~ As Bill Sees It: Is Sobriety Enough? ~ p. 227
The alcoholic is like a tornado roaring his way through the lives of others. Hearts are broken. Sweet relationships are dead. Affections have been uprooted. Selfish and inconsiderate habits have kept the home in turmoil. We feel a man is unthinking when he says that sobriety is enough. He is like the farmer who came up out of his cyclone cellar to find his home ruined. To his wife, he remarked, “Don’t see anything the matter here, Ma. Ain’t it grand the wind stopped blowin’?”
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We ask ourselves what we mean when we say that we have “harmed” other people. What kinds of “harm” do people do one another, anyway? To define the word “harm” in a practical way, we might call it the result of instincts in collision, which cause physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual damage to those about us.
I still hit about 3-4 meetings a week. I’d say the average is two a week because there are times when this just doesn’t happen though. There are some life events that come about and I simply choose them over a meeting. But, make no mistake…I will not go more than a week without at least ONE meeting. If it happens, as I am not perfect, I feel my life begin to gust. I know where my life is headed so I get to a meeting.
So, this morning…after having missed a week of meetings…I felt a bit odd so I got to my Tuesday Morning “As Bill See It Meeting.” I have to say that 99% of the time I totally love this meeting. This morning was no exception to the nearly perfect record (progress not perfection, right?). Anyhow, the meeting was based on page 227 of the ‘As Bill Sees It Book,’ and I believe it is categorized under Complacency.
I think a lot of newly sober people and the ones around them, often feel that since the alcohol and drugs have been set to side that all is now okay. That’s so incredibly far from the truth. Many believe that alcohol and drugs are the problem, when in fact it’s the addict mind working, or not working, that creates all the pandemonium. For most of us we drank or used to cope with some sort of trauma, and that’s when life started swirling, spiraling out of control.
So, although getting clean is amazingly hard, getting sober can be equally hard. We need to learn to deal, cope and adjust to our life in a new way. We do that by going to meetings, getting a sponsor, and learning the 12 Step program.
Get to work.
The program works if you work it.
Recovery Rob BIO
Recovery Rob is a 48-year-old man who has more than twenty years of sobriety, whose drugs of choice at one time were alcohol and drugs, and he has worked in and around the field of addiction for more than 30 years. Having just recently launched his own website, www.askrecoveryrob.com, he hopes to reach out and continue to help others who work through their process of addiction and recovery. Recovery Rob is a professional writer who has published two novels and is currently working on his third. He has been writing and working as Pat Moore Foundation’s premiere blogger and content writer, which helps keeps Pat Moore Foundation’s addiction and recovery blog top-rated.