No joke. A remark in the meeting today, making light of taking a drink, brought an instantaneous reponse from an old timer. They said there was nothing funny about alcohol for the alcoholic. This was serious business, abstaining from alcohol, which almost killed most of us. A life and death proposition.
As I said, most of us, like myself, found that we had made it to the program in the nick of time. Maybe the razors edge. There was nothing funny going on that last day of drinking. I was in the deep part of that alcoholic hell on earth. I wanted to end my life here on earth, rather than go on drinking. I was already alcoholically insane and couldn’t stand it anymore. Thankfully someone reached out and pulled me out of that bar and opened the door to this program, which saved my life.
As that old timer pointed out, it’s all right to laugh at things, which tickle us. We often laugh at what others might not laugh at. Our narrow excapes and the garbage our lives had turned into. But, making light of taking a drink is not one of them.
Today, despite what might be going on in my life on the negative side, is a good day to be sober. I was thinking that as I entered the meeting. How grateful I am that I am sober today and I didn’t want to drink today. How abnormal that is for the alcoholic. By my very nature that’s what I should be doing. Except for this program, which introduced me to the solution to my alcoholic drinking and freed me from the bondage in which alcohol had held me for so many years.
The introduction to the concept that my dilemma was lack of power and I needed to come to believe in a power greater than myself, who could give me the power I needed to live this life.
Somehow I came to believe that this was possible and I grabbed onto it with all that was left in me. Eventually, l learned just who that higher power was in my life, the God of my understanding, and became willing to enter into a spiritual way of life, which was to sustain my pursuit of sobriety.
That meant that I had to begin to study the BB and become open to applying the 12 Steps to my life. That’s one of the reasons I was at the meeting today. To be reminded of what is important in my life in order to stay sober today. I’m still studying the BB and these Steps. I realize I’m not done. There’s always more to do.
Anyway, I was sitting here thinking about all of this and how grateful I am that I have people in my life to point out what’s important for me to think about and put into action.