My wife passed this one on:

"A Buddhist Lama was on a long journey to a holy place. Night was falling in the mountains, and he needed a place to take shelter. Coming to a lonely house, he asked the woman there if he might stay the night. "Yes," she said, "but only if you do one of these three things: drink this bottle of wine, sacrifice the billy-goat out back, or sleep with me." The Lama's vows forbade all these things, but he needed to rest in order to finish his pilgrimage. He decided that having sex with the woman or killing the goat would bring bad Karma upon them as well, but drinking would affect only him, and so was the lesser of the evils.

So he drank the bottle of wine, got very drunk, and went to bed. In the middle of the night, the bleating of the goat woke him up, and in his stupor he slit its throat to shut it up. When the morning came, he woke to find himself in the woman's bed."

In other words: First Things First.

Harboring a resentment is like swallowing poison and waiting for the other person to die.

"...this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feeling we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again. And with us, to drink is to die.
If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics these things are poison." (Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 5.

Bill Wilson's "spiritual advisor", Father Ed Dowling, told him that the 6th and 7th steps were the steps that "separated the men from the boys"... yet, the Big Book seems to skip over them, devoting just 2 paragraphs (one of which is the 7th Step Prayer.)

At the meeting last night, the lead emphasized the importance of the 6th and 7th steps, in a way that really struck a chord for me. In the 3rd step, we "make a decision to turn our will and our life over the the care of God as we understand him." But it's in 6 and 7 that we act on that on a daily basis.

My troubles are of my own making, and largely due to me acting on my character defects. Taking action that can relieve those defects--steps 6 & 7--is me acting on my decision to put my higher power in charge.

Friends going back out... last night a couple folks talked about trying it again. One guy got home and his keys wouldn't work, so he broke in... turned out not to be his house. The other guy wound up back in detox after 2 days. Then a third guy talked about going to his friend's wake yesterday--mixing OxyContin and whiskey maybe wasn't the best idea.

The sad fact is, most alcoholics don't recover. No joke: it's a sobering thought.

On the flip side, I've heard this apocryphal story: somebody asked Bill W. if he would change anything in the big book. He reportedly said "Yes. In 'How it Works', where it says 'Seldom have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path'--that could be changed to 'Never...'."

Two nights in a row, and the discussion was on the first step... what a "coincidence."

My sponsor was adamant about me needing to take this step 100%, and so we chewed it over for a number of months. I was sure about the "powerless over alcohol" part, but "unmanagable?" I hadn't lost everything, still had my job, paid my bills (mostly)... and, as I half-joked, "I always managed to get a drink!"

But the other half of that was, I never managed not to get drunk. And, whatever else i "managed" to accomplish came after the drink... first things first, for this practicing alcoholic, meant that my drinking came before everything. Keeping the job was partly about protecting the supply (no money = no booze), and partly about protecting my self-image as a "functional" alcoholic. Just more denial.

I still have to do this step every day. As A. said on Friday: "Are you powerless over alcohol, and is your life unmanagable? Yes or No? 'Maybe' is a no. 'Sort of' is a no. 'Yes but...' is a no." If I don't think I'm still powerless, that my life is still unmanagable by me, then I'll start trying to manage it myself. And that's when I start getting in the way.

At my homegroup last night (it's a Big Book study group), we read the first half of Chapter 1, Bill's Story. From what we read, it really sounded like he "hit bottom" a number of times [pg 5, 7, 8]--and then drank again!

I remember at one of my first meetings, I'd picked up a little of the lingo, and I was explaining to someone that I "wasn't sure if I've 'hit bottom' yet." He just looked at me and said "You can decide."

For me, today, I make that decision every time I'm willing to accept help. It's not enough for me to say "I'm powerless"--I have to follow that up with action, with a willingness to let someone or something else help me.

Last night's lead mentioned "fake it 'til you make it." I heard that on my way to my first meeting, and (like most things at that point) I didn't understand it and I didn't like it. Later I heard "act as if"--for some reason, that didn't bother me as much.

Like it or not, I followed those suggestions--if nothing else, out of desperation. So I showed up, as if I was committed to the program, even tho I was still skeptical. I acted as if I wanted what was offered, even tho I mostly just wanted out of my jackpot. The important thing was, I took action. And some time later, I noticed almost by accident that I had changed... most significantly, I hadn't taken a drink. I never thought that would happen for me.

Much later, I heard "You can't think your way to sober living. You have to live your way to sober thinking." It's an action program.