Alcoholics Anonymous | July 16 | DonInLondon | Step 7 "Courage To Change"

July 16, 2013 step seven in mind: on a wing and a prayer? Survival! Early days… I went to a meeting last night, partly because I had not been there for quite a long time, partly because I was hoping to hear news from a friend about a matter of arbitration. And also to pick up a chip for my last anniversary in recovery which happened June 1. A step and tradition meeting, focusing on step five all about dishing the dirt on our conduct over the years and the benefit of letting go the secrets which kept us sick…

When I was doing my step four, it was in my early days and part of my past had always been about objective self-appraisal. And yet for some reason when I was doing the step four, because I was still in place of fear pride and ego, my confessions could be grandiose rather than quite ordinary human doings under the influence. Fortunately my mentor at the time had heard most of it all before, helped me put it in context, took the drama out of it and had a clinical interpretation of the truth. I still had remnants of feelings about not being good enough to be an alcoholic, and then exaggerating stories into very tall stories for humorous effect. Even now looking back, some of it was hilarious and the rest of it was tragic. The good news is we gain perspective by sharing the innermost Demons caused by extreme living on the edge, or rather by taking the edge off life…

There was lots of good news last night, I saw one person picked up a chip for 29 years and then all the way to one month, but no newcomers picking up one day at a time chip. Mind you, where I live, there are three newcomers meetings at the same time within a mile. I saw a friend I have not seen for some years, and they are procreating, I suggested that I could be a good godfather, another suggested they could be a good godmother, then another suggested he could be a fairy godfather, and he had ideas who could be a fairy godmother. Life is funny in our open honest and willing Fellowship.

Someone shared something close to my heart which is about prayer and meditation. When I was in rehab a long time ago and somebody was reading from the chapter how it works, when they got to step 11, they mistakenly said, "sought through prayer and medication," rather than prayer and meditation… We can work out when prayer and meditation work in the context of Fellowship, and then with a sober head find out which medications might be appropriate for particular clinical conditions of the mind. Alcohol certainly made me bipolar in the end, and when I had been sober a couple of years, it was really evident that medication was required for clinical depression because my chemistry set was not quite balanced throughout my life. Fellowship helps keep people sober, and helps them find, including me, the right clinical diagnoses if we are alive long enough to understand our predicaments.

Not only do we learn how to care for other people within the Fellowship, we often find close friends and family rely on us to provide support and love them when times are very difficult. Emerging into this new reality, where we learn how to love, how to be loved back and cherish opens the door to very deep connections emotionally. We might have thought ourselves as useless in the past, and now others find us useful because we love without conditions, support where and when we can and keep on learning how to live life today…

In recovery our fatal malady becomes the bedrock of learning how to live reality and cope with life one day at a time…

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