Couldn’t get to a meeting today. The weather was such I had no chance for a ride. So, I decided to do two things to help me stay in contact with this program. One was the BB and the other was someone I have known for almost as much time I have been in here. They are from my old group down in Md.
Anyway I got a lot of help from my friend and a lot from the BB. In fact I read the Doctor’s Opinion about those two men at the end of that chapter and how they stopped drinking and what he thought. And then later on, reading the Tenth Step, I saw almost the same thing the doctor talked about. Encouraging.
I know for myself, and from what my friend said, that we have a definite identity with those alcoholics talked about. We have definitely been freed from alcohol. Not that we’re cured, but the thought of alcohol has been suspended. Any problems I have today are not caused by alcohol. My life has been changed, definitely. My friend and I are not the people, who walked through these doors a long time ago.
The gift we have been given I think of as almost breathtaking. Still amazing. The despair I was in back then has never returned. When I prayed and surrendered I was relieved of the hold alcohol had on me. I can only view it as a miracle. I can never look at myself as someone, who was worthy of a cure. I see myself as having a gift, for which I must be grateful. And I know I have learned from those old timers, my old sponsor, what I desperately needed to know.
I look back at that person in the Doctor’s Opinion, who abandoned his life and was ready to die, since he was so defeated. That was me. I was ready to end my life. Like that man I could not go on drinking. I was so hopeless, and then a friend of mine changed that, when he gave me hope. And that’s what opened the door to pray and ask for help.
My friend has almost the same story. We were both defeated, and then given freedom from alcohol. And what’s so great in our lives, to help us express gratitude, is our being able to freely give this gift to others like ourselves, who need the help we were given.
Anyway, it was like going to a meeting for me and my friend. Both of us were grateful for the gift this program always gives us, a day at a time.