Maxamuus

Marj I wish you the best of success. Hopefully you and I can find the peace we deserve and need.

carlyle

I am still mad at myself too. I do like to drink, a lot. But I have played that part of my life to the end.

What makes me most pi$$ed is I had people see the signs early on and warn me but I wasn't ready.

Maybe life can be your higher power? Something greater than yourself is accepting you are just a part of an entire universe of laws that are impossible to know or sort out completely. We exist in the universe but we are life... Maybe love can be that higher power? What do you value most about life but cannot completely understand? What in your life takes faith? Faith does not have to be religion. It is simply belief or trust in something we do not understand.

I don to know why I am here at this unpleasant fork in the road, but I have faith that it is a challenge to prepare me for something or some calling in th future. I may be able to share my experience and bring love to the life of another who needs is most.

DAB

My point is that you can make anything your higher power, you just have to trust the process. Once you start rowing, the invisible boat will appear, if you stop rowing the boat disappears.

Maxamuus

This is what I struggled with thru rehab. I can get a higher power. I know there has to be something greater then me at play in the universe. Its just what.... I just cant bring myself to praying to a klinex box because I need a high power. I just don't know how to define it.

UpForIt

I've struggled with this too. As I've traveled and seen different things I've been inspired but nothing I consider a "higher power." I wonder if I'm too literal or something.

Maxamuus

Funny, all my therapists said I was too literal or too analogical.

I just wish I knew how to surrender to the Kleenex box... Not putting anyone down, I just seem to be stuck on this step. Im not a religious person and AA seems quasi-religious to me so I seem to be stuck on that. I have read the chapter to agnostics, yet I still seem stuck.

DAB

I think humanity is a greater power than myself. How will I impact humanity? In a positive way or a negative way? We are one, we are all in this together.
Humanity will go on after I die therefore it is a power greater than myself.
Maybe each one of us is a piece of the puzzle that is God.

sunshinescooby

Maxamus.. There is ALWAYS hope.. always.. keep trying. don't give up.

Day 3 of sobriety. Tomorrow I'm going to channel Nancy Reagan and "just say no".. hopefully I will have the strength.. (notice hope in there), but I think I can do it..

Maxamuus

DAB you have given me something to think about. Never thought about humanity. I do strive to be a good person, even bought a homeless guy lunch today. Not for the thanks, just because I want to be a good person.

UpForIt

Just gotta keep moving forward and exploring new things.

Like Steve Martin in "The Jerk" when he discovered that ridiculous music and had to go out and see the world! I tend to quote that movie too often maybe.

neferkamichael

Maxamuus, just dust yourself off and get back on your horse, that's all ya can do. Addiction is tricky, for years on Monday morning I'd be broke and swear this was the last time. Come payday, it would be like I was on automatic pilot, cash check, then liquor store, then dope store, then bar, then wake up Monday morning broke again, blah, blah, blah. Rootin for ya.

Eddiebuckle

I get that. When I was in rehab I thought (but did not share) that the whole HP thing was just plain stupid. Something down the line of "These morons think the great pumpkin is going to keep them sober? Good luck with that..."

I went to AA because I had no better alternative, and was willing to do anything to avoid relapse. I went to dozens of meetings in three counties, and finally found one meeting that I liked. It was hard to believe that the people in that room ever were anything like I felt on the inside, but they were telling aspects of my story in every meeting. I made the group wisdom my higher power. In the three years since, my understanding has shifted but my HP still would be a strange fit for most main line religions.

The first step is to accept without any reservation that you are a hopeless alcoholic, and that to drink you are basically committing slow motion suicide.

The second step is about coming to believe - not believing 100% and understanding 100% - but coming to believe that despite being a hopeless alcoholic, there is a solution. Look around the AA rooms, and you will definitely meet some people whose history makes them incredibly lucky to be on this side of the sod, and yet now live lives that most people would happily take. How is it possible that they got this way? Are they just lucky?? No - somehow they got from where you are to where they are. Just accept that they did that, and that whatever they did is also available to you.

The third step is to simply make the decision to set your doubts and fears aside to try what they tried. What have you got to lose?

I suggest you seek out an AA agnostic who has what you want, and ask him to be your temporary sponsor. Do exactly what he says for 90 days, and if you don't like the outcome, you haven't lost anything from where you currently stand. And I assure you, you do not need to have any particular HP to get an outcome you like.

Maxamuus

Thanks I am going to do my best to shrug this off and pick up the pieces tomorrow and move forward.

While I don't connect with AA I am going to try to go to the early morning meeting tomorrow, as I know they are like me and have been down this road.

Maxamuus

God Eddie.... wow. Your words mean more to me then 25 thousand dollars of detox and rehab did. I need to find a meeting and find a guy like you who understands me and will help me. I am a broken man and just want more then anything to find someone who can help me. Guide me out of this sh!t pond.

I do my best to help those I can. Yet at the end of the day I know I am a broken man and I need to right myself. Its just hard to get from where I am now to where I know I should be.

Thanks for your kind words. It gives me hope that somewhere out there someone understands me.

Eddiebuckle

Maxamuus, there are lots of people like you/us out there. Be patient, keep looking - and reach out to those that are there to help. If you have the opportunity to pose the question in a meeting, you will find the sponsor you need. It may not be at the first meeting you raise the question, but the experience you are looking for is actually pretty common, keep seeking till you find what you need.

Should you have any questions, feel free to send me a PM any time.

Good luck, you can do this.

Eddie

Nighthawk8820

Its not a failure if you learn from it. Whatever you are doing outside of rehab isnt enough or isnt working for you (obviously), so you need to rethink your strategy and give it another go.

Nuudawn

Do believe in nothing greater than yourself...no benevolent force you cannot explain? Universal law? Positive energy? Even the best part of you...your true self...not the bs addiction at the helm that talks to you...lies to you? seduces you..make a complete arse of you? That's not you... YOU want to get sober...your true self...your higher power

mecanix

Hmm , that would do me as a higher power period.

M

GracieLou

And you think you have no Higher power?

I too was having a hard time. It is like I kept looking for this HP to save me.

At first, well still really, I came to look at it that you can't have bad with out good. They qualify each other. They go to together. Ying and Yang. A lead at meeting not long ago said he had a higher power and a lower power. That made sense. You have one, the bad, which means you also have the other, the good. One cannot exist without the other.

I was at AA Founders days last weekend. It was amazing but one of the experiences I will never forget was at the big meeting on Saturday night.

Mind you we are in a large stadium and close to ten thousand people registered for the three day event. They told everyone with a year or less to stand. So you see all these people get up. I am one of them.

They said everyone with 11 months sober to sit, everyone with ten months to sit and so on. I had to stand until 2 months was called. Let me tell you, I felt like I stuck out in this huge crowd but people were clapping and cheering all the way. So I sit and it continues. 1 month, 1 week, 6 days and on down. Then 24 hours. Can you imagine the courage it took to remain standing all that time down to the last couple people that only had 24 hours. It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about. Those people were told to come to the front of the stadium to get a Big book. Again, the amount of courage it took to walk all the way to the front and get that book. Those people had something standing with them and they had something walking with them to get that book. You could feel it.

There is no doubt in my mind that a HP was working there.

The BB says they came to believe, I have. So far every single time I have needed something, not wanted, but needed something it has been placed right in my path in some form or another. Is that luck? coincidence? I think not.

Just as Eddie was placed in your path. Someone to explain something to you that you understood and that you can carry with you.

sunshinescooby

thank you GracieLou.. that was a powerful post..