Wisdom Of The Rooms - 2017

[bluidkiti]

March 6

Quote of the Week

“The secret to my recovery is no secret.”

When I was new to recovery, staying sober – even one day at a time – was a seemingly impossible task at times. Old triggers lurked around every corner, and feelings descended on me without warning. While I was in a meeting I was O.K., but in between them, while out in my regular life, it was touch and go. When I saw people celebrate a year of sobriety, I wondered with awe how they were able to hang on that long.

As I got past 90 days and the fog cleared a bit, I began to acknowledge that there were people who had seven, fifteen and even twenty years sober and more! This was unfathomable to me. How could they not drink through all those New Year’s Eve’s and weddings, and tragedies? When I asked my sponsor what their secret to long term sobriety was, he told me it was simple – “You don’t drink or use, one day at a time.” I came to find out this was the basis of it, but there was more to the secret…

In over twenty years of recovery now, I’ve learned that in order for me to not take a drink, I’ve had to have a spiritual experience. And the way I did that was by working the Twelve Steps of the program with my sponsor. By doing this, I’ve developed a relationship with a Power Greater than myself, and as a result the man who writes this today is a very different man who crawled into the rooms all those years ago. My secret to recovery is the same as all the others – I still go to meetings, I still work the Steps, and I still don’t drink one day at a time.

As anyone in the program can tell you: the secret to recovery is no secret.