Wisdom Of The Rooms - 2021

[bluidkiti]

October 18

Quote of the Week

"I can’t get drunk on yesterday’s booze, and I can’t get sober on yesterday’s sobriety."

During the early part of my recovery, I had frequent “slip dreams.” I would wake up scared that the drinking I had done in my dreams really happened, and that I had lost the sober time I had managed to scrape together. Lying half awake, terrified, it slowly came to me that it had only been a dream and a wave of gratitude passed over me. In those moments, I realized that no matter how much I had drank in the past, none of that mattered as long as I didn’t drink today.

Over the first few years of recovery, I went to hundreds of meetings. I almost always felt better when I did, and I heard people say that going to a lot of meetings was like putting sobriety in the bank. They said on those days you didn’t go, or when life suddenly got tough, you could draw on that sobriety bank account to get you through. After many more years in the program, I felt like my bank account of recovery was pretty large, so I went to fewer and fewer meetings. Then one day at a beach bar in Honolulu, Hawaii, I almost made the ultimate withdrawal by nearly going out.

Thank God I didn’t! I went right to a meeting that night and shared what had almost happened. Some people in the rooms shared similar experiences, and that is when I heard today’s quote. I suddenly remembered that alcoholism never goes away, and all I have is a daily reprieve based on my spiritual condition. And that condition is directly related to my current program and today’s sobriety. Today, I go to meetings regularly because I know I can’t stay sober on yesterday’s sobriety.