DAILY PONDERABLES
Together WE Trudge The Road OF Happy Destiny
Daily Reflections
THE LIMITS OF SELF-RELIANCE
We asked ourselves why we had them [fears]. Wasn't it because self-reliance failed us?
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 68
All of my character defects separate me from God's will. When I ignore my association with Him I face the world and my alcoholism alone and must depend on self-reliance. I have never found security and happiness through self-will and the only result is a life of fear and discontent. God provides the path back to Him and to His gift of serenity and comfort. First, however, I must be willing to acknowledge my fears and understand their source and power over me. I frequently ask God to help me understand how I separate myself from Him.
From the book Daily Reflections
© Copyright 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Twenty-Four Hours A Day
A.A. Thought for the Day
If we're going to stay sober, we've got to learn to want something else more than we want to drink. When we first came into A.A., we couldn't imagine wanting anything else so much or more than drinking. So we had to stop drinking on faith, on faith that some day we really would want something else more than drinking. But after we've been in A.A. for a while, we learn that a sober life can really be enjoyed. We learn how nice it is to get along well with our family, how nice it is to do our work well, whether at home or outside, how nice it is to try to help others. Have I found that when I keep sober, everything goes well for me?
Meditation for the Day
There is almost no work in life so hard as waiting. And yet God wants me to wait. All motion is more easy than calm waiting, and yet I must wait until God shows, me His will. So many people have marred their work and hindered the growth of their spiritual lives by too much activity. If I wait patiently, preparing myself always, I will be some day at the place where I would be. And much toil and activity could not have accomplished the journey so soon.
Prayer for the Day
I pray that I may wait patiently. I pray that I may trust God and keep preparing myself for a better life.
From the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day
© Copyright 1975 by Hazelden Foundation
NA - Just for Today
A curse into a blessing
Page 43
"We have become very grateful in the course of our recovery.... We have a disease, but we do recover."
Basic Text, p. 8
Active addiction was no picnic; many of us barely came out of it alive. But ranting against the disease, lamenting what it has done to us, pitying ourselves for the condition it has left us in-these things can only keep us locked in the spirit of bitterness and resentment. The path to freedom and spiritual growth begins where bitterness ends, with acceptance.
There is no denying the suffering brought by addiction. Yet it was this disease that brought us to Narcotics Anonymous; without it, we would neither have sought nor found the blessing of recovery. In isolating us, it forced us to seek fellowship. In causing us to suffer, it gave us the experience needed to help others, help no one else was so uniquely suited to offer. In forcing us to our knees, addiction gave us the opportunity to surrender to the care of a loving Higher Power.
We would not wish the disease of addiction on anyone. But the fact remains that we addicts already have this disease-and further, that without this disease we may never have embarked on our spiritual journey. Thousands of people search their whole lives for what we have found in Narcotics Anonymous: fellowship, a sense of purpose, and conscious contact with a Higher Power. Today, we are grateful for everything that has brought us this blessing.
Just for Today: I will accept the fact of my disease, and pursue the blessing of my recovery.
From the book Just for Today
© Copyright 1991-2013 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
Thought for Today
"A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the
present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past."
--Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, 1954
"For me, fear is sometimes the realization that I am gripping the steering wheel too hard - and I'm not even supposed to be in the driver's seat." (thanks Chris C.)
Buddha/Zen Thoughts
In the same way that someone in the midst of a rough crowd guards a wound with great care, so in the midst of bad company should one always guard the wound that is the mind.
-Santideva, "Bodhicaryavatara"
Native American
"Oh God! Like the Thunderbird of old I shall rise again out of the sea; I shall grab the instruments of the white man's success- his education, his skills, and with these new tools I shall build my race into the proudest segment of your society."
--Chief Dan George, SALISH
One thing the Indian people do well is adapt. This is why we survive. We must learn to keep our culture, but also to learn the good things that other races have to offer. Education is the future weapon of Native people. We must learn the legal system, health, science and engineering. Indian people have great contributions to make to the world. We need to educate ourselves so we can better protect the land and our children. Otherwise, we will lose the things and the land that we have.
Great Spirit, make me teachable today.
Keep It Simple
Sanity is madness put to good use. --- George Santayana
In Step Two we come to believe a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity. In a way, as we work Step Two, we're praying that our madness can be put to good use. This is just what happens. Addiction was wrecking our life. But it's also our addiction that forced us into a new way of life.
As long as we remember what our madness was like, we can put it to good use. When we feel like giving up, let's remember our madness. It will help us go on. When we see someone suffering from the illness of addiction, let's remember our days of madness. It will help us be there for that person. It's also good to remember that our madness is only a pill or a drink away.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, I believe You can put my madness to good use. I give up my madness; do with it what You want.
Action for the Day: I'll list a couple ways my Higher Power and I have changed my madness into sanity.
Big Book
"Yes, there is a substitute and it is vastly more than that. It is a
fellowship in Alcoholics Anonymous. There you will find release from
care, boredom and worry. Your imagination will be fired. Life will
mean something at last. The most satisfactory years of your
existence lie ahead."
~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, A Vision For You, pg. 152~
There's No Double Standard in Alcoholism or A.A.
Grapevine December 1945
I sat jittering in Bill's office. My psychiatrist had sent me to see Bill.
I had said to her: "Good. I'd like to meet him. Wouldn't it be fun to get him to take a drink?"
She laughed a nice easy laugh. She said, "You couldn't get him to take a drink."
I heard that. It stayed with me. You couldn't get him to take a drink.
So I, the girl who was going to get Bill to take a drink, now sat here, talking to Bill.
He told me a few things, the fundamentals. I heard all of those things, too. Then he made a phone call. He wrote a name and an address on a slip of paper.
"Here is an alcoholic girl," he said. "Why don't you go and see her? Now?"
I fell for that. I said, "Is she still drinking?"
"No," he said, "but she will always be an alcoholic just the same. Just as I am; just as you say you are."
I didn't know where I was going, or what to expect. I didn't expect an attractive apartment. I didn't expect the girl who answered the door --Helen, a friend of Marty's --to be like that. I was a sight and a mess. She didn't notice it. She talked to me as though I were an acquaintance who had dropped in. Time passed. Marty came in.
"I spent six months in Bellevue and a year in Blythewood," she announced. "I used to go to cheap bars on Third Avenue, when my money ran out. If I had no money, I could always 'borrow' drinks from men."
Marty had sized me up. To another newcomer, she might have talked gently, asking questions. She knew that for me this would be wrong. She talked and talked. She didn't stop. I, who had feared to speak, couldn't get a word in edgewise. I tried a couple of times. No soap. She was a girl with my sort of background. She and Helen both had my tastes and interests (that is, what I still fondly considered my tastes and interests. I really had none but liquor and self abasement).
I sat there and listened. Two women like myself. They were like me. They drank the way I did. Especially Marty. Marty, who like me, had gone to cheap bars. At last, someone else who was as "horrible" as I was. And she was horrible no longer.
I heard every word Marty and Helen said. In that short hour something was lifted from my heart, never to return. Three psychiatrists had failed to do it over a long period of years.
"You are sick," Marty and Helen said. "You are sick, not wicked. See, it is a pattern. You have followed this pattern. We, too, behaved in just this way. It is a pattern and you are not alone. You are not the only woman who has been like this. Thousands and thousands of men and women have been like this. And now they are sober. See, it is an illness, a disease with symptoms that we all have. Not a private sin that you alone have invented."
And so this is the end of my story and the beginning of it.
For years I thought I was the only one. The only "nice" woman who behaved this way. The worse I felt, the worse I got. One doctor said to me: "Remorse has contained within it the intention to do it again." This was a brilliant and wise saying. But I could not quit being remorseful. I could not stop doing it again, getting drunk again and again. It's a progressive disease. But I didn't know that. I just thought I was becoming a worse and worse person. I avoided my "respectable" friends more and more. My "unrespectable" friends, with whom I had cast my lot (in order to drink all I wanted to in company) --even these friends criticized me more and more. They, who had thought at first that I was such fun, now avoided me. They told me not to come around when I was drinking. And I was always drinking.
I, who, like most neurotics, had a high white ideal, an unattainable ideal of the person I should be, now found myself unwanted everywhere. I, who had meant to be the wittiest, the prettiest, the most desirable of women. The woman whom everybody would be just crazy to have around. (You note here that I wanted to be liked and loved, but didn't want to like or love anybody in return.)
I was now reduced to going to a cheap bar for my social life. I happen to have a small income. I never cadged drinks from strangers because I didn't have to. I never was robbed, assaulted, beaten up. But I might have been. The difference between the "protected" woman alcoholic (even the woman who drinks secretly in her room and never goes out) and the panhandler on the Bowery is economic. Are you shocked? But this is so. A drunk, man or woman, will do anything to get a drink. Anything --eventually. Perhaps the men, more than the women, know that this is true.
I didn't hit the gutter economically, but in spirit I was there. I spent every night in that cheap bar. I was able to drink there "safely," but I was despised by everyone.
Lots of people think that anything goes in a ginmill, that you can get as drunk as you like and behave any way you like. Not so. Women, especially, are expected to behave. A lady lush creates disturbances. Men are bound to want to pick her up. If she doesn't want to be annoyed, as the saying goes, the bartender has to protect her. If, on the other hand, she encourages advances from men, there may be trouble with the police.
The little bar I frequented was what is known as a family bar. There was a little group that dropped in regularly. They were as gossipy and moralistic as a country club set. They were not alcoholics.
So I, who planned to be the most beautiful, witty, charming and sought-after woman in all New York, was spending my evenings annoying the customers in a ginmill. The customers moved their barstools when they saw me coming.
But this place was my last refuge. Here was the last spot on earth to search for "It." The joy of living. Fulfillment. I called it pleasure. I went there every night looking for pleasure, the pink balloon. Something sick and hungry in me set up an inquiry for this elusive thing. "I will drink, and it will come," I said. "This thing I have never had, and never found anywhere in all my life. A few drinks, and I'll get it." But during the disappointment of those first drinks, I knew I didn't have it. This was a boring ginmill. Sordid. What could I find here? And I would drink more to overcome this terrible emptiness. I did not know that the lack was in myself. That joy, fulfillment, pleasure and love were chronically absent from me; that all the pleasure I had from my drinking was anticipatory.
I was so sick mentally, now, that I was afraid to drink alone. I was going toward my death, and somehow I knew this. I stayed in that bar till it closed.
"Remorse has contained within it the intention to do it again."
Yes. Every morning (or afternoon) I'd swear never to do it again. I must stop, I'd say. I must taper off. I must swear off. It was not only the hangovers that bothered me. I did not have the ordinary remorse of someone who has merely gotten drunk. It was as though I had some inner skin disease, something awful and sore, eating away at the fabric of myself. And then, at night, this fabric would reverse itself into the bright, joyful excitement, the anticipation. I would think, I'm going to the bar tonight. I'm going to get drunk. Not too drunk. Just enough.
This is a common experience. In A.A. you hear this story told over and over. But I know how all the women in the world feel who have had, and are having this grief and misery; and shame and guilt. More and more women are coming into A.A. But there are still countless women who are afraid to come. They are afraid to admit they need help. Sometimes they won't admit it to themselves. They have applied the double standard to themselves. They think that they are worse than men.
And they do not know that they are just sick people who need help. A woman who has TB doesn't think she is worse than a man who has TB. It's the same thing.
Many people all over this country, indeed all over the world, still think the same way. They think all drunks are a disgrace. They think women are doubly disgraceful. But now, at last, through the press, through the more widespread knowledge of A.A. and of alcoholism generally, these old witcheries and taboos are breaking down.
More and more people are understanding that alcoholism is a disease; that the alcoholic, whether man or woman, can be helped and is worth helping.
And as for me, who felt so terrible, I now feel wonderful. I am getting well as a person. I, who did not believe in anything except myself, and who cared for no one but myself--I think that a Higher Power must have sent my psychiatrist to hear Bill talk just at that time. It was around the time that my last chance was at hand. I was very near death. And I, who was going to get Bill to take a drink, I have learned what the word humility means. I have learned what the words love and understanding mean. I have a long way to go, but A.A. is like that. You keep going. You never stop. A.A. is a constant restatement of a few simple things that we must all have if we are to keep sober, to be happy or to live at all.
Felicia G.
Manhattan
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