It was sometime before that date that I came into Al-Anon angry and sick.  My spouse
was in the other room with her new sponsor.  She was new to AA and I was angry,
resentful and jealous.  She dared to have a group of people do what it was that I
could not...change her drinking style, habit, addiction.  Her sponsor suggested that
I also attend AA and after that new rage I understand that my spouse might just have
been telling secrets about me.  Wasn't sure she would come crawling back to me to
resume my work and she did.  After an evening AA meeting she returned home and
asked me if I thought she was an alcoholic and of course I told her no; from my
very best awareness at that time, which was zero, and from my desire to control her
more still...I said no and then she went back out again for years and all the broken
blocks that were still standing tumbled to the ground.

Good stuff did happen which I didn't see back then.  I quit drinking myself.  My
drinking companion, my alcoholic wife wasn't around to teach, control, guide and
manipulate.  I didn't have to hide a bottle from her anymore or chase around to
bars and such to see if I could find her.  I was just done for some reason or another
and without her and the booze I went crazy all by myself.  Certifiably insane, scarey
insane and suicidal.  Thru the cunning, powerful and baffling manipulations of my
HP I found my way back into Al-Anon, claimed a chair and did something for the
first time that would save my life...sat down, listened with an open mind, learned,
practiced and practiced that same thing for the next 102 times for 90 days.  I wasn't
saved by any stretch of the imagination but I had found the place where others knew
what I didn't and were willing to help me when I asked to be helped which was a very
very opposite behavior for this oppositional defiant individual.  I had also been an
isolator so finding me sitting night after night in a group of people was hard to
believe but it was good for my natural ADD.  I am attention deficit so unbeknownst
to me all of the meetings helped me to understand and memorize what I was being
taught.

The smartest, coolest, loving, committed people in the world for me are in the rooms
of Al-Anon and partly for that I am grateful beyond description.  Someone named
it "sponging" for what I was going thru...sponging and soaking up every positive thing
I was hearing in the face to face meetings.  Yay!

The fellowship also introduced me to my Higher Power; face to face with instructions
to trust in the relationship I didn't know existed.  I was told that when I stopped
running the bump I felt to my back was my Higher Power catching up.  That is a great
metaphor for me; count another gratitude. 

The fellowship was also there for me when AA also became a part of my journey and
they supported me and cared even more after I took my own assessment/inventory
of my own drinking history.  Again HP supported me by having that assessment
read and interpreted by an Al-Anon member who had come into Al-Anon the same
week I had and who had given me early information that maybe I carried a "mark"
of alcoholism.  I thought my yellowish-green skin was either jaundice or that my
Portugese, Catholic mother had an affair with an Oriental.  It was neither is was how
my body had been handling the load of alcohol I was putting on it.  She was the
head nurse on the adult section of the rehab I worked in.  So I include AA
in my program.  I fear one thing and one thing only...getting blindsided with a
relapse.  I've experienced it before several times with another addiction and the
power of it sweeping me away is stunning and insane.   I am powerless.

However Al-Anon and Al-Anon/MIP has affirmed in me that I have a power greater
than anything else in my life which might cause me to trash myself like I use to and
that is the God of my understanding thru this program and that if I solely commitment
my life to my Higher Power's will, these steps and traditions (HP's will still) and to
following the suggestions including doing service to those coming up behind us I will
no longer fear.  I will love unconditionally instead and I will find peace and happiness.

Feb., 8th 2011 is about over.  Do I get another day to repeat this?  I'll see in the
morning.

Thanks to all of you new and more deeply experience for being apart of my recovery.
I am truely blessed and grateful.   (((((MIP)))))

-- Edited by Jerry F on Wednesday 9th of February 2011 01:18:17 AM

-- Edited by Jerry F on Wednesday 9th of February 2011 01:25:30 AM