Originally Posted by
Threshold 
I've been worried lately too.
Putting so weight on the suggestions of others and not enough trust in my HP. Listening to too many dire warnings about how I didn't do my steps right, or go to enough meetings or listen to the right speaker tape that my sobriety is sinking into the sands of complacency.
Sometimes I feel like people make "Back to Basics" too complicated.
I wonder if I am overly susceptible to "suggestions" from others because I actually do have a condition that makes me hear voices. I know I can't always distinguish between my thoughts, real people's suggestions and the voices in my head.
I had a lot of that in the early days. On the one hand I desperately wanted someone to tell me what to do, and on the other hand it seemed everyone had an opinion on just what that should be. I even had a treatment tell me, at two years sober, that I would never get sober if I didn't do their program.
Thank God had a sponsor who understood his purpose was to help me connect with a Power greater than myself that would tell me what to do. On the issues you are talking about he would ask me if I felt the need to do x or if I didn't feel the need. He supported me either way and I found, as long as I was being honest with myself, my feelings could be trusted. Perhaps yours can too.
Treatment is a tool, good for getting you started.
Therapy is a tool, great for dealing with outside issues.
Running from triggers, ringing people up, going to meetings, are all tools that will get you some dry time.
BBT was talking about the lost ones. I meet them all the time, been dry 2 or 3 years using the tools, wondering why nothing has changed. Bored with the meetings, not hearing any solution, they are (they tell me) on the verge of going back out.
Sit down with one of these and show them the spiritual tool kit in the Big Book and see the lights come on. That's what it is, one alcoholic, with the Big Book, talking to another alcoholic.
Thanks for a very useful thread BBT.
