[MajestyJo]

A friend asked me to bring up the topic of substitution.

How often we substitute other (people, places and things) for our drug of choice. This can materialize in many forms but it all leads to the same soul sickness.

I was told that anything that came between me and the kind of person God wants me to be and becomes an obsessive, compulsive action in my life and it becomes the 'god' of my life

Sobriety for me means soundness of mind. Anything that takes me out of that state puts me at risk, and I may pick up. I can be clean and sober and not have sobriety.

It has materialized in many forms for me:

1) My bed (hiding from reality and life as a whole

2) Food - stuffing feelings I don't want to deal with or I have allowed myself to become empty and I am looking for something outside of myself to 'fill' me up.

3) Work - redirecting my energies so I don't have to stop and look at myself. An outlet for the emotions I don't want to acknowledge and takes away from time I need to work on my recovery.

4)My compuer - this is a biggy for me. Even though a lot of the work I do on the computer is recovery it is generally to help others, and often I am copy typing, or reading other people's material, and even if I can identify, I need time to process that material. If I don't take that time, then it doesn't do me any good if I don't apply it to my life. I don't like to admit it, but a couple of times I have had friends say to me, "Practice what you preach!" Apply what you know to yourself! Take time for you, this is a living program. All I have is today. Am I living or am I back existing?

5) People, a biggy for me who has been Ms. Caretaker for many years. It is always so much easier to focus and help someone else rather than look at myself. There is also that old "If you don't love me, then I will find someone else who does" Syndrome, along with that "What's good for the goose is good for the gander" Solution which generally hurts everyone.

6) Things like chocolate (sweets are good when you first come into recovery and the cure becomes a curse), pills (depression and nervous disorders which are common to detoxing becomes treated with the "almighty" pill and becomes like "dried-up" alcohol to our system, meetings (go to 90 meetings in 90 days - then what do you do? Stop? I don't think so! Yet they can be a dependency too, and you don't want to leave the safe stronghold and step out into the real world.

Maybe that is why this is called a "One Day At A Time" program. We have to live it, each moment, each hour of the day.

Maybe you have some substitutions you would like to share? We can't know what we haven't been taught or experienced!