Why I Ask if I Can Safely Drink
When I started this blog I had in mind describing living sober – the operative word living. It reflects my experience living without my buddy booze, and what others teach me about sober living. It’s been awhile since I picked up – but how I choose to live is a daily choice. (Just for Today)
So, when someone asked, “Are you OK with folks who have had trouble in the past, now having an occasional drink, I had to stifle “Are you nuts?” But, I did not join a temperance society when I joined the fellowship, or decided to follow Christ.
AA is not a temperance league; we offer suggestions to those who want to stop drinking. (How It Works) However, as my sponsor likes to say, the program works better when you don’t drink. (And when you say your prayers, and go to meetings!)
So, yesterday’s meeting was just where I needed to be, to hear a discussion on the second half of the 12th step: “ . . . practice these principles in all our affairs.”
What principles?
Well, the one that we came to first is a starting point: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, and our lives had become unmanageable.
I can’t practice the principles of AA – dependence on God, emotional sobriety, usefulness, and right-sized living – if I am concentrating on being a social drinker.
Social drinkers don’t concentrate on that either.
After all the time I have lived sober, I have come to believe that I cannot safely drink, no matter how crafty the beer; no matter how mellow the Bordeaux; or, complex the bourbon.
Sticking with program people, I understand today is not a good day to see how recovered I am. My suggestion to any whose lives were unmanageable to any degree through the use of alcohol, to leave the social drinking to social drinkers.
At yesterday’s meeting, some one described how their decision to see how it would work out to have an occasional drink. After twenty years of sober living, they believed what earth people were telling them: You are doing great!
A state trooper disagreed, and gave them a DUI. Their attempt at controlled drinking didn’t end well.
So, I choose today to believe mine wouldn’t either.
What do you think?
Can folks whose drinking made their lives unmanageable, a little or a lot, safely resume drinking?
I value your opinion, dear reader!
Love in Christ,
Sober & Grateful
I’m with you, Barbara. Why would I want to screw up the sober life God’s given me? Since “balance” eludes me on lots of other issues, why now, after 8 years, would I think ANYTHING has changed, where alcohol is concerned. It’s that crazy part of my brain that would lie to me, & tell me a drink is ok. It’s not. At least not for me.
When I finally got around to taking an honest inventory, and that happened after listening to others talk in meetings about the lengths to which they went to make that inventory, I realized, Yes, I might be able to control for awhile the amount of alcohol I drank — but I could never control what alcohol would do to me.
oxxoxoxoxox