SoberRecovery : Alcoholism Drug Addiction Help and Information

I read this tonight and felt it was important to share:

WHY WE KEEP COMING TO AL ANON

From How Al Anon Works for Families & Friends of Alcoholics pp 104-105

Newcomers to Al Anon are often surprised to meet so many longtime members. Many of us continue to attend meetings years after the problems that first brought us to Al Anon have passed, because the program continues to enrich our lives. We continue to change and we are changed by circumstances we encounter, but because we have practiced Al Anon principles in all our affairs our lives have improved beyond imagining. We can’t afford to take these changes for granted. What was once learned is quickly forgotten without continued renewal, practice, and support.

So we keep coming back. For some, Al Anon becomes a spiritual home. Others of us simply love the way we feel when we are with people who speak so openly and so sincerely about what really matters to them. The friendships we make in Al Anon are often extremely close and enduring. But most of us keep coming back because Al Anon helps to keep us sane and serene, even in the midst of difficult challenges, as long as we continue to use the Twelve Steps to work on ourselves.

We change with every new moment of every day. Most of us come to meetings to make the most of all these changes in our lives, to experience them with the love and support of our friends in Al Anon, and to grow in a positive, healthy direction.

We know that Al Anon is not a magic shop that makes all our problems vanish so that we can live happily ever after. Rather, it is a program though which we learn to better cope with our problems, celebrate our joys and our triumphs, feel all of our feelings, and know that everything that happens – the happy and the sad alike – will eventually pass. Again and again in life, we will pass through periods of great difficulty and periods of serenity and confidence. Change can be just as painful after twenty years of recovery as it is for a newcomer. The difference is that after twenty years, we know from our own experience that “this too shall pass”. The pain will eventually cease.

Since there is no “arrival”, no magical day on which we suddenly achieve serenity and live on forever free from stress or strain, most of us eventually learn to be patient. We find that we can trust the process of recovery to move us forever forward, even if it sometimes feels as if we’re moving backwards. We learn from each experience, and over time we build quite a storehouse of wisdom as a result. Pain may hurt as much as ever, but as time passes, we can put that pain in context so that suffering no longer dominates our whole life. We can separate ourselves from our pain, so that pain – as well as happiness and every other emotion – becomes merely another vehicle for growth.