Sometimes, when thoughts come up in my mind in a meeting, I have to wait and reflect on it later, like right now.
What happened was someone brought up that they had a resentment with someone in this program. They also mentioned that they were struggling thinking about leaving the program. Pretty much what I remembered about what they said.
Most people talked about the resentment. That of course is always a good topic, because one of the primary dangers to our sobriety is a resentment. When our emotions take over our thinking.
But what hit me was that this person, like so many before, was really talking about the First Step and the Second Step. My experience with this goes back a long way. A man I knew back many years ago, came to me, when he had returned from going back out and drinking again. What he told me and what happened to him next really stuck with me since then.
He told me that in his first five years that he had really surrendered and worked the Steps of this program. Then he told me that in next five years he had gotten a resentment with someone in his home group. He continued to go to meetings, but the resentment continued to grow and expand. That was because he was building resentments against others who liked the man he resented and how they supported that man. Soon, he said, he left the group and didn’t go back. He had by then developed a resentment with the whole group.
For the second five years he didn’t drink, but he had stopped going to meetings and working these Steps. He told me that he knew he had picked up the next drink five years before he drank it. Then he had gone out and gotten drunk again. Shortly after that he had a heart attack and was hospitalized. That’s what the drink had done to him. He said that was the diagnosis at the hospital. Shortly after he told me all of this, he died. Pretty much tells me that alcohol killed him.
I couldn’t help but relate all of this to what this person was talking about today. I thought
about what I was told by my sponsor and a lot of those old timers. They told me that after we come in that the first thing we have to accomplish, in order to stay sober, was to get well physically. The next step in recovery was for us to get well mentally. And finally to continue to recover and stay sober we have to get well spiritually. And I believe that’s what happened to me.
However when we begin to return to the sickness we have just recovered from, the first thing which goes is just in reverse. The first to go is our spiritual recovery. The next is the mental. And then we’re left with only the physical and, without the mental and spiritual to protect us, we will probably drink again. And the only solution to avoid this is a total surrender on our part. We need to begin to practice the Second Step all over again. We’re going to have to put the control of emotions over our mind aside. In other words we are probably talking about a miracle, I think.
Someone in the meeting referred to what the BB says about when a resentment owns us. In How It Works we’re told that resentments cut us off from the sunlight of the spirit. The insanity returns and we drink again. I know I have seen this over and over and I know it drove me to finally learn how to practice the spiritual axiom in the 12&12. Whenever I’m disturbed there is something wrong with me. It’s not about another person. It’s about me.
That was not an overnight process. I had to get rid of a lot of my “intellectualizing” and resistance to the truth. My self centered ego, of course. Again time takes time. But it did work. Still does. A reminder to do what the Prayer of St. Francis says in the Eleventh Step in the 12&12. What it says in the Lord’s Prayer at the end of each meeting.
Anyway I knew I needed to sit down and meditate on all of this. I can only hope that the person talked to others after the meeting and then took the time to do what we all need to do. To ask our Higher Power for the help I need. We need.
Anyway it was a great reminder to me that I cannot stay sober by myself. I have to go to meetings and be reminded that I need to be tolerant toward people, places, and things. Takes practice, practice, practice. Not always easy but do-able. Especially if I want to stay sober. Makes me grateful for what I have been given. Have to thank my Higher Power and all these people I share my sobriety with and who share theirs with me.