Alcoholism Support Group
Alcoholism is the continued consumption of alcoholic beverages, even when it is negatively affecting your health, work, relationships and life. If you think alcohol is causing you to lose control, it's time to seek help. Our group is a safe place to vent, check in, get back up if you fall, and reach sobriety.
Life has been unmeaningful as of recently, I kind of feel like I am just a servant to be used. There is a really good AA speaker tape by a man named Don who says for him, feelings are not reality. Or shall I say, feelings are not the total reality we experience.
I've got to ask myself if I still believe and can 100 percent commit to the reality that I am an alcoholic and this life is umanagable? I can say that I still do believe that, and am still committed to that being not a lie in my life. If I believe that me being an alcoholic is not a lie, then I can ask myself how then will I manage a life with this dilema? A dilema that knows there is real short term relief in drinking spirits, and staying drunk, and not caring, and just giving up. How well can I answer the question of is short term relief a relief that would be from God? Short term relief would not be of God, short term relief would be of alcoholism, or alcohol, so I am off to a good start if I can say that I am not interested in short term relief.
I am interested in long term relief, through sobriety, and that takes certain measures. Those measures are to pray, read, talk to other alcoholics (in recovery), go to meetings and overall be unselfish in all areas of my life to the best of my ability. Am I doing the best I can in those areas? I don't always pray, with meaning and purpose, mostly because I do have deep seeded resentments still towards God. I do read because I do believe the big book was created specifically for people like myself, I don't really talk to other alcoholics because I have been really resenting people in totality, for the most part. I try to go to as many meetings as I can, however I have been lying to myself saying they are time consuming and a burden against all the other "important" matters in my life, like work and hobbies. Being unselfish, hasn't been the complete struggle it is for most, so I'm happy about that, not being selfish is hard to do, and takes courage, but in the long run, it's the best option. Selfishness will kill me, and knowing that is half the battle if I am interested in long term sobriety and staying recovered.
I still am believing that this whole life is God's production. I am still believing that God loves me, and wants nothing more than to help me in my daily struggles to imperfectly manage a life. I know God loves me enough to be able to say I hate how he is producing right now, and I very much resent my role in life. It is an irritating role, I am irritated all the time, and having to act like my ego isn't at major odds with my role, role of servant to others who don't so much care about me, the irritation of resentment, is fostering an anger that is solidifying a very mean person. Being in a mean state is a very uncomfortable character. The unremoved resentments are the causes of the mean state, it is a further frustration that I have no power to independently remove them, knowing if they were removed I'd be a much happier and successful person, so again, I have major resentment against God, and people, so that is my problem. A problem that is being created by me through selfishness, fear, and dishonesty. When I ask my ego why I need to be selfish, afraid, and dishonest, it has nothing but bullshit to say. It doesn't know.
After identifying the causes, to be selfish, fear-driven, and a liar, I have to ask God for forgiveness, and then forgive myself, and then ask others to forgive me. It doesn't matter if my own ignorance created the character to be what it is and was to get what it wanted out of a rebellious nature, resenting God, the fact that I can see me, clearly, is all that matters, and the fact that I know God more powerful than me and can change me, is very important. I have to humbly ask God, who I resent, to please remove the resentment, fear, dishonesty, and selfishness from this experience, because I simply do not want to drink again or die.
Can I make a list of people I harmed. Well that list would take centuries, but I would if I could, because my ego really is seeing how wrong it has been. Can I make direct amends whenever possible? I can open my mind to doing so. Can I continue to take inventory and when wrong admit it. Maybe. Can I seek though prayer and medition God? Absolutely.
Can I try to carry this message to others, who struggle as I do? Yes. This is the good fight.
I hope that wasn't too dramatic, you all have a great day, and great rest of the weekend.
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check out that smoke ring. It tasted really good. I smothered it with Maulls BBQ sauce which is Local to St. Louis and one of the best I ever had.....
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I was recently separated from my wife of 33 years and it's complicated. Anyway I rented a room about 15 minutes away and I see my kids about once a week. I see the people who own the house I live in once in a while but other than that I stay in my room where I do my cooking, wash dishes in the shower, read, color, and sleep. I get out at least once a day. I grocery shop and I attend 2 meetings...
I highly recommend the book, "Conversations with God" by Neale Donald Walsch. There is also a movie by the same name which is very good. It's all true!
~~~God Bless~~~
I think of all the great teachings, the greatest is that now is all there is. Now... This is the end of struggle when we understand this with our minds and then, ultimately, know it as truth. The past and future is only in our thoughts. It's just a fairy tale. Only now is where we can actually live.
I have a problem with the AA mantra of the need to always identify as an alcoholic. And the need to keep going back into the past, which isn't real anymore. I did this for a while (first year) and it was important for me to own and accept my fuck ups and, more importantly, recognize the pattens in the deep rut that was my life. But that was just a tool that fell away as change slowly shifted my perception of who I am. I'm not an alcoholic because I don't drink. If I begin to drink then I will become one again. But that's not now. Just some vague future possibility of the countless others. So I don't feed that thought and as such, it's not real.
I'm not here to frown on the AA steps. I know they've helped a lot of people. Maybe I'm out of line here, but there comes a time when we take the training wheels off the bike and realize that we can ride without them.
I think the true courage is when we stand up and let everything go that we cling to, believing we need the life raft that's outside ourselves. I am that life raft. You are yours. There's a huge jump from thinking our way through life and trying to arrange it in our minds to just living.
Be kind to yourself