I have been posting here lately, I have known about this site for years, and it really can be a daily source of strength if you utilize it.  6 months ago I thought I was such hot stuff that I wouldn't have had the time to post, I was busy "building a life."  I am several years sober, and recently hit a mini bottom.  I have not drank, but I have really been miserable, angry, very worried all the time, and all the tangible things in my life I need to maintain seems to be either breaking or becoming more expensive.  I think it is safe to say life has sucked for the past 3 months.  

In 2015 I gave up, gave up trying to think, gave up trying to drink, gave up trying to use, gave up on everything, but not in a negative way, I surrendered or admitted my life was one huge problem in general.  After that, all sorts of shocking reversals happened, I fell into tons of money considering I could never keep a positive bank account, I got and held jobs, and had bosses who liked me and wanted me to stay.  I was able to work out consistently, was able to help my family without complaining, life had really changed. 

Things have reverted though.  Make a long story short the money was spent and is gone, I am in crazy debt that could make me drink one day, I just quit a job, the first time I've done such a thing since I've been sober, I am losing the desire to work, I am not that interested in spending free time with family, and my workouts I could care less about, which is not usually the case, usually I am focused and it is important I accomplish the whole workout.  I have been talking to my sponsor more, talking to older AA members more, trying to listen to myself less, trying to let go again, and I am finding minor periods of relief from the anxiety and worry alcoholism creates, even when sober with no interest in drinking. 

I titled this giving back because I wanted to share some things I am not doing, or that my thoughts have begun to find not important, that when I was newly sober, my spirit knew was seriously important to maintain a life I could stay sober from. 

For one, I took meetings off the table, and in the meetings I am not paying attention to all who speak, I am just hoping the meeting will be over so I can go sleep, and be depressed, or eat, or whatever else I choose to do to escape how I feel.  I also have thought it not that important to read daily, read the big book daily, or some other helpful material, written by those who care and understand.  Talking to my sponsor I haven't wanted to do, I am thinking it is time consuming, or that it is too much lecturing, or that I've heard what he has said before.  Those three things considered, my thinking then says I am getting a bad deal from God, and that eliminates reason to pray, I am thinking "who wants to pray to a God that is requiring me to do things that are making me so negative?"  After all that, my thoughts have no idea why being unselfish will help anything at all. 

My problem, and what I want to give back, is my thinking, became ego-centric again, I thought I was better, and didn't need the help I needed day one.  My thinking and how it thought I didn't need to do what I did in year one of my sobriety, today, is the cause of my misery.  It simply is not powerful enough.  The important thing for me regarding the difference between an intellectual experience and a spiritual experience is my thinking, through an intellectual experience eventually tells me I am "too smart" to not recover from not being able to stop drinking on my own, and that fact that I was powerless becomes an inconvient truth going forward my pride and arrogance will forget to bolster it's selfish plans going forward.  A spiritual experience, on the other hand, requires humility, and even my thinking cannot deny that more meetings is more humility, more reading is more humility, more speaking to a sponsor and respecting his 12 step work with me is more humility, prayer to a God I have no idea my opinion of won't budge his will a bit, brings more humility, and being unselfish as a cause to survive, is about the most humbling thing a wanna be superstar like me could ever commit to. 

Humility is slowing winning the race between my mind and my spirit, my whole being, including my thoughts, know, I become a problem when I am not spiritually developed and me thinking that is not a requirment for success as a recovered alcoholic, is dead wrong.  I have to develop spiritually, before all, and in hindsight, I was trying so hard to develop materially, obsessed with a delusion I would be socially a magnet all could gravitate to for the answers, that I forgot room in that equation for humility. 

After several years of sobriety I just wanted to give back the biggest thing I've learned in order to stay sane, and that is if there is one thing I need to ask more for it is humility, and that trusting what seems negative, might just be insurance I will have more humility than not, going forward, makes me incredible secure and revigorates my faith that God (even though I still cannot think positively about the reality of it being real and no joke he exists) is a real authority, greater than anything my mind could ever think of. 

Anyone else have any experience where they either maintained or needed more humility in order to stay sober and spiritual?