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Just For Today

Up Or Down

'This is our road to spiritual growth. We change every day.... This growth is not the result of wishing but of action and prayer.'

Basic Text, p. 35-36

Our spiritual condition is never static; if it's not growing, it's decaying. If we stand still, our spiritual progress will lose its upward momentum. Gradually, our growth will slow, then halt, then reverse itself. Our tolerance will wear thin; our willingness to serve others will wane; our minds will narrow and close. Before long, we'll be right back where we started: in conflict with everyone and everything around us, unable to bear even ourselves.

Our only option is to actively participate in our program of spiritual growth. We pray, seeking knowledge greater than our own from a Power greater than ourselves. We open our minds and keep them open, becoming teachable and taking advantage of what others have to share with us. We demonstrate our willingness to try new ideas and new ways of doing things, experiencing life in a whole new way. Our spiritual progress picks up speed and momentum, driven by the Higher Power we are coming to understand better each day.

Up or down - it's one or the other, with very little in between, where spiritual growth is concerned. Recovery is not fueled by wishing and dreaming, we've discovered, but by prayer and action.

Just for today: The only constant in my spiritual condition is change. I cannot rely on yesterday's program. Today, I seek new spiritual growth through prayer and action.

pg. 238

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Blackouts

Blackouts

We will first give you some definitions, then we will attempt to coherently bring together these three robbers of our sanity and good judgement so that you can get an idea of how powerfully these demons are.

Blackouts are a chemically induced loss of memory of everything that happened during a certain time period. The devious part of blackouts is similar to euphoric recall. We do not know what happened during that portion of the time but we have to pretend as if we do. We ask leading questions and try to worm the information out of our fellows as to what happened. In many instances they may be angry at us for a fight or argument that we don't remember. So when we meet again we are OK with them but they blow us off and we have to assemble their attitude and our mistaken knowledge of the facts, and try to make it make sense. When it does not we blame them. What else can we do? We didn't do anything wrong? Did we?

Euphoric Recall is: The alcoholic sees the world through rose colored glasses. They are so rose colored that they put the glasses of the non-alcoholic to shame. The non-alcoholic glasses let him see himself as feeling relaxed and free of anxiety. The alcoholics glasses see the world as though he was god. He sees the women as beautiful, himself as larger, stronger, taller and bullet proof compared to his buddies. He has no fear of flirting or of sex, and considers himself the best lover alive. All this with absolutely no doubt about it.

But that is only what is going on at the present, or in the now. What makes euphoric recall so devious is that the alcoholic wakes up remembering the night before just the way he "filmed it" while it was happening. (This is in direct contrast to the non-alcoholic who remembers the happenings of the previous evening just as they happened.) When others act coolly toward him the next day he thinks they are jealous etc. In this manner he gradually begins to see the world "as it is not" and cannot understand why non alcoholics don't see the world his way. Since he cannot possibly see himself in the wrong here he gradually becomes a god while blaming others for whatever mistakes he has in dealing with reality. So the denial system is built.

State Dependent Learning: State dependent learning describes why the brain will remember some event while in one state of chemical makeup, and not be able to recall it in another state of chemical makeup. To prove just how true, and how powerful, this is we then put the brain in the original chemical makeup (after 6 beers, or a pint of whisky) and sure enough the memory comes right back. This has been proved by hundreds of examples. One professor of medicine teaches his medical students about this one hour each semester.

I personally experienced this. Perhaps the best example was when I met this girl in Jackson, Mississippi. I had already drunk about a pint when I met her and got her phone number. We partied that night but the next day when I wanted to call her I couldn't remember her phone number. Finally I gave up and went to drinking. After I had drunk about a half pint to a pint I suddenly walked over to the pay phone on the wall and dialed her number. This happened not once or twice while I was there, but three times. I was even curious about it at the time but figured it was just because I have an extra large brain.

This matter of not remembering what went on while we were drinking until we got approximately the same degree of intoxication happens not only when we are drinking, but to a certain degree, when we are sobering up. That is, when we are in withdrawal. We learn how to dance and make love while drunk and to work while withdrawing and so nervous we could thread a sewing machine and it running.

In both cases, we do not learn and then recall things while sober. We learn certain things at certain points of the spectrum of getting drunk, and certain points on the spectrum while withdrawing.

So we are educated in one state and asked to live in another. This is difficult. It means talking a lot of action because that is the way we will relearn how to do these things in a normal state.

This is all somewhat like a psychological depravation chamber. A depravation chamber is a sound proof room with no light what so ever. Not even the movement of air is allowed.

You put a person in this thing for several days and he will not be able to walk right away. Nor will he hear as well or speak as well. He will have problems with depth perception. If he does nothing, it will take him a couple of weeks to get back to normal. But if he is energetically in action doing the things he will need to do to be normal, then he recovers more quickly.

Such is our case with state dependent learning. The more action we taking doing normal things while sober, the faster we will see them as normal.

The Twelve Steps		The Twelve Traditions
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable. 2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. 6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. 7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. 8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. 9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. 10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptlym admitted it. 11. Sought though prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.		1. Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon A.A. unity. 2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority - a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern. 3. The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking. 4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or A.A. as a whole. 5. Each group has but one primary purpose - to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers. 6. An A.A. group ought never endorse, finance or lend the A.A. name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary purpose. 7. Every A.A. group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions. 8. Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever non-professional, but our service centers may employ special workers. 9. A.A., as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve. 10. Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the A.A. name ought never be drawn into public controversy. 11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and films. 12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.