RECRUM: Recovery Ruminations: January 2008

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Rigorous Honesty

It seems a good way to start the new year by implementing yet another form of rigorous honesty here on this blog.

For over three years, I have used an avatar that is not actually me:

This handsome gentleman is, of course, Bill W., co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. I admire him very much, and I do, honestly, try to live by the principles he and the other good oldtimers laid out for us.

He is also a lot better-looking than I am.

I think, though, it's time for me to have an avatar that reflects who I actually am, so that with a glance a reader can get a sense of how I really think and act. In the spirit of rigorous honesty, here is my new avatar:

I actually look more like this than I do like Bill, anyway.

Happy New Year! May God shower you with blessings throughout 2008!

Name: Phil

Sobriety Date:
January 16, 2005

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcoholâthat 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 promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through 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.

Addiction and Recovery Support Webring

I Have Survived Webring

Just For Today Webring

AlcoholAndDrugAbuse.com
Website

Alcoholism: Getting the Facts
National Institutes of Health

Frequently Asked Questions on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
National Institutes of Health

Alcohol Studies Database
Rutgers University

"...If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through.

1. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness

2. We will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it

3. We will comprehend the word serenity

4. We will know peace

5. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others

6. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear

7. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain insight into our fellows

8. Self-seeking will slip away

9. Our whole attitude and outlook will change

10. Fear of people and economic insecurity will leave us

11. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us

12. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves

Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us -- sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them..."
© A.A. World Services, Inc.

If God is for us, who can be against us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8