Taking Action - June 9th

Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A.A. Thought for the Day

We finally came to the bottom. We did not have to be financially broke, although many of us were. But we were spiritually bankrupt. We had a soul sickness, a revulsion against ourselves and against our way of living. Life had become impossible for us. We had to end it all or do something about it. Am I glad I did something about it?


Putting the cork in the bottle is the first step to recovery for most of us. Years of living with the knowledge that my drinking controlled me finally wore to the point that I had  no choice - I had to take action. 
~ Mike 

Acceptance - June 8th

“Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.”

~ William James

A.A. Thought for the Day

Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. We always get worse, never better. We are never cured. Our alcoholism can only be arrested. No matter how long we have been sober, if we try liquor again, we're as bad or worse than we ever were. There is no exception to this rule in the whole history of A.A. We can never recapture the good times of the past. They are gone forever. Will I try to recapture them?


The shipwreck that was my life before sobriety is obvious to me now. I spent years of my life drinking and ignoring how my actions were making my life a misery....I now believe that hindsight can only be 20:20 to a sober person. As an active alcoholic I was blind to the truth.
~ Mike

A Progressive Disease - June 7th

“I have other obligations now-the show, my family, my life...though I know that without my sobriety I wouldn't have any of those things.”

~ Rob Lowe

A.A. Thought for the Day

Alcoholism is a progressive illness. We go through the three stages of social drinking, trouble drinking, and merry-go-round drinking. We land in hospitals and jails. We eventually lose our homes, our families, and our self-respect. Yes, alcoholism is a progressive illness and there are only three ends to it - the insane asylum, the morgue, or total abstinence. Will I choose not to take the first drink?


Don't drink and go to meetings is the best advice ever given to me in this program. There are meetings morning, noon and night every day of the week in Ottawa and over the course of my journey in sobriety I have found a need to take advantage of meetings every day at times. May you too have access to AA when you need it.
~ Mike

Why We Drink - June 6th

“Drunkenness is temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is merely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness”

~ Bertrand Russell

A.A. Thought for the Day

Drinking is the way we alcoholics express our maladjustments to life. I believe that I was a potential alcoholic from the start. I had an inferiority complex. I didn't make friends easily. There was a wall between me and other people. And I was lonely. I was not well adjusted to life. Did I drink to escape from myself?


Drinking made me believe things I could never believe sober - that I was good enough, that I belonged and that people could like me. 
~ Mike

The Right Path - June 5th

“I haven't failed, I've found 10,000 ways that don't work”

~ Thomas Alva Edison

A.A. Thought for the Day

We alcoholics are fortunate to be living in a day and age when there is such a thing as Alcoholics Anonymous. Before A.A. came into being, there was very little hope for the alcoholic. A.A. is a great rebuilder of human wreckage. It takes men and women whose personality problem expresses itself in alcoholism and offers them a program that, if they are willing to accept it, allows them not only to get sober, but also to find a much better way of living. Have I found a better way of living?


I tried staying sober on my own, I tried to control my drinking - but it has only been in the fellowship of AA that I've found the Holistic approach I needed for sobriety. 
~ Mike

Certainty - June 2nd

The one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is unchangeable or certain.

~ John F. Kennedy

A.A. Thought for the Day

Some more things I do not miss since becoming dry: wondering if the car is in the garage and how I got home; struggling to remember where I was and what I did since my last conscious moment; trying to delay getting off to work, and wondering how I will look when I get there; dreading the day ahead of me. I'm quite sure that I don't miss these things, am I not?


I have met some of those poor unfortunate few who could not get the program. They almost all have returned to old ways and continue to have trouble and sorrow in their lives. They are certain that sobriety is not for them. That's a shame.
~ Mike

Progress - June 1st

“The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.”

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes 

A.A. Thought for the Day

Some things I do not miss since becoming dry: that overall awful feeling physically, including the shakes, a splitting headache, pains in my arms and legs, bleary eyes, fluttering stomach, droopy shoulders, weak knees, a three day beard, and a flushed complexion. Also, facing my wife or my husband at breakfast. Also, composing the alibi and sticking to it. Also, trying to shave or put on make up with a shaky hand. Also, opening up my wallet to find it empty. I don't miss these things, do I?


If it were not for this program I would never have been able to shed the shame that kept me from joining society and becoming a father, friend, and neighbour. I do not regret the past but there are many things from it that I do not miss. I love this new life and thank my higher power for it.
~ Mike