It’s always about sobriety, isn’t it. No matter what is going on. If I had lived still drinking, I wouldn’t have any of the “problems” I now have. I’d have just one problem: How to stay alive and wishing I was dead.
Every once in a while I have to stop and think about the fact that all I have today is due to the fact that I was able to get sober. I have to think that I really wasn’t able to get sober, I couldn’t. I had tried many times to stop drinking but I couldn’t. Not on my own. I needed help and I got it through this program. It was the program which introduced me to my higher power and led me to the God of my understanding. It enabled me to maintain and attain to things, which were once out of reach because of my drinking.
I have to remember the fact that my sobriety is the most important thing I have this day or any day. I know from my experience that I can get caught up in almost any aspect of my day and quickly forget this. I can become obsessed with a problem. Any problem. It can blind me a deafen me to the solution and erase the memory of my sobriety. I can forget so easily. Anger, fear, pride, self pity, any number of my defects can come back and overwhelm me.
What I have to remember most at the start of my day is that I have to be grateful to God and this program for this gift of sobriety. I have to ask God to remind me of it often, lest I forget and drift toward that first drink again.
I can do that by attending a meeting and being reminded of where my thoughts should be. I can do that by reaching out and helping someone else.
I can do that by talking to another person in this program. I can do that by picking up the BB or the 12&12 and reading a passage; any passage.
When I paused this morning to think and pray, I was thinking of how grateful I have to be for this gift I have been given: Sobriety.