AA Thought for the Day
(courtesy AA-Alive.net)
July 10, 2016
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The Wine of Success
We must be careful when we begin to achieve some measure of importance and material success.
For no people have ever loved personal triumphs more than we have loved them;
we drank of success as of a wine which could never fail to make us elated.
Blinded by prideful self-confidence, we were apt to play the big shot.
- As Bill Sees It, p.19
Thought to Ponder . . .
The smallest package in the world is an alcoholic all wrapped up in himself.
AA-related 'Alconym' . . .
P R I D E = Personal Recovery Involves Deflating Ego.
A Member Shares:
Claudia here, an alcoholic. I went back out after 10 years of sobriety. I had seven years of good sobriety, meaning I was working my program. Then I discovered I had totally lost myself. I had no idea who the woman in my mirror was, but I knew I hated her. I also knew I couldn’t drink anymore but didn’t think I could not drink. God led me to the rooms of AA and there I found hope that had long ago left my world. In the beginning I went to three meetings a day every day. There was no AA on the Internet in those days, smoking was still allowed in the rooms, and the Old-Timers held back nothing. And when it came to sharing experience, strength and hope they were armed and ready. I found a sponsor and got busy and experienced seven years of growing spirituality. When there came a time in my life when I should have clung to AA like a drowning woman, I came up with reasons for why I had to back away. Today, I know there is no good reason to sit on my laurels and let up on my program or meetings. Eventually, blinded by self-confidence as Bill describes it, I had achieved some measure of importance and material success and forgot where I came from looking in that bathroom mirror in 1987. Over time I completely stopped doing the things that kept me sober, and drank again from the wine of success. I picked up right where I had left off and the downward spiral was fast, furious, and, only by the grace of God, not fatal; but it very well could have been. I confess that because of pride and ego, coming back to the rooms was one of the most difficult decisions I ever had to make. It required the leveling of my ego, along with the admission of deep shame/embarrassment, but it gave me back my life. It was the second best decision I ever made; the first was coming to AA in 1987. God, through this Fellowship, gives me everything. It restored my relationship with my God, restored my relationship with my family; restored my hope, faith and trust. The wine of success need not be the cause for relapse for you as it was for me. AA absolutely works if we work it. It is a program for living, not merely a program to stop drinking. It only stopped working for me because “I” stopped working it. By the grace of God we have been given the gift of a daily reprieve from the death sentence of alcoholic obsession. Thanks.
To respond to the sharer, please email DTShare@aa-alive.org and it will be forwarded to them.
(All shares are reproduced with the kind permission of the person sharing)
Thanks to all of you for sharing so generously of your experience, strength and hope in carrying the AA message.
Blessings in sobriety to all,
In love and service,
joanna b
dailythought@aa-alive.org
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