There are many things that AA teaches recovering alcoholics that help keep them sober. The tools of the program are designed to help them/us deal with daily stress so that a drink will be avoided at all costs. Alcoholics Anonymous was designed to help people stay away from a drink: “one day at a time.”
Understanding how important sobriety is to someone who really wants to stay sober can be done through attending a few AA meetings. It is there that you will find the winners who know how to stay clean and sober: “one day at a time.” Many of the people in the AA program have been attending meetings daily for decades to ensure that they will not go back out and get drunk. You will also gain a greater understanding of why alcoholics drink.
How is it that the winners deal with stress so that they don’t find themselves in a bar or tending to a six pack again?
How do Recovering Alcoholics Handle Stress?
The slogans of the AA program have great value when recovering alcoholics are pressing through difficult times. As people in recovery continue to learn the program, they become equipped to handle the difficulties in life without drinking. One of the readings in AA says; “we will suddenly realize God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.”
In relieving stress, the following phrases carry great power for the ex-problem drinker. At any moment one of these slogans can cause a flood of serenity to pour over a negative emotion.
- Let go and let God
- Meeting makers make it
- One day at a time
- Except for the grace of God there go I
- God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can’t change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
- Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today
- Live life on life’s terms
The Importance of Making Meetings
Grateful recovering alcoholics will spend hours in meetings to ensure that they will not pick up a drink. In the beginning some people will attend three, four, and even five meetings a day, just to make sure that they don’t relapse. If a recovering alcoholic has a relapse things get really tough for them to begin again.
Understanding why an alcoholic in recovery will attend so many meetings is simple, they are told right up front in Alcoholics Anonymous that nothing comes before staying sober. Their sobriety has to be the most important thing to them. Many will set work, family and friends to the side to make sure that they have the strength for the day to NOT have a drink. An alcoholic’s family may suffer in the beginning, but the rewards are great if the recovering alcoholic sticks with the program.
Recovering alcoholics who are the winners, will make their meetings a top priority in their lives. They are not afraid to cancel important plans, rearrange their commitments or to make the family second on the list in order to ensure that they will stay away from getting drunk. This type of attitude demonstrates how important the family is in the big picture to the person in recovery.
There is Protection in the Herd
If you get right in the center of where people are who know how to not drink, then you have a much better chance at not drinking. There’s safety in numbers.
Talking to Another Recovering Alcoholic About Problems
This is where true friendships begin to develop. As one recovering alcoholic shares with another person who is sober in the AA program, about the problems of the day, the problem gets cut in half. The friendships develop as encouraging words and wisdom are shared with one another over the phone, before and after meetings.
Working the Steps
The twelve steps will eventually bring anyone into a relationship with God. As this close personal relationship continues to get stronger, the level of faith a person has in God grows higher. It’s the relationship with God that immediately begins to lesson the stress for a recovering alcoholic.
The first three steps can be summarized this way…speaking about God!
1-I can’t
2-He can
3-So, I’ll let Him
True recovering alcoholics will do everything that they know to do in order to relieve stress without picking up a substance. It is one of the most dangerous TRIGGERS that all recovering addicts must learn to recognize and also how to overcome it’s power. Thanks to programs like AA, there’s help for being able to concur dealing with the stresses of everyday life.
Are you in recovery or is someone you are close to getting sober?
Please feel free to share how you deal with this powerful thing in your life?
Leave a Reply