What We Want to Share

Here is what I have learned in the past 40 years in and out of AA so far…

The problem was me, all me.  I was the one that screwed up my life.  Today, I study the Steps, that is the most important thing in my life.  If I had just read and accepted one line in the book, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (found in Step 10) I would have saved me from my own insanity.  That line is, “if I am disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with me.”   I found this to be a real test in my life, but it is true for me.  9/11, accidents, others anger, unjustified accusations—I have seen my part in my upset in all of them and been relieved of them (one day at a time).

I must surrender on a daily basis, which requires me working all the Steps all the time.  There are no vacations, no holidays, to my programme without painful repercussions.

When I start talking about the programme taking up too much of my time and how it is supposed to be “a bridge to normal living” I am usually in the process of burning it down.

Meetings are not the programme—the Steps are, although we find the guardians of the Steps there. I had gone to some 5000 meetings before I drank again and was miserable a lot of the time.

When there is a choice between listening to my sponsor’s suggestion and listening to my head?  There is no contest; I listen to my sponsor, sometimes with some resistance but not much anymore.

The problem is always my attitude and thinking.  I don’t always agree with the way things go for me (and the world for that matter) but it always gives me another area of my thinking to work on.  Thank God I have the Steps to find out more.

 

Jamie M

January 2008