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 12:00pm PST on our Facebook page to listen to the experience, strength and hope shared by Reisto, Connor, Corey and myself.
We will live stream a reading from Narcotics Anonymous: Just for Today and Alcoholics Anonymous: Daily Reflections. We express how this reading has helped our recovery or how it has impacted us. Please join us, engage as an audience member, post questions and or leave feedback for us at 12:00pm PST. We thank you and hope we can inspire your recovery journey!
Narcotics Anonymous
November 28, 2016: Being ourselves
“To be truly humble is to accept and honestly try to be ourselves.” Basic Text, p. 36
Humility is a puzzling concept. We know a lot about humiliation, but humility is a new idea. It sounds suspiciously like groveling, bowing, and scraping. But that’s not what humility is at all. True humility is, simply, acceptance of who we are.
By the time we reach a step that uses the word “humbly” we have already started to put this principle into practice. The Fourth Step gives us an opportunity to examine who we really are, and the Fifth Step helps us accept that knowledge.
The practice of humility involves accepting our true nature, honestly being ourselves. We don’t have to grovel or abase ourselves, nor must we try to appear smarter, wealthier, or happier than we really are. Humility simply means we drop all pretense and live as honestly as we can.
Just for Today: I will allow knowledge of my true nature to guide my actions. Today, I will face the world as myself.
Just for Today: http://www.justfortodaymeditations.com/category/daily-recovery-readings/
Being Okay with You
When you are an addict like me, facing the world as “yourself” is tricky.
“It is kind of easier to pretend to be smarter, happier or wealthier to make you feel better about yourself,” I said.
I spent so much time in my addiction pretending to be someone who I wasn’t because I was not okay with who I was on the inside. Some days I am still not okay with who I am but I am learning to be humble and love myself one day at a time. The days I am not okay with myself is when I am afraid of becoming who I used to be.
“Sometimes I am afraid of who I truly am because I know the person I used to be was someone that got high and you know killed themselves slowly like day by day and I don’t want to be that person anymore,” I said.
I have the choice to become someone better than who I was in my addiction today because of my recovery.
“I had spent such a long time just being a person who got high and did everything I could do to continue getting high,” Corey said.
It is difficult to move on from the past when all I did for years was get loaded. When I did move on and start believing in myself, there was no one I would rather be than myself. I am okay with being who I am today.
“You are going to look around and not want to be anyone else but yourself,” Connor said.
It has gotten to the point where I am not jealous of others and their humbleness. I have evolved into someone I wouldn’t want to change for the world.
NA and AA
The NA: Just for today focuses on being humble while the AA: Daily reflections puts attention on attraction, rather than promotion of a 12-step fellowship. While each reading is slightly different, they share the same importance. They give me hope and guide me in the right direction. Also, it reminded me of how blessed I am to be living a life clean and sober.
Alcoholics Anonymous
November 28, 2016: Attraction, Not Promotion
Through many painful experiences, we think we have arrived at what that policy ought to be. It is the opposite in many ways of usual promotional practice. We found that we had to rely upon the principle of attraction rather than of promotion.
— Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 180-181
While I was drinking, I reacted with anger, self-pity and defiance against anyone who wanted to change me. All I wanted then was to be accepted by another human simply as I was and, curiously, that is what I found in A.A. I became the custodian of this concept of attraction, which is the principle of our Fellowship’s public relations. It is by attraction that I can best reach the alcoholic who still suffers.
I thank God for having given me the attraction of a well-planned and established program of Steps and Traditions. Through humility and the support of my fellow sober members, I have been able to practice the A.A. way of life through attraction, not promotion.
Daily Reflection: http://www.aa.org/pages/en_US/daily-reflection?y=2016&m=11&d=28
Attraction
A 12-step fellowship is a program of attraction, not promotion. There is a huge difference in making material accessible and promoting the fellowship. Attraction means the people of the fellowship will put info out where other people seeking help could access it. This includes but not limited to booklets, flyers, brochures, speakers and web pages. We need to be sure to supply information instead of being promotional.
Other than supplying information, I need to be sure to be an example to others. I need to make sure to come off attractive to other people by honesty, open mindedness and willingness. Other people is what attracted Connor to the 12-step fellowship.
“That’s what I’m attracted to… people I can connect with,” Connor said.
It would be difficult entering a 12-step fellowship without having a connection with others.
“I get here and I see other people like me,” Connor said.
A meeting is a place where I found people from all walks of life but we all had a common interest- getting and staying clean and sober. It is comforting knowing I am going to find others just like me when I walking into a 12-step meeting. I have always felt so welcomed and wanted in meetings and feeling wanted is something I was lacking my whole life. I can honestly say I am grateful to be a recovering addict.
