Good Living Requires Maintenence

July 12. Hey friends, hope everyone is enjoying their start to this week. I had a rough weekend but made it through sober & somewhat sane. My sunday took a weird turn & I really cannot point at what made it happen, but thats the nature of alcoholism, we don't always know what makes us how we are. But we can do the necessary things to pull ourselves back up from the depths. I tried to do that & I feel after making it through this monday & my week officially underway I might be climbing back up on my feet. I have alot to be grateful for & after taking a day to relax & reflect I am realizing much of this. I have many things going on in my life that are far ahead of where they were just over a year ago. Two more weeks to the day & I will have endured a year of sobriety, not that it was all that painful, it was really more relieving than anything. This break from alcohol & other chemicals has begun to prove what my life can contain in their absence. I like what I am seeing & feeing and so do the people who count in my life. I made it to the meeting tonight at my home group, I felt it necessary to be there as a helping hand in getting up off my ass & out of the depression the weekend brought on. It was just the trick because we had a newcomer at their very first meeting & the topic was rightfully adjusted to meet the newcomer's needs.

Anytime I sit in on a meeting that addresses the newcomer I get reminded of many things. These are all things that I could easily lose track of or take for granted in my sobriety, things that could threaten my recovery process if not identified & highlighted in my mind. I chose not to share tonight, I needed to take with me more of the meeting than I could contribute this time & thats okay. It's actually how it is supposed to be. If anything matters more than me maintaining my own recovery, then I will not be able to recover. I heard all of the advice that I did in the beginning, and over the fourty minutes that other's talked I began to REAPPLY it to all the areas in which I was sick & suffering today. Because of the magic in the common purpose of all of us in the 12 Step fellowship, I was reminded of all the things I have to be grateful for, all without having to talk about myself specifically. I did not need to bring up my woes to get the medicinal cure of the program, I just had to listen & apply what was going to work for another alcoholic. Because what can work for them, can work for me. It has been proven, for over 75 years men & woman in the thousands & millions have been recovering from a hopless state of mind & body.

In that short meeting, just about an hour compared to the two days I have been down in the dumps, I have been able to turn my spirits back around. From slipping away from the happy place in my existance to firmly standing back in the impression of my sober stance, I have to continue to be grateful for the great things I have today & for nothing being close to the horror it was before I began this adventure of change in my life. I have the men & women that on a constant basis do the spiritual duty of helping another despite their own problems in life, because in doing so they have helped me once again. There is nothing that will get better in my life with a drink or drug, nor will it get better by allowing myself to get down & stagger in my steps towards spiritual fitness. I am responsible today for my own sobriety & I am responsible to share my strength experience & hope with others as well. If I don't do so, then I am taking a gift from the world without returning one & I cannot have the balance we all crave as human, spiritual beings. I thank my higher power for always giving me what I need, when I need it, instead of giving me what I want when I want it. One day at a time, it has been a grand accumulation of days in my life, the days of our lives. Not a soap opera show, but reality in its finest, that we can all be well together if we take the path less traveled, the path of those people who have found happiness before us. Here's to carrying the message, may mine always be enough to help the next. Good Night.. Good Morning.. <3 Jimmy