Don't Drink and Go to Meetings
"Don't drink, Go to meetings, get a home group, and get a sponsor."
Are how we FIND Honesty. Its how we FIND God. It's how we clean house! How we keep it clean! HOW we grow our relationship with God!
We must first not drink as if we drink we lose everything.
We must go to meetings as there is where we learn fellowship and an end to our isolation; where we first hear about the principles of AA and sobriety; where we participate in the fellowship of sobriety and find and end to that isolation.
We get a home group as that is where we build out network of other AA's who will become our sources for help and growth and partnership.
We get a sponsor because a sponsor is the one who will take us step by step through the steps, help us find God, help us to clean house, help us to keep it clean and help us to keep growing in the likness of our creator.
ITs obvious that we do not JUST "go" to meetings to hang around or lay about. We must participate! We must be "present." If we use meetings to just "hang around other alcoholics" and kick back and barely listen or participate then have we even gone to a meeting or did we just pass through one? Hmmm.
Alcoholism is isolation. At meetings, home groups and in sponsorship we find the antidote to isolation. It's where we are able to finally form what the 4th step told us before now we had been totally unable to form: "a true partnership with another human being!"
It's also where we continue to find the experiences of other alcoholics and their progress in the process of sobriety and get to share ours. It's where we find newcomers looking for help and so find the best opportunities to do service (where true sobriety exists!).
"Don't drink and go to meetings, get a home group, get a sponsor" is the most profound of "slogans" we have in AA because in that one slogan lies the pathways to the sources of all we seek.
Bob H
NYC