Things My Sponsors Taught Me

[bluidkiti]

From the Book
Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.


ABOUT GOOD DAYS AND BAD ONES


On Good Days and Bad Days

Any alcoholic who can put his or her head on the pillow at night sober has had a good day, no matter what else has gone wrong.

It seemed to me that I had had some pretty bad day since I joined A.A., but this quote denied it. I began to see that for an alcoholic, a sober day is the best there is; anything added to the sober day is icing on the cake. So, if everything takes on a bad color, and all the icing is stripped off my cake, I can still have a good day, because I’m sober.

Please feel free to share your Experience, Strength, and Hope

[bluidkiti]

From the Book
Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Best Days and Worst Days

Your worst day sober is better than you best day drunk.

“Sure, sure,” I’d think, “that’s easy for you to say.” But to be absolutely logical about it (and try to do that when you’re drunk!), if it takes sobriety to have a good day, then the truth of this quotation is obvious. No matter what experiences we might have had, our drunk days were self-destructive day, and never good ones.

Please feel free to share your Experience, Strength, and Hope

[bluidkiti]

From the Book
Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.

On Days that Really Go Bad

There’s nothing so bad for an alcoholic that a drink won’t make worse.


“Think of the worst possible thing that could happen to you,” my sponsors said. “Imagine that this hideous thing has just happened to you, and you go to a bar to drown your sorrows. Will drinking do anything about you situation? Will it make it any better? Of course not!”

I used to blame job pressures for my drinking. But all drinking did for me was to make me miss deadlines and appointments. Drinking increased the pressures I felt. When I didn’t blame the job, I blamed my domestic situation. If you think for a moment that drinking helps things at home, you’re crazy.

Please feel free to share your Experience, Strength, and Hope

[bluidkiti]

From the Book
Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.


ABOUT LAST WORDS


On Miracles

Don’t tell me there aren’t any more miracles; just look around the room!

The odds against an alcoholic are horrendous. By a wide margin, most alcoholics who don’t practice recovery will die of alcoholism or its effects. Medical treatment alone won’t solve the problem, neither will counseling nor any of the other helping professions. The helpless alcoholic, drowning in despair, can be thought of as a lost cause. Almost certainly, this person is doomed. And yet, the message drunks carry to other drunks works.

Take a look around at the next A.A. meeting you go to. You will see smiling, healthy faces. Each A.A. member who follows the program is as great a healing miracle as any recorded in the Bible. The age of miracles is alive and well in A.A.!

Please feel free to share your Experience, Strength, and Hope

[bluidkiti]

From the Book
Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.


On Last Resorts

If all else fails, don’t drink!

If you can avoid drinking, you have a chance to learn A.A.’s way of life; if you drink, you never will. Therefore, as my sponsors said so often, “If all else fails, don’t drink!”

Another hard-nose, who is a trial attorney, told me that in court when his adversary “got his goat,” that meant the adversary was winning. Alcohol is my adversary, and if I let anything in my life gets my goat to the extent that I drink again, my adversary has won and I have lost.

Please feel free to share your Experience, Strength, and Hope

[bluidkiti]

From the Book
Things My Sponsors Taught ME
By Paul H.
On the Ultimate Answer

Shut up, don’t drink, and go to meetings!

There was a period when I hated my sponsors. Of all the remarks they made to me, none upset me so much as this one. It didn’t seem to matter what I asked or said to them—whether I complained of constipation, my boss, sore feet, or the latest thing my kids had done—their reply was always the same: “Shut up, don’t drink, and go to meetings!”

Then I figured it out. If all of the A.A. literature were somehow destroyed in a catastrophe, I still could stay sober. All I had to do was to stop fighting it, not drink, and go to meetings. I finally saw my sponsor’s cruel remark in its true colors—a definition of the A.A. program in one line. So I did what they said. I hadn’t realized how well I had learned the lesson until I recently caught myself telling a newcomer: “Shut up, don’t drink, and go to meetings!”


It works, and to A.A. that’s the only test that matters.

This is the last of Things My Sponsors Taught ME – by Paul H.

Please feel free to share your Experience, Strength, and Hope

[janbear]

My sponsor told me, A truly humble person doesn't know they are.