When i read that article for the first time I'd been going to AA meetings for 6 months and had managed to stay sober. People in AA had been telling me, well, meetings aren't the program of recovery, but I'd had a complete lack of willingness really. I had no desire to ask someone for help, or to get properly honest with myself. My head noise was getting louder, constant chatter really. I was angry, irritable, restless, despairing, and it was exhausting. No life at all really. I just wanted to die. I realised that while I may have been sober, I wasn't LIVING sober. Then I found that article and things started to make sense to me. I realised that what the people in my meetings said may well be the case. I needed to actually do the recovery work. That 'Not drinking' wasn't the same as 'working on my Recovery'. I could sit in as many meetings as i liked but no recovery faury was just going to fly overhead and sprinkle me with her magic dust. The meetings could give me the hope that if i did what those others I met with good recovery had done, then I could get the kind of recovery they had got. But it was a case of doing, not learning. Simple enough you might thing, but that was like a major change of mindset to me. The next meeting I went to, as I listened to How It Works being read out at the start of the meeting I really heard it for the first time. I resolved to 'thoroughly' follow the path there and then. Immediately after the meeting I approached a lady I had been impressed with over the past few months, and who seemed strong and no nonsense (who I didn't think would let me charm her, or spin her any bullcrap). She agreed to be my sponsor and I got to work the next day on my step 1 inventory. Things started getting better pretty my immediately. Of course, there are still rough days in my life, but i can deal with them now. I have learned that I can be fearlessly thoroughly honest with my sponsor. Nothing I have ever said shocked her or disgusted her (all those deep dark secrets that had kept me in pain over the years - sharing them with her and talking them through, and allowing myself to learn from them and move on - what a burden lifted).
It's funny, because if anyone had asked me in the first 6 month if I was working a program of recovery I'd have said yes, and that I was going to AA, and I was trying to eat healthy and exercise. And I'd have believed it. Thing is, I was remaining completely unconnected with it all really. I was not drinking, and I was going to AA for a distraction. Somewhere to go that I couldn't drink. And the hope that people DO get better. Of course,eating healthy and exercising are good for our bodies, but they're just things that would be good for anyone anyway. Not really part of recovery. But I had myself convinced.
Anyway. I am very thankful to that article because it caused me to actually take notice of what others were already trying to say (to me and others in the rooms of AA).
Wishing you all the best for your sobriety, and for your recovery.
BB