June 22, 2024 - Readings in Recovery: Step by Step

 

Step by Step
Saturday, June 22, 2024

“Headstrong and willful, I rushed from pleasure to pleasure, and found the returns diminishing to the vanishing point. Hangovers began to assume monstrous proportions and the morning drink became an urgent necessity. ‘Blanks’ were more frequent, and I seldom knew how I’d got home. When my friends suggested that I was drinking too much — they were no longer my friends. …With a creeping insidiousness, drink had become more important than anything else. It no longer gave me pleasure — it merely dulled the pain — but I had to have it. I was bitterly unhappy.” — Alcoholics Anonymous, 3rd Edition, 1976, Ch 4 (“Women Suffer Too”), p 226.

Today, ask truthfully if the “benefits” of drinking have been obliterated by the consequences — hangovers, drinking out of necessity with no choice, blackouts, loss of friends who suggested I had a problem, drinking to self-medicate. If in the end I concede that I depend on alcohol for pleasure or as a solution to some state of mind like anguish or loneliness, I cannot deny that I am addicted if only emotionally or psychologically. That, by definition, makes me an alcoholic. Today, then, I seek the courage and strength not to reject friends or acquaintances who are worried, and I pledge to seek solutions other than alcohol to my psychological pain and diseased character. And, today, the solution is no farther away than a local recovery group. Today, I make the call. And our common journey continues. Step by step. — Chris M., 2024