[MajestyJo]

Over the years, I have heard so many people say, "The program never worked for me." I found that the program works, if I work for it. It works, because I am still working it.

The program isn't a quick fix, it is a process, a healing process that allows me to live in today alcohol and drug free, no matter what the substance is I try to substitute to make it all go away.

If I am not drinking in my spiritual need, not drinking spirits to meet my needs, it doesn't work.

If I am picking up a drug to escape reality, hide and bury my feelings and shutting of my feelings, then there is no sobriety (soundness of mind), and the program doesn't work unless it is spiritual things instead of people, places, and things, that I choose to put before my God.

I had to make an amend to my God for my thoughts and actions that kept me from Him. My choice, not His. Every time I pick up, be it food, work, cigarettes, alcohol, or street and prescription drugs, I leave God behind and allow my disease to rule my life.

How it works. Honesty myself, with my God and others. Opening my mind to other concepts and ideas other than my own. Willingness to go to any length to stay clean and sober in today.

Something I always remember is that "Ahhhhhhhhh!" feeling when I picked something up and it hit bottom." The thing I had to remember, was that I search for that feeling all of my life. When I reach it, I could stay in that moment, I had to have more. It kept taking more and more to reach that place, and then I found I couldn't reach it any more.

It was the spiritual aspects of the programs in AA, NA, and Al-Anon that worked for me. I could stop, and stay stopped.