We can wallow in the past or live in today. We can live one day at a time or miss out on life by projecting into the future.

Never base today on past events. Remember to take your God with you. He understands you, even if you don't understand Him.

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It is so important to invest my time in making effort to enrich my sobriety. Sober was never enough for me. I wanted the gifts of recovery, the freedom from active addiction in all areas of my life. Recovery is a living program and I only get out of it what I put into it.

We have the tools, we have the good orderly direction when we need it, we are given the strength and courage to see our way through life's trials and tribulations as well as the blessings.

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Substitution doesn't work. It kept me sick for another 8 years, and it was a miracle that I lived to find recovery. I also had to address my eating disorder, my smoking, my work/busy addictionn, computer addiction, and I got so involved in service helping others, I forgot that I had to take time to work on my own issues. I had to learn to top myself up and only give away the overflow. Every year I would suffer from burn out.

Who ever heard of taking just a little. Even one, was never in my thoughts or vocabulalry.

How can I be a clean channel if I continue to abuse my body, mind, and spirit.

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People think that they're going to get sober by osmosis and going to 90 meetings in 90 days. But there's only one way to obtain and maintain sobriety and that's through the progam folded within these 164 pages. - Ted H.

- The Alkiespeaks

So many who come into the rooms and hear the little slogans and cliques and take them literally, or should say literal from their perspective. This is a disease of perception, so it only stand to reason when you are new, you don't always see and hear things they way they are meant, that is why it is good to keep coming back. Keep coming so you don't have to come back.

The blueprint to recovery is in the first 164 pages. The whole book is readable, so is the literature in the fellowship. To enrich me spiritually, I read a lot of things and studies a lot of things. I didn't have much faith in the God of my understanding, and AA was my Higher Power until I became dissolutioned by people who didn't walk their talk. Then I had to learn, look and listen to the message not the messenger.

Because I qualified for many fellowships, I went to AA for my denial. I did not think I was an alcoholic. An addict, no problem, an adult child of an alcoholic for sure, and the mother of a self-admitted alcohlic son qualified me to walk through the doors of Al-Anon. I feel I was fortunate, because I could look at things from both sides of the street.

Recovery is a process, it is not a quick fix. I had to find what I need for my own recovery. I wasn't unique as a person, but I was unique in the fact that no one walked in my shoes, and what was traumatic for me, might not be so to someone else. What was traumatic for someone else, might not have happened to me or held any fear for me.

I had to go to 90 meetings to see if I wanted to stay sober, then I could start building a program. I didn't even have a home group at 3 months. I was one of the really sick ones.

Some people think that 90 meetings in 90 days is the program. We need to be careful that we don't send out mixed messages or messages that are misleading.

I know a guy who thought "Keep coming back" mean he could relapse, go out do his thing, when he got sick, he could come back and start again. It does mean keep coming back to AA. It also means, keep coming back to meetings so you don't have to relapse. Keep coming so you don't have to come back.

How boring and stressful it would be if everything was on a timetable. Oh I have to do this in 90 days and if not I have failed. You don't want to tell anyone, so you run away and use because you don't think you can so you don't try.

The program is keep coming back to meetings, get a group, get a sponsor, get active in your group, get a relationship with your sponsor by talking to her(him), calling her(him) on the phone and working the steps with her(him). As I have heard several times in the recovery rooms, get a sponsor who is opposite your sexual preferance because we don't want a lot of sponsettes running around the rooms.

The program for me is, don't use no matter what. Do whatever you need to do to stay clean and sober for this 24 hours. A day can start any time, so if this one isn't going so well, say the Serenity Prayer, think of what it means, and start your day again.

Questioning the Program:

Alkiespeaks:

Knowing why I was an alcoholic doesn't help. The ship hits an iceberg, it's sinking, everyone is rowing away. But you're on the deck saying; 'I'm not leaving this baby until I understand what happened.' - Clancy I.

Always with the questions! I was told to quit intellectualizing, and if I was still questioning, I was told to 'Stop' and just accept what is. The program has worked for many years, it works when you work it.

People will say the program didn't work for me. They didn't ask why it didn't and what they were doing wrong. It had to be the program not them. This is a disease of perception.

So many times, I was in a mental fog, totally clueless as to what was going on around me. I never questioned things or I wanted to know the ins and outs. There was no balance, it seemed like it was either/or, no inbetween.

The program works if you work for it. This means going to meetings, doing Step work and doing service work.

When you think about it, how can you know what you have never been taught? How can you know, if you don't stick around long enough to find out? How can you find what works for you if you don't try to apply the words and principles to your life? How can you know what to change if you don't take an inventory of what is there.

One day at a time it does work.

How many times we can't see or feel that we can do because we put up blocks, mental, emotional, spiritual and phsyical barriers to excuse our behaviour and to stop us from moving forward and changing out of our comfort zone.

I can't do this because.... I don't feel.... I don't think.... All the beginnings of putting up barriers which stop us from moving forward and growing in recovery.

It is because I am back in the "I" mode and have blocked God from leading me to where He would have me go. I can talk a good story, and yet instead of walking my talk, I am standing still, if not retreating back into what I think is my safe zone.

Often it is about taking risks, trusting my Higher Power to be there whether I succeed or fail. The failure is in the not trying.

It is nice to have something I believe strongly in, affirmed in a reading or by another recovering addict.

It has been my experience, many times over that something that was good in the moment, doesn't not always stay that way. Things change, and things no longer serve me the way they use to and I need to rethink things and continue to grow and change.

Sometimes it is just a new awareness, a new memory, a new defect that has developed that I hadn't been aware of or have developed as a result of something that happened in today or have one that I asked for help on reappear and raise it's ugly head.

I pray that I will continue to grow in honesty with myself and others.

Today in my readings and reading from other sites, the words that have come up have all asked me to be honest with myself.

It is so easy to skim over something and think, "Oh it isn't that bad!" or think "It isn't as bad as it use to be" and excuse myself from really looking at something.

For example, today I am really tired. I have been on the go all week and really need a down time and yet the word 'laundry' keeps popping into my head. I know I have been procrastinationg about it, but then on the whole, I haven't been home with a lot of time to do it or have no energy when I got home to even contemplate doing it.

Unfortunately, I do have enough clothes to last me until Tuesday because I have to conserve my energy to work four hours on Monday. I can change the sheets on my bed and get them ready to be laundered. I have already changed the towels and done the do things. What I need to do is look at what I have done and not focus on what hasn't been done. Stay in the moment and live in today and do the do things I need for myself. That takes honesty, if I don't know what my needs are, how can they be met if I don't turn them over to my HP and ask for help.

This is a quote I found on another site:


Love this quote, "...God is working when I am not." I need to remember that.

This angel will change daily. Like the quote says, it will be changing without help from me.

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I was told that if I turned things over to my Higher Power, I will know. If I have doubt, should I, could I, then the time is not right. When the time is right, I WILL know.

I have to practice patience and tolerance, because it is in my God's time, not mine.

Have a friend who looks at life the same way as the first half of the quote below does. For me, it is too negative. If I think negative, I attract it too me. It has been my experience, that when I live in the moment and not project into the future, I can walk in faith. Things just never turn out as badly as I thought they would when I take my Higher Power with me on my daily journey. I don't have that "Why me?" attitude and can accept things more readily. When I get that feeling, I have to ask myself "Why not me?"

That prepares me for what ever comes my way, positive or negative. I don't go looking for things to happen. I try to live in today, and when I encounter negative, I ask myself, "What can I do to change it?"

Love the second half of the quote posted in 2009 on another site, it still rings true in 2016. Lest I forget, what brought me to the doors of recovery will take me back out if I don't deal with it. It will trip me up and I could end up going back out. It doesn't have to be a physical bottom, I have had emotional and spiritual bottoms in recovery.

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~ DAY BY DAY ~ (Daily Meditations for Recovering Addicts) ~

Learning new ways

Once we make a connection with our Higher Power, the ongoing problem is to hold on to it. Repeatedly we slip into our old ways of thinking and behaving. If not curtailed, eventually these will lead us back to that first fix, pill, or drink. We need only a word, thought, or familiar situation to get caught up again in an old habit.

We have to discover (and rediscover) that the old way of life has become impossible and the new one essential. We do this—and do it again—by praying, meditating, and working the Twelve Steps of recovery.

Am I living the program?

Higher Power, help me avoid being smug and complacent in my new life. Remind me that old ways of living have become impossible for me.

The new ways of living that I will cultivate today are

God help me to stay clean and sober today!
Just realized while posting, that I use to have this book in early recovery. I must be one of the books I passed on, along with three Just for Today books, and two Basic texts and It Works, How and Why: The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Narcotics Anonymous. I also gave away two In God's Care books by Karen Casey. What helps me, will hopefully help another.

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Love this. Tears are so healing. Many times I come to the site and read old posts, especially when I am not have a great day, and my God leads me to where I need to go, and the tears will slip out and run down my cheeks, and I don't even know what I am crying about.

I never did do tears well, so it was good when they started falling on their own, or so it seemed. My God doing for me what I could not do for myself.

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Tears don't always come easy for guys. We've been told: Tears are a sign of weakness. Don't be a crybaby! Big boys don't cry!

I have cried in my recovery and have felt the healing power of tears. Don't hold back...if the rocky places in life brings you to tears, let it out. Let the tears flow like rain.