Today, once again, I had to go back and think and remember what it was that began my life in sobriety. I can never forget that and I never want to forget. It not only saved my life, it helped me to begin to learn how to live life. Alcohol had taken all that away. Now I was being given what I had almost lost. My life.
So, when I am at meetings where getting sober is being discussed, I have to not only think about all of this, but to talk and share what it was that turned me around and saved my life. Of course the first thing was the gift of hope one friend gave me. I knew nothing about AA before he spoke to me and told me there was a place, where men and women met and stayed sober together, and he wanted me to go there.
That led to my first prayer in a long long time. I remember I totally surrendered. I told God, as I understood Him, that I was willing to give up alcohol, and turn my will and my life over to Him. I wanted to surrender and stop living the life I was living with alcohol. I wanted to change. And the next day I woke up and alcohol was gone.
Then I came to my first meeting and was not only welcomed, but I never forgot the fact that they were really talking about the very thing I had gone through. Surrendering to giving up alcohol. But then they went on and on with what they did next. Began to start to live a sober life and do whatever was necessary to change. They talked about starting to live this way of life. And an old timer stopped that night, Jan. 6, and read the first paragraph in the Jan. 6 page of the Twenty-Four Hour a Day book. I never ever want to forget that either.
I thought about all of this. And I shared how my old sponsor told me that I not only didn’t know that I didn’t know, I only thought I did. It knocked the wind out of me. And then he told me that what I had learned didn’t mean a thing. I was going to have to learn all that I didn’t know. And that was how to live a sober life. He told me that I had to not read the BB. He told me that I had to study it. And that began for me this way of life. And I’m still living it.
Anyway, I did stop and think about all of this and more. I am so grateful. I was given a spiritual awakening. I began to learn how to stay sober a day at a time. I learned all of this from those old timers and the BB. I was helped to learn how to change my whole life. And over time I not only began to learn how to do this, but still try to continue this a day at a time. I don’t think I will ever complete this. Like they told me, that time takes time.