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.
So not drinking at all ---that is staying sober---
becomes the basis of recovery from alcoholism.
And let it emphasized: Living sober turns out to be not
at all grim, boring, and uncomfortable, as we had
feared, but rather something we begin to enjoy and find
much more exciting than our drinking days.
The alcoholic can learn to completely control his disease,
but the affliction cannot be cured so that he can
return to alcohol without adverse consequences.
Keep an Open Mind
Some of us found formal prayer a strong aid in not
drinking, while others fled from anything that suggested
religion. But all of us are free to change our
minds on these ideas later if we choose.
Many found that the sooner we started work on the
Twelve Steps offered as a program of recovery in the
book Alcoholics Anonymous, the better, Others of us
felt the need to postpone this until we had been sober a
little while.
The point is, there is no prescribed A.A. right way or
wrong way. Each of use uses what is best for himself
or herselfwith out closing the door on other kinds of
help we may find valuable at another time.
Stay away from the first drink
if you dont take that first drink, you cant get drunk
and
One drink is too many, but twenty are not enough.
Doctors who are experts on alcoholism tell us that there is
a sound medical foundation for avoiding the first drink. It
is the first drink, which triggers, immediately or some time
later, the compulsion to drink more and more until we are
in drinking trouble again
Remembering that alcoholism is an incurable, progressive,
fatal disease
We are also convinced, after the countless attempts we
made to prove otherwise, that alcoholism is incurablejust
like some others illness. It cannot be cured in this sense:
We cannot change our body chemistry and go back to being
the normal, moderate social drinkers lots of us seemed
to be in our youth.
Getting active
It is very hard just to sit still trying not to do a certain
thing, or not even to think about it. It's much easier to get
active and do something else---other than the act we're trying
to avoid.
So it is with drinking. Simply trying to avoid a drink (or
not think of one), all by itself, doesn't seem to be enough.
The more we think about the drink we're trying to keep
away from, the more it occupies our mind, of course. And
that's no good. It's better to get busy with something, almost
anything, that will use our mind and channel our energy
toward health.
CSO GRATITUDE NIGHT BANQUET
Saturday November 1, 2008
Woodfords Congregational Church
Doors open 5:30 PM
Portland Group Gratitude Night Sun. Nov. 2
Free all you can eat Buffet
Starting at 6:00 P.M.
Regular meeting at 7:00 PM with Guest Speakers
becomes the basis of recovery from alcoholism.
And let it emphasized: Living sober turns out to be not
at all grim, boring, and uncomfortable, as we had
feared, but rather something we begin to enjoy and find
much more exciting than our drinking days.
The alcoholic can learn to completely control his disease,
but the affliction cannot be cured so that he can
return to alcohol without adverse consequences.
Keep an Open Mind
Some of us found formal prayer a strong aid in not
drinking, while others fled from anything that suggested
religion. But all of us are free to change our
minds on these ideas later if we choose.
Many found that the sooner we started work on the
Twelve Steps offered as a program of recovery in the
book Alcoholics Anonymous, the better, Others of us
felt the need to postpone this until we had been sober a
little while.
The point is, there is no prescribed A.A. right way or
wrong way. Each of use uses what is best for himself
or herselfwith out closing the door on other kinds of
help we may find valuable at another time.
Stay away from the first drink
if you dont take that first drink, you cant get drunk
and
One drink is too many, but twenty are not enough.
Doctors who are experts on alcoholism tell us that there is
a sound medical foundation for avoiding the first drink. It
is the first drink, which triggers, immediately or some time
later, the compulsion to drink more and more until we are
in drinking trouble again
Remembering that alcoholism is an incurable, progressive,
fatal disease
We are also convinced, after the countless attempts we
made to prove otherwise, that alcoholism is incurablejust
like some others illness. It cannot be cured in this sense:
We cannot change our body chemistry and go back to being
the normal, moderate social drinkers lots of us seemed
to be in our youth.
Getting active
It is very hard just to sit still trying not to do a certain
thing, or not even to think about it. It's much easier to get
active and do something else---other than the act we're trying
to avoid.
So it is with drinking. Simply trying to avoid a drink (or
not think of one), all by itself, doesn't seem to be enough.
The more we think about the drink we're trying to keep
away from, the more it occupies our mind, of course. And
that's no good. It's better to get busy with something, almost
anything, that will use our mind and channel our energy
toward health.
CSO GRATITUDE NIGHT BANQUET
Saturday November 1, 2008
Woodfords Congregational Church
Doors open 5:30 PM
Portland Group Gratitude Night Sun. Nov. 2
Free all you can eat Buffet
Starting at 6:00 P.M.
Regular meeting at 7:00 PM with Guest Speakers
Great post Billy. "Living sober turns out to be not
at all grim, boring, and uncomfortable, as we had
feared, but rather something we begin to enjoy and find
much more exciting than our drinking days."~ So So So TRUE.
Where my attention goes, energy flows.
I always find what I am looking for.
There are clues to this way of thinking and behaving all over in our basic text and personal stories.
Here's a few of my favorite ones which helped me wake up to to more contented sobriety in the early years and they still help me in my living life on God's terms today.....
And, as stated in one place of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous,
3rd Edition, pg. 449,
"When I stopped living in the problem and began living in the answer, the problem went away."
pg. 450.....
"a magnifying mind that magnified whatever it focused on.
"And the more I focused my mind on her defects, the more they grew and multiplied."
pg.451
"A.A. has given me a new pair of glasses....."
"I can do the same thing with an A.A. meeting. The more I focus my mind on its defects--late start, long drunkalogues, cigarette smoke--- the worse the meeting becomes. But when I try to see what I can add to the meeting, instead of what I can get out of it, and when I focus my mind on what's good about it, rather than what's wrong with it, the meeting keeps getting better and better."
"When I focus on what's good today, I have a good day, and when I focus on what's bad, I have a bad day. If I focus on a problem, the problem increases; if I focus on the answer, the answer increases."
Pg.452...... And last but not least......
"I must keep my magic magnifying mind on my acceptance and off my expectations, for my serenity is directly proportional to my level of acceptance."
"When I remember this, I can see I've never had it so good."
"Thank God for A.A."
In Love, Light, Truth, and Service,
"Stubborn" TerrieAnn/ralop