The Real Problem

What a beautiful program Alcoholics Anonymous is. Not only does it relieve our uncontrollable use of alcohol but is applicable to each and every problem in our lives.

We come to A A because we desire to stop drinking alcohol and are unable to do so on our own.  Alcohol severely impacts our lives, our minds, and our bodies.  We discover through the program of Alcoholics Anonymous that alcohol, of itself, is not and was not the problem - it is but a symptom of the problem.  The real problem with us as alcoholics (and addicts of any and all types) is self-centered fear. We are afraid we will not get what we want... and afraid to lose what we have.

When any of our human instincts are threatened we overreact until we make the decision in the Third Step of the program to turn our thoughts and our actions over to the care of God. Once we do this we are on our way to a serene and peaceful life.  The integration of the remaining steps into our lives leads us to a life in which we are praying and meditating on a daily basis.  When praying we ask only for the knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out. Remaining in that present state of mind, in the will of God, we do not drink. In God's hands all of our problems are solved.

God is the solution to the real problem. Once we are in His will we do not overreact when we think that our human instincts are threatened as we are trusting in His safety and serenity. May you find Him and his comfort now.

Written By Armand

What Was Our Choice To Be?

I had admitted I was alcoholic. I believed in God. I drank twice while a member of Alcoholics Anonymous - once for thirteen months and once for ninety days. Only after the second relapse did I fully realize that I had to make a choice. As the "Big Book" of Alcoholics Anonymous says, "When we became alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is or He isn't. WHAT WAS OUR CHOICE TO BE?"

Early on I chose - God is everything. When I made that choice I had no idea of the power of the human instinct, how pervasive it is and how difficult it would be to turn from my nature and to live in the will of God. The second relapse brought me to a state of reasonableness in which I clearly saw that the surrender had to be absolute. In Bill's Story in the "Big Book" it says "Simple, but not easy; a price had to be paid. It meant destruction of self-centeredness. I must turn in all things to the Father of Light who presides over us all." What will you chose - He is and He is everything or the nothingness which envelops one in the darkness? 

Written by Armand

Self -Centerdness

When I become angry or resentful, it is in that moment that I manifest my human SELF-CENTEREDNESS.  In the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous it says "that we think is the root of our troubles."  It also goes on to say "It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness.  To the precise point that we permit these do we squander the hours that might have been worthwhile.  But with the alcoholic whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave.  We found it fatal!  For when harboring such thoughts we cut ourselves off from the sunlight of the spirit."
           The solution to our alcoholism is a vital spiritual experience.  We must give life to our relationship with God.  We accomplish this by turning from our human nature and living in the will of God.  We receive God's will through inspiration conditioned by prayer  and meditation.  We can't possibly be in the will of God when we are manifesting SELF - CENTEREDNESS in our lives , but by sobrogating our human nature to the will of God we cannot possibly manifest the SELF - CENTEREDNESS of our human nature in our behavior.


Written By Armand

Forming And Sustaining Relationships

        The chapter on the fourth step in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions describes our dysfunctional relations well: "But it is from our twisted relations with family, friends, and society at large that many of us have suffered the most. We have been especially stupid and stubborn about them. The primary fact that we failed to recognize is our total inability to form a true partnership with another human being."

          I went through my entire life unable to interact with others on an intimate level. I was incapable of allowing others to experience me as I truly was and I was unwilling to allow others to share with me their own true self.  I would present to the world what I thought the world needed to see about me so I could feel good and safe about myself.  In the past, the relationships I did have were of the type which, when I was done taking that which I wanted from them and them from me, the relationship was over.  I was incapable of FORMING AND SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIPS in an honest and caring way with other human beings.

          The greatest gift I have received from developing a personal relationship with God is the ability to interact with other human beings at an honest and true level - therefore forming and sustaining relationships that are caring and loving, loyal and trust-giving. My landing on such soil from which these relations sprout was done simply, but not easily, by going through the twelve steps of the program of AA. This can occur for any who return to the being God created and meant for them to be. When this does occur, human potential is maximized and becoming a recovered, unbroken being is completely possible.

Written by Armand

Humility With Serenity

The Fourth Step is the beginning of a process in which we list our resentments, fears and sexual conduct on a four column inventory to determine the exact nature of our wrongs.  Step Five is, "admitted to God to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.  In many great spiritual traditions a deep introspective period is necessary and Alcoholics Anonymous is no different.  The purpose of which is to discover within ourselves what it is about ourselves that is keeping the grace of God from our lives. Then a confession, our Fifth Step, for a sense of relief  from the shame and guilt is common.  If we are to overcome our alcoholism, a review and admission of our  defects is necessary.
                The chapter Into Action in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous states, "we shall be more reconciled with discussing ourselves with another person when we see why we should do so.  The best reason first. Time after time newcomers have tried to keep to themselves certain facts about their lives.  Trying to avoid the humbling experience, they tried easier methods.  Almost invariably they got drunk.  Having persevered with the rest of the program, they wondered why they fell.  We think the reason is they never completed their housecleaning.  They took inventory alright but held onto the worst items in stock.  They only thought they had lost their egoism, they only thought they had humbled themselves in the sense we find it necessary until they had told someone all their life story."
               All the steps of AA are humbling but none more so than the Fourth and Fifth Steps.  To tell someone the deepest, darkest side of ourselves is a very humbling experience.  Along with it comes a sense of relief.  For maybe the first time in our lives we are free of the shame and guilt that we have carried within ourselves for years.  There is a sense of serenity.  The Step Book of Alcoholics Anonymous says, "when HUMILITY is combined with SERENITY a great moment is apt to occur," and for me it was the presence of God in my life for the first time since I was a little boy.
               If we are willing to do a complete Fourth Step as outlined in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous followed by a complete and honest Fifth Step, HUMILITY will intersect with SERENITY and we will know a peace that we have never before experienced.

Written by Armand

Reliance Not Defiance

In the Big Book of  Alcoholics Anonymous it says, "When we  encountered A.A., the fallacy of our defiance was revealed.  At no time had we asked what God's will was for us; instead we had been telling Him what it ought to be. No man, we saw, could believe in God and defy Him, too. Belief meant RELIANCE, NOT DEFIANCE. In A.A. we saw the fruits of this belief: men and women spared from alcohol's final catastrophe. We saw them meet and transcend their other pains and trials. We saw them calmly accept impossible situations, seeking neither to run nor to recriminate.  This was not only faith; it was faith that worked under all conditions. We soon concluded that whatever price in humility we must pay, we would pay."

           Reliance upon God is the basis of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous; humility is the key which unlocks the door to the grace of God.  The Twelve Steps of A.A. move us from developing a faith in God to trusting in God and finally a true reliance upon God in every area of our life.  This relationship with Him allows us to transcend the travails of life in such a way that we are not self-centered and caught in our own needs and problems. Rather, we are trusting in the will of God as it unfolds in our life - freeing us to be open to the world around us and sensitive to the needs of others.   

Written by Armand

Step Six Key Questions Step Seven Basic Ingredient

Having completed Steps One through Five, there are some fundamental recovery questions in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous that must be answered before we can move on.
                            
             1) Have we omitted anything?
             2) Is our work solid so far?
             3) Are the stones properly in place?
             4) Have we skipped on the cement put into the foundation?
                                                                   5) Have we tried to make motor without sand?

          If we can answer these questions in the affirmative, then we have completed the first five steps in such a way that we have acquired the humility necessary to be entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
          The Big Book of AA states "if we can answer to our satisfaction, we then look at Step Six.  We have emphasized willingness as being indispensable.  Are we now ready to let God remove from us all the things which we have admitted are objectionable?  Can God now take them all, every one?  If we can answer in the affirmative we have then completed Step Six.

                 The Seventh Step of Alcoholics Anonymous is "humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings."  In the Step Book it states "this lack of anchorage to any permanent values, this blindness to the true purpose of our lives produced another bad result, for just as long as we convinced ourselves that we could live by our own individual strength and intelligence, for just that long was a working faith in a higher power impossible.  This was true even though we believed God existed.  As long as we placed self reliance first, a genuine reliance upon a higher power was impossible.  THE BASIC INGREDIENT of all humility, a desire to seek and do God's will, was missing."
                 I have learned through experience that belief in God is not enough, that we must trust in God in every area of our lives, even as our every day life unfolds.  The purpose of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is to bring us from a thought process propelled by our human desires to a thought process propelled by the will of God.  In the will of God our defects that exist in our human nature cannot possibly be manifested in our behavior.  And it is only through true humility, a desire to seek and do God's will, that that can occur.  We can free ourselves from the bondage of self, we can trust in God in all things and, if so, we are protected from the disease of Alcoholism.

Written by Armand

The Bright Spot Of Our Lives

As sponsors in Alcoholics Anonymous we must live the principles of the program if we are to have the integrity it takes to present the principles of AA to others.  We have come to understand that our very lives as ex-problem drinkers are dependent upon the lives we are called to help.  Our lives take on a purpose and meaning that we have not experienced before.

    In the "Big Book" of Alcoholics Anonymous in the chapter "Working With Others" it states, "Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics... You can help when no one else can... Remember  they are very ill.  Life will take on a new meaning.  To watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness vanish, to see a fellowship grow up about you, to have a host of friends - this is an experience you must not miss.  We know you will not want to miss it.  Frequent contact with newcomers and with each other is the bright spot of our  lives."

        There is nothing that we can do with ourselves that is more important then helping someone else recover from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. Nothing. In order for this recovery to occur for them in its purest form, those we are helping must develop a personal relationship with God. It is through such a relationship with Him that they will recover. It is through this relationship that they will know serenity, peace and joy, maybe even for the first time in their lives.

        Obviously none of this can possibly occur for others if it has not occurred for us - as we cannot give away that which we don't have. Live this life through Him and in helping others do the same, you will be living within the bright spot of your life.

Written by Armand

Moral Psycholgy

Featured in "The Doctors Opinion" of Alcoholics Anonymous is a letter from Dr. William D. Silkworth, the Medical Director of Townes Hospital in New York City (a renowned hospital during that time for the treatment of alcoholics). One of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous and primary author of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill W., was under Dr. Silkworth's care on three separate occasions there. In Dr. Silkworth's letter he states, "We doctors have realized for a long time that some form of  moral psychology was of urgent importance to alcoholics ... unless [the alcoholic] can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope for his recovery."          
          Dr. Silkworth and his colleagues believed that not only did the thought processes of the mind need to be completely transformed but the source of what powered these thought processes altered as well.  The American Heritage Dictionary defines psychology as "the science that deals with mental processes and behavior" and it holds the word moral synonymous with the word virtuous. Therefore, what the experts formulated was that the thought processes of the mind had to become virtuous.  In order for this to occur the mind of the alcoholic could no longer be propelled by its own human nature or instincts but rather by the will of God through inspiration. As the latter part of the 11th Step bids, "...praying only for the knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out."                    
          The psychic change is the very core component of the solution to alcoholism - to any and all addictions, really. Through the grace of God (the source that powers the thought processes), a transformed and virtuous thought process is possible and it is real. If one experiences such a change they can recover from this disease of alcoholism and to any and all other vices, habits and addictions this disease encompasses.

Written by Armand