Recovery Reflections: Halloween Addition
Hello everyone! My name is Bianka. I would like to give you another warm welcome to Detox to Rehab’s Recovery Reflections. Please join us each Monday at noon on our Facebook page to listen to the experience, strength, and hope shared by Connor, Corey and myself.
We will live stream a reading from Alcoholics Anonymous: Daily Reflections and Narcotic Anonymous: Just for Today. We express how this reading has helped our recovery or how it has impacted us. Please join us, engage in the audience, post questions and or leave feedback for us at noon. We thank you and hope we can inspire your recovery journey!
Alcoholics Anonymous
October 31, 2016: Avoiding Controversy
All history affords us the spectacle of striving nations and groups finally torn asunder because they were designed for, or tempted into, controversy. Others fell apart because of sheer self-righteousness while trying to enforce upon the rest of mankind some millennium of their own specification.
– Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 176
As an A.A. member and sponsor, I know I can cause real damage if I yield to temptation and give opinions and advice on another’s medical, marital, or religious problems. I am not a doctor, counselor, or lawyer. I cannot tell anyone how he or she should live; however, I can share how I came through similar situations without drinking, and how A.A.’s Steps and Traditions help me in dealing with my life.
Read the full Daily Reflection here: http://www.aa.org/pages/en_US/daily-reflection?y=2016&m=10&d=31
Their Own Experience
When working with others we can always hope for them to take a suggestion but never cram it down their throat. Everyone in a 12-Step fellowship needs to walk their own path, with an others guidance, but another person cannot have their experience for them.
“I won’t tell them what they need to do, I will tell them what I suggest them to do,” I said.
As a person in recovery, I need to let everyone have their own experience because they need to learn from their mistakes to grow. However, when working with someone I will try and relate to them so they don’t have to make the mistake because I have already done it for them.
“Try to relate it to your own experience and offer them that,” Connor said.
Offering my own experience is all I can do. I am not a therapist, councilor or doctor. I have no right telling others what I think is best when I have no experience in the matter.
“Look I understand I don’t have to live of the consequences of the decision and you do,” Corey said.
If I were to give someone advice on a subject I have no experience in, it would not be fair. I am not the one who would have to live with the consequence if the advice I have given was wrong.
“The only thing you can do is share your experience, strength and hope,” I said.
Since it is not fair give suggestion on something you have no experience in the only thing you can do is share your strength and hope to help another individual trying to recover.
AA vs NA
The AA: Daily Reflection focus on the reasons why you should not give advice with no experience and the NA: Just for Today puts attention on how your relationship is with your higher power. While each reading is very different, they share the same importance. They give me hope and guide me in the right direction. Also, it reminds me of how blessed I am to be living a life clean and sober.
Narcotics Anonymous
October 31, 2016: Our relationship with a Higher Power
Working the Twelve Steps of Narcotics Anonymous gives us a fresh start in life and some guidance for living in the world. But the steps are more than a fresh start. When we do our best to work the steps, we develop a relationship with our personal Higher Power.
In the Third Step, we decide to allow a loving God to influence our lives. Much of the courage, trust, and willingness we need to continue through the succeeding steps comes from this decision. In the Seventh Step, we go even further by asking this Higher Power to change our lives. The Eleventh Step is a way for us to improve the relationship.
Recovery is a process of growth and change in which our lives are renewed. The Twelve Steps are the roadmap, the specific directions we take in order to continue in recovery. But the support we need to proceed with each step comes from our faith in a Higher Power, the belief that all will be well. Faith gives us courage to act. Each step we work is supported by our relationship with a loving God.
Just for today: I will remember that the source of my courage and willingness is my relationship with my Higher Power.
Read the full Just for Today here: http://jftna.com/pages/10-31.htm
Seeking our Higher Power
There is no human power that can stop me from getting loaded. I need something greater than myself to restore me to sanity.
“We need something beyond ourselves that can give us what we need to stay sober and to start fresh and follow the rest of the steps,” Connor said.
If I couldn’t keep myself from getting loaded, no one can. I tried to do it from my family but their power was not strong enough. That is why I need something greater than myself to keep me out of trouble. Even now that I am clean and sober I still need to pray to my higher power each morning, every night and throughout the day to keep me from picking up the drugs or alcohol.
“I do need to keep in touch with my higher power in order to maintain my recovery,” I said.
I am not cured from the disease of addiction. I never will be and I am totally cool with it because I have something that watches over me always and keeps me sane. Something that I believe in and put my trust into that I call God. I remember the first time I found out there was a God, a power greater than myself.
“I dropped to my knees and I prayed and I didn’t know what I was praying to but it helped me and from that moment I moved forward. It is the reason I am where I am today,” I said.
That was when I understood there was something looking over me because I am still clean and sober today.
Corey had a similar experience.
“There were a lot of stories I have where like I shouldn’t have come out of that okay, I probably should have died … weird things happen and here I am. Something had to be looking out for me,” Corey said.
I totally relate to what Corey is saying here. As drug addicts, we are lucky to be alive. We were dancing with the devil each day and should have not came out of our addiction alive. There is a simple question you must ask yourself if you want to stay clean and sober.
“Do I want to keep running and die? Or live my life how I am supposed to?,” I said.
