Sharing and Caring

[MajestyJo]

In the Al-Anon's Twelve and Twelve, I changed the wording so others could identify from alcohol to people, places and things.

There is a difference that some people don't recognize. l) That once the alcoholic has picked up, he is no longer in control and is acting out in his disese.
2) That even though he is not actively using, he is still under the influence and has the thinking patterns unless he has experienced the spiritual changes in his life.
3) That alcohol is a killer and no respector of persons and it is a disease that affects the whole family.

I only saw my father drunk twice. Once when I was eight years old and again when I was fourteen, yet his disease affected my whole life. I didn't know he was an alcoholic until my mother died when I was twenty, and he no longer had to hide his drinking.

My 'isms' came from my mother, my father was never there, so how could he have passed much onto me. It was my mother's use of food and her 'bed' (isolation) that affect my thinking and actions. I never had a sit down conversaton with my father until I was twenty-six years old; then I made the decision to become his drinking buddy.

My sponsor told me that I could only do the first half of the first Step 100% and it needed to be 100% or I would pick up again. If I didn't have the honesty and acceptance of my disease and the willingness to surrender it to the program, then I would not stay clean and sober (soundness of mind).

This has been a big truth for me. When I get caught up in life, my life can again become unmanageable. It isn't the drinking and drugging, I have been clean for 13 years, 9 months, and 11 days; it is my thinking, my actions, my attitude that can slip into old behaviors and I can find myself with unmanageability. A friendship gone astray, a relationship broken, a job gone, a bill that has accumulated, etc. which can take me back into the obsessive compulsiveness of active addiction.

I firmly believe we slip (you can only slip if you have something to lose) into these old ways because we have had lapses long before we pick up. Like stopping going to meetings (need to go for attitude adjustments), picking up the phone (isolation is unhealthy, me alone with me tells me I am just 'fine'), and no spirutal connection of the fellowship leaves me without the "good orderly direction" that I need to stay clean and sober. This is a program of reflection. I was told that for every finger I pointed at someone else, I had three coming back at me. When I become judgmental, and think I know and start looking at others, then my own life is unmanageable, because 3 pointers lead to 12 issues of my own that I need to deal with. After awhile, I get tired I don't know about you, but this happened to me at 7 years sober when I got into a relationship in recovery for the first time. It got so bad that I was willing to count the pieces of toilet paper that he used on each roll in my apartment and charge him accordingly for rent on the use of my chair, my TV, my time and energies for cooking his meals (he said he liked sitting down in my restaurant).

In today, I can look back and laugh at myself. Believe me it was not a healthy place to be.

Thank you for letting me share.