First Things First & Boundaries� (c2000)
I've been hearing a lot about types of AA meetings, and what's "OK" or not....� This is what works for me.
First Things First:
When I relate any part of my story to my alcoholism,
which isn't hard for me to do, I can talk about anything in AA that I need
to talk about.... I've done it for years.
Boundaries:
I just need to develop appropriate boundaries / focus
for whichever 12-step meeting I am choosing to attend, be it AA, ACOA,
open or closed, etc.....� Or any of the many others.... And that,
to me, is the key.....
For Me, It's All About A Drink Or Not:
I prefer the "not".� I've found that all my causes
& conditions,� which the 4th Step wants me to deal with, relate
to my active alcoholism.� I can do this in a general way, as guided
by "How It Works" -- I don't have to do gory details here.� The 10th
step wants me to keep current with my causes & conditions as they re-surface
in sobriety.
So all the other "stuff":� ACOA & codependency & relationship & Al-Anon issues, eating disorders & abuse issues:� they ALL relate to my alcoholism and my recovery thereof....So would gambling & sex & work, etc. addictions if I had them.... I make a "bad joke" about stuff someone else is bugging me with by telling them that I will put their demand, unreasonable request, or whatever the heck it is, on my "I'll Drink Over It Later " List.... which to me is the same as filing it in the circular file....�� Sometimes I'm the only one who thinks my joke is funny!� I don't want to go there.
I am alcoholic in recovery, my primary purpose is to stay sober, and to do that I have to deal with my "stuff"....� I do not want any "stuff to drink over".� I've done that in AA, AA-ACOA, and therapy.� I write in a journal on a daily basis. I meditate.� I talk to the God of my understanding, and then I listen as best I am able.
My friends, my partner -- are alcoholic in recovery &/or non-alcoholic in some kind of recovery, my family is alcoholic &/or ACOA not in recovery, & then there's co-workers, acquaintances, and people I encounter for whatever reason.... and they ALL have "stuff"....� Al-Anon / ACOA programs help me know how to live with myself and my friends and my family, and the world at large..... I want to stay sober more than anything else.� So I learn to deal with the "stuff".....
I recently was reminded about the book Sermon On The Mount, by Emmet Fox.� It's got one of the most detailed "recipes" for dealing with resentments that I've ever been given or used.� It's in the part where the author "dissects"� The Lord's Prayer and says what each of the parts means to him.� It's awfully similar to the Big Book parts about resentment & praying for people with whom one has such.� No, I don't remember what pages.....
So, as usual, I take what I like and leave the rest.� I need all the help I can get.....
Another sober thought.... You know that one about "if you don't seek humility, it'll be delivered"?� And the real "kicker" is: How loud does it have to get before I can hear it?� I hear better in sobriety than I did as an active drunk.....
I get messages from "the Universe" all the time.... from other people, from books & music & street signs & television/radio/computer, shower thoughts, you name it.... hmmmm, God maintaining anonymity again?????
This one is about boundaries.... thanks, God, for the reminder.
What I needed to remember today, slight "ouch"..... I decide my own boundaries.� I do not decide or choose "your" boundaries, no matter who "you" are.� I do, however, watch your boundaries to see if they are something I can live with or not, and then I make choices appropriate for who I am.
Not always an easy distinction to make....
I find this version of the Serenity Prayer helps me!� I've heard it at meetings.....
God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change (You)
To change the things I can (Me)
And I damn sure know the difference
between You and Me!
I find it "weird" how lasting and beneficial things can come out of trauma, hurt, & anguish.� I may "never" fully understand it.� But then I don't fully understand "God, as I understand Him" either, and those benefits are surely God-shot deals.� I don't have any other way to explain them.� I used to hear this one man in Maine AA say that if he understood God, then he wouldn't need God.� Hmmmm....
In 1989, I went through a God-shot deal that was two months
of joy & openings, followed by two months of troubled times, followed
by two more months of huge losses, trauma, hurt, and anguish.� That
was followed by one year of learning to live with difficult change and
open-endedness and "unknowable what's-next".� Then there was two years
of digesting the
openings and endings, the realities and fantasies, the
pain and growth. One of my longest sober growth spurts, it covered the
span of my 6th, 7th, and 8th AA sober anniversaries.
Out of that experience, from many facets of life and multiple spiritual sources, of which AA was one, came the following prayer which saved my sobriety and my life.� I wrote it, yet it was given to me by the Universe.� I needed it.� I still use it today.� It goes as follows:
"God, please keep me sober today.� Please help me through today.� Please tell me what to do, please help me to do it, please do it for me when I can't so that I can do today your way. Thanks, God."
My first sponsor is the one who taught me that "please" and "thank you" worked with prayer as well as with people.� She's since gone to the great meeting in the sky, so to speak.� Thanks, Dori.� And, no, she wasn't part of the three-year growth spurt / trauma / learning deal. Yet another benefit of that deal was that I was still in Maine when I'd thought I'd be in New Mexico.� And I was there for her passing.� She had Multiple Sclerosis, and left the planet while in her middle 30's.� She's one of the most courageous people I've ever had the privilege to know. Thank you, God.
I woke up this morning with "How It Works" running through my brain.� It could have been worse! LOL!� So what's going on here, I said to myself.....
Haul out my Big Book.... even after 16 �� years my Big Book is somewhere nearby.� Color-coded from many readings in various ink underlinings with high-lighter additions in pink green yellow orange blue...... Notes in the margins.... so THAT'S what I thought about that.....
"How It Works", from chapter five of the Big Book..... "Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path...."� At how many countless meetings have I heard those words!� How many times do I mumble those words to myself when I see or hear something that troubles me...... Lots.....
Some variations I've also heard �
How It Works..... it works just fine, thank you!
How It Works..... it works if I work it......
How It Works..... the steps are how it works, the traditions
are why it works....
How It Works..... read the (various descriptive adjectives)
book, it's in there.....
How it works..... thoroughly followed our path.... honest with themselves..... a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty.... capacity to be honest.� "Honest" is in the first paragraph THREE times..... must be important, yes? LOL!
If you want what we have..... willing to go to any length to get it..... balked... easier, softer way, but we could not..... alcohol, cunning baffling powerful, without help it is too much for us, but there is One who has all power..... half measures availed us nothing.... here are the steps we took.....
Do you have any clue what it's like to brush your teeth the "quickie skip the corners" way and have running in your head "half measures availed us nothing"?????� What a wild brain I have!� I have sober teeth as well!
No wonder it takes "hitting bottom" in order to make room internally for honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness!� That's a tall order.� Daily reprieve from active alcoholism, freedom from that first drink one day at a time..... That's a tall gift.� Think I'll continue to keep doing what I'm doing so I can keep the gift of sobriety.
Got another opportunity to write what I call "those dang God-shot letters" today.� It was either that or have a resentment, and I just wasn't up for a big ole resentment today......
So I went hunting in my Big Book for some stuff about anger.... Sometimes I wish I'd get one of those Big Book Index "thingies"..... Ah, yes, it's right there in How It Works.� "Resentment is the �number one' offender." and "If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us.� They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for an alcoholic these things are poison."
Ok, HP, I said, now how does this recovering alcoholic� translate all that into something an 83-year-old non-alcoholic with selective listening who also does avoidance just might be able to hear?� How do I say what I need to say?� Please help, HP.� Here's what came:
"Dear (name),
I got something bothering me, and I figure this is
the best way for me to get it all out in one piece.� I know you will
do with it whatever it is that you do.� I am hoping you will read
this all the way through. Thanks in advance for listening.
"I understand that you.....� Your experience with.... is different than my experience with....� I don't ask you to deny your experience with...., and ask that you do not deny or dismiss mine.
"What I'd like you to know is.......
"And yes, you have every right to..... Just don't expect me to like it.
"I have a right to how I feel, and a right to say what I need to say.� I don't have the luxury of not dealing with things that bother me, I cannot afford to ignore the things that anger me, that cause me hurt.� To ignore them is to let them fester, and to let things fester is to give myself some lame excuse to drink, and I do not want to ever go back to that place.� To say them where they need to be said is to release them and let them go.
"So, thank you for letting me say what I needed to say."
Then I signed it, and mailed it, and drove around town until I could better let it go.� I got to say what I needed to say, and that is about all I can expect from this.... and I didn't get a resentment... And I didn't pick up a drink.� Thank you, God.
"Bottom" �� when there's no more room to go down..... "Hitting Bottom" �� when that's as far down into the pit of Whatever Hell I needed to go to so that I could finally see that alcohol no longer worked for me, solution-wise or other-wise.� That's when I became willing To Do Anything, Whatever It Takes To Not Go There anymore, especially to not pick up that first drink and start the whole cycle in motion again.
And began to learn how to live life without a drink, to learn how to live life sober......
It's a different "place"/ feeling for different people because each has different levels of denial, different tolerances for pain and abuse, different needs for escape and oblivion, different ideas of fun and partying, different tolerances for alcohol's physical, emotional, mental, spiritual effects.....
What &/or How much do I have to LOSE� before I say, my body says, the Universe says (my friends have already said it.... my family has no clue.....): "Enough is Enough"?� That's what I know as "hitting bottom".... How LOUD does the message have to get before I can hear "Enough is enough"?� That's "hitting bottom"....
Getting drunk and vomiting my first time drinking..... that wasn't loud enough.� My family said "oh, isn't that cute".� I was 17 yrs old, drinking with friends and family in my parent's home.
Getting drunk and attempting suicide because a boyfriend ended our relationship in a letter that also said that my best wasn't good enough, and I believed him..... that wasn't loud enough.� I was 22 yrs old in a locked psych ward, they called it circumstantial, and I was drinking within MINUTES of my hospital release.
"Coming to" from a black-out, driving my car home from a party in the middle of the night, trying to "lose" the guy I'd invited to follow me home, not having any clue for miles where I was until I recognized a place that I used to baby-sit when I was a teenager..... that wasn't loud enough.� I was 25 yrs old.
Driving in black-outs yet not getting a DUI or DWI or OUI (whichever U.S. state I was driving in at the time)..... I got away with it, so that wasn't loud enough. I was between 20 and 34 yrs old� for those times.....
Having a fellow teacher tell me she could smell the Schnapps on my breath at my school's Open House �� I taught 7th grade � (I hated Open House) while I had to talk to tons of parents and remember kids' names that I barely knew because it was only the beginning of the school year, all at the end of what had already been a long day of teaching....� that wasn't loud enough.� I was 32 or so yrs old.
Fighting with my then-husband about how much I drank, hiding what I drank, and having him clean up after me when I blacked out and raged or vomited or went into a crying jag....� to the point that he wouldn't take me anywhere anymore.... yet he didn't want to lose his best drinking buddy, he just wanted me to slow down a bit..... I was 26 to 33 yrs old.
Stealing money from the Freshman Class Activity Fund (I was the responsible adult Class Advisor) to support my drinking at the end of the month when my paycheck wasn't due for 3 more days..... I was 32 or 33 yrs old.
And TONS of other stuff, a lot of it the same old same old......� I was a functioning drunk.� I didn't kill any one.� I didn't have big car accidents.� I wasn't in any news headlines.� I paid my bills, mostly on time.� I didn't live under a bridge or in the streets.� I drank expensive liquor when I could get it, and cheap stuff when I couldn't. I had a job, a car, a house, a marriage....... I had possessions..... BUT I DID NOT HAVE ME..... I hurt myself, and I hurt other people.
And I do not know why I woke up on March 30, 1984, some 2 months shy of my 34th birthday, and "Knew" that I'd had my last drunk and my last drink......� Some part of me knew, I guess, that I'd had enough, that enough was enough......� I "lost"? Left? The job, the car, the house, the marriage... in sobriety!� I no longer belonged there..... I found other sober people, places, and things along the way...... And I began my journey of life in sobriety, going to my first AA meeting April 8, 1984.� And I've been sober ever since, thus far, one day at a time.....
I must have needed to remember all this, as I lost track of time while writing it..... I thought I was just going to write some short thing..... Ah, well.....my HP obviously had other plans for me! LOL!
I recently bought myself a Big Book Concordance, an even more in-depth index than a regular index.� What a trip!� I love reference books..... Yeah, I know, I'm weird! LOL!
My Big Book is "color-coded" ( I use the phrase loosely) with highlighters and pens..... It was what I did while reading..... perfection turned from a fault into an asset, as what I needed to do was study the dang thing!� To make sure I "got" it, I guess..... Also for something TO� DO to fill all these new hours in between working and meetings... since I was no longer drinking.... Kept me sober, taught me sanity....
Anyway, my brain remembers, for example, that the quote about "resentment is the #1 offender for relapse" is yellow and red, and on the left side of the book.� Time-consuming to go hunting for it...... and easy to become distracted by something else while hunting.... Which is fine if I have the time and inclination to do so... Yet not terribly efficient!� So, I bought a concordance..... my sober present to myself today :)
I went looking for references to "Bottom".... and after eliminating such phrases as "bottom of the stairs", I found 5 references in the Big Book to "hitting bottom".� With one exception, they're all in the stories! That did surprise me! What also surprised me is that there were so few references to the phrase.....
So if you also want to go find them.....
Page 187, paragraph 1
Page 315, bottom of the page
Page 391, top of page
Page 461, paragraph 1
Page 504, 3rd paragraph up from the bottom
Of course, then I realized that the Big Book uses "that
phrase" only in the stories..... Chapters 1-2-3 are all about "hitting
bottom"!
Thanks for reading :)
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