Topic: 12Step

What’s likely to provide you with the best recovery guidance? There’s your ‘recovery guide’- maybe a better description for nonbelievers than “higher power.”

As addiction progresses, the addict or alcoholic grows away from the larger culture from whence they came.

Sponsors, the saying goes, carry the message, not the alcoholic.

The more we exert ourselves to help those with problems like ours, the more concrete benefits we receive from AA.

It’s easier to trash-talk the fellowships than think about quitting. But that’s not the only thing behind the negativity.

Motivation springs from external as well as internal sources. Our internal desire for change is rarely enough to get us all the way through to our stated goals.

The way you feel changes over time — and that’s why people keep going to meetings.

What can a newbie reasonably expect from participation in Alanon et al? Support, although perhaps of a type you don’t initially recognize, since it doesn’t involve much sympathy.

If you’ve made friends among people who share your experience and are willing to listen, you’re miles ahead of most family members, who still have no place where they can safely vent their own problems.

Family programs like Al-anon and Alateen can help us learn ways to recover from the effects of someone else’s addiction, and help us contribute to their recovery