Redmayne

When you realize that there are more reasons in your life not to drink than remembering you were formerly addicted to alcohol or suffer from alcoholism.

It's a bit like the saying that the best trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people he existed or as Marcus Aurelius said,'You have power over your mind, all the rest are external events. Realize this and you will gain strength,' or 'Your mind is dyed by the colour of your thoughts.'

Otherwise you're just 'spinning you wheels' and locked in a cycle of events that no longer exist.

Or as the character Vivienne Lord says in Fargo - Season three to Gloria Burgle,'I've been sober twenty nine years, everything before that was a dream.'

August252015

I have found that the "only thing that had to change was everything," as they say.

It's a wonderful, thing, too - living as I do now is a full and abundant way of life I never would have had (never did have) if I'd kept drinking.

And making the change to this life took discipline and practice in certain ways, til new habits became routine. The payoff is enormous- and, indeed, as the BB says, the promises are coming true for me.

Forward movement and cycling on is my way to go!

Redmayne

Echoing your thoughts that the only thing that had to change was everything and not being the brightest apple in the barrel. Albeit it I stopped drinking in Feb.,2008 the point was really driven home to me in Sept.,2016 when an unexpected life saving operation from which I wasn't expected to recover, was followed by five weeks in a medically induced coma.

Once I regained consciousness I realised that, not surprisingly the world had managed perfectly well without me doh!On which basis, always one to seek advantage from adversity, I could, using Richard Bach's words,

'Allow the world to live as it chooses,

Whilst allowing myself to live as I choose.'

And that in the process of my recovery from what, using the surgeon's words,' a very stressful, traumatic experience, indicating that my recovery from which was going to take quite a lengthy period. Once I had regained a reasonable degree of my mental and physical abilities I could put this into practice even more so than in my recovery from drinking enhancing both it and me and pursuing my desire, in very real terms of becoming a serious student of the practices and principles of Stoic philosophy...Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius (my hero, you may have noticed.. and Seneca, and stop 'spinning my wheels'.

Although I wouldn't recommend my experience, it's certainly not for the faint hearted, I think the idea that 'everything has to change' has great merit.