Once I want and will these things, God provides the strength.

What’s your experience?

26 March 2025: Redirection

“10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.”

We have few tools. Inventory. Confession. Apology. Prayer. Meditation. Work. That’s literally it. But that’s enough.

I can get agitated, wondering if I am getting things wrong, in large and small matters. In inventory I can disclose the mistakes I have made. One can see only a fraction of those. There’s no need to ‘go deep’: any attempt to untangle the tangled, read the runes, or dive down into the muddy reservoir of feelings, thoughts, and impulses is doomed to failure. That’s why, in inventory, I need only ask the question and write down what’s sitting there, obvious, waiting to be picked, the overripe, low-hanging fruit, hiding in plain sight, unconscious because I’m not paying attention not subconscious. Anything else is time-consuming, speculative, and highly likely to be wrong.

But will I not therefore miss something? And will I not therefore bring down doom upon myself, unwittingly, because I haven’t investigated and catalogued every neuronal misfiring? No, because God will do for me what I cannot do for myself. This means that, if I am making mistakes that are too complex or hidden for me to spot (under the heading, ‘I don’t know what I don’t know’), God’s quite capable of giving me a simple corrective measure that corrects the problem of which I am not even aware.

In short, therefore, I do take inventory, but I keep it simple, listing and disclosing the obvious. More importantly, I ask God what to do today. I am surprised at how often there are indicated changes in direction, approach, activity, and so on in every part of my life, changes that I do not understand and seem to be arbitrary. Whenever God tells me to stop something, start something, or do something differently, especially when I do not understand why, it is probably because I have been making a mistake and did not realise it. Rather than waiting for me to spot it, God simply redirected me.

What’s your experience?

25 March 2025: Jaythinker

Adaptation of the jaywalker passage from Chapter 3 of the Big Book:

Our behaviour is as absurd and incomprehensible with respect to the first drink as that of an individual with a passion, say, for believing his own thoughts. He gets a thrill out of believing fast-moving thoughts. He enjoys himself for a few years in spite of friendly warnings. Up to this point you would label him as a foolish chap having queer ideas of fun. Luck then deserts him, and he is slightly injured several times in succession. You would expect him, if he were normal, to cut it out. Presently he is hit again, and this time has a fractured mind. Within a week after leaving the hospital, a fast-moving thought hits him and breaks his spirit. He tells you he has decided to stop believing his own thoughts for good, but in a few weeks he breaks both spirit and heart.

On through the years this conduct continues, accompanied by his continual promises to be careful or to keep away from self-centered thoughts altogether. Finally, he can no longer work, his wife gets a divorce, and he is held up to ridicule. He tries every known means to get the believing-his-own-thoughts idea out of his head. He shuts himself up in an asylum, hoping to mend his ways. But the day he comes out he believes some of his own thoughts, which snaps his mind in two. Such a man would be crazy, wouldn’t he?

You may think our illustration is too ridiculous. But is it? … However intelligent we may have been in other respects, where believing our own thoughts has been involved, we have been strangely insane. It’s strong language—but isn’t it true?

What’s your experience?

24 March 2025: Success and failure

“When resentful thoughts come, try to pause and count your blessings. After all, your family is reunited, alcohol is no longer a problem and you and your husband are working together toward an undreamed-of future.” (Chapter Nine, Big Book)

“That is the emotional hangover, the direct result of yesterday’s and sometimes today’s excesses of negative emotion—anger, fear, jealousy, and the like. If we would live serenely today and tomorrow, we certainly need to eliminate these hangovers.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

When negative thoughts assail me, I have a choice: indulge them or reject them.

Any thoughts can be rejected, and anyone can turn their mind to another topic.

What does success look like?

Not the absence of assailing thoughts: but the refusal to indulge them.

A successful day might therefore be a very rough day, with hundreds of instances of refusing to indulge a negative thought and actively turning my mind to another topic.

This need not be a cause for distress or gloom, however; distress and gloom would themselves fall into the category of negative thoughts and be subject to the same regime.

A failed day is a day in which I have entirely indulged negative thoughts.

A mixed day is a day in which I have indulged some and rejected others.

What I do tells me what I want and will.

Success or failure therefore boils down to a question of wanting and willing.

A mixed day is thus a day of mixed wantings and willings.

Part of me wants and wills to get well.

Another part of me wants and wills to indulge negative thinking.

No one is responsible for my wanting and willing but me.

A mixed day is therefore an indicator that I haven’t yet picked a side: I’m still trying out both sides.

What’s your experience?

23 March 2025: Bailing out

“So we had to get down to causes and conditions.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

When I write the same thing on the inventory daily (e.g. fears, day after day), I am not using the inventory for its intended purpose. I am using it to give the appearance of work and change. I am peddling, but I am on a stationary bicycle. I am dealing with the symptom, not the cause. The problem is having a mindset that produces fear. The mindset needs to change. That is the subject matter of the inventory. It is no good writing that I am frightened and I ought to trust God and then writing the same thing the next day. I need to actually start trusting God. Then I am removing the problem, not the symptom.

It is like going to see a debt specialist to help me manage my finances when my problem is that I am gambling and racking up debts. I can sort out my finances for the day, alright, but I will simply rack up debts again. The problem is the gambling.

It is possible to go round and round in AA, working the programme on problems, but the problems keeping coming back, the same ones, over and over, wearing different hats. Then I drift and say, ‘I need to get back to the programme.’ Nonsense. That programme left me with recurring problems, as they were trimmed but not torn out by the roots. What I had was not a programme but a pain management system: using the programme like a drug to alleviate the pain of what I am doing to myself.

When the roots are pulled out, my programme stops being troubleshooting and starts being cultivating a relationship with God through raising consciousness and working for God practically.

What’s your experience?

22 March 2025: Re-in-sourcing

“We know what you are thinking. You are saying to yourself: “I’m jittery and alone. I couldn’t do that.” But you can. You forget that you have just now tapped a source of power much greater than yourself. To duplicate, with such backing, what we have accomplished is only a matter of willingness, patience and labor.” (Chapter 11, Big Book)

In the past, I would outsource the solution to others. I would then fight the corner of the problem against others, who were in the corner of the solution. I would make some effort but without having given up self, first, and then triumphantly present to others the fact that their solution had failed. I had tried but it was not my fault I had failed: others had failed to help me, I thought.

People wisely short-circuited this and placed the responsibility back with me. As a sponsor eloquently put it, “Change or die, Princess.”

When I’m faced with a problem, a slew of problems, lots of negative emotions, or a generalised state of anxiety or depression, this is the commitment I make:

“Until I am back on track, productive and happy, I am going to find solutions from the available resources and channels, and I am going to apply them fully. I will ask God to guide me constantly. And I will not ask anyone for help, including my sponsor. Only God. I will start with asking God to show me the problem (me) and then proceed to ask God for the solution.

I should not forget that I will have God, I will have the Big Book, I will have my existing experience of the Steps, Traditions, and Concepts, and I will have the aggregate experience of AA, other fellowships, and the world’s religions and spiritual literature, with God quite able to speak through those channels. I have everything a person needs. But what I do not get to do is outsource the problem. This is between me and God.

I will turn this ship around promptly, with God’s help. Failure is not an option. Success is down to me.”

Once I’m maximally using the available resources and touching the limits of what I’m capable of with God alone, then I seek further help and input.

What’s your experience?

21 March 2025: God’s plan

“Neither is reason, as most of us use it, entirely dependable, though it emanate from our best minds.” (Chapter 4, Big Book)

“On that basis we are almost always in collision with something or somebody, even though our motives are good.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

All I get to do is ask God for God’s will, which is the next action to take or the next action to plan.

I don’t find out what the ultimate objective is.

I don’t find out even after the action whether it was right. The right action might produce a frightful kerfuffle. The wrong action might produce peace and harmony. I can’t even tell from the outcome. Godly outcomes don’t always look Godly. Demonic outcomes might attract applause and be quite sound rationally. The devil is suave, insightful, and an excellent administrator.

In other words, I’m completely in the dark, except in as far as God reveals His will through prayer and meditation, using the three available mechanisms: inspiration, an intuitive thought, or a decision.

Reason is a necessary but secondary tool, as reason can be used for good or ill. Examination of motives is a necessary but secondary tool, as motives can be misleading. Consulting other people often muddies the waters or misfires. Of course, use one’s brain, scan for selfishness (attraction or aversion), and talk to a grown-up, but the ultimate answer lies only with God.

What’s your experience?

20 March 2025: Whose advice am I following?

“We have seldom told them the whole truth nor have we followed their advice.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

I don’t worry about changing my thinking in the sense of what thoughts occur to me. I concern myself instead with identifying which guide I decide to follow: (a) the ego (speaking through my voice) or (b) God (speaking through the programme, the principles, prayer / meditation, people I trust who are not invested in my life). Having identified the guide I to follow, I follow that guide regardless of what I think or feel.

What’s your experience?

19 March 2025: Meditation

“11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

“On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

“The word ‘meditation’ simply meant concentrated thought on a chosen subject, considering it quietly, soberly, and deeply.” (Al-Anon’s Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

This is what I do when I meditate.

God, God’s word, and the application thereof to my life are the content and focus.

Not me. I am to be entirely nullified. Not self-awareness: self-nullification.

The result is conscious contact with God and knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out.

What’s your experience?

18 March 2025: Facelift

“a few set prayers which emphasize the principles we have been discussing” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

“There is a direct linkage among self-examination, meditation, and prayer.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

What I do when I’m out of sorts:

Raise consciousness

Saying personal or off-the-peg prayers, listening to religious or spiritual radio stations, using video or audio apps with classes or prayers, reading or listening to religious or spiritual texts: anything that stresses the nothingness of self and the allness of God and my job being to serve God. The religion that the Big Book points us towards is religion that underlines the principles contained in the Book. I do meditate, but I use meditation that directs my thinking to understanding and applying spiritual principles and directs my attention away from self and towards God. All of this boils down to lifting my face to God. The original facelift.

Inventory

I do not try to do in-depth inventory when I am very disturbed, because it will be skewed and psychological rather than moral. The simple spotting of gross errors and obvious corrective measures suffice to begin with. Once I have started to emerge from the darkness, I will be able to see clearly, and then I can do full inventory accurately and swiftly.

Detailed moral inventory can be as simple as this:

Materialism: concern with material matters above spiritual matters
Atheism: placing self as the centre and objective of my life
Seeking certainty, security, and privilege in the world
Setting my own goals rather than doing God’s will
Designing my life rather than watching God unfold it
Resistance to ups and downs
Failure to trust God’s providence
Preoccupation with own thoughts
Confidence in my own assessment
Gloom about the future

Corrective measures:

Trust God
Seek God’s guidance
Get on with the next right action
Enjoy the day

What’s your experience?

17 March 2025: Spiritual life

“For if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others …” (Chapter 1, Big Book)

“All went well for a time, but he failed to enlarge his spiritual life.” (Chapter 3, ibid.)

“The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it.” (Chapter 6, ibid.)

“He will perceive that his spiritual growth is lopsided, that for an average man like himself, a spiritual life which does not include his family obligations may not be so perfect after all.” (Chapter 9, ibid.)

Ask a hundred people in AA what improving your spirituality involves, and most might say something to do with meditation and prayer, spiritual reading, and so on.

In fact, according to the Big Book, it’s much more to do with sponsoring others and fulfilling one’s obligations in the family and beyond.

Prayer and meditation are required to provide direction and strength for this, but the relationship these bear to the improvement of one’s spiritual life bear is the same as that between preparing for one’s day job and the actual performance thereof.

When going to work, one should probably brush one’s teeth, put on some trousers, and read the incoming emails containing the instructions for the day, but those aren’t the point. The point is the work.

The trap I fall into with spirituality is thinking it’s about feeling better or achieving altered states. That’s just getting drunk in a different form.

What’s your experience?

16 March 2025: Bad head

“We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

A response to waking up in a bad mood (fears, insecurities, etc.):

Do not think about the problem.

Instead, ask God to direct one’s thinking, then think about God. Put on a podcast of the liturgy of the hours, an audiobook of the Bible (dramatised), a podcast or audiobook of sermons, the Rosary, the Angelus on repeat, or whatever appeals to you from a tradition that appeals. The content is entirely down to personal taste and present state of mind.

During this immersion, God will speak, to bring new perspective. Do not think about these new ideas: simply note them in passing (perhaps writing them down), then return to the practice.

Within half an hour, the situation has been rewired.

But do not take an active part in this: one places oneself in the right environment, stays there, and lets God do the heavy lifting.

When I do this, I’m sorted out.

What’s your experience?

15 March 2025: Courtesy and flattery

“He becomes, on the next occasion, still more demanding or gracious, as the case may be.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

My self-will can express itself in the form of being bullish or overbearing. It can also come in the form of ingratiation.

There’s a fine line between courtesy and flattery. Sticking to a courteous ‘thank you’ usually suffices. A thumb-up usually suffices. When I find myself praising without occasion, I ask myself why. Invariably, I want something from the other person or I’m attempting to stage-manage their emotions. I agree when I agree but not merely to short-circuit my own thought process, to sidestep genuine examination and discussion, or to secure someone’s favour or attention. I don’t promise unless a commitment is required; I don’t signal my intentions in order to receive a down-payment on the credit I think will follow my performance. I don’t justify, explain, or defend to redeem my image when I’ve tarnished it. In short, when I’m awake, I have a greater chance of spotting the manipulative intent, saying less, and saying it more simply.

What’s your experience?

14 March 2025: Material

“As material success founded upon no more than these ordinary attributes began to come to us, we felt we were winning at the game of life. This was exhilarating, and it made us happy. Why should we be bothered with theological abstractions and religious duties, or with the state of our souls here or hereafter? The here and now was good enough for us. The will to win would carry us through. But then alcohol began to have its way with us. Finally, when all our score cards read ‘zero,’ and we saw that one more strike would put us out of the game forever, we had to look for our lost faith. It was in AA that we rediscovered it. And so can you.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

“If there were no social instinct, if men cared nothing for the society of one another, there would be no society. So these desires—for the sex relation, for material and emotional security, and for companionship—are perfectly necessary and right, and surely God-given.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

“Our desires for sex, for material and emotional security, and for an important place in society often tyrannize us.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

“The immense resources now being harnessed promise such a quantity of material blessings that many have come to believe that a man-made millennium span lies just ahead. Poverty will disappear, and there will be such abundance that everybody can have all the security and personal satisfactions he desires. The theory seems to be that once everybody’s primary instincts are satisfied, there won’t be much left to quarrel about. The world will then turn happy and be free to concentrate on culture and character. Solely by their own intelligence and labor, men will have shaped their own destiny.
Certainly no alcoholic, and surely no member of AA, wants to deprecate material achievement. Nor do we enter into debate with the many who still so passionately cling to the belief that to satisfy our basic natural desires is the main object of life. But we are sure that no class of people in the world ever made a worse mess of trying to live by this formula than alcoholics. For thousands of years we have been demanding more than our share of security, prestige, and romance. When we seemed to be succeeding, we drank to dream still greater dreams. When we were frustrated, even in part, we drank for oblivion. Never was there enough of what we thought we wanted.
In all these strivings, so many of them well-intentioned, our crippling handicap had been our lack of humility. We had lacked the perspective to see that character-building and spiritual values had to come first, and that material satisfactions were not the purpose of living. Quite characteristically, we had gone all out in confusing the ends with the means. Instead of regarding the satisfaction of our material desires as the means by which we could live and function as human beings, we had taken these satisfactions to be the final end and aim of life.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

“We must be quite as careful when we begin to achieve some measure of importance and material success. For no people have ever loved personal triumphs more than we have loved them; we drank of success as of a wine which could never fail to make us feel elated. When temporary good fortune came our way, we indulged ourselves in fantasies of still greater victories over people and circumstances. Thus blinded by prideful self-confidence, we were apt to play the big shot. Of course, people turned away from us, bored or hurt.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

“But as time passed we found that with the help of AA’s Twelve Steps we could lose those fears, no matter what our material prospects were. We could cheerfully perform humble labour without worrying about tomorrow. If our circumstances happened to be good, we no longer dreaded a change for the worse, for we had learned that these troubles could be turned into great values. It did not matter too much what our material condition was, but it did matter what our spiritual condition was. Money gradually became our servant and not our master. It became a means of exchanging love and service with those about us. When, with God’s help, we calmly accepted our lot, then we found we could live at peace with ourselves and show others who still suffered the same fears that they could get over them, too. We found that freedom from fear was more important than freedom from want.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

Focus on the material, and both the spiritual and the material go to pot.

Focus on the spiritual, and the material takes care of itself, provided I take a few practical measures.

What’s your experience?

13 March 2025: Reunited homes

“While the internal difficulties of our adolescent period were being ironed out, public acceptance of A.A. grew by leaps and bounds. For this there were two principal reasons: the large numbers of recoveries, and reunited homes.”

A while after I joined AA, I went down the wrong path and spent time attributing my problems, mental habits, emotions, and life to events from the past and the actions of family members. This harmed my relationships.

I had to backtrack and learn firstly to accept responsibility for my own life, secondly to regard those in my immediate family (parents, siblings) with understanding and benevolence, without a jot of criticism for the present or the past or their general being, and thirdly to actively contribute to their lives, where appropriate.

For this I needed both the Steps and the Traditions.

What’s your experience?

12 March 2025: White flag

“And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone—even alcohol.”

Fighting, even for good causes, has become the dubious luxury of normal people. Whatever the merits, I’ve abused the privilege, so it has been taken away. I have enough to do without fighting as well.

I turn back mental combatants at the gate, too, with a blessing to go on their way. This includes all thoughts of the future and past, all rumination, all potential objects of attack, all contemplation of dark or troubling things. There is enough good to consider without considering evil as well.

What’s your experience?

11 March 2025: Only

“11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”

What do I pray for in AA? Knowledge of God’s will and the power to carry that out. This is much narrower than in other settings, where prayers can be very wide ranging, including prayers for particular outcomes to geopolitical situations, social engineering objectives, in fact anything but the moral betterment of the individual person who is praying and his steering away from self and towards God.

This focus in Step Eleven shows me what the focus in my life must be: performing the actions God would have me perform in my day, leaving the world to the world.

What’s your experience?

10 March 2025: New and deeper experiences

“They had told of a simple religious idea and a practical program of action. That was two months ago, and the result was self-evident. It worked!” (Chapter 1, Big Book)

When I was a number of years sober, I thought I needed a new or deeper experience of the Steps, as I had potent resentments against a number of things.

The truth was that I did not have a good working command of the entry-level process of eliminating resentment.

The programme proper starts on page 63, and the full answer to resentment is given by page 67. This is a beginner’s question. I did not need PhD AA. I needed kindergarten AA.

What’s your experience?

9 March 2025: Obsession

“There is the obsession that somehow, someday, they will beat the game.” (Chapter 2, Big Book)

“The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.” (Chapter 3, Big Book)

“There was an insistent yearning to enjoy life as we once did and a heartbreaking obsession that some new miracle of control would enable us to do it. There was always one more attempt—and one more failure.” (Chapter 11, Big Book)

The obsession, the illusion: I can drink enough to ‘do the job’ without drinking so much I experience or bank up unacceptable consequences.

The truth: I never have enough, so I’ll always drink so much I experience or bank up unacceptable consequences.

What’s your experience?

8 March 2025: Mental defence

“We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink.” (Chapter 2, Big Book)

“Once more: The alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink. Except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His defense must come from a Higher Power.” (Chapter 3, Big Book)

‘At certain times’ suggests that sometimes I can rely on reason to keep me away from drink and sometimes I cannot. The danger is that the some-time effectiveness of the mental defence lulls me into believing I can rely on it continuously. I then start to rely on reason not God, and, when faulty reason tells me that a drink is a good idea, I will drink.

What’s your experience?

7 March 2025: Befogged

“Though we work out our solution on the spiritual as well as an altruistic plane, we favor hospitalization for the alcoholic who is very jittery or befogged. More often than not, it is imperative that a man’s brain be cleared before he is approached, as he has then a better chance of understanding and accepting what we have to offer.” (The Doctor’s Opinion, Big Book)

To track an animal, one might profitably look for the tracks it has left, then follow them.

If they’re worn away by rain or other interference, tracking becomes very hard.

My emotions are the tracks left by my thinking.

The resentment and fear inventories rely wholly on the availability of emotion (resentment and fear).

The conduct and relationship inventories rely in great part on the availability of emotion (guilt and shame).

Alter or erase these, and the inventories are hampered greatly or become entirely impossible.

This is why, to make progress, I must avoid anything that alters or erases emotions.

What’s your experience?

6 March 2025: Worthwhile

“the hours that might have been worthwhile” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

The point of the hours is that they be worthwhile. The point of my life is that I do good, not feel good. Feel good is a bonus, not the point.

That means I never need to do anything to change the way I feel, through lawful or unlawful means. How I feel is a sign of how I think. To change how I feel, how I think must change. To change how I think, how I live must change. To change how I live, I reset the goal to do good, not feel good. To do good, I require the direction and strength of Good. The Good heals all.

What’s your experience?

5 March 2025: Will

Recently, I heard someone say, “God’s will is not the actions I take, it’s the attitude I take to those actions.”

That’s one view.

“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

“Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.” (Ibid.)

I think it really does mean the actions.

4 March 2025: Change and motivation

“I was to test my thinking by the new God-consciousness within. Common sense would thus become uncommon sense.” (Chapter 1, Big Book)

Most change I bring about or seek to bring about, in my life, in my home group, or in the fellowship, comes from being unhappy about something.

Once I reconcile myself to what is, I usually discover that things are OK as they are. No change is necessary.

Until then, I cannot know for sure, because any course of action can be argued for using common sense.

I need the uncommon (rare) sense of Divine direction.

What’s your experience?

3 March 2025: Problems and solutions

“One was to go on to the bitter end, blotting out the consciousness of our intolerable situation as best we could; and the other, to accept spiritual help. This we did because we honestly wanted to, and were willing to make the effort.” (Chapter 2, Big Book)

To solve a problem requires the following:

I must have a problem
I must know I have a problem
I must know that you are not the problem
I must know that I am the problem
I must know that I do not have the solution to the problem
I must know that someone else does have the solution to the problem
I must want the solution to the problem more than the price to be paid for the solution

What’s your experience?

2 March 2025: The meeting after the meeting

Here are some principles I have learned to apply to the meeting after the meeting (‘fellowship’):

Order something chargeable, even if it’s just a coke or a bowl of steamed rice. If necessary, skimp elsewhere to make this possible. It’s polite to the venue, and not ordering affects the group’s relationship with the venue. It’s also polite to the people around me. If I’m eating elsewhere later, have a few bites then take the rest away in a Tupperware container. Bring one along for this purpose. The point is sharing a meal, and the eating is as symbolic as it is gastronomic or nutritional.
Don’t be fussy about who I sit next to. We’re all equal, and everyone is good enough.
Don’t dither about sitting down: others can see you’re calculating, and it’s embarrassing for everyone.
Don’t start a new table if there is a seat at an existing table.
Don’t leave a gap at the table: sit closed up to the next person, even if your heart sinks. Make the most of it.
This is a time to talk equally to whoever was at the meeting, not catch up with special friends.
Don’t give any one person more attention than anyone else.
But make an effort to make sure new people or visitors are especially welcomed and included.
Don’t talk about politics, current affairs, or anything controversial or unpleasant.
Some chit chat is fine but we’re there to talk about recovery, not television, travel, or shopping. Particular, private topics are not suitable for protracted conversation. It defeats the purpose and leaves the people adjacent or opposite out in the cold. They did everything right.
No protracted one-to-one conversations, for the same reason. If I want to get to know a particular person, I make an arrangement with them. If I want to have an in-depth talk to my sponsor or sponsee, ditto. Such conversations are worse than empty seats, firstly because no one else can sit there and secondly because they take up acoustic space.
Make sure any conversation I have is open to surrounding people joining in and help them join in; get them up to speed if they shift attention and actively bring them in by asking a question or asking what they think about something.
Look out for who is not being spoken to or otherwise included and include them.
Don’t hog anyone.
Don’t ignore anyone.
“Do not think of what you will get out of the occasion. Think of what you can bring to it.”

What's your experience?

1 March 2025: Meditation

“Prayer and meditation are our principal means of conscious contact with God. … As beginners in meditation, we might now reread this prayer several times very slowly, savouring every word and trying to take in the deep meaning of each phrase and idea. It will help if we can drop all resistance to what our friend says. For in meditation, debate has no place. We rest quietly with the thoughts of someone who knows, so that we may experience and learn.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

“Meditation means personalising [religious principles], taking the abstract ideas, making them your own, and then coming away with an emotional takeaway that informs your behavioural choices. So: intellect, emotion, behaviour.” (Rabbi Shais Taub)

Now for some contemporary definitions of meditation:

“Meditation refers to a family of self-regulation practices that focus on training attention and awareness in order to bring mental processes under greater voluntary control and thereby foster general mental well-being and development and/or specific capacities such as calm, clarity, and concentration” and “[w]e define meditation … as a stylized mental technique … repetitively practiced for the purpose of attaining a subjective experience that is frequently described as very restful, silent, and of heightened alertness, often characterized as blissful.” “The aim of zazen is just sitting, that is, suspending all judgmental thinking and letting words, ideas, images and thoughts pass by without getting involved in them.” (Wikipedia)

These descriptions do not mention God or God’s will but refer to self-regulation of the body and mind, subjective experience, restfulness, silence, bliss. These are perhaps good things in themselves, and one might profitably adopt such practices if one is suited to them, but they are the opposite of the Step Eleven meditation. They lack any notion of seeking God’s will or relationship with God. They focus away from content and active engagement with it towards non-engagement and detachment. They are not about anything except the thought processes of thinker, in other words their focus is self.

Let’s look back at Step Eleven:

“Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”

The purpose: conscious contact with God, knowledge of God’s will for us, the power to carry it out.

Reading the remainder of the passage from page 86 onwards of the Big Book:

“On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives. Under these conditions we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all God gave us brains to use. Our thought-life will be placed on a much higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives. … we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision … Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely upon it.”

Thus, meditation (per Step Eleven) is about:

Redirection away from self
Redirection towards God
Receiving guidance from God
External, worldly content: what to do today
Active engagement with content
Actively managed thought about that content

This is not about detachment but active engagement.

I have found mental poise and balance through AA’s suggest meditation.

I tried practices consistent with contemporary notions of meditation, and I found them ineffective.

The reason for this was twofold:

Firstly, being alone with my thoughts, separate from others, from content, from the world, from God, undirected by anyone but myself, unfocused on a specific objective, detached from the external reality, and simply attempting to be present to myself to observe and learn about myself was torture. It increased my anxiety exponentially. I became more preoccupied with self. I was extremely unwell, and sometimes today can be extremely unwell, and the last thing I need under those conditions is introspection or severing my ties to the nuts and bolts of everyday reality.

Secondly, in thinking I had ticked the Step Eleven meditation box, I did not do AA’s suggestion meditation. I was not improving my conscious contact with God, I was not seeking God’s will or the power to carry that out, except through prayer (one side of the mechanism), and, in the absence of direction from God, I was living based on my ideas and my instincts.

The combination was a recipe for disaster.

I do sometimes employ calming forms of meditation (perhaps better termed contemplation), but now I always use content to focus on (Psalms are a great place to start). However, this is in addition to not instead of AA’s suggested meditation.

What’s your experience?

28 February 2025: Nil by mind

“a victim of crooked thinking” (Chapter 10, Big Book)

In hospitals, the phrase ‘nil by mouth’ means that the patient is not to be given anything to consume.

I need to apply the principle of nil by mind.

This means I refuse to engage with any thoughts that arise from the lower self.

When I engage with them, I always lose.

Wrestle a pig and you’ll get covered in mud.

I am to accept only thoughts from God.

How?

Ask.

Then read spiritual literature.

That will tell me what to think.

What’s your experience?

27 February 2025: Screw up

“If he gets drunk, don’t blame yourself. God has either removed your husband’s liquor problem or He has not. If not, it had better be found out right away. Then you and your husband can get right down to fundamentals. If a repetition is to be prevented, place the problem, along with everything else, in God’s hands.” (Chapter 9, Big Book)

Imagine drawing something on a piece of paper over a few years.

The object is complex and takes years to draw.

Now imagine screwing up the paper, throwing it in the fire, and starting again.

The object has to be drawn from scratch.

Each line takes the time it takes to draw.

There are no shortcuts.

When I was relapsing, I was back at square one each time.

I did not pick up recovery where I left off.

Whatever had been learned was retained but presently inaccessible.

I had to build up from nothing.

When I relapse into old behaviours then emerge, remorseful, I am back at square one.

I have to build up from nothing.

Absolute devastation, absolute humility.

Then, God can help.

But He can only help me if I recognise where I am.

God’s direction is incompatible with leaning on my own understanding.

It was my own understanding that got me into trouble in the first place.

What’s your experience?

26 February 2025: Spree

“they pass through the well-known stages of a spree” (The Doctor’s Opinion, Big Book)

Here’s a pattern I played out for years into AA:

When they do something for me, I treat it as their payment of a debt towards me. I usually find something wrong with it, and am ungrateful, although I may express gratitude in order to secure the supply.

When they do not, I treat it as their neglect of their duty.

I expect others to do for me what I should do for myself, listen to my lengthy narratives, assess my situation, and then advise me what to do. I argue at various points but insist they continue.

I then go and do what I was intending to do, and things go wrong, except now it’s somehow everyone else’s fault.

If anyone rightly steps back, sets a boundary, withholds unhelpful helping, refuses to engage in the drama, or allows me to find my way out of the problem I found my way into, I view them as heartless.

I then play one off against another, to punish and to manipulate more service provision.

Only once everyone let me go did I rock-bottom, and only then did I really start to get well.

What’s your experience?

25 February 2025: Blinkers

“How blind I had been.”

One is always safe in the Being of God.

This fact can be obscured by blinkers.

What are blinkers?

Addictions, grievances, guilts, secrets, wishes.

What’s your experience?

24 February 2025: Pathogen

“Resentment is the ‘number one’ offender. … From it stem all forms of spiritual disease …” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

Resentment is the pathological mechanism by which the pathogen propagates itself.

Self is the pathogen.

Self = the notion I am a self-authoring being, separate from and independent of God and others, an individual, an undivided and non-connected unit, with its own plans and designs, identity, scheme, plot, and image.

What’s your experience?

23 February 2025: Two questions

“Never was I to pray for myself, except as my requests bore on my usefulness to others. Then only might I expect to receive. But that would be in great measure.” (Chapter 1, Big Book)

My two valid questions:

How can I improve my relationship with God?
How can I better do God’s will (six-sevenths service, one-seventh sabbath)?

If these are resolved, all other questions are resolved.

If I have any other question, I’m usually trying to solve the problem bypassing God.

What’s your experience?

22 February 2025: Loneliness

“We realize that the word ‘dependence’ is as distasteful to many psychiatrists and psychologists as it is to alcoholics. Like our professional friends, we, too, are aware that there are wrong forms of dependence. We have experienced many of them. No adult man or woman, for example, should be in too much emotional dependence upon a parent. They should have been weaned long before, and if they have not been, they should wake up to the fact. This very form of faulty dependence has caused many a rebellious alcoholic to conclude that dependence of any sort must be intolerably damaging. But dependence upon an AA group or upon a Higher Power hasn’t produced any baleful results.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

I thought I was lonely and that people were the answer.

Firstly, I was blocked from a true relationship with others by my unamended harms and by my accumulated grievances. I felt lonely not because of lack of people but blocked connection with those who were there.

The attempt to depend on a few, special others was my failed bypass mechanism.

Secondly, I was boring and needed my own interests.

Thirdly, I needed God as my first and foremost friend.

What’s your experience?

21 February 2025: Decisions

“Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

Once I take Step Three, I do not need to make any more decisions. I ask for them. I ask for them by asking, ‘What would someone with a good programme do?’ I almost always know. When there is genuine doubt, a little input helps.

What’s your experience?

20 February 2025: Dependence

“Let’s examine for a moment this idea of dependence at the level of everyday living. In this area it is startling to discover how dependent we really are, and how unconscious of that dependence. Every modern house has electric wiring carrying power and light to its interior. We are delighted with this dependence; our main hope is that nothing will ever cut off the supply of current. By so accepting our dependence upon this marvel of science, we find ourselves more independent personally. Not only are we more independent, we are even more comfortable and secure. Power flows just where it is needed. Silently and surely, electricity, that strange energy so few people understand, meets our simplest daily needs, and our most desperate ones, too. Ask the polio sufferer confined to an iron lung who depends with complete trust upon a motor to keep the breath of life in him.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Decisions)

The driver of the car has to keep his eye on the road and has constant decisions. The passenger can get on with activities. The discipline of allowing God to run my life at the top level gives me far more freedom at the day-to-day level. I do not need to keep my eye on the road or make constant decisions. I can get on with the content whilst God handles the form.

What’s your experience?

19 February 2025: Resolutions vs decisions

“They are over-remorseful and make many resolutions, but never a decision.” (The Doctor’s Opinion, Big Book)

A decision is a robust commitment to a course of action. Large decisions cannot be revoked or altered without another decision, made with the same seriousness as the original decision. Flip-flopping, intermittent action, half-heartedness, reversals, alterations in course, yieldings to impulse, ‘let’s wait and see how I feel in the moment’, apparent takings back of the will, slips, all of these mean that the decision was never really made in the first place. It was a nice resolution, which made one feel better, more positive, in the moment, but it did not represent a relinquishing of an old path and the turning off onto a new one. The answer in such cases is not ‘try harder’ but once more go through the decision-making process from scratch to see where the gap or flaw was. Only if a real decision is now made on a firm foundation will any lasting change occur. Whilst I am still equivocal about the choice between self and God, any self-willed efforts at change will come to naught.

What’s your experience?

18 February 2025: Personal consequences

“we ask that we be given strength and direction to do the right thing, no matter what the personal consequences may be” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

In AA I have learned to do what is indicated, not what I feel like doing.

What is indicated might feel uncomfortable.

It might bring about short-term challenge or conflict.

These are the personal consequences.

When I run away, duvet-dive, or avoid, I am not living.

These are also personal consequences.

I must pick between the personal consequences of life and the personal consequences of non-life, of death.

What’s your experience?

17 February 2025: Dyb-dyb-dyb-dyb

“we tried to carry this message to alcoholics” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

There’s no virtue in ill-preparedness.

A cat crouches to spring.

A cellist learns the notes.

A cook procures the ingredients.

A sharer prepares the message to deliver.

What’s your experience?

16 February 2025: Just ask!

“Each individual, in the personal stories, describes in his own language and from his own point of view the way he established his relationship with God.” (Chapter 2, Big Book)

I was at a meeting and about to share, and I asked God, “What shall I say?”

I heard, “Talk about Me.”

So I did.

What’s your experience?

15 February 2025: Of others

“Love and tolerance of others is our code.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

If of others is in there, there’s a reason. It would be more economical to say love and tolerance is our code. The restriction of love and tolerance to of others is therefore meaningful.

The programme is not about self-love but self-abandonment.

This requires being intolerant of my own beliefs, thinking, and behaviour, where these are wrong:

“The rule is we must be hard on ourselves, but always considerate of others.” (Ibid.)

Intolerant of active addiction, unhappiness, defects.

What’s your experience?

14 February 2025: Sane and happy usefulness

“Yes, of course you’ll get back to Narnia again some day. Once a King in Narnia, always a King in Narnia. But don’t go trying to use the same route twice. Indeed, don’t try to get there at all. It’ll happen when you’re not looking for it.” (C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe)

Spiritual experiences happen to me, but I can’t construct or conjure them.

“We have found nothing incompatible between a powerful spiritual experience and a life of sane and happy usefulness.” (Chapter 9, Big Book)

The point is not the bonus of the spiritual experience but practical sanity (seeing things as they are) and happy usefulness (my active, constructive engagement in the world: no spiritual hilltops).

What’s your experience?

13 February 2025: Catch-22

“As to two of you men, whose stories I have heard, there is no doubt in my mind that you were 100% hopeless, apart from divine help.” (Chapter 2, Big Book)

The chance to share puts me in a Catch-22 situation: talk about the solution to alcoholism (divine help) but risk alienating those one wants to help.

Louise would say: tell the truth; they’re going to die anyway.

Talking about God won’t really harm anyone, so I do it anyway.

What’s your experience?

12 February 2025: Talking to oneself

“for he has helped you more than you have helped him” (Chapter 7, Big Book)

Sometimes I think, in the world of recovery, I’m talking to myself. In fact, I am. One is the chief audience of one’s own message-carrying. I tell others what I need to be hearing myself. That’s why I’m saying it.

What’s your experience?

11 February 2025: Right thing

“We earnestly pray for the right ideal, for guidance in each questionable situation, for sanity, and for the strength to do the right thing” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

“… we ask that we be given strength and direction to do the right thing …” (Chapter 6, ibid.)

“… but be sure you are doing the right thing …” (Chapter 7, ibid.)

“At this stage of our progress we are under heavy pressure and coercion to do the right thing. We are obliged to choose between the pains of trying and the certain penalties of failing to do so. These initial steps along the road are taken grudgingly, yet we do take them. We may still have no very high opinion of humility as a desirable personal virtue, but we do recognise it as a necessary aid to our survival.” (Step Seven, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

“Do we lay the matter before our sponsor or spiritual adviser, earnestly asking God’s help and guidance—meanwhile resolving to do the right thing when it becomes clear, cost what it may?” (Step Nine, ibid.)

“Having opened our channel as best we can, we try to ask for those right things of which we and others are in the greatest need.” (Step Eleven, ibid.)

Six references to ‘the right thing’. Keeping the programme simple can boil down to simply seeking to do not what I want but ‘the right thing’. That is enough to keep me occupied.

What’s your experience?

10 February 2025: Handiwork

“When I complain about me or about you, I am complaining about God’s handiwork. I am saying that I know better than God.” (Page 417, Big Book)

“it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves” (Jubilate)

To praise or damn myself is to praise or damn someone else’s work. Not my role, not my business.

To have my own plans and designs, wishes, and ambitions is to misappropriate. I belong to God, not me. I’m not here for me.

What’s your experience?

9 February 2025: Boring

“You say, ‘Yes, I’m willing. But am I to be consigned to a life where I shall be stupid, boring and glum, like some righteous people I see? I know I must get along without liquor, but how can I? Have you a sufficient substitute?’” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

“There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person. Nothing is more keenly required than a defence of bores. When Byron divided humanity into the bores and bored, he omitted to notice that the higher qualities exist entirely in the bores, the lower qualities in the bored, among whom he counted himself. The bore, by his starry enthusiasm, his solemn happiness, may, in some sense, have proved himself poetical. The bored has certainly proved himself prosaic.” G. K. Chesterton, Heretics

Alcoholism is not boring. Recovery is not boring. If I’m bored, I’m the problem.

What’s your experience?

8 February 2025: Guard

The 15 December ODAT reading contains the phrase ‘guard against thoughts of dread’.

Guard against thoughts of dread.

[This applies to all negative thoughts.]

I do not originate the thoughts.

They are originated somewhere in the brain.

My job is to guard against them: literally to prevent their intrusion and incursion.

I don’t need to examine them. I need to bat them off!

What’s your experience?

7 February 2025: By-paths

“There will be alluring shortcuts and by-paths down which they may wander and lose their way.” (Chapter 9, Big Book)

“12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

The purpose of the spiritual awakening is to fit me to carry the message and be a benefit to those around me.

I have gotten lost in spiritual growth as an end in itself. I went a bit mad and stopped being as useful. A sponsor helped me fix that.

What’s your experience?

6 February 2025: Troubles galore

“But those of us who have tried to shoulder the entire burden and trouble of others find we are soon overcome by them.” (Chapter 9, Big Book)

Of course, as a sponsor, one is not ‘taking on’ someone else’s troubles at at all. Signposts (sponsors) are looked at for guidance then left behind, not leaned on.

A trouble shared is a trouble doubled. Sharing a trouble with an absorbent person results in that person acquiring the trouble themselves.

It’s now not just in me but in you.

Right-minded people in AA would see my troubles but then see through them as though they were not there, and then I looked again, and the troubles were gone.

The trouble isn’t the trouble, the trouble is the trouble I give myself about the trouble.

Once the trouble is gone, I’m left with facts and actions, neither of which are problematic.

What’s your experience?

5 February 2025: A hundred forms

“Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity,” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

“It’s marvellous to believe you are the White Knight and that those are the black dragons coming over the hill to destroy all that is good. Later, you discover there are no clearly divided goods and evils. The more I have lived, the more I have realised the best of us are capable of cruelty if we think it’s in a good cause. Even the worst have gentleness, occasionally. People, on the whole, are better than you think. There’s no black and white. Just a pathetic greyness in which everyone is trying to find solutions.” (Laurie Lee, Things I Wish I’d Known At Eighteen, published in Village Christmas)

Sometimes my selfishness looks like selfishness. Sometimes it looks like do-gooding or indignation about a cause.

What’s your experience?

4 February 2025: Enlightenment

“Under these conditions we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all God gave us brains to use,” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

“How frequently we see a frightened human being determined to depend completely upon a stronger person for guidance and protection. This weak one, failing to meet life’s responsibilities with his own resources, never grows up. Disillusionment and helplessness are his lot. In time all his protectors either flee or die, and he is once more left alone and afraid.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

“Sapere aude!” (Horace, First Book of Letters) [Translation: “Dare to know!” or “Have the courage to think for yourself!”]

“Enlightenment is man’s way out of self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s native sense without another’s guidance. This immaturity is self-imposed if its cause is not lack of native sense but failing to resolve and summon the courage to use one’s native sense without another’s guidance. Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own native sense! is thus the motto of the Enlightenment.” (Kant, Answer to the question: what is enlightenment?)]

In recovery I have had to learn to think for myself, even though that entails (a) effort and (b) the risk of making mistakes. Otherwise, I remain stuck as a child, dependent on others.

What’s your experience?

3 February 2025: Putting out

“Putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

When I’m upset at someone else’s behaviour, there are three remedies:

(1) I recognise that they have done nothing wrong: I am merely being selfish, entitled, and imperious
(2) I recognise they have done something wrong but they can be excused on grounds of tiredness, naivety, illness, etc.
(3) I recognise they have done something inexcusable but forgive: withdraw condemnation and extend love

It is important not to apply the wrong remedy to the situation, to avoid the extremities of being a boob or a prig.

What’s your experience?

2 February 2025: Deflation

“All members of the family should meet upon the common ground of tolerance, understanding and love. This involves a process of deflation.” (Chapter 9, Big Book)

The ego is deflated not removed. Once deflated, it remains, and re-inflation is possible.

What’s your experience?

1 February 2025: Eggs in the fridge

Having eggs in the fridge won’t satisfy hunger: I have to cook them.

Having the programme in the book won’t satisfy me spiritually: I have to do what it says.

What’s your eggsperience?

31 January 2025: Contradiction

“… we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely. … Half measures availed us nothing.”

“Many of us exclaimed, ‘What an order! I can’t go through with it.’ Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

There is an apparent contradiction here: ‘Do this 100%! But you won’t succeed.’

Here’s how I resolve this:

I organise my life to take the necessary actions fully and swiftly. When I come to a disagreeable action, I take it. There are slip-ups, and the results can look shabby, but the job is done.

Think of it like a cross-country race: one runs the entire race, not cutting across fields to avoid difficult patches, and one keeps going. One might slip over, get covered in mud, cut oneself on brambles, but one has completed the course. One might be a slow runner in absolute terms, but one committed to the course and, once started, did not stop.

What’s your experience?

30 January 2025: Ready–not ready

“If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it—then you are ready to take certain steps.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

Wanting + willing → ready

Ready = wanting + willing

What’s wanting? The emotional desire for an outcome.

What’s willing? Committing to all indicated actions.

This makes the state of readiness.

One might not feel ready, but one is.

What is your experience?

29 January 2025: Worship

“We found, too, that we had been worshippers. What a state of mental gooseflesh that used to bring on! Had we not variously worshipped people, sentiment, things, money, and ourselves? And then, with a better motive, had we not worshipfully beheld the sunset, the sea, or a flower? Who of us had not loved something or somebody? How much did these feelings, these loves, these worships, have to do with pure reason? Little or nothing, we saw at last. Were not these things the tissue out of which our lives were constructed? Did not these feelings, after all, determine the course of our existence? It was impossible to say we had no capacity for faith, or love, or worship. In one form or another we had been living by faith and little else.” (Chapter 4, Big Book)

“Actually we were fooling ourselves, for deep down in every man, woman, and child, is the fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form or other it is there. For faith in a Power greater than ourselves, and miraculous demonstrations of that power in human lives, are facts as old as man himself.” (ibid.)

Some obvious false gods I have worshipped:

Sex
Money
Power
Prestige
Comfort
Thrills
Looks

Some less obvious false gods I have worshipped:

Technology
Commerce
Society
Government
Ideology
Progress

All these have seemed to promise solutions to problems; salvation, in fact.

These domains or principles of course have their merits and flaws, materially.

But as the source of my salvation? No.

The source of my salvation is God.

Less me.

More God.

No me.

All God.

What’s your experience?

28 January 2025: Keep it simple

Some of George Orwell’s principles on how to write well:

Never use a long word where a short one will do.
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Never use the passive where you can use the active.
Never use ... a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

These are very helpful for inventory, e.g.

“Mrs Jones. She’s a nut—she snubbed me. She committed her husband for drinking. He’s my friend. She’s a gossip.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

When I follow these principles, the inventory is quick, easy, and clear.

What’s your experience?

27 January 2025: Honest with themselves

“Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves.” (Chapter 5)

At the most basic level, to me, this means:

Recognising I have failed
Recognising, therefore, my beliefs, attitudes, and values have failed
Adopting new beliefs, attitudes, and values that work
Implementing those promptly, diligently, resolutely, by applying the programme precisely as instructed
… before all else and above all else, because there won’t otherwise be an ‘all else’
Without scepticism, cynicism, bet-hedging, without my fingers crossed behind my back, without grumbling, whining, challenge, resistance, mini-breaks, sabbaticals, alteration, adaptation, cherry-picking, without taking what I want and leaving the rest, without delay, without cutting corners, without falling back asleep, without descending into box-ticking or other perfunctory compliance
Obviously I will fail at the level of performance: how I do in practice might often show great room for improvement
But I cannot afford to discount at the level of commitment, deciding in advance to hold back my full self from the process

It turns out there are quite a few ways to throw a spanner in the works, to sabotage the whole operation, often whilst superficially complying with the process.

Self-honesty therefore really means daily vigilance about my own commitment to the programme and my own living up to that commitment.

What’s your experience?

26 January 2025: Mastering resentment: the how

“We saw that these resentments must be mastered, but how?” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

[See pages 63 to 67 for full details]

First three columns

Who or what triggered the upset?
What precisely did they do or what is the state of affairs?
Where have my plans been disturbed? How they treated me (PR, SR)? Wants (A)? Needs (S?) Money (PB)? Image (P)? Self-image (SE)? My plans all involve running towards (self-seeking) or running away from (fear).

Now let’s unwind the resentment.

Facts

I don’t have all the facts
I have only those as present themselves to me
Many of those ‘facts’ are not facts at all
I have little or no access to the past
I have no access at all to the future
I have no access to others’ thoughts
I have no access to others’ motivations
I know but a fragment of the truth

Perspective

I see things from my perspective
There are eight billion other people
There are also communities, companies, agencies, countries
Each of these has a different perspective
My ‘perspective’ is woefully inadequate and distorted

Picture

How I see things depends on the facts
... and on my perspective
... and on how I assemble the picture from those parts
My ability to assemble a fair, rational picture is flawed
Not just because I’m working with fragments
But because my reason is in itself flawed
And skewed by my interests

Scheme

To resent is to say ‘this should not be so’
This means I have a notion of how things should be
That is my ‘scheme’
My ‘scheme’ will not make me happy (pp. 60–62)
My unhappiness is coming from the scheme
Not its failure to come off
To be happy I must drop the scheme
This leaves me merely with what is
And then I seek God’s will for me instead

Futility

Discernment is a useful faculty
Judgement is not
Resentment achieves nothing
It does make me unhappy though

Fatality

Resentment locks me inside myself
It distorts my perception of reality
It disconnects me from others
It disconnects me from reality
It disconnects me from God
I need to be connected to God
I need this to stay sober
If I resent, I will drink

Powerlessness

To resent is to be dependent on others
How they act dictates how I feel
And the course of my life
For me to be free, the resentment must go

Judgement

No one has appointed me as judge
I do not have the skills of judge
Condemnation does not help anyone
I am as flawed as those I judge
I am in no position to judge

Understanding

Most people are not behaving badly
The few that are are largely driven by self
I can be driven by self
I must surely identify with this
And see I cannot fully drop self
So nor can they
And some are ill and blind
As I am sometimes ill and blind
I look at the situation from others’ point of view
I develop compassion for others

Love

Appeal to God for rescue from resentment
Affirm that God’s will be done
Seek, from God, understanding of others
Ask God how I can help others

Inventory: mistakes

Where is my perception wrong?
What did I do I should not have?
What did I not do I should have?
How should I see things instead?
What corrective action is required?

Inventory: selfishness

What of my interests am I promoting?
What of others’ interests am I neglecting?
What corrective action is required?

Inventory: self-seeking

What was my gameplan?
What should my gameplan be instead?

Inventory: dishonesty

Where did I lie?
Where did I wrongly conceal?
Where did I misrepresent?
Where did I deceive myself?
Where did I scheme or plot?
What is the truth?
What corrective action is required?

Inventory: fear

What have I feared?
What outcomes must I let go of?
What possibilities must I face with cheer and courage?
How would God have me be?
How would God have me act?

Inventory: blame

Where did I set the ball rolling?
Where did I compound the problem?
What should I have done instead?
What corrective action is required?

Inventory: faults

What are my defects of character, here?
What are the opposing virtues?

Inventory: wrongs

How did I harm others?
What amends are required?

Takeaway formula

Humility: I know but a fragment of the truth
Trust: I drop my plans and accept God’s preferable plan
Perspective: I see things from others’ point of view
Compassion: I actively develop benevolence towards others
Boundaries: I seek to improve only my own attitudes and actions
Prayer: I pray for the above and for God’s will
Action: I take the action indicated

What’s your experience?

25 January 2025: Plumb disgusted

“We were plumb disgusted with religion and all its works” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

I was, too, until I was in a bad way and the only thing I hadn’t tried (everything else had failed) was prayer. I prayed, it worked, and I haven’t looked back.

What’s your experience?

24 January 2025: Right size

“They helped us to get down to our right size.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

I have a habit of assessing whole swathes of my life or the world and drawing gloomy conclusions.

The answer here is not, in my case, ‘thinking it through’, but humility, recognising I’m insufficiently knowledgeable, skilled, intelligent, and wise to draw such or indeed any grand conclusions. Even if the first three deficits were fixed, the ego’s sidewinds blow my assessment off course; the self-centred perspective makes all that is near seem large and all that is far, small, regardless of actual magnitude; and the selfishness has me overstressing my immediate experience of situations rather than their substance or value.

Best to pull back and simply let God guide, without assessing at all.

What’s your experience?

23 January 2025: What is alcoholism?

“A chronic disease in which a person craves drinks that contain alcohol and is unable to control his or her drinking.” (NIH)

“If someone loses control over their drinking and has an excessive desire to drink, it’s known as dependent drinking (alcoholism). Dependent drinking usually affects a person’s quality of life and relationships, but they may not always find it easy to see or accept this.” (NHS)

“In the preceding chapters you have learned something of alcoholism. We hope we have made clear the distinction between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic. If, when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably alcoholic.” (Chapter 4, Big Book)

“The tyrant alcohol wielded a double-edged sword over us: first we were smitten by an insane urge that condemned us to go on drinking, and then by an allergy of the body that ensured we would ultimately destroy ourselves in the process.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

There was a lot wrong with me besides that. That wasn’t my alcoholism, though. There’s no mysterious ‘ism’ in alcoholism. It’s not having a rotten childhood, feeling that one is different or disconnected, or general emotional immaturity. Even the spiritual malady is not itself a component of alcoholism but a universal human phenomenon, something that stands in the way of God and therefore the solution to alcoholism. Rather, the double-edged sword: being compelled to drink, and then over-drink. The solution to alcoholism, the Twelve Steps, fixed all of the other problems, too.

What’s your experience?

22 January 2025: Death Star

“clear-cut directions are given showing how we recovered.” (Chapter 2, Big Book)

“our generation has witnessed complete liberation of our thinking … the complete readiness with which we throw away the theory or gadget which does not work for something new which does?” (Chapter 4, Big Book)

If one acquires a Lego Death Star, with lots of the pieces missing, and without the instructions, one might build something, but it won’t be the Death Star and certainly won’t be capable of zapping Alderaan.

That was my position a number of years into being an AA member: I had done some of the programme but not all of the programme, and I had not bought into the general scheme set out in the Big Book. There were many benefits, including the fact of sobriety, but there were many fundamental problems that had not been solved and could not be solved using my piecemeal approach.

I needed the full instructions, the full kit, and the pluck and persistence to complete the clear-cut process.

What’s your experience?

21 January 2025: Defective relations

“defective relations with other human beings have nearly always been the immediate cause of our woes” (Step Eight, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

My trouble with others has usually boiled down to:

Listening too little
Speaking too much
Speaking too rashly

A bit more poise has helped a lot of my relationships.

What’s your experience?

20 January 2025: Doubt

“Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now. If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it—then you are ready to take certain steps.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

Those stories should be enough. If someone is not convinced by the stories, there’s usually nothing further I can say to convince them.

What’s your experience?

19 January 2025: First Things First in service

“It also indicated that strenuous work, one alcoholic with another, was vital to permanent recovery.” (Foreword to the Second Edition, Big Book)

The point of service is to enable the two primary vehicles of recovery: meetings and sponsorship.

Sometimes, service can take on a life of its own and seem to exist for its own sake. Business meetings, group conscience meetings, Intergroup meetings, and complex service structures develop, and the actual benefit of these meetings and structures is often a trickle compared to the great cataracts of time and effort that are poured into them.

A few things I’ve learned about service:

Keep admin to a minimum
Deal with practical problems swiftly and pragmatically
Leave the group conscience only to make ‘final decisions on large matters of general policy and finances’
Otherwise: leave the officers just to handle things.
Don’t over-regulate: let common sense solve most situations
Keep in mind the purpose of carrying the message

What’s your experience?

20 January 2025: Doubt

Those stories should be enough. If someone is not convinced by the stories, there’s usually nothing further I can say to convince them.

What’s your experience?

18 January 2025: Good purpose

“When it will serve any good purpose” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

When I’m about to speak, or send a message, I find it helpful to ask, ‘Why am I about to speak or write? Is the purpose legitimate? Is the purpose good?’

Sometimes the purpose is not good, and I’m up to one of the following.

Justification
Defence
Explanation
The expression of intention
Bragging
Recruiting someone into a resentment
Indiscretion
Complaint
Seeking sympathy
Seeking attention
Currying favour
Pressurising
Manipulation

It’s best then to resist the temptation.

One cannot go through one’s life second-guessing everything, but I find it helpful sometimes, maybe for a day or so, to practise checking motives before saying anything. It’s amazing how many potential conversational starters or contributions get deleted before making their way out.

What’s your experience?

17 January 2025: Giving it a minute

“Remember it was agreed at the beginning we would go to any lengths for victory over alcohol.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

“They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

When I engage in the programme to bring about profound and lasting structural change, I need to give it a minute. This means completing all Twelve Steps, studying and applying the Twelve Traditions and Concepts, and, having completed the first nine steps, giving it at least a couple of years of lots of sponsorship and service before looking up to see if it’s worked.

Very often people start casting around for other solutions before this process is even well underway, or at some other point in the process. Other therapies, fellowships, and approaches are bolted on, slowing down and conflicting with the main process, and resulting in the whole show grinding to a halt.

I have done this a lot, and it didn’t work.

There is nothing wrong per se in any other therapy, fellowship, or approach, and one must follow one’s conscience, but I got into trouble trying to adopt two or more systems or philosophies and splitting my precious recovery time between them.

The best solution I’ve found: Find a system I trust, put my back into it, and give it a minute. And, by a minute, I mean two to three years.

What’s your experience?

16 January 2025: Penny for your thoughts?

Penelope, Odysseus’ wife, whilst he is away, spends the day weaving a burial shroud for Odysseus’s elderly father, Laertes, but then spends the night undoing it.

This is just like where I work the programme very hard and ostentatiously in one part of my life, or on some days of the week, then deliberately engage in destructive thinking or behaviour, until I can’t stand it anymore, and come back with my tail between my legs. Essentially, there is no real surrender, only tediously working through the cycle, of relapse and pseudo-recovery, just like with drinking and full-blown relapse:

“Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks—drinks which they see others taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery.” (Doctor’s Opinion, Big Book)

… the well-known stages of a spree …

Over time the pendulum swings have diminished, and the result is more stability.

What’s your experience?

15 January 2025: Difficulties

“take away my difficulties” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

I do not ‘give my difficulties’ to God. He does not need them or want them.

The context of this phrase is Step Three and the programme as a whole.

The programme asks me to seek and do God’s will, in the place of seeking and doing the ego’s will.

On a compass, true north is only one of the degrees of the three hundred and sixty.

The other three hundred and fifty-nine are not true north.

Almost everything that occurs to me is not true north: it is the ego’s will.

The programme appears entirely about redirection of my will to align with God’s will not the ego’s will.

My will power then activates movement in that direction, the direction of true north, the direction of God.

When I do the right thing, the wrong action ceases to exist.

When I think the right thing, the wrong thought ceases to exist.

When I believe the right thing, the wrong belief ceases to exist.

The taking away of difficulties is really the byproduct of my concerted action along new lines.

God does not serve me: I serve God.

God does not take anything from me.

God takes me, and only me.

Anything that is not me (my troubles, my difficulties) is left behind.

What’s your experience?

14 January 2025: Against my will

“We doubt if many of them can do it, because none will really want to stop, and hardly one of them, because of the peculiar mental twist already acquired, will find he can win out.” (Chapter 3, Big Book)

It was very difficult to tell whether I was drinking in accordance with or against my will.

To drink a drink, I had to want to drink that drink. Every drink therefore seemed in accordance with my will. It appears impossible, therefore, for a person to drink against their will.

My will, properly speaking, is my overall desire in terms of the outcomes, direction, and course of my life.

In the moment, my wish, my wanting, my feeling, might be at odds with the outcomes, direction, and course of my life.

If such discrepancies occur, my life will lurch in all sorts of directions sequentially, like a taxi being directed in turn to different destinations by different occupants.

The best way to tell whether my action is in accordance with my will or against it (whether drinking or another behaviour) is this:

Did I coldly intend to do what I did?
Did I regret it afterwards?
Did it work against my best interests?

If I acted against my cold intention, if I regretted it afterwards, if it worked against my best interests, then I have a problem: a rogue desire is operating, and, if the behaviour repeats, I am acting under compulsion, co-opted by that desire to do its will.

What’s your experience?

13 January 2025: Bigger and better

“Being wrecked in the same vessel, being restored and united under one God, with hearts and minds attuned to the welfare of others, the things which matter so much to some people no longer signify much to them.” (Chapter 11, Big Book)

The other day, I heard someone use the phrase bigger and better, about something or other. I asked myself: Is bigger better? Is more better? My life used to be about bigger, better, more, higher, faster: the next notch on the comparative scale.

Today things are much more static, stable, and peaceful. Here is fine. I don’t need there. What I have is fine. I don’t need more.

What’s your experience?

12 January 2025: Guilt

“make amends quickly” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

Guilt is a signal that I need to review my conduct, rationally.

If my conduct has been poor, I need to apologise and / or adjust my behaviour.

If it has not, that’s the end of the matter.

One I have made amends, I must drop the guilt. God is the judge; not me.

The answer to such guilt is humility.

What’s your experience?

11 January 2025: Separation

“At the hospital I was separated from alcohol for the last time.” (Chapter 1, Big Book)

The question of stopping drinking is not straightforward.

It must be carefully distinguished from not starting again, which is a different project.

God separated Bill from alcohol as follows:

(1) God inspires Ebby to visit Bill
(2) God does a good job through Ebby
(3) Bill submits to hospitalisation

But look at the process: Bill does not invite Ebby.

It is not Bill’s bad experiences that activate the process of getting well.

He’s the object of this entire process.

Punchline: If we’re the object of the process, if we drink again, we will simply have to wait for intervention.

Looking at this, I realise I got sober and stayed sober not because of me but because of God: I took the action, but God gave me the direction and strength.

What’s your experience?

10 January 2025: Resentments about childhood

“every dark cranny of the past” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

I used to be very upset about my childhood. I thought I had a terrible childhood. The truth was that there were individual unpleasant incidents but that, at most moments of most days, most things were OK. The narrative I had built was a fabrication, like taking a few stars in a sky full of them, drawing lines between them, and calling it a constellation. The stars are there, but the constellation is a figment. I had made a world out of the dark crannies then dragged it round after me like a curse.

Developing gratitude for all that was either neutral or good right-sizes the past.

What’s your experience?

9 January 2025: Death threats VI

There are several points in the Big Book where it is made explicit what the individual must do to avoid drinking and therefore death. Taken together, these constitute the essence of the AA programme, though other elements are presupposed (Step One) or necessary concomitants (Step Ten). The essence can be captured under six headings.

The sixth and last of these:

SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY

The necessity of a spiritual life is arguably less well understood in AA. But even when that fact is acknowledged, the content is often not understood in the AA sense. Often, prayer and meditation, contemplation, spiritual retreats, and other practices are viewed as the content of the spiritual life. These are not the content but the facilitators; the vessel not the draught. The spiritual life, according to the Big Book, is one of work on God’s behalf. The following items are placed in a sequence specifically to illustrate this: the two points of the necessity of a spiritual life for mere survival and the core thereof, namely work with other alcoholics. No work with other alcoholics, no spiritual activity; no spiritual activity, no active relationship with God; no active relationship with God, no mental defence; no mental defence, drinking; drinking, death.

“As to two of you men, whose stories I have heard, there is no doubt in my mind that you were 100% hopeless, apart from divine help.” (Chapter 3)

“To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face.” (Chapter 4, Big Book)

“Perhaps your husband will make a fair start on the new basis, but just as things are going beautifully he dismays you by coming home drunk. If you are satisfied he really wants to get over drinking, you need not be alarmed. Though it is infinitely better that he have no relapse at all, as has been true with many of our men, it is by no means a bad thing in some cases. Your husband will see at once that he must redouble his spiritual activities if he expects to survive. You need not remind him of his spiritual deficiency—he will know of it.” (Chapter 8, Big Book)

“It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do, for alcohol is a subtle foe. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God’s will into all of our activities.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

“Both saw that they must keep spiritually active. One day they called up the head nurse of a local hospital.” (Chapter 11, Big Book)

“For if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others, he could not survive the certain trials and low spots ahead. If he did not work, he would surely drink again, and if he drank, he would surely die.” (Chapter 1, Big Book)

“All went well for a time, but he failed to enlarge his spiritual life.” (Chapter 3, Big Book)

“Fred would not believe himself an alcoholic, much less accept a spiritual remedy for his problem.” (Chapter 3, Big Book)

“Though the family does not fully agree with dad’s spiritual activities, they should let him have his head. Even if he displays a certain amount of neglect and irresponsibility towards the family, it is well to let him go as far as he likes in helping other alcoholics.” (Chapter 9, Big Book)

“Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. It works when other activities fail.” (Chapter 7, Big Book)

“All of us spend much of our spare time in the sort of effort which we are going to describe.” (Chapter 2, Big Book)

“Once more: The alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defence against the first drink. Except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defence. His defence must come from a Higher Power.” (Chapter Three, Big Book)

Two aspects to spiritual activity: that which supports carrying the message etc. and the carrying of the message etc. When much of my spare time is spent on Step Twelve work, and much other time is spent actively in other, supportive spiritual activities, namely seeking God’s will through the many channels available, plus the strength to carry that out, the things of the world do not touch me in the same way as otherwise.

What’s your experience?

8 January 2025: Death threats V

The fifth of these:

STEP NINE

On this point, there are two specific injunctions plus a couple of illustrative stories. The two injunctions concern amends in general and creditors in particular.

“[W]e will never get over drinking until we have done our utmost to straighten out the past. We are there to sweep off our side of the street, realizing that nothing worthwhile can be accomplished until we do so.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

“We must lose our fear of creditors no matter how far we have to go, for we are liable to drink if we are afraid to face them.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

“After consulting with his wife and partner he came to the conclusion that it was better to take those risks than to stand before his Creator guilty of such ruinous slander. He saw that he had to place the outcome in God’s hands or he would soon start drinking again, and all would be lost anyhow. He attended church for the first time in many years. After the sermon, he quietly got up and made an explanation. His action met widespread approval, and today he is one of the most trusted citizens of his town. This all happened years ago.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

“Some time later, and just as he thought he was getting control of his liquor situation, he went on a roaring bender. For him, this was the spree that ended all sprees. He saw that he would have to face his problems squarely that God might give him mastery. One morning he took the bull by the horns and set out to tell those he feared what his trouble had been. He found himself surprisingly well received, and learned that many knew of his drinking. Stepping into his car, he made the rounds of people he had hurt. He trembled as he went about, for this might mean ruin, particularly to a person in his line of business. At midnight he came home exhausted, but very happy. He has not had a drink since.” (Chapter 11, Big Book)

The proverbial monkey on my back left my back, and actually left town, when, for the first time, I got to a point where there was no one left I had harmed I had not done my utmost to make amends to.

What’s your experience?

7 January 2025: Death threats IV

The fourth of these:

STEP FIVE

Secrecy, specifically lack of confession, …

“The best reason first: If we skip [the fifth] step, we may not overcome drinking. Time after time newcomers have tried to keep to themselves certain facts about their lives. Trying to avoid this humbling experience, they have turned to easier methods. Almost invariably they got drunk. Having persevered with the rest of the program, they wondered why they fell. We think the reason is that they never completed their housecleaning. They took inventory all right, but hung on to some of the worst items in stock. … He should realize that we are engaged upon a life-and death errand.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

Secrets make me cautious, cagey, hypocritical, and, by way of compensation, shrill and self-righteous. All of these separate me from others.

What’s your experience?

6 January 2025: Death threats III

The third of these:

HARMFUL CONDUCT

Lesser known is this item: behaviour that harms others, whether deliberate or unrepentantly permitted, leads to drinking.

“If we are sorry for what we have done, and have the honest desire to let God take us to better things, we believe we will be forgiven and will have learned our lesson. If we are not sorry, and our conduct continues to harm others, we are quite sure to drink. We are not theorizing. These are facts out of our experience.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

I know I’m acting harmfully when I justify myself.

Only what is indefensible clothes itself in defence.

What’s your experience?

5 January 2025: Death threats II

The second of these:

RESENTMENT

The link between resentment and drinking is clear: resentment leads to separation from God; separation from God means separation from our source of protection.

“It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worthwhile. But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harbouring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again. And with us, to drink is to die. If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics these things are poison.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

A jagged, threatening world, I find, cannot be lived in for long. An escape must be sought. All forms of escape start to seem attractive.

Moreover: the more resentful I get, the more wrong I get:

“You know Rosalind. She’s never so righteous as when she is in the wrong.” (Downton Abbey)

What’s your experience?

4 January 2025: Death threats I

The first of these:

UNITY

One cannot recover alone. This is true at the beginning but also after many years. People drift, dangerously, and drifters drink.

“But out of this frightening and at first disrupting experience the conviction grew that A.A.’s had to hang together or die separately.” (Foreword to the Second Edition, Big Book)

When I stop carrying the message to others, I forget it myself. When I hear what I believe echoed around me, I know it is true instinctively, not just intellectually.

What’s your experience?

3 January 2025: Clear the line

“There I humbly offered myself to God, as I then understood Him, to do with me as He would. … I ruthlessly faced my sins and became willing to have my new-found Friend take them away, root and branch. … My schoolmate visited me, and I fully acquainted him with my problems and deficiencies. We made a list of people I had hurt or toward whom I felt resentment. I expressed my entire willingness to approach these individuals, admitting my wrong. Never was I to be critical of them. I was to right all such matters to the utmost of my ability. I was to test my thinking by the new God-consciousness within. Common sense would thus become uncommon sense. I was to sit quietly when in doubt, asking only for direction and strength to meet my problems as He would have me. Never was I to pray for myself, except as my requests bore on my usefulness to others. Then only might I expect to receive. But that would be in great measure.. My friend promised when these things were done I would enter upon a new relationship with my Creator; that I would have the elements of a way of living which answered all my problems.” (Chapter 1, Big Book)

The things: Steps Three through Eleven. When they were done (completed, except in as far as they are there to be taken each day), then a new relationship is established.

What is done can be undone. If I develop resentment, if I act harmfully, if I keep secrets, if I deliberately or negligently prosper or permit character defects, if I develop unmade amends, if I undo the work of Three through Nine, and if I do not, in Steps Ten through Twelve, place the doing of God’s will first—in particular the carrying of the message—the line of communication will be strained and then snapped. If I want to continue to receive direction and strength to follow that direction, the line must be kept intact and strong. When I feel lacking in direction and strength, there is something wrong with the line of communication, and what was once done has now been undone.

What’s your experience?

2 January 2025: Limitless

“He may not see at once that he has barely scratched a limitless lode which will pay dividends only if he mines it for the rest of his life and insists on giving away the entire product.” (Chapter 9, Big Book)

“As arrested alcoholics, we must have a program for living that allows for limitless expansion.” (The Keys of the Kingdom, Big Book)

In sticking to the material and neglecting the spiritual, I sell myself short.

Focusing on the spiritual results in material improvements only as a by-product.

A big life means a big spiritual life, not a big material life.

What’s your experience?

1 January 2025: Willingness in practice

“Upon a foundation of complete willingness I might build what I saw in my friend.” (Chapter 1, Big Book)

For me, willingness means a meek and uncomplicated readiness to take certain actions. That’s not all, though. It is not merely a matter of doing extra things. All 168 hours in the week were already occupied. The very fact of taking new actions means certain existing actions must be stopped. I cannot have my cake and eat it. Worse: the new, required actions will often involve pain, boredom, or other discomfort or inconvenience; they will involve challenge; they will involve change. This must be withstood. Stopping certain actions also entails negative emotion and difficulty. There are thus four elements to willingness:

Taking new action
Stopping old action
Accepting new difficulties
Foregoing old comforts

When considering willingness, I consider all four aspects.

In a sense, however, the question of willingness kicks in only if there is no willingness, in that only the resistant have to summon the feeling of willingness.

For example, when I surrendered in July 1993, people suggested I go to a meeting every day, get service at all the meetings I went to, call lots of people, listen to lots of AA tapes (they were actual tapes then), and I just did. No one had to tell me twice, prompt me, nudge me, remind me, convince me, persuade me: it just happened automatically, because I had made a decision. A decision is a commitment to action that resists later changes in feeling, circumstance, or thought.

When I look at my action and it’s inconsistent, it’s only ever because I haven’t made a final decision; I’ve made a conditional decision or I’ve made no decision at all: I’m still surrendered to self. A shaky decision is no decision at all, hence the reference in the Doctor’s Opinion (Big Book) between the man who makes many resolutions but never a decision.

What’s your experience?

Step One and Beyond Daily Topics 2025 Q1

31 March 2025: Attitude

30 March 2025: Constantly

29 March 2025: Problem

28 March 2025: Show; Know; Grace

27 March 2025: Just four

26 March 2025: Redirection

25 March 2025: Jaythinker

24 March 2025: Success and failure

23 March 2025: Bailing out

22 March 2025: Re-in-sourcing

21 March 2025: God’s plan

20 March 2025: Whose advice am I following?

19 March 2025: Meditation

18 March 2025: Facelift

17 March 2025: Spiritual life

16 March 2025: Bad head

15 March 2025: Courtesy and flattery

14 March 2025: Material

13 March 2025: Reunited homes

12 March 2025: White flag

11 March 2025: Only

10 March 2025: New and deeper experiences

9 March 2025: Obsession

8 March 2025: Mental defence

7 March 2025: Befogged

6 March 2025: Worthwhile

5 March 2025: Will

4 March 2025: Change and motivation

3 March 2025: Problems and solutions

2 March 2025: The meeting after the meeting

1 March 2025: Meditation

28 February 2025: Nil by mind

27 February 2025: Screw up

26 February 2025: Spree

25 February 2025: Blinkers

24 February 2025: Pathogen

23 February 2025: Two questions

22 February 2025: Loneliness

21 February 2025: Decisions

20 February 2025: Dependence

19 February 2025: Resolutions vs decisions

18 February 2025: Personal consequences

17 February 2025: Dyb-dyb-dyb-dyb

16 February 2025: Just ask!

15 February 2025: Of others

14 February 2025: Sane and happy usefulness

13 February 2025: Catch-22

12 February 2025: Talking to oneself

11 February 2025: Right thing

10 February 2025: Handiwork

9 February 2025: Boring

8 February 2025: Guard

7 February 2025: By-paths

6 February 2025: Troubles galore

5 February 2025: A hundred forms

4 February 2025: Enlightenment

3 February 2025: Putting out

2 February 2025: Deflation

1 February 2025: Eggs in the fridge

31 January 2025: Contradiction

30 January 2025: Ready–not ready

29 January 2025: Worship

28 January 2025: Keep it simple

27 January 2025: Honest with themselves

26 January 2025: Mastering resentment: the how

First three columns

Facts

Perspective

Picture

Scheme

Futility

Fatality

Powerlessness

Judgement

Understanding

Love

Inventory: mistakes

Inventory: selfishness

Inventory: self-seeking