Page 15 - AA NEWS MARCH 2019

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he got drunk, having started a fight in a bar with college aged fellows...but once in AA and on a spiritual path, he has been fight-free.
“The Housewife Who Drank at Home” (p. 298) began trying to live without alcohol but she only succeeded in fighting it and realized “an alcoholic cannot fight alcohol.” She looked to involvement in community organizations and running a business to stay away from alcohol, and when all of life is a substitute for a drink, there is no happiness and no peace. “Mere cessation from drinking is not enough for an alcoholic while that need for that drink goes on. I switched to beer. I had always hated beer, but now I grew to love it.” When she surrendered and joined AA, she was able to face her problem squarely and honestly and was able to tap into a faith in God that worked where nothing else would.
In “My Bottle, My Resentments and Me” (p. 437), the filthy and befuddled self-proclaimed hobo came into town on a rail. “For six years I’d been fighting for survival on skid rows and riding across the county in freights.” His fight was not only with alcohol but for his very existence. The miracle of AA transformed him and his whole life in unimaginable ways.
The once-happy family man in “Building a New Life” (p.480) illustrates another kind of fight that is well-known to married members — “There was only fighting at home, and I finally moved out, so the kids wouldn’t see me drunk.” After sobriety and solid membership in AA, his wife took him back and they added another child to their family and he maintains beautiful relationships with all his kids. No more fighting there...
In “A Vision of Recovery” (p. 494-495), a young Native American man witnesses his father’s rages and swore he’d never be like him. He didn’t see that alcohol and rages were related. In school he began fighting with classmates and gained a “tough guy” reputation. Those kinds of fights landed him in
juvenile correctional facilities and later in jails. But later in AA he desperately made a connection with his Higher Power that saved him.
The 75-year-old retiree in “A Late Start” (p. 541) had a difficult time with the third step, but he found that having completed it, he could face or untangle other steps if he could remember to relax, trust the program, and implement the step rather than fight it. Another great example of what happens when we stop fighting!
“Into Action”—page 84-85 says “: And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone—even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality—safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.” If we believe this promise and follow this example, we really have no need to continue to fight.
By Llisa H.
This whole thing is so much more than just sobriety. To be sober and continue the life I had before—that would have driven me back to drink. One of the things I really like about AA is that we all have a sense of direction, plus a roadmap telling us precisely how to get there. I like that. All I want out of AA is more and more and more until I’m gone.
Dr. Paul, AA Grapevine, July 1995
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