Willpower
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Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: New Jersey
Posts: 581
Willpower
When we want to make changes in our lives, it often requires willpower. Exercise, eating right, breaking habits...our ability to stick with it and maintain discipline usually determines our success. And society celebrates willpower as the key to most everything.
For the alcoholic, though, willpower is often futile. This is the most baffling of alcoholism's many nasty characteristics: people who are in control of their lives in almost every aspect just cannot put down, and keep down, alcohol.
When you decide it's time to quit and cannot, consider the idea that perhaps your willpower is the problem. That your best efforts to quit are simply too weak in the face of your disease.
But don't give up hope. Millions have recovered from alcoholism by recognizing their powerlessness and seeking a power greater than themselves that can solve the drink problem.
This is the fundamental program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Faced with the reality of our hopelessness, we launch ourselves into a spiritual program of action. The writing we do during this process illuminates how fear drives most of our problems, how our actions drive the chaos of our lives. And when we are done writing, when we've shared it with another person and brought it to a God that we're not even sure exists, when we start to clean up the wreckage of our past and right our wrongs, we begin to feel better. What is better? The absence of craving. A new clarity about our own truths. And an awakened spirit.
So if building barriers to drinking does not work for you, if you get 30 days, 40 days or 4 months or 10 years and inexplicably return to drinking, do not view this as failure, but absolute confirmation that you are an alcoholic, suffering from a chronic, relapsing condition.
That only a spiritual experience can conquer.
For the alcoholic, though, willpower is often futile. This is the most baffling of alcoholism's many nasty characteristics: people who are in control of their lives in almost every aspect just cannot put down, and keep down, alcohol.
When you decide it's time to quit and cannot, consider the idea that perhaps your willpower is the problem. That your best efforts to quit are simply too weak in the face of your disease.
But don't give up hope. Millions have recovered from alcoholism by recognizing their powerlessness and seeking a power greater than themselves that can solve the drink problem.
This is the fundamental program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Faced with the reality of our hopelessness, we launch ourselves into a spiritual program of action. The writing we do during this process illuminates how fear drives most of our problems, how our actions drive the chaos of our lives. And when we are done writing, when we've shared it with another person and brought it to a God that we're not even sure exists, when we start to clean up the wreckage of our past and right our wrongs, we begin to feel better. What is better? The absence of craving. A new clarity about our own truths. And an awakened spirit.
So if building barriers to drinking does not work for you, if you get 30 days, 40 days or 4 months or 10 years and inexplicably return to drinking, do not view this as failure, but absolute confirmation that you are an alcoholic, suffering from a chronic, relapsing condition.
That only a spiritual experience can conquer.
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