I Don't Know Shit

"Not until you have failed can you learn true humility.  Humility arises from a deep sense of gratitude to God for giving you the strength to rise above past failures.  The humble person is tolerant of others' failings, and does not have a critical attitude toward the foibles of others.  Humble people are hard on themselves and easy on others."

Ahhhh. . . . . fuck me.

"The A.A. members who sponsored me told me in the beginning that I would not only find a way to live without having a drink, but that I would find a way to live without wanting to drink.  A.A. taught me that willingness to believe was enough for a beginning.

From the story "Freedom From Bondage" from The Big Book.  I vaguely remember entering the phase where alcohol didn't appear to be under a neon spotlight - no matter where I looked I could always see that brightly lit drink or bottle sparkling in the periphery, like my retina was detaching or I had ingested LSD.  I wasn't ignoring the alcohol anymore - I just wasn't hyper-aware of its presence.  That was very freeing.  I could be in places where alcohol was served without being held captive by its presence.

Here's the writer's take on the insanity of alcoholic drinking: "Rationalization is giving a socially acceptable reason for socially unacceptable behavior, and socially unacceptable behavior is a form of insanity."  My take is "Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

"If you have a resentment you want to be free of, if you will pray for the person or the thing that you resent, you will be free.  If you will ask in prayer for everything you want for yourself to be given to them, you will be free.  Ask for their health, their prosperity, their happiness, and you will be free.  Even when you don't really want it for them, and your prayers are only words and you don't mean it, go ahead and do it anyway.  Do it every day for two weeks and you will find you have come to mean it and to want if for them, and you will realize that where you used to feel bitterness and resentment and hatred, you now feel compassionate understanding and love."

I was surprised to read this section of the book.  I even had it underlined in my personal copy but could not ever remember having read it before.

Two weeks!  That's a long time to pray for some miserable son of a bitch I'd like to throttle.

At the meeting this morning there were seven of us: Me, 30 days, 2 days (free from jail after crashing a car drunk), 4 months, 9 months, and 11 months, and a homeless woman who was too incoherent to add up her time.  I swear that the 4 month guy who led chose "I don't know shit" as the meeting topic.

Kept me sober.