IndaMiricale

Day 23,


There is some alcholoic thought,conscious or unconscious that comes before every slip. As long as we live , we must be on the lookout for such thoughts and guard against them. In fact, our (my) AA training is mostly to prepare us and me , to make us ready to reconginize such thougts at once and to reject them at once.

The slip comes when we allow such thoughts to remain in our minds, even before we actually go through the motions of lifting the glass to our lips. The AA program is largely one of mental training. How well is my mind prepared?

Well with that I am in total training how about you ?

Good love , Inda

Dee74

I prefer to think in terms of accepting my thoughts...I know from a lifetime of trying I can't stop what I think, but I can make sure I don't act on them.

I guess it all comes out to the same thing

D

ReadyAndAble

Those thoughts still register, but after 11 months, they're more of a nuisance than anything. So I don't feel like it's a battle. It's just something I'm aware of, and respond to, sort of like paying attention to the weather report when planning your day.

That said, I do not take my sobriety for granted, and still spend a good amount of time on SR to reinforce why.

Thanks for the thought-provoking post, Inda.

TheTinMan

Daily prayer and meditation. Constant training. Constant gratitude. Constant acceptance.

lushly

Thanks Inda. I needed to hear that thought today. My relapse mind set has reared it's ugly head recently. I have remained sober, due to the work that I have done and my connection to the universal energy prior to this time. I never thought of it that way. Hu? That why I love this sight. Lushly

timetochange

I think that when I slip, I have those "thoughts" and rather than recognizing them, accepting them, or really even thinking about them, I just ACT. As hard as it is to work through those urges, it is so much more worthwhile than acting on them, that's for sure.

gaffo

Seventeen years ago I quit a serious cigarette habit. I have been dusting off a few of the tools that I used. One of the most potent is the knowledge that a relapse will "reset the misery". Do I really want to go through the first day/month/year of hell again?

Tigger41

Gaffo - great post - I'm also going back to when I stopping smoking and saying to myself "remember how you would have "just one cigarette" and I'd be back to a pack a day"

So now when I look at a drink - I think - I am SO HAPPY I quit cigarettes in the late 80s and I thought I would always miss them - and now I would just get sick if I took a puff. And I say to myself it will be like that with alcohol - in a few years (or even less) I will not miss it. I know this to be the case.

keithj

India, I don't know where you've heard this or gotten your 'AA training', but this is counter to the program. The program tells me repeatedly that we 'cannot recall with sufficient the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or month ago.' The mental obsession of the alcoholic described in the BB manifests as an inability to recall with any clarity all the bad stuff that happens, a delusion that somehow this time will be different, and an obsession that I'll be able to pull it off this time. This idea is all through the first 3 chapters of the BB, and exemplified in Jim, Fred and jaywalker stories.

If you're hearing about thinking through the drink and mental exercises to recognize drinking thoughts and triggers, then you are sadly being misguided. I urge you to reconcile what you are hearing with the BB and find some folks that are sharing the actual AA program. I say that with sincere concern and a lot of experience of seeing people not stay sober all the while believing that they are 'doing AA.'

quote aabb1st

RobbyRobot

Hi Inda,

Good to know you didn't experience a slip.

You know, I'm sure that AA does not have any kind of a mental training aspect to living the 12 step program. I appreciate we all have our own viewpoints and experiences, but the idea that in AA we somehow prepare our minds against going back to alcoholic drinking is really very far from the practicle practise of the 12 steps.

Alcoholism creates an alcoholic mind-set, and I have no defense against that alcoholic mind, except to acquire and live a spiritual life. I cannot think my way out of that alcoholic mind. Impossible. I must have a psychic change that creates a new sober mind-set, and it is this sober mind-set that keeps me protected from the deranged thoughts and reactions of my alcoholic minded thinkings because I'm no longer thinking with an alcoholic mind.

As a matter of fact, spiritually speaking, my alcoholism illness has been arrested, and so of course my alcoholic mind and the obsessions that are born within it, are also arrested and they are for lack of better words, removed from me.

I don't need to protect myself from slipping. I don't need to be on guard, I don't need to be prepared.

So, I'm not in total training. Simply living an honest spiritual sober life as I have come to understand my higher power, as described in the AA program, ensures I have no worries, ever, about slipping, or relapsing, or whatever alcoholically.

If I choose, I can think about slips all day long, and I'm not in any risk or danger of acting on those thoughts. My mind is sober, and so when I do reflect on drinking its with a different purpose than when my mind was alcoholic.

FWIW, its not thoughts that get alcoholics drunk, its untreated alcoholism that gets alcoholics drunk, not some lousy thoughts about having a drink. Please re-visit reading the Big Book chapter 5 "How it Works" and you'll discover some clear answers which will serve you better than all the mental gymnastics in the world.

IndaMiricale

@ Keith, its in the 24 hr. book.

I might be green but I have Open ears