Audio: Gratitude Attacks

A member shares their experience cultivating gratitude.

The Principle of Integrity

By Anon.

It was difficult for me to see how that small untruth was hurting anyone, it was just helping me to keep peace around the homestead. The lie was after all only allowing me to enjoy a small repayment for why I was working so hard in the first place. I had seen “Dallas” as a kid growing up, the stars always had a drink in their hands. They would walk into a room and the first thing they did was go to a fancy looking table, get a nice looking crystal glass and put some brandy in it. Then they would talk of all manner of life and problems and solutions, always it seemed with a drink in hand. I figured if it was good enough for the stars on TV, it certainly would do me no harm.

So as a young married man, starting a family, when the question was posed: “Did you stop for a drink on the way home?” I always told just a little white lie - I always responded wholeheartedly “No.” Like Dover’s White Cliffs continuing to be eroded over time, I was losing my Integrity little by little and there was nothing I could do about it. I could not stop the conduct which necessitated the lie, despite my best efforts to try. I had already learned the hard way that the trouble that came with my drinking lessons kept me locked in my hidden past. That’s why these little falsehoods were harmless. I could take a gentleman’s pleasure after a hard day at the office before returning to the home that hard work sustained. It was just another of life’s delicate ecosystems, one activity bolstered another, was sustained by a third, so that a fourth could persist, and so on, and so on.

But the erosion of my soul was occurring, just like those White Cliffs. The first time the Truth intervened, at that couple’s session with the ill-fated marriage counsel, when I volunteered out of the blue that I drank the way I did because I was an alcoholic, that was quite a show stopper. Almost two decades later I still don’t know from where that nugget of Truth emerged.  But the admission was a game changer, no doubt about it. It did not save the marriage and has not yet patched things up with the children, but it unlocked a Truth that had been hidden until that moment by the blanket of my denial for all of my waking life until then. So too it was with the first time I admitted I was a Newcomer to the 7:00 am group I had been attending for months, each morning still bent from the night before. The lie not told, the lie of omission, had been just as damaging to my Integrity, as I was later to learn. After I embraced sobriety, I found that not only had these lies taken their toll, but the marks they had left on me became the signposts on the path I was to follow to become the man I always wanted to be, they were the signposts on my road called “Change.”

I had to be searching and fearless with my inventory, and my Decision had given me the courage to accomplish that. But then I had to “admit” this inventory. First an admission to my Higher Power, Who I could not see any way, so that was no big whoop. Then to myself, but I had penned the inventory, so no surprises there. But the admission to another human being, this was raising the bar quite high indeed. I had to be honest with this guy, my sponsor it turned out, face to face, about everything. As if it was necessary to underscore the value and need for this, I heard the horror stories about how those who did not employ Integrity in this admission, that often a drink, a slip, was their dubious reward and for me, to drink was to die. So here it was, put out all my cards face up, no tricks, nothing up my sleeve, nothing, nothing at all, held back. Otherwise, be prepared to pack it in and let my disease do what it wanted to do, take everything from me until I had nothing more to give, then take my last breath too. As I had lost my Integrity, one white lie at a time, so too I gained it back by the daily halting of that practice. Although it had been daunting and difficult, that first Fifth Step [there have been others over the years] gave me the tool I needed to speak the Truth. As the challenges have come since, that tool of Integrity has been often used and it has served me well.  I learned in its use, that it was the Willingness to try that put my Integrity into the space it needed to do its work, a space the Courage I had found in taking my inventory had made for that very purpose.   

Exposed

By John W.

Those clowns said “You are as sick as your secrets,”
What did they know, his were “confidences to be kept.”
Of course they were of matters important, and of regrets,
But their memory he addressed only alone, silently as he wept.

So why the need to pull the scabs off of these old wounds?
The solace gained from his private affirmations was enough.
No need to “go public,” to raise these dead from their tombs.
“No” this was too much to ask, this suggestion just too tough.

But the affirmation to go to any lengths was at him gnawing
Eroding the peace in his days, the calm of his dreams.
Like “The Tell-Tale Heart” it beat, always time marking.
Its acme so, ‘twas though his soul was bursting at its seams.

Try as he might, with all the self-will he could summon,
No force to quell this invading presence could he muster.
For his plight was different, unique, his sins surely uncommon
And against the suggestion of their disclosure he did bluster.

His dilemma seemed formidable, he could fathom no resolution.
His delay had been costly, as to the brink of a drink he was driven.
Goaded by a “drowning man’s despair” he had sought a solution,
“Seek only the willingness to try” had been the suggestion given.

Yet for reasons he could later neither explain nor deny,
When this “life ring” was cast, he put arrogance and pride aside,
He grasped this chance as though his last, he became willing to try
And somewhere in him, survival and humility commenced to coincide.

In the light of its telling, the darkness of his past began to wither.
The power of owning it, totally, freed him now by his admission.
He had cast off its shackles, silenced its incessant twitter,
And could see his fear now as naught but baseless apparition.

The calm that beset him as this Step he had finally taken,
He witnessed by the sobriety which ensued over years,
As it cemented his faith in a process now rarely shaken
With a gift he had before not owned, a tool to address his fears.

John R. W.
03/08/2018
To Dad - On Your 96th Birthday
May Jesus Hold You close to His Heart

Step 5 - More Will Be Revealed

By Anon.

Like many others before me and since, I had heard the mantra: Don’t Drink, Get a Sponsor, Work the Steps - Your Life Will Change. Maybe like others, I thought of this “change” as being of a tangible nature, things would quiet down at home or in the office (in my case maybe in both places), this financial insecurity thing would be gone and I would be good to go, for life. I mean weren’t my difficulties to be taken away, so as to mark this “way of life” to the newbie just struggling in the door?

With my wife and children back, my job roses, my IRA soaring, I could shout the praises of AA from the rooftops (anonymously of course) for anyone with a problem and an interest, this was my plan. My guy, Owen, then with 26 years behind him, smirked as I explained this and gently responded “More Will Be Revealed.” He wouldn’t tell me what he meant by that quip, just said to integrate it into my 11th Step meditation practice and sooner or later I wouldn’t need to keep asking him, I would know. His unexpected passing in 2011 sealed his silence on providing further enlightenment, but not on the wisdom of his retort now seemingly made so long ago. As suggested, I gave this advice some thought and I listened at the meetings to “hear” him. But while the gift of sobriety did indeed change my life and gave me the beauty of days to experience it I am sure it would not have been mine had I continued to drink, my plan of what my sober life would be like must have been great comic relief for my Higher Power.

As I continued to Live Life on Life’s Terms, I found myself confronted with issues, problems, and just plain-old tough stuff, which I was sure should not have been happening to me, a sober man. These had to be exceptions, they had to be the mistakes in God’s world that are not supposed to be there. Yet as one seemed to exacerbate the other or complicate them both and confound any perception of a solution or way out, my hope was fading. The storm clouds were gathering, life was not looking pretty, in fact, it was getting pretty ugly. I thought of Owen’s advice: More Will Be Revealed. So I asked what step applied, was searching and fearless about the moral inventory I took about today’s problems and made my list. I admitted it readily to myself and my Higher Power, but how to another? I should not have been surprised, but I was, about how the answer to my silent, private question manifested itself.

Literally the very next day, an Oldtimer I had not seen in weeks showed up at my new Home Group for his first time there. After hearing my self-pity clothed in justifiable anger and resentment before the meeting when he made the mistake of inquiring “How are you,” he volunteered after the meeting that I really should consider doing a 4th Step on this and discussing that with my Sponsor. I proudly, and a bit smugly, pulled my notes from my wallet and said I was way ahead of him, I had done so already. Smiling, he asked when I was to do my Fifth Step. My fumbling response confirmed I had not decided on that yet. So when he accepted my request to be that “another human being” I felt vindicated. But, when deciding “when,” he rebuffed the notion of “maybe sometime during one of the upcoming weekends” and offered “now” before we each headed off to our respective jobs-oh my! Gone was my veneer of rhetoric, the rubber was meeting the road - right now, in this moment. The admissions that followed were heartfelt and honest, albeit at times unexpected. As we parted company, I thanked my Listener for his time, his ear, and his making exact the nature of my part in the drama, his were observations I of course had wanted to overlook completely or justify righteously.

In the parking lot at work, as suggested, I reviewed what had just happened -It was then that More Was To Be Revealed. For although I had done a 4th Step many years before, this time it was different. This time, as I reviewed what had preceded these recent admissions and the disclosure and discussion of them, I began to feel something different. Whether it was the nearness of my Creator or not, I would be unable to verify with scientific precision, but it was perceptible, it was real, it was there! Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, this day mine it seemed was of the “slow” variety, but with the work had come the materialization, more was being revealed. Life’s difficulties may have remained, but I knew on this day I was no longer alone when dealing with them. From the power of this way of life, I had instead this victory over them.

Radical Acceptance

By Dede H.

Cloistered in my bed where I write
Love visits me everyday on my tray
This food emanates brilliant radiance
I’ve lived a colorful life filled with rage
Over involved valor is now discarded

Radical acceptance is taking its place
My Higher Powers do not need me
Every day I race to find sustenance
They show me where the good food is
Nutrition floats in your eyes with Grace

Bits and pieces of surrender teach me
Enter the galley of this anonymous ship
Sobriety cooks—thank God you’re here
Group of Drunks I revere your seats
It’s a liquid friendship we worship to eat