Inside The Big Book
 

Introduction



"To show other alcoholics precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book." ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, Foreword To First Edition, pg. xiii :



To introduce everyone to this column, I figured that it would be appropriate to start at the beginning of the book. Being that the main purpose of the Big Book is to show other alcoholics precisely how the first one hundred people recovered. It seems that probably is the most important point that the book makes.

Sure the Big Book has a lot of stuff in it, but the precise plan of recovery is what we are seeking. It is the message that is contained in the first 164 pages. The stories show us that we are not alone in the way alcoholism affects us. In fact it seems to me that we all can relate quite a bit to each and every story that is told. There is a very good reason why! They are just like us in one way or another. If we weren?t alcoholics, we wouldn?t be able to relate.

So if you are an alcoholic then this book has a program that has been written down in a precise way for you. Of course that is only if you are serious about recovering. That is why it really seems to me that the first thing that someone has to do is pick up the book and start reading.

O.K. I will admit that there are some things in the book that might make it hard to understand. But we must be willing to make a conscious effort to understand those things. That is why it seems really important to me to write down what I believe those things mean. It is by you and I working together to understand these things that will keep us sober. Once we come to an understanding we pass the message on to others who are still suffering. That?s how it works!

You may say, ?Well I can tell other people how it works for me?. That?s not it! The program of recovery lays with-in the pages of the book. The problem that exists with some who say they are in this program is they don?t understand that. They carry the message to others about how they believe it should be done. I guess that is cool if it is working for them, but that isn?t how the first one hundred got sober, and it is not how many, many more got sober after them. It is by following the program that has been written down.

If you notice in the quote above I underlined the word ?We?. There is a reason for that. The message isn?t that Bill W. got sober and wrote down precisely how he did it. Nor is it exactly how Dr. Bob got sober. It isn?t an individual undertaking. It is consorted effort. That is they way it is right now. The program is a bunch of alcoholics getting together and trying to understand precisely how to stay sober.

I hear a lot of people say in meetings that ?if you don?t drink, that you stay sober?. To some extent that is true, but it only covers the part of sobriety that involves the drink. The Big Book shows precisely how to not only put down the drink, but how to be sober in the other parts of your life. So when I hear people say something like that, I realize that they don?t understand what the first one hundred were trying to say.

So it really seems important to start this out with the understanding, that my opinion is only that. The reasoning behind this column is to share some of what I have learned in studying the program of recovery as it has been precisely laid out in the Big Book.

I hope you enjoy it! ~ Thanks, Ed C.

The Disease
 

The Disease

"Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false”. ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, The Doctors Opinion pg. xxvi-xxvii~

At first glance someone might look at the above passage and not fully digest how powerful this statement is. It could easily be written off as Dr. Silkworth just saying that alcoholics cannot differentiate the true and the false of how injurious alcohol is, but this statement goes way beyond that.

If someone admits that they are doing harm to themselves, and still inflict injury by doing the same thing over and over again, how crazy are they? It is sort of like sticking one’s hand on a hot frying pan. Wouldn’t it be totally insane to keep on doing it? This is where the gravity of the statement “they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false” comes into play. Someone who cannot differentiate between what is true and what is false is crazy.

Whoa now! Hold on! Crazy is a strong word. Well how is it that we can explain doing something that we know is harming us over and over again? Albert Einstein coined the well know definition of insanity as: “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. Old Albert was a pretty wise man!

Now we can start to see where being crazy or insane pretty much defines the alcoholic. We take in alcohol because of the effect that it produces. Our senses like the feeling that we get from it! Plain and simple! The problem is alcoholics like this feeling so much that it becomes habit. We habitually seek the feeling produced by alcohol . This becomes so flagrant that we lose control of our senses, both mentally and physically. This is called a pathological condition or dis-ease.

You may wonder why it is that I separate the word disease. Dis is a prefix meaning not, and ease means comfort. So we’re not at comfort with ourselves. How can we be? We know that we are hurting ourselves with the intake of alcohol, but we like the feeling we get so much that it no longer matters to us. So yes alcoholism is definitely a disease, a disease cause by insanity.

We just are not hurting ourselves with this insanity either. This disease transcends the physical and mental aspects of our health. This disease spreads with-in our circle. We affect everything that we come in contact with. Not only other human beings, but also our immediate environment. This is addressed in the Big Book with the quote: "The alcoholic is like a tornado roaring his way through the lives of others”. ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, Into Action, pg. 82~ We certainly roar our way through the lives of others, but if we look back at the destruction we cause, it does not only involve human life, but all of the other creations of God.

This all caused by not having the ability to differentiate between true and false. So what is true? What is false? How do we know the difference? Well true is consistent with being real. It is reality or actuality. I like the definition “That which is”. False is simply “that which is not true”. Seems simple to differentiate? Huh? Well for alcoholics it isn’t.

It seems to me that the alcoholic is delusive. We might just say, “OK, the alcoholic is delusive about the first drink”, but I contend it goes deeper than that. It seems the alcoholic is delusive about life. It all boils down to this delusion being caused by self. This being the delusion that comes from the belief of self being the most important thing. That personal gratification is more important than anything else. This leaving out the factor of there being so many other things happening than what is going on in one’s mind. Therefore the delusion exists in the mind of the alcoholic. The mind is tricked into not knowing the difference.

So how does the alcoholic overcome this dilemma? Well it is covered in step #2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. All it takes is a belief. We might ask this Power to grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Ah! Serenity, calm, at ease.
--Ed C.

The Alcoholic's Problem
 

"The Alcoholic's Problem"

"Selfishness, self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self, which later placed us in a position to be hurt. So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making". ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, How It Works, pg. 62~

Selfishness and self-centeredness is the root of our problems. Wow! Selfishness is a noun that simply means: Stinginess resulting from a concern for your own welfare and a disregard of others. Fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, all things that stem from imagination drive this concern. We are acting from the imaginary. The self!

But what is a self? Here?s the kicker, the self is one's consciousness of one's own being or identity; the ego. It is what you believe you are. So when you imagine something that the self should be doing, you do it without regards of what that action is going to do in effecting other's being. That?s what selfishness and self-centeredness is!

The problem is there are a bunch of selves out there. So what we have is a bunch of unconscious goobily gook happening. In some of the studies I have read, it has been called electromechanical smog. This smog is caused by people doing stuff that doesn't jive with reality. That is why when you read in the above passage from the Big Book that our selfishness and self-centeredness is driven by self-delusion that it starts to make sense. If we are doing stuff that doesn't jive with reality, then it is false.

What really complicates all of this is we create reality with all of this non-sense. Being that we are creating this reality with no regards with what it is doing to others, it causes turmoil. Turmoil is extreme confusion and/or agitation. We get everything all stirred up. This is what causes this smog, our imagination.

In Bill's story he writes: "I fancied myself a leader, for had not the men of my battery given me a special token of appreciation? My talent for leadership, I imagined, could place me at the head of vast enterprises which I would manage with the utmost assurance". This is very important to understand. It is from this fantasy (fancy) and imagination that the alcoholic problem stems.

Where is it that we feel hurt when we believe someone has wronged us? Doesn't this come from the mind? In our fantasy we believe that what we are doing is what reality is. When in fact reality is happening all around us. We are just unconscious of it. We seem to be in our own little world, doing things that only involve what we believe will benefit our "selves". Meanwhile we a making other people suffer. If they are acting like us, then it just adds to the chaos. Are we really hurt, or are we just getting paybacks for what we are doing to others?

So you may ask where does the drinking fit in? Well it is as a direct result of the feeling that we get from the alcohol or drugs that causes us to only think about pleasure. What is going to please the self? It is when we take these things to the extreme that the problem exists.

Take a look at all of anonymous programs today and see where it is that this premise of pleasure fits in. Sex, gambling, alcohol, drugs, overeating, and a plethora of other things that are done for pleasure and get out of hand. All because we believe our self should be in constant pleasure. We do these things to feed our fantasy, and forget that there is a whole big universe beyond our own little needs.

What is reality? To be real is to exist in truth and actuality, not imagination. I'm not making this up! That is the actual definition of reality! So what we bring forth from our imagination is not true and actual until we create it. If we create turmoil by imagining self-based thought, that is what becomes our reality. Our reality is a bunch of non-sense. It is a bunch of confused thought.

So how is it that we remedy this? Again we go to the Big Book and find: "This is the how and the why of it. First of all, we had to quit playing God. It didn't work. Next, we decided that hereafter in this drama of life, God was going to be our Director. He is the Principal; we are His agents. He is the Father, and we are His children. Most good ideas are simple, and this concept was the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which we passed to freedom". "How It Works" pg. 62

If we focus our attention on what God's will is for us, rather on self-will, it brings us back to clarity. That is why it works really well when we help each other with problems. It seems to me that is what God's will is for each and every one of us. Living in harmonious action with not only other human beings, but all of God's creations.
--Ed C.

Going To Any Lengths



"If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it --- then you are ready to take certain steps. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, How It Works, Page 58~



“Step Three is like the opening of a door which to all appearances is still closed and locked. All we need is a key, and the decision to swing the door open. There is only one key, and it is called willingness”. Pg. 34, 12 & 12. Willingness is the key! You have to be willing to go to any length to get it. Get what?



To be willing is to be ready to act gladly; eagerly compliant. But what is it that we have to be eagerly compliant to get? Is it sobriety? Not really! It’s spirituality! If we are willing to find the necessary spiritual experience, then sobriety will follow. This is why I find it hard to believe that people who claim to be working the steps say they do not have believe in a God of their understanding to make the steps work. They have not been willing to go to any lengths to get what it is that we have.



I have always been inclined to go along with anything that keeps someone sober, but again it is not the suggested program of recovery. It is not what has worked for many millions of people who have been willing to go to any lengths. That may be the reasoning behind why it is that these people have failed to find the necessary serenity to stay sober.



Oh! You ask why it is that I say that? Well sobriety isn’t just putting down the drink. Sobriety is being devoid of frivolity, excess, exaggeration, or speculative imagination. These are things that most of us don’t understand. Why? It has to do with not being able to recognize what they mean. We have been acting with-in the boundaries of frivolity, excess, exaggeration, and speculative imagination for so long that we have come to believe that it is normal to act that way. That is why I believe that someone can act without sobriety and not even touch a drink or drug.



Let’s get back to the subject of spirituality. Spirituality has to do with the immaterial. Immaterial being those things, which have no material body; the soul. I like to call it incorporeal consciousness. The spirit! This is the nature of who we are. But how is the soul linked to finding sobriety? Well look at where frivolity, excess, exaggeration, and speculative imagination come from. The mind, not the soul. The problem being we use the mind in concerns of the material rather than the concerns of the immaterial. The place where our conscience is.



Where does God fit into all of this? It seems to me that God is the ultimate in understanding spirit. God is the ultimate spirit. No matter where your understanding of that God comes from. After studying many different religions it has come to my opinion that the underlying result of a belief in this spirit or spirits has to do with understanding ourselves. Where we fit into all of the wonder it is we call the universe. It is when we come to this realization that we start to see it takes a lot more than our selves to make all of this work. There has to be something that has created all of this wonder. It just didn’t happen!



So you ask “Where is it that I found out that spirit is the thing that we must be willing to go any lengths to get”? Well again just turn to the Big Book. “Reminding ourselves that we have decided to go to any lengths to find a spiritual experience, we ask that we be given strength and direction to do the right thing, no matter what the personal consequences may be.” ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, Into Action, pg. 79~



Oh yeah by the way to have a spiritual experience is to become conscious of God as we understand Him. It is not by coming to a belief in ourselves. Our ‘self’ is where our problems lie. It is by God’s will that we stay sober. Not by our own. Of course that is if you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it! Just remember we are powerless, but there is One who has all power—that One is God. May you find Him now!
--Ed C.

"The Storm"







"The alcoholic is like a tornado roaring his way through the lives of others. Hearts are broken. Sweet relationships are dead. Affections have been uprooted. Selfish and inconsiderate habits have kept the home in turmoil. We feel a man is unthinking when he says that sobriety is enough" ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, Into Action, pg. 82~



I know that not all of us have experienced the fury of a tornado. Living in Florida, I have lived through not only several tornados, but also a few hurricanes too! The above passage is very subtle in it’s message. It does not only cover the damage caused by the behavior of the alcoholic, but also the necessity of the clean up after the fact.



In a tornado the winds are very strong. They whip around everything, sometimes causing damage. The damage can be very light, or in a lot of cases it is very extensive. In fact the tornado can cause complete devastation. Not only structurally, and environmentally, but has the potential power to kill! It is my contention that the alcoholic is like the devastating type of tornado.



O.K. I hear you saying, “Isn’t that a bit harsh in making a comparison between the alcoholic and the tornado?” Let’s just think about that for a moment. Alcoholic behavior is described as selfish. In being selfish we act on our own accord, leaving out the account of what effect that action has on not only others, but the environment as a whole. We act with very little thinking. So how do we really know how much damage we have really done?



If someone does a thorough inventory of their life they start to see the extent of this damage. Again this not only involves just human life, but everything we touched. We caused turmoil in everything we did. In some cases we probably did damage far beyond what we recognized. Some of this damage may have resulted in death, either human or some other living being.



So maybe now you get the idea of how devastating the disease of alcoholism really is. It causes extreme damage not only to us, but also to our surroundings. Still nowhere is this damage more evident than our own homes. There it is like a tornado that sits in one place for years and years. Causing complete devastation!



How many hearts have been broken? What kind of sweet relationships are dead? Where has all of the affection gone? This where the comparison between the tornado and the alcoholics gets a little bit strained. In a tornado people will seek shelter from the wind if they have enough prior warning. Yet with the alcoholic this destructive wind builds up over a great period of time. It is sort of like the victims of this storm endure the full force of the wind, only to have it go and then come back again. Never really having a place to seek shelter. This is until they have had enough. Most sane people will recognize our devastating power and get out of our way. It is only then that we start to wonder why it is that we no longer have the affection of those in whom we supposedly love.



Sometimes there are those who just keep on standing in the path of our destruction. It is those people who suffer the most. For they are the ones who love us the most, and keep on getting hurt the worst. It is when they finally break; that we lose something that will never be replaced. That is what is called a sweet relationship. Once dead, it is never the same. For somewhere deep inside that person there lies the idea that they tried everything they could to love us, only to be pounded (either literally or figuratively) into the ground by our destructive force, over and over again.



So what about the clean up? How do we go about “fixing” all the damage? Steps 8 & 9 address this: Step#8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. Step#9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Well it is a bit harder than it sounds in making amends. It has been my experience that making the list and direct the amends to the people is the easy part. The hard part is living up to our words.



We have to start walking the walk. It is only then, that the amends start to work. It is then and only then, that we start to see our loved ones, friends, and neighbors peeking there heads out of the storm shelter. In some cases they never do! All we can do is be willing to do the best we can in making these amends, and do our best in cleaning up our lives.

Will it ever be the same? Nope! Nothing is ever the same!!!!! Each day is a new one. We have to live for today, and not worry about yesterday or tomorrow. The only thing we can hope for is for God to show us the way in keeping the storm from ever building again.
--Ed C.

“Our Enemies”

"The greatest enemies of us alcoholics are resentment, jealousy, envy, frustration, and fear." ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, To Employers, pg. 145~

When you think of enemies, you might think about people who have made us mad, or perhaps we have made them mad. But these things are just feelings. Does it matter? Just think for a moment where our problems arise when it comes to other people. Don’t all of our problems arise from resentment, jealousy, envy, frustration, and fear? Seems to me they do!

But how can non-material things be our greatest enemy? Well if we put them in our brains they can be very hurtful. So hurtful that it can cause us to drink. We all know that alcohol is our greatest foe, so anything that can lead us to the drink can be our enemy.

Let’s break this down for a moment. Resentment is to re-sense something. We actually feel an emotion with-in us when we think about something. Most of us feel anger about either a real or imagined grievance. Something that we believe in where we have been wronged. Sometimes this sense can last for years and years.

Jealousy is a feeling we get when we are not content with what we have. We are actually discontent with the idea that someone else possesses something that we don’t have. If you really think about it jealousy and envy run hand and hand, but the strange thing about this is we can build resentment towards another person just based on how far we take this feeling. This is where the imagined grievance comes into play. Heck we don’t even have to be physically harmed by someone else to build this type of resentment.

Now we can take a look at frustration! Frustration is to cause feelings of discouragement or bafflement in something we think we should be doing or have done. We constantly are scrutinizing ourselves based on some type of standard. Most of the time we have no idea what standard that is, but we certainly become frustrated when it doesn’t happen our way. Doesn't matter what it is, we become baffled over it.

Then there is fear. This is the feeling that can get so bad that it can even kill. But what causes this dread? What makes us feel that an event or object presents us with a dangerous circumstance, something that we must fear? It’s pretty simple! We don’t know the outcome. We have no faith!

So what do all these things have in common? They are feelings!!!! They do not exist in reality. They are created with-in our minds! Alcoholics are examples of these particular feelings gone completely awry.

Sure, you read this and ask “But these are normal feelings. Right”? Well let’s look at it this way. Emotions are God-given instincts, but when they get out of whack they affect our mental state. So yes, emotions are normal feelings in normal circumstances, but in the alcoholic’s case they become extreme. In our case they become deadly.

In today’s science we have found that certain levels of chemicals in our brains cause these feelings to become overactive. Being that I am not a scientist in any way, I do not wish to go into it any more than mentioning these chemical imbalances as the source of our mental problems. But there is something I can say that may make a lot of people feel uncomfortable, that is these imbalances are a direct result of our overactive imaginations!!!!

O.K. now that I have you feeling a little bit of resentment towards me saying that, I will explain what I mean. There is a little ditty in the Big Book that made this fact glaring to me. (That and the fact that I have done quite a bit of research into why it says things such as this in the Big Book). The quote is the last line of “Spiritual Experience” pg. 570 (In the third edition): “There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”— Herbert Spencer

Contempt prior to investigation! That’s it! We are seeing life through our eyes only. We act out in contemptuous behavior without fully understanding the how and why of things. It effects how we do things and how we function in our relationships with others. It is called prejudice. Not just racial prejudice, but pre-judgment of everything we do.

It is like not going swimming in the ocean because there are sharks out there. Or perhaps it is like us walking down the sidewalk at night, scared out of our wits, just knowing there is someone waiting in the shadows to harm us. It could be as simple as getting anxious over our wife or husband being late. Or God forbid a wife or a husband talking to someone of the opposite sex. All of the drama that takes place in our minds without knowing what reality is. We prejudge that reality is the picture that is going on in our mind!

Linking this to our drinking problem may not be as hard as people think. Just as we can rise the levels of the chemicals that cause us to feel certain emotions, it seems to me that the same thing can happen when the thought of a drink comes to mind in the alcoholic. Again it is an overreaction to our thoughts.

So how is it that we are supposed to tackle something as complex as the human mind. Well it is really simple. We surrender! We give up! We stop building up all of these scenarios about people, places, and things in our minds. Instead of worrying what other people are doing we start to focus on what we are doing. We ask God to provide us with the serenity to accept the things we cannot change (those things in which we have no control over; i.e. anything that anyone else has, says, or does), the courage to change the things we can (our behavior in the aspect of investigating the reason behind our actions; i.e. having a purpose other than self-serving), and the wisdom to know the difference (between what is our imagination and what is real). With God’s help we can defeat our enemies.
--Ed C.

“The Handicapped”

"We alcoholics are sensitive people. It takes some of us a long time to outgrow that serious handicap." ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, The Family Afterward, pg. 125~

Alcoholics are sensitive people? Sensitive to what? Well we certainly were not sensitive to other people’s feeling. We seem to be sensitive to things that we make up in our minds. The statement above means that things that are either said, done, or maybe nothing at all, may hurt us emotionally.

How can we be hurt emotionally by something that hasn’t happened? If you really think about it, there are certain things that are made up in our minds that have yet to be proven real. To be real they would have had to have happened. In this case they don’t. These feelings that we feel in this case are called imaginary resentments. In the Big Book they are referred to as “wrong doing of others, fancied or real” (Alcoholics Anonymous page. 66). Well I’m here to tell you that all resentments are imaginary. Here’s how I will prove it.

If someone says or does something to you that you do not like, chances are you will immediately feel anger. This is a normal human response. But if you keep on feeling that anger because of the actions of another human being, where does that feeling come from? It comes from nowhere else but your mind!!!! If you choose to keep feeling that anger after the action it becomes something mental.

Oh you say, “What about physically abuse or something of that sort”? Well it is like this, you only feel a certain amount of physical pain from that type of abuse. The problem exists beyond that. It is the emotional pain that follows that becomes the problem.

Sure it is not a very nice thing when someone hurts someone else physically or mentally, but this is not what the alcoholic’s problem stems from. We react in our mind to the way other people act. This reaction is to a emotional response to an imagined scenario. It is the mental disability caused by re-sensing anger and fear from the imaginary. Oh yeah! If you have a mental disability you are said to be “Handicapped”.

This is a serious handicap, because if the alcoholic cannot over come this dysfunction of the imagination, they are doomed to drink again. To drink again for an alcoholic is for them to sign their own death warrant.

How do we conquer the imagination? It seems to me that we must start by differentiating between what is true and what is false. The problem is the alcoholic has a hard time differentiating true and false according to Dr. Silkworth ( Dr.’s Opinion page, xxvi Alcoholics Anonymous). So us alcoholics have to look beyond ourselves for help.

It has been impossible for a human being to instill the ability for differentiating true and false into another, so we must look beyond human help in doing so. This help has to come from a Higher Power, from the One who instilled this ability with-in us in the first place. It is He who will give it back to us. This One is God, may you find Him now!

For those who fail to recognize this, they are like children who refuse to give up on their imaginary friend. The longer they refuse to be willing to ask for God’s help, the longer they are condemned to building up imaginary feelings. They are confined with-in their own mind. Outside of reality! Handicapped!

The key to this is the word outgrow. In A.A. we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. Ours is a spiritual progression, not a spiritual perfection. It is those who come to an understanding of this, who will outgrow this serious handicap.
--Ed C.

"The Miracle"

"We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes!" ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, Into Action, pg. 84~

The reason I call this ?The Miracle? is the difference in our attitude (Old to new). This has to be a miracle because the way I see it, the old attitude was a hopeless state of mind. Alcohol ruled our lives and in most cases it was thing main thing that we focused our attention on.

By following the rules of the program laid out as it is in the Big Book that change happened pretty quick too. We went from being drawn towards alcohol, to recoiling from alcohol in a blink, once we became willing to buy into the things we had to do in following the program.

So what is it that we attributed this miracle to? Is it the fact that we all of a sudden decided to quit? No! Is it because we made a decision to attend A.A. meetings? No! Is it because we started reading the Big Book? No! It?s is because we became willing to start to follow direction, with God being the focal point. GOD (Good, Orderly, Direction)!

I hear a lot of people say ?Meetings and the people in them are the reason I can stay sober?. Meetings and the people who are attending them are important as far as an atmosphere that is conducive with staying sober, but that is not the way we stay sober. The way we stay sober is by working the steps of A.A. as they are laid out in the Big Book (Located in ?How It Works?).

Those steps are up on the wall of most meetings, but they only represent words to most that look at them. They will never keep us sober unless we understand what they represent. The only place that the representations of these words are located is in the Big Book. It is by reading about the program and understanding what it says that brings light to the words in the steps.

If one buys into what those words represent they WILL be changed! They WILL experience an entire psychic change! They WILL come to understand a God! It is by coming to this understanding that the miracle happens.

We go from acting insane and out of normalcy, to acting sane and normal automatically. We do this without realizing that it happened. It just comes! That is the how and why it. But do these things come by understanding only the words?

No! It is by performing rigorous action. It?s by coming clean with one?s self. It is by accepting that the self is no longer important. It is by performing God?s will for us. It is by sharing those virtues with one another. We all of a sudden realize that a change has happened. This is something that cannot be explained any other way than miraculous. Only because those of us that came into this program were beyond hope.

There was nothing anyone of us could do for ourselves, nor could anyone else do very much for us. Yet just by simply making a few simple changes in the way we thought about things, alcohol no longer was important to us.

Can we contribute this miracle to God? I can certainly think of no other reason other than God did for us, what we could not do for ourselves. We went from being sick both mentally and physically, to being able to function in a relatively normal way. Just by coming to believe that there actually was a Power greater than ourselves. We did that and the miracle happened. It just came!
--Ed C.

"Our Inventory"

"Putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done, we resolutely looked for our own mistakes. Where had we been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and frightened? Though a situation had not been entirely your fault, we tried to disregard the other person involved entirely. Where were we to blame? The inventory was ours, not the other man's. When we saw our faults we listed them. We placed them before us in black and white. We admitted our wrongs honestly and were willing to set these matters straight." ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, How It Works, pg. 67~

This is where alcoholics have big problems. We want to blame others for our misfortunes. But where does the problem start? In our minds!!!!! We have to put out of our minds the wrongs that we believed others had done to us and start looking towards our own mistakes. An easy thing to do? Not really.

It seems to me that a lot of people including alcoholics suffer from trying to put the label of right or wrong on things. Not only labeling people, but other places and other things. Yet we have some type of mental block when it comes to labeling the same things that we are thinking and doing. We don?t take into consideration that it could be possible that the other person probably believes that whatever they are doing is right and whatever we are doing is wrong. When confronted with this idea huge problems arise.

What makes things right? What makes things wrong? Ahhh! It?s the way we think about things. Right? Wrong? Well probably there are certain people who will say one thing and a whole set of others will say another, but it is the group who say ?I really don?t know? that may have upper hand on answering the question. They are the ones who approach situations with an open mind.

Now back to taking our own inventory. We would love to be able to take other people?s inventory. In fact it happens all of the time. But if we stop and take a look at what we are doing and the way we are acting, if we are very honest with ourselves, we will see that we indeed have faults that need to be taken care of. Taking other people?s inventory should be one of them!

I contend that the only place right and wrong should be declared is when we take a look at our own inventory. In fact it may be better to look at the whole thing by not even labeling ourselves, but to come up with better solutions to what we believe we should be doing.

Just like taking inventory at a business it is proper to write down the stock. We check everything that is in the stock room and get rid of damaged and spoiled goods. That is why it is said that it is best to write it down. There we can look at our inventory and establish the things we need to get rid of. If there is something that seems damaged we ask ourselves if there is some way to fix it. This may seem strange as far as listing emotions, but that is exactly what we are doing. We are talking about a honest, emotional inventory, we have to treat these things as real (even though they are not real, only imaginary).

Are there good emotions? Sure there are, the problem exists with the way we fire these emotions off. This is what we are looking for when we take the inventory. It is not emotions that need attention, but the way we are making these emotions work.

Emotions like fear, sadness, depression, anxiety, and etc. are all emotions that are normal feelings that are built into human beings. It is normal to feel these things from time to time, but to feel them all of the time is a big problem. If one does an inventory and writes it down it is glaring what is causing these things. It is pictures of things we believe to be problems with other people, or even sometimes ourselves that keep on recurring in our minds. These are called resentments! Resentment is the number one offender in alcoholics.

"Resentment is the "number one" offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stem all forms of spiritual disease, for we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick?. "How It Works" Alcoholics Anonymous (fourth edition) pg.62.

So that is where we start to fix the problem. Spiritually! We don?t try to fix the mind, we fix the spirit. It is when we dispose of all the bad stuff with-in the spirit that the mental and the physical aspects of our alcoholism start to get better. This includes all of the bad relationships that we thought we had. We start to see where it actually was the way we were behaving that caused these problems.

How is it that we dispose of all of these bad, spiritually spoiled goods? We ask God to remove them. The only thing we have to do is find out what they are and ask God to take them away. Plain and simple.

This is a good quote I came across when was researching spiritual principles:

"The amount a person suffers in their life is directly related to how much they are resisting the fact that "things are the way they are." This has got to be one of the KEY pieces of wisdom about being human. If there is suffering or discomfort, there is resistance to the way things are. Period. ~ "Nine Principles for Happiness and Healing"
Series by Bill Harris http://www.trans4mind.com/holosync/principle1.html
--Ed C.

"The Realm of The Spirit"

"We have entered the world of the Spirit. Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. This is not an overnight matter. It should continue for our lifetime." ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, Into Action, pg. 84~

This is it! The world of the Spirit. The place where alcoholics have to be to become effectively sober. By effectively sober I mean not only putting down the drink, but making an over all change in one’s behavior. If an alcoholic is serious about becoming sober they must be able to cross over from material thinking to spiritual thinking.

This happens on a personal level, so really and truly there is no one person who can tell you how to do it other than by coming to believe in a Power greater than ourselves. By turning our wills and our lives to a God as we understand Him. What this does is create the necessary psychic change in the alcoholic, to provide them with the tools to change their behavioral pattern. Just putting the drink down does not do it!

It doesn’t really stop there either. Staying effectively sober is like exercising. In fact it is maintained by exercise, by spiritual exercise! Once we have crossed over into this realm of the spirit, we must be ready to grow in understanding and effectiveness. But how do we do this?

We cannot sit in meetings and talk about how life is treating us and so on. We must be willing to pick up the tools we have been handed and be willing to use them. This program was founded on the premise of one alcoholic working with another alcoholic. It is by helping one another come to an understanding of what is going on around us that we get out of self.

But as the Big Book says “God will constantly disclose more to you and to us. Ask Him in your morning meditation what you can do each day for the man who is still sick. The answers will come, if your own house is in order. But obviously you cannot transmit something you haven't got”. ~ “A Vision For You” pg. 164 Alcoholics Anonymous Edition Four ~ This is so true. We can make grand claims of understanding a God, but when it comes to transmitting God’s message to someone else there is no answer. This is why it is necessary to constantly seek what God’s will is for each and every one of us. We cannot speak about the Spirit if we do not know what the Spirit is!

Just as we did in practicing our addiction, we have to practice in growing towards God. We do this through prayer and meditation. Each time we practice this ritual we progress towards a closer relationship to the God we understand. We come to understand Him better with each day we practice. Once we come to this understanding we then can share our experience with one another. We keep on doing this day in and day out for the rest of our lives. This is how we come to understand Spirit!!!

In this realm of the Spirit things drastically change. Whereas once we constantly were in a battle with our emotions, we now can see that with God as our driver we no longer have to worry about things. Working and getting along with one another some how changes the way we think about things. We lose interest in doing things that harm ourselves and others and soon gain interest in finding ways to better life. Life not in the material sense, but in the immaterial.
--Ed C.

"Faith"

"Imagine life without faith! Were nothing left but pure reason, it wouldn't be life." ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, We Agnostics, pg. 54~

What is faith? It is the theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will. It consists of the study of the nature of God and a coming of the understanding of the Truth. So primarily it is not really that hard to imagine life without faith because with some of us we lived that way for a very long time.

So what we really were doing was living without life. Sounds sort messed up doesn't it? But just think for a moment about how it was that we were living. We lived a life based in self reasoning. We really had no answers to what we were doing, but we created reasoning behind that. We lived life without purpose.

Reason is defined as a declaration made to explain or justify action, decision, or conviction. We were going through life declaring a justification for our actions. When in a real sense we had not a clue what was going on. Reality escaped us. We were living with-in the material world but had no real explanation why or how it got that way.

This is where faith enters the picture. It was the at the exact time that we accepted the smallest idea that God was the Power that would be able to restore us to sanity that we started practicing faith. Directly after accepting that possibility we were asked to surrender ourselves to the God that we understood and the process of living life outside the boundaries of the material world started to blend into our thinking.

With most of us the fact that we became willing to turn our wills and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him, we were reborn. An instant change came over us and we were now ready to accept that possibly we were at fault for most of our misgivings. That if we practiced even more faith, that God would provide us with the tools to change all of that around. We now would rely on Him instead of relying upon ourselves. We began living again.

Fear, paranoia, worry, anxiety?..were no longer things that gripped us. We were able to live life now and not be hampered with those particular imagined diseases. Oh yeah! Alcoholism being a symptom of all of that also became unnecessary too! We could live life now without alcohol, drugs, or anything else that seemed to hinder us. So that same imagination that caused us all the grief, now can imagine life without it. That is what I call a turn around!

For those who do not understand this premise let?s look at it this way. Do you remember when you first started to ride a bike? Mom and dad would run along side of you making sure that you stayed steady. You had faith in mom and dad not to let go of you, but soon you noticed mom and dad were no longer beside you and you were actually maneuvering the bike yourself.

This is sort of what faith is in God. You rely on God to steer you in the right direction. He is there beside you while you are riding the bicycle of life. If you believe in Him, he will not let you fall.

Life without this faith is sort of like learning to ride the bicycle by yourself. You might actually learn to ride it, but there is never the comfort or the security of someone there to catch you when you fall. There is no one there to guide you in the learning process. There is always the nagging fear that you have never learned the right way of riding the bike.

See with God it doesn't matter! He will be there no matter if you did it right or wrong. He takes away the fear. It is not the fact that you are riding the bike, but the experience of riding the bike. The experience can never be right or wrong. God sees to it that it is never going to be that way.

So with faith you can enjoy the experiences of life, without faith you will never know! Another great quote:

"A person who has done much of their life unconsciously doesn't know they are doing it, and you may not believe me when I tell you this is something you are probably doing, and doing quite a lot, if not all, of the time. It takes becoming more conscious to realize what you were doing." ~ "Nine Principles for Happiness and Healing" Series by Bill Harris http://www.trans4mind.com/holosync/principle6.html
--Ed C.

"The Foundation Stone"



"Helping others is the foundation stone of your recovery. A kindly act once in a while isn't enough. You have to act the Good Samaritan every day, if need be." ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, Working With Others, pg. 97~



Helping others is the foundation stone of your recovery. It seems to me that we first must understand why it is that we must represent the rebuilding of something to make this recovery thing work. A foundation stone is the first stone that is placed in the foundation to mark the start of new construction.

First of all it seems we as alcoholics have to symbolically represent our lives as something that was in need of repair or in most cases something that needed to be totally rebuilt. We represent that idea with tearing down our old lives and rebuilding anew.

So helping others is the symbolic stone we lay in the new foundation of our lives. That is where we start. But wait! Don?t we have to work on ourselves first? Well it seems to me that we must be able to learn what it takes to help others before we can offer help.

First of all we must understand that living life free from thinking about ourselves is paramount. If we look at helping others with the idea that it is helping us then the effectiveness is useless. Even though we may benefit from the pleasure we receive from helping others, we have to take self out of the equation. The foundation stone is laid with selflessness.

But how is it that we act with selflessness. First of all we need to understand that self is only an imaginary image that we use to identify our being. If we become conscious of this self only being an image, then it becomes easier to live without it. It is when we use it to justify our actions, then we become selfish. That is why if you use helping others to justify your own sobriety, you are doing so in selfishness.

The problem I have with the verse I am using for this week?s column is the fact that it says we have to act the Good Samaritan everyday, if need be. Not only should we be the Good Samaritan everyday, but it should be always. Not only when we deem it necessary.

It seems to me that we cannot be selective in how we are helpful. If we are going to help someone who seems to have troubles, then we have to do it with no abandon. This is how we become selfless. Selectiveness breeds prejudice, we start to think about the this? and that?s of who we are helping and how it is going to affect us, it no longer becomes effective. It becomes selfish!

So a kindly act every once in a while does not do. We have to be effective in our helpfulness. It has to happen day in and day out. We have to bend over backwards to help someone that needs help. How do we do this you ask? Well it seems to me that practicing patience, tolerance, and being nice to other people is a start. Just smiling and being nice to someone who seems to be having problems changes their attitude a little bit. That little bit just might be enough to change their attitude about feeling better about their situation later on!!!!

A real short story that relates to this premise. During the first five years of practicing sobriety I had to ride the city bus. This was direct result of my alcoholism, and driving record. So any way I certainly had plenty of practice in learning how patience works, and how to tolerate other people.

Well one day about four years into this journey I was sitting at one of the bus stops that I had to catch a transfer bus to get to work. I was so adept at working this schedule that I had a monthly pass, and knew where and when I had to be. Sitting at this bus stop meant that I had to wait about twenty minutes for the transfer bus to arrive. So meanwhile plenty of other buses made their way to the stop with people getting on and getting off to transfer to other routes.

One girl in particular caught my attention. She was extremely agitated and seemed to be looking for something. I watched her painfully get angry about whatever it was that she was missing, so I asked her if there was something I could do to help her. She told me that she had lost her monthly bus pass. She had used it to get there, but had lost it either on the bus or at the stop we were sitting at. So I asked her if she had any other way of getting to where she was going. She said ?No? !!!! So I calmly offered her my monthly pass.

She was beside herself. Why would anyone give up their bus pass to her? Well I had enough money to get to where I was going, and I could always get another bus pass. She was so thankful that she could not stop saying thank you. I told her not to worry about it. Just to remember if she ever had the opportunity to do the same, that she should not hesitate.

It was only couple of minutes later that she settled down and was waiting for her bus to come, when all of a sudden she reached down into her sock and there it was, her bus pass. She bashfully brought the bus pass I had given her back to me and handed it back, explaining how she had stuck her bus pass in her sock and had forgotten about it. She then went on how she still could not believe that someone would be willing to help her without wanting anything else in return. I told her that was the way it was supposed to be!!!
--Ed C.

"Your Greatest Possession"

"Cling to the thought that, in God's hands, the dark past is the greatest possession you have?the key to life and happiness for others. With it you can avert death and misery for them." ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, The Family Afterward, pg. 124~

?The dark past is your greatest possession?. What??? You may ask that same question. To understand this you must understand that experience is the tool that you must rely on if you are going to stay sober.

Your past is important, yet we also remember that we cannot live in the past, we can only share that past with others so they can understand that they do not stand alone in the way they feel. Being that the statement says it is ?the key to life and happiness for others?, you must understand that we have to share the truth about our dark past for it to be effective.

In the Doctors Opinion page xxvi it states ?Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false?. So we must possess the ability to be able to differentiate these things that we are so ready to share with others. To share falsehoods only furthers the confusion that is already taking place with-in the circle of people who have to be subjected to it.

You may ask how it is that your dark past can possibly avert misery and death for someone in whom you share it with? Well it seems to me that if we can share the dark past of our lives with someone who does not fully understand the truth about how destructive acting selfish and self-centered can be, then if they are willing to LISTEN, the effectiveness of such sordid tales may just save them from walking down the same path. In the case of the person who has already walked that path, they too can benefit from us being able to take them by the hand and leading them to a better way of life.

See with people like us it is just that way. We have to be able to relate to one another to be able to understand the truth. That is why it is very hard for someone who has never drank to be able to relate to someone who has. They just do not understand where alcohol has taken some of us.

I remember when I first attended rehab, there was a councilor who seemed out of place from all the rest of the councilors. It seemed to me that he had a hard time relating to everyone that was the trying to rehabilitate. It wasn?t until I asked him about what brought him into wanting to be in such a trade that I came to understand the problem. He had never touched a drink or a drug in his life. He had all the schooling that one could possibly imagine, but he had not been to the school of hard knocks. That lack of experience was a detriment to his effectiveness. Believe me when I say that the addictive personalities in that room picked up on that like a pack of wild dogs. We tore him up!!!

So in being able to notice something like that we can now understand that we as alcoholics are even more effective in helping others than a trained professional. Well let?s look at it this way. We are trained professionals. We have been trained in the school of alcoholism!!!!
--Ed C.

"The Undisciplined"

"We alcoholics are undisciplined. So we let God discipline us..." ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, Into Action, pg. 88~

So what is discipline? In the online dictionary www.dictionary.com the best definition for this conversation is: Training expected to produce a specific character or pattern of behavior, especially training that produces moral or mental improvement.

But didn't we have training? What was all of this growing up stuff? Didn't we receive the right information from our families, our teachers, our pastors, priests, and spiritual leaders? No! Maybe it is because we refused to listen?

It seems to me that one of the biggest problems that I suffered growing up is not listening to experience. Some might say that I was un-trainable. Sure there were the things in life that I learned, but when it came right down to the nuts and bolts of it, I had to do it my way. Some may think that is a great way to learn, but it leaves those who learn that way undisciplined.

So in this undisciplined action, the facade of self-knowledge grew into what was believed to be truth. The fact was I actually had not a clue if what I was doing had any effect on anything other than my ?self?. I knew neither truth or falsehood. Only what I made up in my mind.

Sure there were those who tried to show me discipline. Just ask the cops and the judges who kept on trying to show me the way. Ask all of the people who trusted in me, and were completely let down when they found out I had lied to them. What they didn't realize is that I didn't have a clue what they were trying to say to me. I didn't care, and I certainly didn't want to hear it!!!

See this is where selfishness and self-centeredness comes in. We as alcoholics are undisciplined. We were trained, but in a way that involved self. Most of us have stories about the this? and that?s of our life and how hard it was growing up. But the facts are if we had listened to all of the good advice that had passed our way, chances are we would not be in the shape we are today.

But getting away from the past and looking into the now. We need to realize that if we are going to look to God for this discipline that we are lacking, we also have to listen. God will train us, but we have to listen to Him.

This is exactly the reasoning behind why there are so many failures of sobriety, when it comes to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. We want what the people who have made sobriety a success have, but we don?t want to listen to how it is they did it. I have spent the last six years into researching this problem and have recognized that there are many people who seek what the program has to offer, but are not willing to go to any lengths to get it.

In the Big Book it states: 'If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it - then you are ready to take certain steps." "How It Works" pg. 58. Those steps are a design to bring us closer to God. People say they are ready, but are they willing?

God doesn't just snap His fingers and boom all of a sudden you find discipline. It has to be practiced. There is no better way to practice this discipline than to work diligently with other alcoholics. In fact it doesn't necessarily have to just be alcoholics, but to carry on the word of a spiritual experience to all that want to listen. It seems to me that this is His will for all us. That is if we are willing to listen!!!!
--Ed C.

"Our Mottoes"





"We have three little mottoes which are apropos.

Here they are:



First Things First

Live and Let Live

Easy Does It."



~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, The Family Afterward, pg.

135~



I hear a lot of people use these mottoes pretty freely, but do we know what they are meant to represent? Let?s take a look at each one of the mottoes and see what is just right about each one of them. Oh yeah! Apropos means: Just Right!



First things first! Let?s talk about ?First Things First?. Seems pretty simple to understand? Well the saying goes back a ways, and has been used by religious people for some time. It seems to me that most likely the people who wrote the Big Book liked the saying because it symbolizes priorities. Prioritizing God in front of all else is what we are talking about. Things like family and work and those things are important, but if we do not pick up the spiritual tools that God has laid out before us, then we are most likely to return to drinking and all of that other stuff really doesn?t matter any way.



Some people think that it is really a priority that we try to mend a broken relationship or marriage when we decide to quit drinking, and found how wrong they are when they tried putting that first on their list of things to do. See none of this will work if there is not some type of spiritual or psychic change in our thinking. This just does not happen over night or just because we decided to put down the drink. It takes plenty of practice at realizing this. So it seems to me that ?First Things First? is get right with God, then other things will fall into place.



Now on to ?Live and Let Live?. Believe it or not this phrase was coined in the First World War by troops that practiced not trying to kill one another in the trenches. They found if they did not antagonize the enemy, that at the end of the day they were still alive. These guys could usually see and hear each other and practiced not trying to do things that didn?t really need to be done. I guess you could say that there was enough killing going on, and if there didn?t need to be any more killing, then it seemed apropos.



You could look at the way soldiers did things and apply this saying to what we all should do. We should live our own life and leave others to do the same. It seems to me that a lot of us want to be in charge of other people?s lives, that we should dictate the way they do things to make us happy. I have found that just like the actor who wants to run the whole show (How It Works pg.60), that other people don?t want their show run for them. It makes them mad and then it causes friction. All of this calamity is caused by people trying to butt into other people?s lives. It does not work!



We have to recognize that it takes a bunch of different people using their own thoughts to make up this world. That we all use different maps of thought. Instead of trying to push our thoughts onto one another, we should share them and learn the reasoning behind the thoughts of others. Our thoughts are what validate our lives no matter who we are. So if we invalidate someone else?s thoughts in lieu of our own, we in all practicality have invalidated their life. Wouldn?t that make you mad?



So just do what you think is the next right thing. Be the best you can be and let other people do what they have to do. I have found the best way to persuade someone into behaving better is to act kindly to them. If they must be selfish, then walk on!!!!



Now for the final motto: ?Easy Does It?. I really and truly believe that a lot of people get the wrong idea from this motto. They believe by having the word easy in the phrase that there is no work to this thing we call ?a program of recovery?. It?s just not so, the phrase was meant to not go over-board in trying to push our new found values onto other people. We must revert to the ?Live and Let Live? motto to understand what this means.



Say you have finally found God and believe that with this new found faith that you are going to save all the people you once hung out with. Chances are you are going to be looked at as a crazy hypocrite and may lose any chance you might have in being helpful to someone that might need your help some where down the line.



By ?Easy Does It? it seems to me that it is meant to take what you have learned from taking the steps of A.A. and apply those principles to your every day life. Not to push those principles onto others. Just live them in your life and show others by example what living a life with God in it can do!



I certainly know that ?Easy Does It? does not mean that we should not read and understand the things in the Big Book that apply to the program of recovery!!!
--Ed C.