No More Excuses

My favorite meeting each week is a Big Book study that a few of us facilitate at a local state administered involuntary hotel and spa resort. Yesterday was a holiday so the guys had a free day -- no obligations or mandatory programs to attend. Unlimited TV time and an animated corn-hole tournament. Attendance at our meeting dropped from twenty inmates to five.

Our experience is that if an inmate doesn't attend a meeting the very day of their release then they probably won't ever attend a meeting, that this will lead to a drug or alcohol relapse, and that they will end up back in jail. To a man, everyone assures us that they will make a phone call to another recovering alcoholic and that they will go to a meeting every day. They aren't lying -- they really believe this. We pointed out to the Hardy Five attending our meeting that the distractions are going to be much more powerful on the outside. If someone can't be bothered to walk across a room and spend an hour on their recovery while they are locked up, there isn't much chance that they will be able to resist the temptations on the outside.

I didn't stay sober until I started thinking of The Program as oxygen. I don't have the option of not breathing today. It's number one on my list of things to do. I don't have the option of not working on my recovery today. At the start of each week, I automatically sketch out what I'm going to do to stay sober. I work around every distraction and obligation. There are a million meetings out there. There is plenty of time to pray or read our literature. A two minute phone call can energize me for hours.

I was never too busy to drink. I'm never too busy to work on my recovery.