Step One and Beyond Daily Topics 2024 Q3

30 September 2024: “Today, I have a choice”

I used to be of the view that AA increased my range of choices, that it gave me back the capacity to choose. I’ve since changed my mind.

Stopping drinking was a necessity for years, but not one I could follow through on. Then I found myself in AA, by grace not judgement, and I ‘tried’ to return to drinking but found the way barred. Then, working the programme was the only viable option. No choice in any regard.

Once I was working the programme, there were lots of ‘musts’, and ‘had tos’, which are polite ‘musts’.

Today, I’m not choosing to stay sober: I could opt for drinking only if I were insane.

As I am sober, I can, I suppose, genuinely choose between not working the programme and working the programme, but in a condition of being awake, the choice is a no-brainer.

“I woke up. This had to be stopped. I saw I could not take so much as one drink.”

“Certainly I was interested. I had to be, for I was hopeless.”

“I simply had to believe in a Spirit of the Universe, who knew neither time nor limitation.”

“Simple, but not easy; a price had to be paid. It meant destruction of self-centeredness.”

“We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics.”

“… and then asked me if I thought myself alcoholic and if I were really licked this time. I had to concede both propositions.”

“But after a while we had to face the fact that we must find a spiritual basis of life—or else.”

“We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves.”

“… even casual reference to spiritual things made us bristle with antagonism. This sort of thinking had to be abandoned.”

“We had to ask ourselves why we shouldn’t apply to our human problems this same readiness to change our point of view.”

“… we had to stop doubting the power of God. Our ideas did not work. But the God idea did.”

“When we became alcoholics, … we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing.”

“Sometimes we had to search fearlessly, but He was there.”

“We had to have God’s help.”

“… we had to quit playing God.”

“Our liquor was but a symptom. So we had to get down to causes and conditions.”

“If we were to live, we had to be free of anger.”

“He saw that he had to place the outcome in God’s hands or he would soon start drinking again …”

“We had to learn these things the hard way.”

“We all had to place recovery above everything, for without recovery we would have lost both home and business.”

“So, you see, there were three alcoholics in that town, who now felt they had to give to others what they had found, or be sunk.”

What’s your experience?

29 September 2024: Boring

“If not irritable, he may seem dull and boring …” (Chapter 9, Big Book)

“Now I was to plunge into the dark, joining that endless procession of sots who had gone on before.” (Chapter 1, Big Book)

“And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky / And they all look just the same” (Little Boxes, Malvina Reynolds)

“we were never being boring / We were never being bored” (Being Boring, Pet Shop Boys)

When I’m in self, I’m boring. I have five thoughts. Here they are:

I love you!
I hate you!
You hurt my feelings!
Where’s mine?
Go away!

The fifth one is usually expressed less elegantly than that.

There’s no character in unhappiness. There might be some personality, but that’s just window-dressing in a shop where there’s nothing for sale.

Mercifully, life sober, once one has a programme, is surprisingly interesting, and I find other people who are well invariably interesting, because each person seems quite different than the next, with a unique perspective and a unique personality.

In turn, as self is shrunk and destroyed, the world starts to seem much more interesting.

What’s your experience?

28 September 2024: “Selfishness—self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

“Resentment is the “number one” offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stem all forms of spiritual disease, for we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

“Each person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show; is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery and the rest of the players in his own way. If his arrangements would only stay put, if only people would do as he wished, the show would be great. Everybody, including himself, would be pleased.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

“Our actor is self-centered—ego-centric, as people like to call it nowadays. He is like the retired businessman who lolls in the Florida sunshine in the winter complaining of the sad state of the nation; the minister who sighs over the sins of the twentieth century; politicians and reformers who are sure all would be Utopia if the rest of the world would only behave; the outlaw safe cracker who thinks society has wronged him; and the alcoholic who has lost all and is locked up. Whatever our protestations, are not most of us concerned with ourselves, our resentments, or our self-pity?” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

“Should his own image in the mirror be too awful to contemplate (and it usually is), he might first take a look at the results normal people are getting from self-sufficiency. Everywhere he sees people filled with anger and fear, society breaking up into warring fragments. Each fragment says to the others, “We are right and you are wrong.” Every such pressure group, if it is strong enough, self-righteously imposes its will upon the rest. And everywhere the same thing is being done on an individual basis. The sum of all this mighty effort is less peace and less brotherhood than before. The philosophy of self-sufficiency is not paying off. Plainly enough, it is a bone-crushing juggernaut whose final achievement is ruin.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

This is how ‘self’ develops in me:

• I harbour self-centred interests.
• I resent anything that appears to threaten them.
• I fear what might threaten them.
• I scan for and select evidence that supports the resentment and fear.
• I reject evidence that denies or mitigates the resentment and fear.
• I discount any evidence of good or progress.
• I identify people I believe are against me
• I identify conspiracies against me.
• I adopt the baseline that others are corrupt, dishonest, stupid, and malevolent.
• I consider myself honourable, honest, smart, and good.
• I fantasise that everyone would be better off if they were like me.
• I perceive others as fundamentally untrustworthy.
• I construe others’ actions as motivated by ill intent towards me.
• I trust my own perceptions and interpretations implicitly.
• I reason from emotion not evidence.
• I prefer preference for a simple, entirely bleak picture over a complex, nuanced, and balanced picture.
• I treat groups of people as homogenous entities characterised by isolated negative features of individuals.
• I generalise unreasonably.
• I react strongly to single datapoints and build pictures based on them.
• I never lose an opportunity to have an overheated emotional reaction to a datapoint.
• I use single datapoints to re-activate whole narratives.
• I obsess about narratives.
• I recruit people to co-sign my narratives.
• I mentally and verbally attack others.
• I demonise, ostracise, and scapegoat.
• I construct my life around defending against others.
• I construe my attacks on others as defence.
• I construe their defences as evidence I was right all along.
• I act out the above as I extend the ‘I’ to the ‘we’ of any social group I belong to.

The solution per the Big Book:

“He was on a different footing. His roots grasped a new soil.” (Chapter 1, Big Book)

“For we are now on a different basis; the basis of trusting and relying upon God.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

This is how the above sequence is altered:

• I seek the good of all.
• I trust God.
• I get on with being useful.
• I don’t take myself so seriously.

What's your experience?

27 September 2024: Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me!

“We could perceive them quickly in others, but only slowly in ourselves.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

When I think that others are out to get me, deliberately trying to hurt me, because they’re mean, I’m really the one that is attacking them: I’m accusing them of having malign intent and low character. Ironically, this contempt leaks out, as one cannot, unfortunately, hide one’s inner condition perfectly or even well. They haven’t got it in for me: I’ve got it in for them. But I don’t like to admit that, yet I cannot get away from it, because it is part of me, so I see it in others (when it’s not really there, at least not in the way I perceive). I’m the nice one (I think!); if only others were as nice as me, we’d all be OK, I think. Oh, how wrong I am!

Whenever I’m in the victim stance, I’m really on the attack, and using myself as my own human shield against the accusation that that is what I am doing.

What I see in others is myself peering back.

What’s your experience?

26 September 2024: 5 minutes to change my life

“There’s the spot-check inventory, taken at any time of the day, …” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

Exercise:

1. I get quiet and say a little prayer.

2. I take a sheet of paper or a note on a computer or phone and write two headings:

• Things to stop doing (or do less of)
• Things to start doing (or do more of)

3. I ask God to show me what to write.

4. I write (words and phrases; no essays):

E.g.

Things to stop doing (or do less of):

• Sugar
• Texting during meetings
• Etc.

Things to start doing (or do more of):

• Pause before replying
• Pray during the day
• Etc.

5. After 5 minutes, I stop.

This gives me an awful lot of information very quickly about what needs to change in my life.

What’s your experience?

25 September 2024: Suffering from untreated alcoholism, sober?

Untreated alcoholism often described as having lots of problems in life, being upset, depressed, angry, or anxious, etc.

One can certainly have untreated alcoholism in a drunken condition, in that one is, well, drunk.

Is it possible to have untreated alcoholism, sober, once one has been detoxed? What would that look like? What would treated alcoholism look like?

If the central problem of alcoholism, sober, is the obedience of one’s own impulse to drink, untreated alcoholism is a condition in which one would obey an impulse to drink, and treated alcoholism is a condition in which one would not obey such an impulse (instead recoiling (page 84), going and finding an alcoholic to carry the message to (page 15), engaging in intensive work with other alcoholics (page 89), phoning a clergyman (154), etc.)

The difference between untreated and treated alcoholism is not, therefore, whether one has practical or emotional problems but whether one is serving self (treating oneself as God, playing God) or abandoning self (treating God as God, serving God) (page 15, page 59, page 63, page 164, page 199).

“We could actually have earnest religious beliefs which remained barren because we were still trying to play God ourselves.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

“Either we had tried to play God and dominate those about us, or we had insisted on being over-dependent upon them.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

“If we really depended upon God, we couldn’t very well play God to our fellows nor would we feel the urge wholly to rely on human protection and care.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

The person who has treated alcoholism might still have lots of problems but have surrendered to God.

The person with untreated alcoholism might have no problems and be having quite a jolly day, centred entirely on self: What programme? God who?

I think this is the best description of untreated alcoholism in the book (page 43):

“Physically, I felt fine. Neither did I have any pressing problems or worries. My business came off well, I was pleased and knew my partners would be too. It was the end of a perfect day, not a cloud on the horizon.”

“I … I … My … I … my …”

The best description of treated alcoholism in the book (page 15).

“We commenced to make many fast friends and a fellowship has grown up among us of which it is a wonderful thing to feel a part. The joy of living we really have, even under pressure and difficulty. … There is scarcely any form of trouble and misery which has not been overcome among us. In one western city and its environs there are one thousand of us and our families. We meet frequently so that newcomers may find the fellowship they seek. At these informal gatherings one may often see from 50 to 200 persons. We are growing in numbers and power.”

“We … us … to feel a part … joy of living we really have … among us … of us … our families … We meet frequently … 50 to 200 persons … we.”

The treatment of my alcoholism has been the journey from ‘I’ to ‘we’, and I can tell a lot about whether my alcoholism is being treated by the number, nature, and depth of interactions with other human beings, especially alcoholics, on a daily basis.

What’s your experience?

24 September 2024: Fighting

“And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone—even alcohol.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

“Besides, we have stopped fighting anybody or anything. We have to!” (Chapter 7, Big Book)

Resentment is fighting. Whenever I’m practising resentment, fear, disappointment, or despair, I’m resisting, and, if I’m resisting, I’m fighting.

One idea: take the matter in relation to which I’m practising resentment, fear, disappointment, despair, and say:

“So X has happened / might happen? Very good. Now, what am I going to do about it?”

If there is something to do, do it.

If not, say:

“In that case, very good. Anything else?”

What’s your experience?

23 September 2024: Number one offender

“If you ask him why he started on that last bender, the chances are he will offer you any one of a hundred alibis. Sometimes these excuses have a certain plausibility, but none of them really makes sense in the light of the havoc an alcoholic’s drinking bout creates. … the truth, strange to say, is usually that he has no more idea why he took that first drink than you have. Some drinkers have excuses with which they are satisfied part of the time. But in their hearts they really do not know why they do it.” (Chapter 2, Big Book)

“In some circumstances we have gone out deliberately to get drunk, feeling ourselves justified by nervousness, anger, worry, depression, jealousy or the like. But even in this type of beginning we are obliged to admit that our justification for a spree was insanely insufficient in the light of what always happened. We now see that when we began to drink deliberately, instead of casually, there was little serious or effective thought during the period of premeditation of what the terrific consequences might be.” (Chapter 3, Big Book)

“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 harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

“Physically, I felt fine. Neither did I have any pressing problems or worries. My business came off well, I was pleased and knew my partners would be too. It was the end of a perfect day, not a cloud on the horizon. … I ordered a cocktail and my meal.” (Chapter 2, Big Book)

Sometimes the idea is presented that alcoholics have bad feelings, and they drink because of the bad feelings. They think: “I’m having a bad feeling. A drink will solve that. Therefore, to solve that, I will have the drink.” And then they have the drink. Seems plausible, right?

This looks like the operation of reason. Yet, both overall and in most individual situations, the relief of bad feelings afforded by drinking is actually outweighed by the bad feelings generated by drinking, if not during the bout, certainly in the immediate aftermath, and that’s before one considers the aggregate effect of alcoholic drinking in terms of emotional state.

As the readings above show, moreover, this ‘reasoning’ was typically grossly inadequate (and in my experience fleeting: the thought of a drink would occur, apparently in response to a ‘bad feeling’, and the plan would immediately present itself. This is not consideration or contemplation in the ordinary sense of decision-formulation.)

Furthermore, I did not think of a drink every time I had a bad feeling. And I thought of a drink when I did not have a bad feeling.

The idea that I drank because of bad feelings is now starting to look very shaky indeed.

It’s very clear that the reason I gave myself for drinking—bad feelings—was not the reason in the sense of the primary ground in a logical system.

It’s very clear that the system was not logical. The system was not sound. The system was not sane. In a system that is not logical, sound, or sane, it makes absolutely no sense to talk of reasoning, because what appears to be reasoning is really rationalisation: the presentation of superficially plausible but ultimately specious reasons for a course of action. If the course of action is not driven by reason, by ordinary mental processes of the higher parts of the mind, it must be driven by something else.

What is driving it, then? Short answer: alcoholism. There’s part of my brain that seems to throw up the idea of a drink periodically. The occurrence of such a thought might be brought forward by a general dissatisfaction with life sober (cf. the boy whistling in the dark, Bill with his “waves of self-pity and resentment” which “sometimes [but not all the time] nearly drove me back to drink [but did not]”, and Fred, whose attempts to live life sober were apparently unsatisfactory, even though he at the time was not actually aware of that: “My old manner of life was by no means a bad one, but I would not exchange its best moments for the worst I have now. I would not go back to it even if I could”), but there are as many examples of characters in the Big Book who are not unhappy or who are not aware of how relatively unhappy they are (CAB: “His physical and mental condition were unusually good.” MOT: “retired at the age of fifty-five, after a successful and happy business career … Out came his carpet slippers and a bottle.”)

What we’re therefore left with is simply the phenomenon: come rain or shine, the thought of a drink will occur.

“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)

We therefore need a relationship with God to stay sober.

And this is where resentment (accompanied by all its friends) comes in:

When I’m resentful, I’m adopting the position: “I’m in charge. I know how things should be. And this is not how things should be.” I’m playing God, and, when playing God, I’m cutting myself off from God.

This is why resentment (and all its friends: cynicism, fear, anxiety, depression, self-loathing, despondency, despair) lead to a drink. They may or may not prompt the thought of a drink to occur. Maybe the thought would have occurred anyway. Maybe the opportunity would have presented itself anyway. But they sure as hell block off the defence against following though and actually drinking.

To drink, two things must happen:

Firstly, I must think of a drink.

Secondly, I must take the drink.

Resentment may or may not trigger or accelerate the onset of the first, but its absence is no defence against the thought of a drink.

Resentment will block me from the only Power that can stop thought converting into action.

That is why resentment is the number one offender.

What’s your experience?

22 September 2024: At once

“We ask Him to remove our fear and direct our attention to what He would have us be. At once, we commence to outgrow fear.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

“Timidity in accepting responsibility, or cowardice in facing difficulty or suffering. Surrender to feelings of depression, gloom, pessimism, discouragement, self-pity, or fear of death, instead of fighting to be brave, cheerful, and hopeful.” (St Augustine Prayer Book, Sacrament of Penance)

fighting to be brave, cheerful, and hopeful

Not fighting against something but fighting for something.

I don’t need to sit with fear. I get rid of it.

What’s your experience?

21 September 2024: The true tale

“Eventually he got the true tale out of Bilbo after much questioning, which for a while strained their friendship; but the wizard seemed to think the truth important.” (J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring)

I don’t expect a sponsorship relationship necessarily to be smooth or even comfortable.

A good sponsor will sense concealment and question.

But, as a sponsee, it’s really down to me to come clean straight away.

What’s your experience?

20 September 2024: Rivals

“There are always plenty of rivals to our work. We are always falling in love or quarrelling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavourable. Favourable conditions never come.” (C. S. Lewis, Learning in War-Time (1939))

“Throughout this process, we expect quick responses and for you to keep your appointments with us as best you can. If there is anything happening in your life that might interfere with your responsiveness, we recommend waiting to apply until you are ready.” (cia.gov, notice to prospective applicants)

“we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

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

“Reminding ourselves that we have decided to go to any lengths to find a spiritual experience …” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

“Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God’s will into all of our activities.” (Chapter 6, Big Book)

When I’m willing, the step work, the sponsorship, the service gets done.

When I’m not, it doesn’t.

It’s never a question of circumstances; it’s only ever a question of willingness.

What’s your experience?

19 September 2024: Decisions, decisions

“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.” (The Doctor’s Opinion, Big Book)

“Some will be drunk the day after making their resolutions; most of them within a few weeks.” (Chapter 3, Big Book)

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

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

“Let him know you are available if he wishes to make a decision and tell his story, but do not insist upon it if he prefers to consult someone else.” (Chapter 7, Big Book)

“If you have already made a decision, and an inventory of your grosser handicaps, you have made a good beginning.”

“Decision is the whole business here; a door must be shut for ever.” (G. K. Chesterton)

When I made the decision to stay sober, it had to be a decision that would prevail forever, not a temporary decision, not a provisional decision, not a hope, not an ideal, but a commitment to a course of action: that course of action was building a life around the programme and running my life in accordance with the programme.

The door must slam and lock, and the keys must be lost.

I did ‘take my will back’ for a couple of years (i.e. reversed my commitment to place AA at the centre of my life, and attended only sporadically), but I made another decision to commit to AA, and that decision has not been reversed.

Along the way I make mistakes and have certainly had excursions into self-willed behaviour, but the basic scaffolding of turning my will and life over to God has not been decommissioned or dismantled.

I don’t think it’s possible to ‘take one’s will back many times a day’ in the sense of reversing Step Three.

Either the Step has been taken or it hasn’t.

If it hasn’t, it’s possible to play-act it, as I did for a few months before I got finally sober, taking some of the actions of those who had turned their wills and lives over but without the actual decision having been made itself.

If there’s real double-mindedness, a lukewarm commitment to the programme, a constant back-and-forth, a continual to-and-fro, a dilettantish dabbling, a taking-what-I-want-and-leaving-the-rest, flurries of activities interspersed with periods of idleness and programme amnesia—where I’m living as though I really do not have a programme—the (rhetorical) question is: Did I really take Step Three in the first place?

For me, Step Three is like the decision to move to a new country.

Firstly, I must actually move there and set up home.

Secondly, there is the job of becoming a good citizen.

I might make a terrible hash of the latter, but that does not mean that the former has not taken place.

When I make a terrible hash of the latter, I’ve not reversed the decision to live there.

Contrariwise, if I have not moved there, I might eat the food of the country, listen to its radio, and learn the language, but moved I have not.

In fact, the latter person might be doing a better impression of a national of that country, but it is the former who is actually living there.

I find it useful periodically to check that my Step Three decision really is in place:

Is my life structured (albeit with flaws) around God and AA, or are the latter adjuncts to ‘my life’ (‘my life’, ‘my programme’, ‘my steps’, ‘my sponsor’, ‘my meetings’, ‘my higher power’)?

What’s your experience?

18 September 2024: Every day ... must ...

“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)

When, today, I do not take the actions indicated, it is because I believe I do not need to take those actions today in order to guarantee not succumbing to the desire to drink.

In other words, I have ceased to believe I am an alcoholic.

An alcoholic is someone who must be making spiritual progress today in order to guarantee staying sober today.

It’s a useful question to ask myself: What does my prioritisation of spiritual growth (or lack thereof) say about my belief concerning my alcoholism?

What’s your experience?

17 September 2024: Get off the train!

“My friend promised when these things were done I would enter upon a new relationship with my Creator.” (Chapter 1, Big Book)

Imagine if taking the Steps were a journey from London to Edinburgh. One passes through each of the intermediate stations and arrives in Edinburgh. But, rather than getting out in Edinburgh and living in Edinburgh, one gets a flight back to London and decides to continue living there, enriched by much train lore and railway-related wisdom.

It turns out that Edinburgh was never the goal. There was never any interest in Edinburgh. The aim all along was to live in London, just without the horror and the pain.

But guess what? London is London, and London is not Edinburgh.

I did the Steps, yes, sure, to recover from alcoholism (result!) and to get a good ol’-fashioned design for living.

But I still wanted money, security, a career, stuff, advancement, achievement, status, friends, holidays, luxuries, all sorts of things, and the job of life was to obtain, keep, and secure these things against pestilence, war, and termites.

I did not want to abandon myself to God and then content myself with whatever came back to me from God.

I certainly did not set aside large chunks of time to serve God directly through sponsorship and carrying the message or having such work the primary occupation of my mental activity (this is what living in Edinburgh is, in the above example).

It took a second rock-bottom of materialism (‘London’) to convince me I really did want to live in Edinburgh.

What’s your experience?

16 September 2024: “The wise man strives to no goals, but the foolish man fetters himself” (Sengcan, Hsin-Hsin Ming: Verses on the Faith-Mind)

As soon as I have goals, I’m trapped by the goals: the course is set, there is uncertainty about outcome, here is not OK, there will be OK, but I’m not there, so I’m not OK. My life then becomes programmed in order to achieve those goals; I’m constantly measuring progress against those goals; the more goals, the more constrained I am; there is no breathing space. Then comes in competition with others: I’m no longer one with others, I’m side-eyeing them, because the achievement of most goals is zero sum: my attainment is your loss and vice-versa. I also end up in competition with myself: each of my goals competes with each of the other goals.

By contrast, the programme asks me to let go of the future (except for those isolated moments of legitimate forward planning) and instead ask God not what the goals are today but what the activities are today. And once I have the plan, I forget everything on the plan except the thing I happen to be doing right now. Any objectives are God's and take care of themselves provided I take care of the actions.

What's your experience?

15 September 2024: Re-potting the potted

“potted, adjective: slang: drunk” (Merriam-Webster)

“Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them.” (Chapter 2)

“He was on a different footing. His roots grasped a new soil.” (Chapter 1)

“Giving, rather than getting, will become the guiding principle.” (Chapter 9)

“Suggest how important it is that he place the welfare of other people ahead of his own.” (Chapter 7)

“Save for a few brief moments of temptation the thought of drink has never returned; and at such times a great revulsion has risen up in him. Seemingly he could not drink even if he would. God had restored his sanity.” (Chapter 4)

“Perhaps he could handle, say, three drinks—no more! Fear gripped him. He was on thin ice. Again it was the old, insidious insanity—that first drink. With a shiver, he turned away and walked down the lobby to the church directory. Music and gay chatter still floated to him from the bar.

But what about his responsibilities—his family and the men who would die because they would not know how to get well, ah—yes, those other alcoholics? There must be many such in this town. He would phone a clergyman. His sanity returned and he thanked God.” (Chapter 11)

The order here is very interesting:

1. The insanity (the belief a drink is safe) returns.
2. He takes programmed action (smart feet walking away from danger).
3. A thought occurs to him about the welfare of others.
4. He takes further programmed action (seeking out an alcoholic to help).
5. Sanity returns.
6. He says a prayer of gratitude.

The programmed action takes place before the return of sanity and even before the thanking of God.

This can happen only if the individual is ‘dominated’ by a new set of ‘conceptions and motives’ (‘a new soil’, ‘giving, rather than getting’, ‘place the welfare of other people ahead of his own’).

It cannot be invoked as an act of the will, which is why instructing people what to do in such situations, namely to invoke the will to do (a) not (b), will always ultimately fail: either the programming kicks in or it does not.

Once the new system is in place, once the individual is re-potted in ‘new soil’, all of this is automatic.

To amplify, it is no good giving people instructions what to do ‘if the insanity returns’, because, in that situation, the person is insane. Only domination by a new set of conceptions and motives will do the job.

In order to help someone who is at risk of the insanity, returning, therefore, what is needed is not little tips, tip-lets, but the following injunctions (Chapter 1):

“It meant destruction of self-centeredness. I must turn in all things to the Father of Light who presides over us all.” (Bill’s Story)

“There I humbly offered myself to God, as I then understood Him, to do with me as He would. I placed myself unreservedly under His care and direction. I admitted for the first time that of myself I was nothing; that without Him I was lost. I ruthlessly faced my sins and became willing to have my new-found Friend take them away, root and branch. I have not had a drink since.” (Bill’s Story)

... and everything that flows from these.

The above is my experience, too.

What’s yours?

14 September 2024: A little above excellent

Here’s a good list of major things that pretty much everyone in recovery has available and can activate on any day or in any week.

When someone asks me how things are going or how my week was, the answer is always excellent, because this list is always operative.

To answer otherwise is to deny the good.

If I’ve had bad feelings, that’s not down to my life: that’s down to me. The truth is that all is well, but I have refused to see it.

• Somewhere to live
• Utilities
• An income
• Having sufficient physical health to live a life
• The ability to buy food and other necessities
• Cooking facilities
• Living in a nice neighbourhood
• Being in recovery from alcoholism
• Having friends and acquaintances to talk to
• Getting to talk to friends and acquaintances
• Having physical meetings to go to
• Having people to talk to at those meetings
• Having a Higher Power
• Having a relationship with a Higher Power
• Having a free-of-charge programme to change one’s life
• Making progress in that programme
• Having a highly effective daily programme to live by
• Having experienced people in recovery to consult
• There being lots of interesting things to do
• There being lots of things in the world to take an interest in
• The availability of nature

There is no reason not to be perfectly cheerful, unless I have decided I would rather be miserable.

What's your experience?

13 September 2024: Design for living

“We, in our turn, sought the same escape with all the desperation of drowning men. What seemed at first a flimsy reed, has proved to be the loving and powerful hand of God. A new life has been given us or, if you prefer, ‘a design for living’ that really works.” (Chapter 2, Big Book)

Steps Ten through Twelve provide me with a practical system for living. When I rely on that, which really means relying on God, I do not need to rely on self, and I do not get myself into trouble.

• Be with God as I wake up
• Read spiritual literature daily, in the morning
• Extract lessons therefrom to apply to the day
• Devise a plan for the day each morning so I know precisely what I’m doing and when I’m doing it
• Construct the plan around necessary preparations and the fulfilment of obligations
• Work now, play later
• Stick to the plan: no messing around; no impulsive alterations
• Go to lots of meetings
• Carry the message at every meeting I go to (or at least be visibly available to do so)
• Carry the message as afforded the opportunity in online groups
• Spend at least one hour on working days (at least two hours on non-working days) on step work (or, if not in a step work cycle, on sponsoring others)
• Only consort with pragmatic people who will not countenance self-pity, self-indulgence, victimhood, avoidance, sloth, complacency, cynicism, or rebellion
• If troubled, immediately apply the tools of Steps Ten and Eleven: no wallowing
• If very troubled, read or listen to spiritual materials until the solution(s) become apparent: then write them down and apply them
• I’m not done until I feel entirely better
• Never go to bed disturbed: sort it out now
• Be with God before going to sleep

What’s your experience?

12 September 2024: The fallacy of standing up for oneself

“Though his family be at fault in many respects, he should not be concerned about that. He should concentrate on his own spiritual demonstration. Argument and fault-finding are to be avoided like the plague.” (Chapter 7, Big Book)

“We avoid retaliation or argument.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

I used to think I needed to stand up for myself more in my relationships in the world. That would have meant fighting back, arguing, remonstrating, and directing other people to act differently. I have learned in AA that none of these things change people’s personality. It turns out they are the way they are not because of my failure to fight, argue, remonstrate, or direct. The reason they are behaving the way they are is also not because of my failure to fight, argue, remonstrate, or direct. In fact, the opposite is often true: their behaviour towards me is often a defence against my belligerence, querulousness, peevishness, and imperiousness.

Even where I’m simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I happen to be present for someone else’s disagreeable behaviour, fighting, arguing, remonstrating, or directing tends to antagonise, escalate, and generate conflict. Someone who is behaving irrationally is rarely amenable to reason. I’m also letting the other person know precisely what to do to wind me up. I’m giving them the map of my sensitive facilities, ready for their next bombing raid. I’m setting myself up for problems down the line.

It is impossible to legislate for all situations, but I am struggling to think of a situation where ‘fighting back’ was warranted and worked. I can think of many situations where ‘fighting back’ was not warranted and, when attempted, made things worse. On the few occasions where ‘a boundary was set’, and I felt very proud of myself, the other person’s behaviour reverted to form the next time round the merry-go-round, and the apparent victory of the boundary-setting was hollow. I can also think of instances where my boundary-setting, remonstration, or expression of ‘hurt feelings’ actually caused long-term harm, through a domestic warfare of attrition, as I gradually wore people down. As C. S. Lewis puts it: “the unconstitutional (and often unconscious) tyranny of the most selfish member [of the home.]”

Requests and negotiations are possible with reasonable and mature people, but I’m sparing even with those. I’ve found it more useful to simply attempt to rub along with the people in my life the way they are.

It turns out the above two injunctions from the Big Book are the only sensible way forward in my relations with others.

What’s your experience?

11 September 2024: Conscience

“If he thinks he can do the job in some other way, or prefers some other spiritual approach, encourage him to follow his own conscience.” (Chapter 7, Big Book)

If the person’s approach is indeed sensible, then intervention is unnecessary. Here, conscience really is being followed.

If it’s nonsense and potentially dangerous, there’s usually nothing one can effectively say: the mind has already been made up.

It's not conscience that's been followed in that case, or at least it's something masquerading as conscience that is leading the way.

More input from an approach that has already been rejected will go the same way as the existing input.

Best to keep my mouth shut, in that case.

There might be exceptions, but I've never been dissuaded from a perilous course once I've built up a head of steam. It's only once I find myself flying through the air having jumped off the edge of a cliff that I start to look for silk to sew a parachute.

What’s your experience?

10 September 2024: Quite as abnormal

“In this statement he confirms what we who have suffered alcoholic torture must believe—that the body of the alcoholic is quite as abnormal as his mind. It did not satisfy us to be told that we could not control our drinking just because we were maladjusted to life, that we were in full flight from reality, or were outright mental defectives.” (The Doctor's Opinion, Big Book)

Let’s rejig:

• Madness and stupidity do not explain my excessive drinking because
  • I am and was neither mad nor stupid
• Unhappiness does not explain my excessive drinking because
  • I drank excessively even when not unhappy
  • I drank excessively even when alcohol did not render me happy
  • After a few drinks, an additional drink had no observable effect on my happiness level
• My excessive drinking was a consistent feature of my drinking, regardless of mental or emotional state
• Mental, emotional, and spiritual state are not, therefore, the primary factor in excessive drinking
• Once these are ruled out, we only have circumstances and physical state left
• My excessive drinking was a consistent feature of my drinking, regardless of my circumstances
• Once these are ruled out, we only have physical state left
• The only consistent element in my physical state when drinking—after the first drink—was the fact of having alcohol in my system
• When I was sober, I did not seek, in advance, to drink excessively (so much I was sick, so much I was violent, so much I was rangy)
• Once I had the first drink, the plan became to drink excessively (even if I became sick, violent, or rangy)
• The switch from the desire to get drunk (but not sick, violent, or rangy) to the desire to remove all constraints took place when I had the first drink
• I conclude that the uncontrollable desire (craving) to drink excessively stems from the presence of alcohol in my system
• This craving is therefore a physical phenomenon that co-opts my mind to achieve its aim (another drink)
• In this state, I think this is what I want, so I do it
• In reality, I am compelled

What's your experience?

9 September 2024: Stopping drinking and staying stopped

“At the hospital I was separated from alcohol for the last time. Treatment seemed wise, for I showed signs of delirium tremens.” (Bill’s Story)

I said to Doug, in 1993, “I’ve given up drinking.” He said, “Princess, it gave you up.”

I have never stopped drinking, at least not as an act of the will.

There was a last drink. I lifted the bottle to my mouth and drank from it.

The bottle was taken from me.

The evidence that I should stop drinking was there for years but largely invisible to me.

What is stopping?

Recognising a drink drunk as the last drink then progressing gradually to an alcohol-free state.

The insight I should stop was a gift I neither earned nor bade come to me.

The ability to formulate an actual plan to stop was a gift.

The ability to implement that plan was a gift.

The ability to withstand the withdrawal symptoms was a gift.

Some people need considerably more help to proceed through the period of the alcohol leaving the body and the body adjusting to the new circumstances.

The availability of resources to help me was a gift.

Once I was fully detoxed, a second project, staying stopped, came into play.

This involves not having the first drink.

This involves not drinking the first drink when the thought of a drink occurs to me.

This involves being defended by an overriding force when the thought of a drink occurs to me.

This involves being on an entirely new footing, in the process of eliminating every shred of selfishness from my life.

If I am progressing in that project, diligently and swiftly enough, the overriding force is activated.

I do not avoid the first drink as an act of the will.

I commit to not having the first drink, ever again.

I then commit to a course of action that enables that to be implemented.

But not by be.

Back to stopping drinking:

Many people never stop drinking, because they cannot conjure the forces that must necessarily intervene from outside the system, and the forces never intervene.

No other person can conjure those forces. No group of people can conjure those forces. Sometimes someone is ‘trying to stop’ and everyone is ‘trying to help’ but nothing shifts, not an inch.

They have Good Ideas that are Ideas but are not Good.

They follow those Good Ideas into the forest and never return.

I now understand with horror that I never stopped drinking but was separated from alcohol.

I was released: I did not release myself.

What’s your experience?

8 September 2024: The first coming to believe

“we had come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as we had been living it” (Big Book)

If one took advice from a person, and the advice, when implemented, produced hopelessness and futility, one would cease seeking advice from that person.

If that person is oneself, the logic should be the same.

However, in practice, even when I admit that I am feeling hopeless and futile, and think I’m ready for the programme, the fact is I’m still accepting my own beliefs, thinking, assessment, and general negative, cynical, and faithless mindset.

To get away from hopeless and futile outcomes, I have to abandon what is causing them, namely self-reliance.

When I’m self-reliant, I take the neutral facts and build my own story and picture.

When I’m God-reliant and programme-reliant, I take the neutral facts to the programme.

For instance, I might note a financial risk or a difficulty in a personal relationship (‘just the facts, ma’am’), I take those neutral facts and apply this:

“For we are now on a different basis; the basis of trusting and relying upon God. We trust infinite God rather than our finite selves. We are in the world to play the role He assigns. Just to the extent that we do as we think He would have us, and humbly rely on Him, does He enable us to match calamity with serenity.” (Big Book)

Bypassing all negative claptrap, and applying this, I see all I have to do is:

• Do as I think He would have me do (‘What’s the next right action?’)
• Humbly rely on God

If I’m still listening to any other of my old, negative thinking, that means I haven’t had the first ‘come to believe’ moment: coming to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as we had been living it.

I have to have that coming to believe first, before I can have the coming to believe of Step Two.

What’s your experience?

7 September 2024: The complaining of others

Complaining can be a solitary affair, but often it likes company. It's a bit of an extrovert. To have company, it must have an accomplice.

A few years ago, I came home late after an eventful day in a period of an unusually heavy schedule of obligations.

I let out a stream of complaint, not about a person, about external matters, but in the presence of a person.

The person said, not looking at me, but gesturing in the general direction of my words:

"That has to stop. If you permit it, it will take over."

Another time, the same person, when I complained, said. "Right, so, what are you going to do about it."

This was genuinely helpful.

Listening to complaining reinforces the narrative: it does not provide lasting relief.

When I'm listening to others' complaints, I'm not supporting them: I'm aiding in their destruction.

Redirection of my attention to the solution was what was needed, not sympathy.

What's your experience?

6 September 2024: Complaining

“He is like the retired businessman who lolls in the Florida sunshine in the winter complaining of the sad state of the nation.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)

I’ve been a great complainer in my life. Complaining, grumbling, whining, self-pity, case-building, catastrophisation, self-reproach, reproach of others, contempt, cynicism, disappointment, despair, disillusionment, depression.

When I’m engaging in these, it’s like going and gambling away in the casino all of my hard-earned earnings: all of the goodness that comes my way thanks to working the programme is thrown out of the window by verbalising such thoughts where I’m not actively called upon to critically assess a situation. Even where critical assessment is required, it can be performed impersonally, neutrally, and economically. Otherwise, switching back and forth between complaining and ‘working the programme’ is like performing an act of self-harm, going to hospital to have oneself disinfected and stitched up, and then going home and opening up all of the wounds again.

The thought level is hard to deal with: one can’t control the complaint thoughts that come into the mind. By learning to spot such thoughts at the point of entry, one can resolve not to entertain them. If I refuse to believe and entertain complaint thoughts, they do no harm.

The spoken level is different, however. The impetus to speak comes from me. There’s a hurdle to leap before the words come out of my mouth. It is quite possible to enact zero tolerance of complaint speech (in all its forms) in a far more consistent way than zero tolerance of complaint thoughts. Thoughts can be front-of-mind or back-of-mind, precisely articulated or vague, worded or wordless. But spoken language is unambiguous: either I’m complaining or I’m not; it’s perfectly clear.

The task, therefore, is to enact the same zero tolerance one would expect of oneself when it came, for instance, to shoplifting or spitting chewing gum onto the pavement.

This gives the Steps a chance of actually working, by not undoing on one side the good work I am doing on the other.

What’s your experience?

5 September 2024: Common solution or not?

“We have a way out on which we can absolutely agree, and upon which we can join in brotherly and harmonious action. This is the great news this book carries to those who suffer from alcoholism.” (Big Book)

“The literature contains no answers. The answer is always peculiar to the individual. There is no common solution.” (An anonymous member)

My experience is that there is a small but important amount of truth to the second statement. There’re definitely answers and a common solution in the literature, but these give me a method for living, not the specifics of whether to move house, what to do on Tuesday, and whether or not to give Marjory or Donald a wide berth.

There’s room for consultation with others, but that can denegerate into pitiful dependence on others.

My true reliance has to be on God, not on me alone, and not on others alone. And that will produce particular solutions tailored to me.

“This programme is Bob-shaped.” (Bob K, early 1990s)

What’s your experience?

4 September 2024: Beyond human aid

From Mark H

“Today I know that I am responsible for one thing and one thing only. I am responsible to do the things necessary so that I can be a channel, so that God’s Power, God’s Love, and God’s Way of Life can come through me and touch you. Period. End of statement. Nothing more. That’s all I have to do. If I do that, the Power does the rest. The Power shows me where I’m gonna live, who’s gonna be in my life, how much I’m gonna make, where I’m gonna go, what I’m gonna do. Wow, what a deal for someone like us. It says that the WHOLE function of the Big Book is that I’m going to take a series of actions to allow a Power which is inside me, to begin to manifest and become real in my life, and this Power will do for me that which I have never been able to do for myself. THAT’S what this Program is.

It is NOT a program of getting yourself sober and keeping yourself sober. But I didn’t know this until I began to make it a way of life. If anyone in this room is sober tonight and ever drinks again, you will drink because of your self-will. The Big Book says, “Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must or it kills us!” So that’s what we’re up against. If you’re a real alcoholic or drug addict, that’s what you’re up against. You’re not up against alcohol or drugs. You’re up against your selfishness.

Now here’s the great trap. The very thing that will take you back to alcohol and drugs you create and there isn’t anything you can do about it. Ain’t that great? I create the very thing within me that makes me diseased that will convince my mind, in spite of grave consequences, to go take a drink when I know I shouldn’t take a drink. Although I have a desire not to take a drink, I’ll do it anyhow and there’s nothing I can do about that on my power. And then we wonder why they look at us and say, “I can’t help you; you have to go find God.” Because it’s the truth, they can’t help us. We are beyond human aid. The Twelve Steps are the only vehicle I’ve ever known that keeps my ego right-sized.”

What’s your experience?

3 September 2024: Detachment

The Al-Anon detachment sheet:

“Detachment is neither kind nor unkind. It does not imply judgement or condemnation of the person or situation from which we are detaching. Separating ourselves from the adverse effects of another person’s alcoholism can be a means of detaching: this does not necessarily require physical separation. Detachment can help us look at our situations realistically and objectively.

Alcoholism is a family disease. Living with the effects of someone else’s drinking is too devastating for most people to bear without help.

In Al-Anon we learn nothing we say or do can cause or stop someone else’s drinking. We are not responsible for another person’s disease or recovery from it.

Detachment allows us to let go of our obsession with another’s behaviour and begin to lead happier and more manageable lives, lives with dignity and rights, lives guided by a Power greater than ourselves. We can still love the person without liking the behaviour.

IN AL-ANON WE LEARN:

• Not to suffer because of the actions or reactions of other people
• Not to allow ourselves to be used or abused by others in the interest of another’s recovery
• Not to do for others what they can do for themselves
• Not to manipulate situations so others will eat, go to bed, get up, pay bills, not drink, or behave as we see fit
• Not to cover up for another’s mistakes or misdeeds
• Not to create a crisis
• Not to prevent a crisis if it is in the natural course of events

DETACHMENT

By learning to focus on ourselves, our attitudes and well-being improve. We allow the alcoholics in our lives to experience the consequences of their own actions.”

What’s your experience?

2 September 2024: Carry this message

“As part of his rehabilitation he commenced to present his conceptions to other alcoholics, impressing upon them that they must do likewise with still others. This has become the basis of a rapidly growing fellowship of these men and their families.” (Big Book)

The Twelfth Step encompasses the whole programme, with three elements:

• Spiritual awakening (dying to self and recognising the supremacy of God in one's life)
• Seeking to help others to wake up
• Making myself useful in all areas

The first eleven steps form the preparatory foundations for this. They might also improve my emotional condition, my thinking, and my practical circumstances, but they do not, in themselves, bring home the harvest.

The work of the programme does not end in Step Twelve: it starts in Step Twelve. No Step Twelve; no programme.

What’s your experience?

1 September 2024: Needed power

“We could wish to be moral, we could wish to be philosophically comforted, in fact, we could will these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn’t there. Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly.” (Big Book)

If I keep doing the wrong thing and keep failing to do the right thing, the problem is not lack of intelligence, lack of knowledge, or lack of will, per se: the problem is lack of power. This is because, side by side with my will, is another will, the lower self, the devil, the spiritual malady, the addiction, the parasitic force that yanks the steering wheel and results in me succumbing to impulse or being paralysed in the face of the right action.

To find the right solution to a problem I need to know what the problem is. Once I know the problem is lack of power not lack of information, I can seek the power.

And the prime prerequisite for seeking that power is creating space by decommissioning my own power plant: the abandonment of self in principle before the abandonment of self in practice.

What’s your experience?

31 August 2024: The enemy

“1. LET God arise, and let his enemies be scattered: let them also that hate him flee before him.” (Psalm 68)

The enemy: some of the thoughts that come into my head, unbidden. I can’t fight them directly, but I can ask God to displace them, to scatter them, and then turn my attention to God Himself or to serving God. The enemy then flees.

What’s your experience?

30 August 2024: Letting go

“I pray to learn to enjoy the good that each day brings and not to be apprehensive about the future, which is in God’s hands.” (One Day At A Time In Al-Anon)

If I’m concerned about someone, I mentally place them in God’s hands and imagine God looking after them.

If I’m upset about someone, I mentally place them in God’s hands and imagine God looking after them.

If [fill in the blank], I mentally place them in God’s hands and imagine God looking after them.

If they ‘pop back’ into my mind, I ‘pop them back’ into God’s hands.

What’s your experience?

29 August 2024: Powerlessness over others

"This workbook cannot help those who are active in their addictions. We don’t know of any programme which can help these people. Perhaps it is as simple as this: when the time comes to face the healing process these people avoid the process via their addiction. Common sense tells us we need to totally abstain while working on this healing process. The mind that made us sick cannot make us well in its present state nor under the influence of the addiction. We need something higher than us, different than us, other than us, that can and will do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. This is a mind-training and spiritual-awakening programme, so it is important to be consciously present." (Al Kohallek)

Once someone is clean and sober, able to think clearly, and emotionally present, I might be able to help them.

Until then, I can’t.

I can suggest detox, but I can’t administer detox.

The initiative must lie with them, however: I cannot induce willingness.

Until then there’s prayer, which is a recognition of my own powerlessness.

What’s your experience?

28 August 2024: Wired

My brain (and I suppose everyone’s) appears to be wired:

(a) To seek pleasure
(b) To avoid pain
(c) To establish an identity

It’s not dumb. It’s mechanical. It continually sends me impulses in these three areas, because that’s what it’s programmed to do.

Growing up and getting well has meant, for me, learning to act right regardless of the (lack of) pleasure, regardless of the (inevitable) pain, and regardless of my anonymity or prominence or the furtherance of my 'personal ambitions' in the situation, even to the detriment of my most obvious and immediate interests. It was startling to discover I did not need to heed these prompts: they could rattle away trivially, like a neighbour's tinny radio.

What do I concentrate on?

Being at complete peace. Then asking:

• What needs to be done?
• What needs to be done by me?
• How best to do it?

... considering, not my desired outcomes, but the given, stated mission.

What’s your experience?

27 August 2024: Divine help

What you say about the general hopelessness of the average alcoholic’s plight is, in my opinion, correct. 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. (Big Book)

My wife and I abandoned ourselves with enthusiasm to the idea of helping other alcoholics to a solution of their problems ... (Big Book)

All went well for a time, but he failed to enlarge his spiritual life. To his consternation, he found himself drunk half a dozen times in rapid succession. (Big Book)

An alcoholic is someone who, if they do not have divine help, activated through work and self-sacrifice for others, will drink, and, if they drink, they might never stop, and die an unpleasant alcoholic death.

Someone who recognises they are an alcoholic will act on this information. This can be discerned by observing the conduct: does the conduct consist in a good dose, each day, of abandonment of self, of work and self-sacrifice for others?

Someone who does not recognise they're an alcoholic but believes that AA might help them improve their life, will do AA Lite. A little this, a little that, but no completion of the programme, and no centrality of AA, recovery, and the service of God.

Someone who does not recognise they're an alcoholic, but does not believe that AA can help them, will stop going to AA altogether.

There are three basic groups: AA Full Throttle, AA Lite, and No AA. One can tell what one believes from what one does.

What's your experience?

26 August 2024: Testing

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. (Bill's Story)

The chief source of input must always be from God: the uncommon sense of inspiration, an intuitive thought, a decision.

Two commodities only: direction (what to do) and strength (the ability to do it).

One objective: serve God (by being useful to others).

Self: irrelevant, except as an expedient or means for serving God (by being useful to others).

What is received? Life.

What's your experience?

25 August 2024: Spilling out

As the clock ticks out like a dripping faucet
Till you're full of rag water and bitters and blue ruin
And you spill out
Over the side to anyone who'll listen

Tom Waits, Ninth & Hennepin

When I got into recovery, I was completely uncontained. I told a lot of people an awful lot. Undisciplined. Feverish. Florrid. Largely inaccurate.

In recovery I've had to learn:

(a) To contain myself and reserve disclosures for the right people
(b) To disclose what needs to be disclosed, precisely and concisely.

When communication is indiscriminate and flaccid, it achieves nothing.

When communication is targeted and focused, it achieves everything.

Drizzle vs fire hose.

What's your experience?

24 August 2024: That only gets worse

We are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period we get worse, never better. (Big Book)

she has that razor sadness / that only gets worse (Tom Waits, Ninth & Hennepin)

When I place material concerns first, I'm feeding what should be starved and starving what should be fed: I'm reviving the spiritual malady that stands in the way of God enabling me to stay sober.

This condition is progressive, sober, in the same way that alcoholism is progressive when it is active.

But so is recovery.

What's your experience?

23 August 2024: Bad directions

They all started out with bad directions (Tom Waits, Ninth & Hennepin)

That's why I ended up in the wrong place, before ending up in the right place (AA).

The whole journey of recovery involves:

• Admitting I'm in the wrong place
• Admitting, therefore, that I've been operating based on bad information
• Admitting, therefore, that my faculty of discerning good from bad information is also flawed
• Observing that others are in a good place
• Concluding that they have got there by following information, which must, therefore be good
• Concluding that good information and bad information differ from each other
• Concluding that the good information looks bad from the point of view of the bad information
• Abandoning my entire information system
• Accepting a new one, on the basis of how others are doing not what I think is good and bad
• Acting on that new information.

What's your experience?

22 August 2024: Inconvenience

One regularly hears how Step Twelve work only ‘counts’ if it’s ‘inconvenient’.

This is a good principle, if one is still beset by selfishness: the apparent inconvenience of Step Twelve work is a good sign one is actively and successfully overcoming the selfishness.

But antagonising the enemy’s occupying force of selfishness is insufficient in the long term; indefatigable, it will fight back and reconquer the territory it has lost, when the knight tires.

Rather, the enemy must be routed.

The apparent inconvenience of Step Twelve work is only a stepping stone.

The ideal condition is to be so surrendered to doing God’s will one forgets one ever had another life.

“To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one.” (Doctor’s Opinion)

This was written of active alcoholics.

But it can also be written of alcoholics active in AA:

To be so cheerful about doing God’s will it ceases to be work and becomes constant pleasure.

What’s your experience?

21 August 2024: Shut up

I have to be careful to avoid:

• Filling silence because I am uncomfortable
• Sharing every thought that has come to me
• Thinking of things to say for the sake of it
• Contributing more than my fair share to conversation
• Turning the conversation to myself
• Viewing meeting sharing limits at targets not caps
• Going over time because I haven’t finished
• Giving people advice they did not ask for
• Engaging people who signal wanting to be left alone
• Raising topics so I can vent my views
• Trying to find out why people are upset or quiet
• Thinking aloud
• Commenting on my own errors or disorganisation
• Justifying
• Explaining
• Defending
• Sharing intentions
• Bragging

I’ve still got a way to go.

I'm going to take a leaf out of Cogey's book:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C-vRr92RKZn/

What’s your experience?

20 August 2024: Thine own understanding

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

Common sense would thus become uncommon sense. (Big Book)

When I'm upset in any way at all, two things have happened. Firstly, I have concluded something. Secondly, I have concluded I am correct about my conclusion. I have thus leaned unto my own understanding twice: firstly of the situation and secondly of myself. In fact, self-propagated plans and designs are similarly based on two such conclusions, even in a place of apparent complete equanimity.

What I'm supposed to lean unto is God and God's will. This comes in the form of an inspiration, an intuitive thought, or a decision. These cannot be interrogated. One can consult, sure, and review and analyse, but history is littered with examples of things that seemed a great idea to people who were at least superficially well intentioned.

Thus common sense is elevated into uncommon sense: the uncommon sense is also a form of sense, but a higher form and a rarer one.

What's your experience?

19 August 2024: All

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

If we can answer to our satisfaction, we then look at Step Six. We have emphasized willingness as being indispensable. Are we now ready to let God remove from us all the things which we have admitted are objectionable? Can He now take them all—every one? If we still cling to something we will not let go, we ask God to help us be willing.

... all the things ... take them all ... every one ...

It’s not each but all. All: the totality, without exception.

I do not need to consider individual defects.

I’m looking at the totality of defectiveness.

The question is not whether I am willing to be free of this or that defect: it is whether I am willing to see that guarding any defect means I have not let go of the basic premise: I’m in charge, and what I want, I must have. Holding onto one defect in principle means I have not yet begun to understand the nature of the problem: I think I can remain in charge but co-opt God to remove from me anything that I think stands in my way. One hears people talking about defects being ‘survival mechanisms that no longer serve me’. I’m not the one to be served. God is the one to be served, and the defects are what stand in the way of serving God. Being entirely to ready to have such defects removed is to remain the big fat selfish emperor baby, with God as the minion, there to change its diaper. Any view of Step Six involving looking at the pros and cons, the prize and the price, of defects is still stuck in the self-serving mindset.

The deliberate or petulant retention in principle of a character defect is therefore a sign that the relationship with God is inverted, and needs to be upended: this is why the review of the first five steps is so important for Step Six: I discover myself entirely ready because:

1. My physical craving for alcohol, if set off by drinking alcohol, could kill me.
2. I must stay away from the first drink forever.
3. The thought of a drink will occur.
4. It will seem like a good idea: I will think it will serve me.
5. If I am out for me, out to serve me, then I will drink, and I will die. [See note]
6. If I am out for God, out to serve God, what serves me is irrelevant, and drinking is impossible.
7. Self-serving must go, so the defects must go, as part of this bigger project of the destruction of self.

[Pirkei Avot 1:14 He [Rabbi Hillel] used to say: If I am not for me, who will be for me? And when I am for myself alone, what am I? And if not now, then when?]

To use another analogy:

If one is hanging off the side of a burning building by one finger, the result is the same as if one is seated wholly inside the burning building.

One must let go absolutely. It’s not a question of fingers and releasing them one by one: it’s a matter of recognising what the fingers are hanging on to.

What’s your experience?

18 August 2024: All

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

Became would suggest a process. Were suggests a state.

Were entirely ready: this is less a Step to take and more a fact to observe.

The first five steps render me in a position where this is true.

The actual taking of the step is checking whether this is indeed true.

If it is not, there's a simple remedy: we ask God to help us be willing.

It is up to me to be willing. God can provide assistance, but the initiative is mine.

God will not make me willing against my will.

I must therefore be willing to be willing.

This means taking sides against my character defects, not defending them.

What's your experience?

17 August 2024: Just one line

As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day “Thy will be done.”

If this was the only extant programme action, the entire programme would replenish itself from this DNA. If this is all I do today, I will be doing very well indeed, provided I do it every time I am agitated or doubtful.

What's your experience?

16 August 2024: Actions count

... tu avais l’intention de nous sauver, et, aux yeux du Seigneur, c’est comme si tu avais réussi.

... you had the intention to save us, and, in the eyes of the Lord, it is as if you had succeeded.

Alexandre Dumas, La Tulipe Noire

Much twelfth-step work does not bring about the desired results in terms of the sponsee or other person being helped actually getting better.

But one gets points for trying sincerely to help.

At the very least, sobriety is pretty much guaranteed on the part of the person seeking to carry the message, provided that a few other simple rules are kept.

What's your experience?

15 August 2024: “A kindly act once in a while isn’t enough. You have to act the Good Samaritan every day, if need be.” (Big Book)

This applies more generally: I have a habit of adopting a solution when I’m being watched but then dropping it even though it works, once I’m no longer being watched, or precisely because it has worked.

Every day is a day when I have to bring the vision of God’s will into all my activities.

Every day is a day when I have to turn away from self, from negativity, from any scintilla of self-pity, gloom, cynicism, or alarm.

This is chiefly a question of smart action: share on these WhatsApp groups however busy I am or however I feel; share at meetings however busy I am or however I feel; respond to sponsees however busy I am or however I feel. Right action pulls my head out of my behind, but it’s tedious, trivial daily right action, not the occasional misery-driven flurry, that makes the real difference.

What’s your experience?

14 August 2024: Naugatuck

Three gems from an AA member in Naugatuck, CT.

Stop saying ‘I’ and start saying ‘we’.

Every time you’re upset, say ‘Whatever!’

Everything after ‘but’ is BS.

What's your experience?

13 August 2024: Blame

Someone overheard the following:

That is what’s so bad about credit cards. They allow you to spend more money than you have in your bank account and before you know it they have you in debt.

What a perfect example: it's much easier to blame people, places, and things (the corollary of which is falsely claiming powerlessness over them) than to accept responsibility.

What am I responsible for? Every belief, thought, behaviour, and whatever flows from these. That's a lot.

What's your experience?

12 August 2024: Levelling of pride

“There is a solution. Almost none of us liked the self-searching, the leveling of our pride, the confession of shortcomings which the process requires for its successful consummation. But we saw that it really worked in others, and we had come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as we had been living it. When, therefore, we were approached by those in whom the problem had been solved, there was nothing left for us but to pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools laid at our feet. We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed.” (Big Book)

Pride is false attachment to anything transient. Being sponsored is very tough on the pride. Pride says, “I got this.” A sponsor says: “You don’t got this.” Pride says, “I understand this.” A sponsor asks: “Do you? Try again.” And then you get to question everything. Every idea, every belief, every thought, every behaviour. Why is this necessary? When things are not working, the problem could lie anywhere, and everything is connected. None of this is personal. What is being challenged is not the person but the ideas, the beliefs, the thoughts, the behaviours. This is certainly necessary when one is new. It is also necessary when there is a crisis or the realisation that one has gotten majorly off track. It is also necessary when one first switches sponsors. After that, things get a little easier, as the new system settles down, but there are going to be doozies where, to step up to the next level, one has to let go of old ideas, including those that one has ‘learned’ ‘in AA’. The process often also requires reading the AA literature as though it has never been read before, to see what really says (which is usually at odds with what one has learned in meetings). It usually turns out it never has been read before. There is a difference between letting the words pass through one’s mind, with or without regurgitation, and reading. There’s a difference between reading to find out what the person is really saying, with no preconceptions, and imposing on what one reads what one wants to believe.

“But the program of action, though entirely sensible, was pretty drastic. It meant I would have to throw several lifelong conceptions out of the window. That was not easy.” (Big Book)

As long as one can learn to toughen up when having an idea challenged (after all, the idea is not the person, and being wrong does not mean one lacks capability), the process can actually become enjoyable and interesting. I have actually found it to be a great relief to be rid both of unhelpful ideas and ideas that I had accepted at face value without ever thinking them through.

What's your experience?

11 August 2024: Pop Quiz

The following passages from the Big Book contain descriptions of five people. One of them stays sober. The other four drink. One of them has had a psychic change. The others have not. One is spiritually fit. The others are not. Which is which?

(1) His physical and mental condition were unusually good.

(2) He is a good salesman. Everybody likes him. He is an intelligent man, normal so far as we can see.

(3) I was not too well at the time and was plagued by waves of self-pity and resentment.

(4) … he … retired at the age of fifty-five, after a successful and happy business career.

(5) Physically, I felt fine. Neither did I have any pressing problems or worries. My business came off well, I was pleased and knew my partners would be too. It was the end of a perfect day, not a cloud on the horizon.

No. 1 has not had a spiritual experience:

“Here and there, once in a while, alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences. To me these occurrences are phenomena. They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them. In fact, I have been trying to produce some such emotional rearrangement within you. With many individuals the methods which I employed are successful, but I have never been successful with an alcoholic of your description.”

He drinks again.

No. 2 “failed to enlarge his spiritual life”.

He drinks again.

No. 4 drinks again.

No. 5 “would not believe himself an alcoholic, much less accept a spiritual remedy for his problem”.

He drinks again.

No. 3 has had a spiritual experience, is in fit spiritual condition, as he continues to “perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others”.

“... but I soon found that when all other measures failed, work with another alcoholic would save the day. Many times I have gone to my old hospital in despair. On talking to a man there, I would be amazingly lifted up and set on my feet. It is a design for living that works in rough going.”

He stays sober.

I see from this that spiritual condition has nothing to do intrinsically with character, circumstances, physical condition, mental condition, or emotional condition. It has to do with whether one is serving God or self.

This takes the pressure off, as I do not need have good character, good circumstances, or a good physical, mental, or emotional condition to stay sober, although, if I serve God, these will all likely improve in God’s time from whatever the baseline is for these five parameters.

Rather, this gives me a simple project for the day: Serve God. When? Today. When is it today? Every day.

What's your experience?

10 August 2024: No further authentication

"To show other alcoholics precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book. For them, we hope these pages will prove so convincing that no further authentication will be necessary. (Foreword to the First Edition)

What convinced me in my first meeting that AA would work was the evidence in front of me of a disparate range of people who all testified that AA had helped them to stop drinking.

What convinced me years later was tapes of people talking about applying the Big Book in their lives and seeing those lives utterly transformed.

I did not stop to ask them whether they agreed with me politically or ideologically. I did not ask who they voted for or what their theology was. I did not care about their social background and status, accent, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, or other categorical classifiations. They did not need to look like me or sound like me to be like me, and I, like them.

They drank like me and yet they had got better, and their stories were enough.

All I needed to do was copy them.

AA remains amazing because I get to sit in rooms with people whose politics and worldview might be quite different from mine and yet I find ways of identifying with and learning from them, and I, in turn, am shown patience and tolerance for my quirks and character defects.

The patience and tolerance extends all the way into the literature: I get to accept the literature at face value, as the writings of people of good will in a different society and at a different time, whom I am to learn from, not criticise, and not attempt to change in any way. I would not like my words changed on the basis that people, now or in the future, disagree with my thoughts or how I express them, so I do not attempt to change theirs. They offer: I can either accept or thank and move on.

As I heard at a meeting in California many years ago:

"Take what you can and file the rest away for later consideration."

What's your experience?

9 August 2024: a God personal to me, who was love, superhuman strength and direction (Bill's Story)

To me, this means:

• God is actually interested in me and my life
• God is actively interested in my welfare
• God's direction is available to me: what to do today
• God's strength is available to me: the wherewithal to do it

As long as I stay in this lane, I'm looked after.

What's your experience?

8 August 2024: Fear

“We ask Him to remove our fear and direct our attention to what He would have us be. At once, we commence to outgrow fear.” (Page 68)

This morning, a fear thought knocked on the door. Part of me wanted to ‘investigate’ it (i.e. indulge it) before letting it go. Examining the ‘source’. Thinking through ‘options’. Strategising. Flow charts. Tree diagrams.

I prayed, and then it occurred to me: I’ll have to let it go sooner or later, so it might as well be sooner, and, if it’s sooner, it might as well be now. The first thing to do with fear is to ask for it to be removed.

My job is then to trust not that ‘it’ will be ‘OK’ (whatever ‘OK’ means) but that ‘I’ will be OK.

The ‘it’ will be as it will be, and I’ll just have to trust the world to handle its affairs.

I’m responsible only for my own affairs, plus whatever modest contribution God wants me to make to the world at large.

What’s your experience?

7 August 2024: Why?

“.. I drank to drown my sorrows” (Daily Reflections, 6 August 2024)

Yes. But:

I also had the first drink when I had no sorrows.

I also had the first drink when I knew the alcohol was not working anymore.

I drank because ... I’m an alcoholic and I was still enthroned as the master of my own destiny.

Also:

“If you ask him why he started on that last bender, the chances are he will offer you any one of a hundred alibis. Sometimes these excuses have a certain plausibility, but none of them really makes sense in the light of the havoc an alcoholic’s drinking bout creates. ... But in their hearts they really do not know why they do it. Once this malady has a real hold, they are a baffled lot.”

The why doesn’t matter: it’s the ‘that’ that matters: the fact that the thought of a drink will occur, and, if I’m in the habit of obeying self rather than God, I will drink, which is why I need to be in the habit of obeying God.

What’s your experience?

6 August 2024: Pain

Is the process of the Steps painful?

In my experience, no. There is not one element of the AA experience that is painful, in itself.

Actions, especially confession (Step Five) and amends (Step Nine) can be very uncomfortable in the moment, but they're like the pinpricks of injections or the pain of having a sticking plaster ripped off: the pain so rapidly yields to relief and other feelings that the 'pain' becomes almost enjoyable, a sign that release is on its way.

Every single dose of grinding, intolerable, unceasing pain comes not from the programme but my resistance to it, to some principle, to God's will, to reality, or to my perception of reality.

The widow in the Bible puts in her two mites and she's done. That's all she's got but it's all she gives.

Anyone who does not do that will see their universe crumble, slowly, and painfully. I've had that happen many times.

This need not be, ultimately, with some practice in surrender.

When I let go absolutely, I'm instantly absolutely fine.

What's your experience?

5 August 2024: ... evading responsibility (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

"I'm terrified."

"No you're not. Your dumb-ass brain's advance-warning system, which is malfunctioning, has offered up a lurid fantasy of doom, and you have decided to agree with it, and rewind and replay the fantasy repeatedly, and, as a result of that, you are feeling feelings of terror."

The language I use distorts my perception of reality. Today, I'm watching out for where the way I describe what is going on shifts responsibility to someone or something else or presents ms as being in a state for which I am not responsible.

How do you use language to avoid responsibility? How can you reframe that?

What's your experience?

4 August 2024: Turning it over

In Step Three, we are to turn over our wills and lives to God.

Turn over (per Webster's 1913):

To transfer; as, to turn over business to another hand.

I can transfer only what is in my hand. You are not in my hand. The world is not in my hand. The past and future are not in my hand. Outcomes are not in my hand. I cannot turn these over. The delusion that they are in my hand must be smashed.

What is turned over?

My will (my determined course of action) and my life (my pursuit of that course of action) are transferred to God, and are matched by the two notions of the knowledge of God's will for me and the power to carry that out.

I do that by asking God for what to do and then by asking God for the strength to do it.

That is the entire programme. The only two ways to fail are not to do that or to do other than that.

What's your experience?

3 August 2024: Two-Stepping

Without necessarily taking that first drink, we often get quite far off the beam. Our troubles sometimes begin with indifference. We are sober and happy in our AA work. Things go well at home and office. We naturally congratulate ourselves on what later proves to be a far too easy and superficial point of view. We temporarily cease to grow because we feel satisfied that there is no need for all of AA’s Twelve Steps for us. We are doing fine on a few of them. Maybe we are doing fine on only two of them, the First Step and that part of the Twelfth where we “carry the message.” In AA slang, that blissful state is known as “two-stepping.” And it can go on for years. (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

The chief sign of two-stepping is where I find myself again and again being 'saved' by twelfth-step work and service. Twelfth-step work works when other activities fail, not because other activities fail. Other activities should and do largely work.

It is certainly the case that, when other activities (exceptionally) fail, I must engage heavily in service and twelfth-step work as the only available remedy.

It is also the case that, when I am generally off-bream and realise I need to rework the first eleven steps to come back on beam, it is the twelfth-step work that (a) keep my head above the water (the drink) and (b) empowers me to actually do the reworking work.

However, when I find myself in the position of someone 'whose head is always insane unless I'm doing service or sponsorship', there's something wrong. Something in the first eleven steps has been missed: usually a lot of things. Almost invariably I'm (a) attached to material-world outcomes (hard to achieve, and yield only thin and exiguous milk, regardless of how one works the udders, as it were) and (b) not trusting God's plan for my 'salvation'. Everything else is detail.

Step Twelve should ideally arise out of abundance. It should not be the hammer to break the glass again and again because the carriage is full of smoke. The carriage is not full of smoke because life is being lifey or life does not stop happening just because one is sober. It is full of smoke because my arse is on fire, and the question is then to find out why my arse is so flammable.

What's your experience of two-stepping?

2 August 2024: Concept X

Concept X: Every service responsibility should be matched by an equal service authority — the scope of such authority to be always well defined whether by tradition, by resolution, by specific job description or by appropriate charters and bylaws.

Concept X tells me I need to match authority and responsibility. My area of responsibility is the set of duties and outcomes for which I am accountable. My job therefore is to exercise authority (decision-making and follow-through) within that area of responsibility but not beyond it.

Two questions to ask myself:

Where am I exercising authority where I do not have responsibility (= interference)?

Where am I failing to exercise authority where I do have responsibility (= avoidance)?

What's your experience with Concept X?

1 August 2024: The work

A few are fortunate enough to be so situated that they can give nearly all their time to the work. (Chapter 2)

We do not like the thought that the contents of a book or the work of another alcoholic has accomplished in a few weeks that for which we struggled for years. (Chapter 8)

This couple has since become so fascinated that they have dedicated their home to the work. (Chapter 11)

The 'work' in AA is the facilitation and performance of carrying the message.

How much time am I spending on the programme each day?

It's the time I am spending on the facilitation and performance of carrying the message.

It's possible to be spending hours on AA activities each day, whilst spending nought minutes on 'the work'.

Everything else, all the 'work on myself', and anything contained in the first 11 steps, is not the work but the preparation for the work.

When I'm not getting the promised results of being happy, joyous, and free, even though I'm apparently doing 'lots of AA things, including work on myself', it's usually because I'm not doing 'the work' as described above.

The solution when I'm in a bad way is not the first eleven steps. It's the Twelfth Step.

What's your experience?

31 July 2024: The spiritual dos

More cheerfully:

A list of the 'dos' in Chapters Seven to Nine. Overly specific instructions have been ignored; what is set out below is a list of general spiritual principles. Duplicates are ignored.

• Cooperate (89:3)
• Be helpful (89:3)
• Be patient (90:1)
• Put yourself in the other person's place (90:2)
• Wait (90:3)
• Be sane (94:1)
• Be quiet (94:1)
• Be full of human understanding (94:1)
• Offer friendship (95:1)
• Offer fellowship (95:1)
• Use discretion (96:3)
• Concentrate on your own spiritual demonstration (98:3)
• Be considerate (99:1)
• Increase the pleasure of others (102:1)
• Attend to your business enthusiastically (102:1)
• Be of good temper (111:1)
• Use your energies to promote a better understanding (115:3)
• Defuse heated discussion (118:1)
• Be tolerant (118:2)
• Be loving (118:2)
• Live and let live (118:2)
• Show a willingness to remedy defects (118:2)
• Count blessings (119:1)
• Think of what you can put into life (120:0)
• Cheer others up (120:1)
• Ask how you can be helpful (120:1)
• See what you can give (122:2)
• Face and rectify errors and convert them into assets (124:1)
• Be thankful (127:0)
• Praise progress (127:0)
• Be flexible ('yield here and there') (131:2)
• Thoughtfully consider the needs of others (131:2)
• Insist on enjoying life (132:1)
• Cheerfully capitalise trouble (133:0)
• First things first (135:5)
• Easy does it (135:5)

To follow on from yesterday, practising the AA programme means practising all of the above until they become one's character.

Over the next twenty-four hours, I'm going to be practising: being grateful.

To be grateful requires me to be observant, and, in being observant to what is going on around me, I can neglect the internal temptations to self-absorption and negativity.

What are you going to be practising?

30 July 2024: The spiritual don'ts

A list of the 'don'ts' in Chapters Seven to Nine. Overly specific instructions have been ignored; what is set out below is a list of general spiritual principles. Duplicates are ignored.

• Criticising (89:3)
• Forcing yourself on people (90:4)
• Pleading hysterically (90:4)
• Being over-anxious (91:0)
• Putting pressure on people (91:2)
• Moralising (91:3)
• Lecturing (91:3)
• Nagging (91:1)
• Taking offence (94:1)
• Being contradictory (94:2)
• Wearing out your welcome (95:1)
• Exhibiting passion for crusade or reform (95:1)
• Talking down from a spiritual hilltop (95:1)
• Prodding (95:3)
• Pushing (95:3)
• Discouragement (96:1)
• Avoiding responsibilities (97:1)
• Depending on people ahead of God (98:1)
• Arguing (98:3)
• Fault-finding (98:3)
• Participating in the quarrels of others (100:2)
• Thinking of what you can get out of a situation (102:0)
• Withdrawing (102:1)
• Intolerance (103:1)
• Hatred (103:1)
• Bitterness (103:2)
• Hostility (103:2)
• Fighting anything or anyone (103:3)
• Condemnation (108:1)
• Anger (111:0)
• Being a killjoy (111:2)
• Hurry (113:1)
• Crowding people (113:2)
• Taking sides in arguments (115:3)
• Resentful or critical disagreement (117:3)
• Expecting too much (118:2)
• Urging attention for yourself (119:1)
• Dampening enthusiasm (119:1)
• Complaining (119:2)
• Reminding others of spiritual deficiency (120:2)
• Arranging others' lives (120:3)
• Guiding the appointments or affairs of others (120:3)
• Wrapping others in cotton wool (122:1)
• Placing others on a pedestal (122:1)
• Having fixed ideas about others' attitudes towards you (122:1)
• Interest in having your wishes respected (122:1)
• Demanding that others concede (122:1)
• Playing the lead (122:2)
• Arranging the show to your liking (122:2)
• Measuring life against that of other years (123:1)
• Reproach (123:3)
• Digging up past misdeeds (124:3)
• Gossip (125:2)
• Ridicule (125:2)
• Making careless or inconsiderate remarks (125:2)
• Placing money first (127:1)
• Self-pity (127:3)
• Self-justification (127:3)
• Rancour (134:3)
• Bias (134:3)
• Standing in judgment (135:2)
• Pettiness ('making a burning issue out of ...') (135:2)

These are all part of the first 164 pages, which, according to the flyleaf of the third edition of the Big Book, is the AA message.

That means that practising the programme is about not just going through the Steps formally but trying to apply all of the programme in one's home, occupation, and affairs.

NB Spiritual Dos are coming tomorrow.

Over the next twenty-four hours I'm going to be practising avoiding:

"- Interest in having your wishes respected (122:1)"

… because I'm in a house with a dozen people and I'm only, therefore, one-twelfth or so of the people here.

Motto: yield wherever possible, and do so without complaint or leaking disappointment. Let others take the lead.

29 July 2024: Change begins with me

Over thirty-one years ago, I said to Brian, "I don't why I drank again. I was doing so well with the programme."

He said: "You were doing very well, except for the not-drinking part."

Frequently, since then, I've wondered why I was apparently 'slipping' on 'old' behaviours (really current behaviours: if they were really old, there would not be a problem), particularly because I was 'doing so well with the programme'.

I'll tell you why: I was doing very well, except for the changing part.

The Steps won't force me to change. They'll help me change, and cushion the blow. But they won't change me against my will. I have to want to change. No. Scratch that. I have to want to change and be willing to change. Which usually means being willing to go through the pain of keeping my big fat mouth shut and refusing to let certain narratives occupy my mind for more than a nanosecond. 'Who will I be if I let go of all of that?' No one. Nothing. Exactly. That's the whole point of this. Who I appear to be has to go.

How it works is this: I recognise there's a problem and specify it (that's Steps One through Seven). There might be amends, and there will certainly be alternative ways of living in Steps Ten through Twelve that serve as an adequate substitute and distraction whilst I'm withdrawing and running new habits into a groove. But Steps Ten through Twelve (and God) will not force me to stop acting out or start acting well. I have to do that, through gritted teeth. I literally have to pretend to be a different person. God gives me sufficient strength to bear the pain of change but will not change me for me. I have to put my best foot forward. Then I discover that the person I am pretending to be is who I really am.

Here are some things that do not stop unless I stop them, one damn minute at a time:

• Arguing
• Complaining
• Worrying
• Resenting
• Fantasising
• Acting out with food
• Acting out with sex
• Unnecessary criticism
• Manipulation
• Overspending
• Acting on impulse

Here are some things that do not start unless I start them, one damn minute at a time:

• Working (work first, fun later)
• Recording what I spend and keeping within my budget
• Eating properly
• Exercising reasonably
• Fulfilling obligations
• Offering to help in any situation I find myself in
• Positioning myself to help those who are new or in trouble
• Sharing at meetings
• Going for fellowship
• Sponsoring others (whether the relationship is formalised or not)
• Doing service

I'm sure most people could continue these lists.

Everything starts with the desire not to 'be my authentic self' but to be rid of the 'personality' and lifestyle the real me has been hiding behind.

They weren't kidding when they talked about a psychic change.

What's your experience?

28 July 2024: A different angle

"We were prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle." (Chapter Five)

Yesterday, a news snippet disturbed me. I woke up thinking about it. I applied the above line but did not try to bring about the new angle myself. Instead, I said to God, "Show me a different way to look at this situation." I then said set prayers whenever the topic came into my mind and adopted a position of trust. The waves of thoughts abated.

What's your experience?

27 July 2024: The alcoholic aria: me-me-me-me-meeeeeee

"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." (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions)

I put character-building and spiritual values first not by putting those things first but by constructing a good list of constructive things to do today (which have nothing to do with personal ambitions) and simply getting on with it, having made contact with God first and shown up for duty. That is the lion's share. The rest resides in activating an appropriateness-module in how I'm behaving: something that reins me in, takes me out of centre-stage, and has me largely be quiet, except when I am genuinely called upon to take a lead. This, of course, is asking God to act through me in real time. It turns out most things do not need to be said, and most impulses are without value.

What's your experience?

26 July 2024: Perpetual possibility

"We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition." (Page 85)

To me, this means that drinking again or acting out in other ways is a perpetual possibility.

I'm never guaranteed sobriety absolutely, on any given day, let alone the rest of my life.

What I am offered is a deal where if I do my part, God will do God's part, and I will be safe:

"We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality—safe and protected." (Page 85)

This means I have to stay close to God today and do God's will today.

What's your experience?