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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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Random Recovery Thoughts

Random Recovery Thoughts
Collected In Meetings and Chats

"Sobriety is the leading cause of relapse."

"A treatment center is where you go and pay $15,000 to find out that A.A. meetings are free."

"If drinking is interfering with your work, you're probably a heavy drinker. If work is interfering with your drinking, you're probably an alcoholic."

"I often obsessively pursue feeling good ... no matter how bad it makes me feel."

"When I was new, I didn't think I had any obsessions, until I started thinking about it. Then it was all I could think about."

"I asked my sponsor how to let go of something. He said "Don't think about it." I left happy, finally knowing how to let go. Went home, told myself I would never think about it again ... Thought about it more than ever before in my life."

"How come if alcohol kills millions of brain cells, it never killed the ones that made me want to drink?"

"It's not old behavior if I'm still doing it."

"If God were small enough to understand, He wouldn't be big enough to be God!"

"If you want to quit drinking, you are going to have to quit drinking."

Newcomer: "How do I know how many meetings I should attend each week?"
Old-timer: "Gradually cut back until you drink. Then you'll know."

"If you're looking to have an image in AA, look around at the meetings you go to and take a look at who you're trying to impress."

"I would rather go through life sober, believing I am an alcoholic, than go through life drunk, trying to convince myself that I am not."

"The secret to the AA program is the first three words on page 112 of the Big Book."

"An alcoholic is a person who wants to be held while he's isolating."

"Resentments are like stray cats: if you don't feed them, they'll go away."

"A lot of members criticize newcomers for sharing in their first thirty days; what scares me are those bleeding deacons sharing in their last thirty days."

"The difference between a problem drinker and an alcoholic is that when the alcohol is taken away from the problem drinker, the problem goes away. But when the alcohol is taken away from the alcoholic, the problem begins."

Sponsee "When will I get a good job?" Sponsor "When you are ready."
Sponsee "How will I know I am ready?" Sponsor "You'll have a good job."

"If I am not the problem, then there is no solution"

"Before I came into AA, I was dead, but I did not know enough to lay down."

"It is the great obsession of every Al-Anon, that some day he or she will learn to control and enjoy their drinker."

"I drank when I was happy. I drank when I was un-happy. Actually, I am a reason to drink."

"You don't have to be sick to want to get well. But if you don't want to get well, you ARE sick."

"I can't do God's will my way."

"Being single minded has one drawback: there's no room left for God."

"In order to change the way we feel we need to change the way we act."

"There is only one way to coast, and that is down hill."

"The good news is you get your emotions back; the bad news is you get your emotions back."

"All AA asks is that you completely change your attitude as soon as possible."

"Don't be a pigeon. If you tie a message to a pigeon's foot and send him to Denver, the guy in Denver will get the message... but the pigeon won't."

"Never put people in AA on a pedestal ... there's no room to dance when one is on a pedestal."

"I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God's hands, THAT I still possess."

"Without memory, there is no healing. Without forgiveness, there is no future."

"Our business is doing God's business. As long as we do God's business, whatever happens to us is none of our business. That's God's business."

"Whining is not only graceless, but can be dangerous. It can alert a brute that a victim is in the neighborhood."

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.