[bluidkiti]

March 21

Quote of the Week

"Keep it green so that you don’t forget where you came from."

I used to have an amazing ability to recover from a night’s—or a weekend’s—worth of debauchery. While there were days when I would swear off that kind of behavior and made promises to never drink that much, or never do that kind of thing again, inevitably I forgot the pain and demoralization and did it all over. Having the physical ability to bounce back was good, but not being able to remember the ugly consequences—and not being able to control my drinking or other abuses that led to them—caused my life to become unmanageable. Finally, I looked for a better way.

When I entered the program and got sober, the familiar cycle began again. After thirty days, I felt great physically and began to forget about my inability to control my drinking. Soon I was thinking that while there had been some bad incidents lately, these were isolated, and surely now that I had some time and knew more about alcoholism I would be more careful and could probably control and enjoy my drinking again. My sponsor suggested I work my First Step more thoroughly by writing an exhaustive inventory, and then move into the Second and Third Steps. Most of all, he recommended I didn’t drink, one day at a time.

I’m glad I didn’t. What I found is that the more sobriety I got, the more I realized how bad things really were for me. I also learned that alcoholism is the only disease that tells me that I don’t have it, and that every night while I sleep, it is in the closet doing push-ups—getting stronger and waiting for me to let my guard down. It chills me still when I hear of people going back out after long-term sobriety. To avoid that terrible fate, I’ve been taught to keep doing the things that got my life good: attending meeting regularly, helping others, and so on, rather than the things that got good. Regularly doing so allows me to keep it green, and that’s a good thing, because I don’t ever want to forget where I came from.