Day 4 - Walking in Dry Places

I began my day as most of my days attending the Eye Opener meeting. I was disturbed by the presence of a woman I've known in the program for several years. By her own admission in her sharings, she has not experienced any "hard bottoms" and considers herself lucky for that fact. She seems to live a charmed life - no need to work, no money worries - and asks me questions, the answers to which she would know if she had listened or cared about my own sharings in her presence. Now there you have a perfect example of alcoholic mind set. In reality, I know very little about this woman. She may very well have problems I would consider extremely difficult. She may be too frustrated with her own alcohol issues to be fully "there" at meetings due to preoccupation with something that troubles her. I will make a point to congratulate her on her recent several year medallion and ask her how things are in her life. I will ask God to take away my selfishness and replace it with humility and caring if only for the time it takes me to show my friend that I care and that I am proud of her for her accomplishments in the fellowship. I read from several small AA daily inspirational books each morning and the reading today was especially meaningful and helpful to me as I had an overwhelming urge to drink last night. Instead of giving in I dropped to my knees, prayed for help and in less than a minute the urge had completely passed and I was back on the AA beam! Never underestimate the power of prayer. I can't imagine my life without it. Here is today's reading from WALK IN DRY PLACES from Hazelden publishing (available at most book stores) ERASING OLD TAPES: The human brain works like a tape recorder. With great fidelity, this built in recorder stores up old memories that are recalled at surprising times. There are two kinds of these "old tapes" that are dangerous to the recovering alcoholic. One dangerous old tape is a bitter memory of an unkind word that hurt us deeply. This kind of memory comes back to destroy our peace of mind or to intensidy feelings of low self-esteem. Equally dangerous is another type of old tape: the recollection of a drinking experience that may have seemed enjoyable. When we run an old tape of this kind, we are revealing that we still wish we could drink. Our recovery program shows us how to erase these old tapes. Bitter memories and resentments can be erased my forgiving the people who hurt us. We can eliminate the desire to relive pleasure in drinking experiences by looking honestly at the total effect of alcohol on our lives. We can not relive the past, but we can use the lessons of the past to make our lives what they can be today. Today, I will not be troubled by anything from the past. I can not change what happened five minutes ago,but I can refuse to entertain thoughts that will harm me. I will give you my "drunk-a-log" in my next post.