Quitting drinking is easy!

[Barto]

... I did it every night – although sometimes my nights ended in the afternoon or even later.

It is staying stopped – living sober – that can be difficult. Why else would the periodic start drinking again after detoxing every week or so! (Thank God I wasn’t a periodic. Detoxing the couple of times I did it was enough for me.) And thank God for this “design for living,” called the 12 Steps, given us by Alcoholics Anonymous.

I had an old friend once tell me that “whether you are focused on drinking or focused on not drinking, you are still obsessed with alcohol.” Is it any wonder then that the Steps do not focus upon not drinking, but upon living life?

Which brings me to another thought. I read, and hear, about so many drunks that cannot get past Step One because they are hung up on the issue of faith, even though our program allows us, and even encourages us, to choose a higher power of our own understanding – as the chapter “We Agnostics” discusses. To go even further, our books tells us only a willingness to believe is enough to begin. “Why do so many let this issue of faith keep them from trying this simple program – taking 12 relatively small steps into freedom?” Is it simply rationalization – a rationale to keep drinking despite the obvious danger and in the face of a real solution (evident in the sheer number of alcoholics sober in AA). Does the would-be newcomer simply want to keep drinking?

After all, everyone, even an atheist, has faith in something, at least to one degree or another. For example, everyone who makes plans for the future has a sort of faith that they will live to see that future, even though no one has control over whether or not they will live to see it. Doesn’t simply being alive necessarily involve faith?

I guess these are my thoughts for today.

[sugErspun]

Well said Barto.

I had mentioned the other day - we will make things much harder than they need to be until it's too late - and become willing to do ANYTHING to just live another day. The simple solution is no more simple at times of extreme desperation than they are when someone realizes they might have a problem and want to solve it. Internally we create the difficultly.

The steps? Simple.

[Barto]

I figured the title of this thread would cause it to get a lot of Looky-loos. Maybe I should have posted it in the Alcoholism section.

[acon4726]

Hahaha, you got me with the thread title.

[Sheryl85]

One of my favorite parts in a friend of mine’s story is when he went to his first A.A. meeting and was standing in the back of the room, in a corner, and this old guy walked up to him and asked him if he had a problem with his drinking.

My friend’s reply was classic, “I don’t have a problem with my drinking, I have a problem with my stopping and staying stopped.” (Amen!) He admitted that later on he learned that it’s a lot easier to stay sober than it is to get sober. (It took awhile before I fully understood that one.) But he’s done that for 35 years now…

May we all be so blessed.