After spending years sober I hit a new bottom,a bottom in recovery that no human power could relieve me from. That meant meetings, fellowship, sponsees, all of it stopped working. I had forgotten the most important aspect of the program and was surr...
There is a program out there, gifted to those afflicted with the disease of alcoholism, that is the answer to ALL of our spiritual suffering. One of the founders of this program had a spiritual experience that he was then divinely directed to write the book-titled Alcoholics Anonymous-which has gone on to help so many recover.
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Just like so many of the ideals and conceptions of 2020, this spiritual program that was gifted to all who would accept it has been condensed and edited down straying from the original text.
I am a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and my recovery date is 2-21-15. My sponsor, also of course a member of alcoholics anonymous and her recovery date goes back over 62 years and she had the privilege of attending meetings with one of our programs founding fathers Bill W. I thank God for the day she came into my life because that was the day I began my journey to recovery...that was when I began to fall in love with a program that I had been in the middle of for 5 years and found a insufficient substitute for the spiritual malady that originally brought me a powerful surrender.
Today my life is a life I never imaged possible-even after a couple years sobriety, many sponsees, many commitments, meetings, fellowship, Hospital and Institution meetings, and more under my belt. I have everything I ever wanted and ever will need and it has been that way for many years. I live on a place some who do not believe recovery is possible call the Hot Pink Cloud. I live in a place where I face human emotion with the power and strength of God that delivered me from a hopeless state of mind and body and all of the pain of my emotions have been removed and everything that is promised in this book has happened to me. I live free.
It was painful, it was more painful than anything I can even really explain. It was the feeling of all human power failing me, it was hopelessness that no medication, drug, or person could fill. My spirit was sick and suffering and the band-aid and busy work I was doing in AA was not sufficient because God wanted me to recover just as many millions of people have in this program. My sponsor calls it Spiritual Surgery, by the time I heard her say that I thought "...well why didn't you say that then????" and could laugh at the pain. I could laugh at the joy that came from making it through to the other side able to look back and realize a living and loving God had carried me through the darkest time in my life....in sobriety.
So to get to AA versus Alcoholics anonymous, I hope to discuss some of the things that I have encountered in southern California meetings that vary from the text, the program, and the principals of alcoholics anonymous and have become AA as we know it....starting with all of this identifying our beings as the disease we suffer from-alcoholics.
(For those that may read this I would like to apologize for the typos that may make this difficult to read. I have to do very little editing in order to stay in the truth of what God has done for me in my life.)
