Harmful Decisions - Who Should Decide

September 20. Hey everybody, hope your Monday exceeded expectations, which we shouldn't have anyway right? Just go with the flow. So mine didn't contain much action, a few phone calls from family & a friend but not much else early on. In the evening I got myself ready for MARS Group & mom took me there. I tried to make arrangements to hang out with some friends afterwards but nothing worked out. The meeting was minus several of our normal members & Kathy whom got things going to start the group, but we made the absolute best of it. With fewer people the conversation was more intimiate, the discussion more real, and the laughs louder & longer. Afterall we aren't there to be miserable, we are there to share recovery & its tools. The discussion went into detail about the 9th Step, making ammends to those we harmed. There was a lot of discussion about the exclusion for this step which says, except when do to so would injure them or others. People wanted to clarify what exactly hurting someone else means, because revealing you did someone wrong is going to do some sort of harm to a person's psyche regaurdless unless they already knew of the specific case. While everyone tossed ideas back & forth I thought of what was most important to me & for other alcoholics in regaurds to this process. My topic for tonight doesn't even have to do with ammends actually, moreso the actual workings of the alcoholic mind & how exactly we determine right from wrong in our spiritual steps & lives.

The key to figuring out alot of our 'confusing' decisions in Sobriety is this, We in fact are alcoholic; our minds, bodies, thoughts and feelings are all relative to our disease. We will not think clearly or know what's right when left to our own devices, most of the time. As we begin to recover we become more capable of deciphering right from wrong, hurt from help, and good from bad etc. Even in our most spiritual stages of recovery we are not fit to simply decide for ourselves what is best or right, we have proven to other's and ourselves that in the past our own decisions got us nothing but High, Drunk, or Spiritually Bankrupt. In addition many other losses or damages have been undergone at the expense of our alcoholism & our thinking we can run our own show or lives. So what do we do when there is a big decision in our lives? One that affects others, our lives, our spirituality, or other's life in general? We consult another alcoholic, one with experience in not only our specific problem, but with all 12 Steps in their life. If we want to take or keep control of our lives, even in these difficult & baffeling decisions we will run things into the ground as we always have. We DO NOT know what is best for us at all times, if we think we do we are not far from spiritual disaster or a drink/drug. Our ability to turn our will & our lives over to our Higher Power are not enough, we cannot be perfect sheep to follow the code of our creator or it's rules. We need someone else to help us, that is why working with another alcoholic is a key element of lasting sobriety, because it helps both parties.

You don't have to take my word for it, or the thousands of other alcoholics that are successfully sober today, you CAN try it your way over & over.. but when you expect different results you will be praying all over for the insanity to be relieved. Our best performances in life as alcoholics are ones that are thought out, prayed about, and that we ran by another alcoholic who has successful & stable sobriety w/ experience in what we are trying to accomplish, endure, or survive without harming anyone. In the end that is what's most important, that we don't harm ourselves or someone else, with the exception of if we are making ammends & have to take loss or damage because of the ammends, that we take such consequences so long as it won't hurt anyone else directly. This means our children, spouses, family, business partners etc. We take the damage, not them, and if they would be harmed then we must turn all of this over to our higher power & another alcoholic that would steer us away from the wrong decision. Thanks for listening, and remember that what's right is what is right. We do not define what right is, our view or conception of it may be scewed, years & decades into recovery. We are not so big that we cannot shrink our ego's down & accept help deciding the difficult things in life & if we are that big, our higher power will be along to humble us soon enough. Either that or our alcoholism will cripple us when we take a drink. "You had to be a Big Shot, Did Ya?" Good Night.. Good Morning.. <3 Jimmy