Page 14 - AA NEWS MARCH 2019

14 14
Continued from page 1
Recently, a “normie” friend shared with me that she and her spouse are starting a new 30-day healthy lifestyle program that Includes abstinence from various foods and alcohol. Sounds healthy, right? If that would have happened to me during my drinking days, I might have been willing to try it, but during the 30 days, I would have been consumed with an inner struggle. Not only would I have been beyond grouchy, I would have found at least a dozen good rationalizations for including a bit of alcohol in the plan. Or if I managed to stick to the plan for the entire 30 days, every day would have been filled with thoughts of drinking, feelings of persecution and martyrdom, false pride, and a plan for day 31 in which I would have proceeded to drink myself quickly into oblivion. The physical, mental and emotional struggle would feel like I was engaged in a FIGHT against the urge to drink that would feel like a juggernaut (a merciless destructive force that would surely win the fight).
Several other friends were recently diagnosed with cancer and are engaged in various treatments in their fight against the ravages of this illness. They have surrendered to the diagnoses and are getting professional help from oncology doctors and surgeons, and everything that medical science currently offers. They continue to fight. When we come to AA and stop drinking alcohol, we finally surrender to the truth about our alcoholic prognosis, and we get “professional” help from the divinely inspired steps and through our sponsors and others who have walked this path before us. As newcomers, we feel like we are fighting the urge to drink every day, but the more we immerse ourselves in meetings, surrender to taking the treatment (working the steps with our sponsor) and incorporate the principles
contained in the steps into our daily lives, the fight is replaced with a new freedom that includes serenity and inner peace.
The stories in our book Alcoholics Anonymous include an excellent collection of stories in which are often illustrated our individual continuing fights against alcohol. First, in “Bill’s Story,” he realizes that he could not take so much as one drink, and to his wife’s delight, he is convinced that he must be through with alcohol forever, but shortly after he came home drunk. “There had been no fight.” A tragic variation of this incident has been repeated among us repeatedly and again, driving us to consider suicide as the only solution to our unbearable situation.
In “A Vision For You” (p. 158), the new man in the early days of AA says “...God ought to be able to do anything...He sure didn’t do much for me when I was trying to fight this booze racket alone.” But when he turned his life over to the care of his higher power, he began to have a spiritual experience and a new freedom because he stopped fighting it all on his own.
In “Gratitude in Action” (p. 195), the protagonist’s uncle told him that he’d give him a roadster he loved if he would stop drinking for a year. He made the promise to abstain, but was very soon drunk again...” I could do nothing to fight it off, even while I was denying the fact.” He soon lost the car and his job, had gone to jail, had three stays in a psychiatric hospital and couldn’t get off the infernal merry-go-round.
The high school student in “The Missing Link” (pp. 282-2830 talks of returning to his hotel covered in bruises after the first time
Continued page 15