HOW TO SURVIVE THE HOLIDAYS

HOW TO SURVIVE THE HOLIDAYS

and

STAY CLEAN AND SOBER

1. Don’t try to get through this all by yourself. Get connected with others who can support you in staying clean and sober. It does not have to be your close friend or a partner. Your sponsor, your counselor/therapist, or someone who has had a few years of sobriety can also be quite helpful. It’s never too late to ask for help but it is better to let someone know about your needs a week or two before the actual risky time.

Great Holiday Tips for People in Recovery!

Most people know the holidays can be a period of emotional highs and lows. Loneliness, anxiety, happiness and sadness are common feelings, sometimes experienced in startling succession. The bad news is the holiday blues can trigger relapse for people recovering from alcoholism and other drug addiction. The good news is the blues can be remedied by planning ahead.

Holiday Articles for Sobriety

Holiday Articles for Sobriety

It's that time of year again, the Holiday Season. Time to be happy, time to be with friends and time to celebrate. For those of us that are in recovery from alcohol/drugs, this time of year can be very difficult to get thru clean and sober. Thru the years of my time on the internet my managers and I have put together some articles and tips for folks just like us to aid us to make it thru clean and sober.

Most of the work was compiled by Elva E. (Cuddles) one of my managers, with me since my first recovery group in January of 2004.

What do the Three Legacies of AA represent?

What Bill W. had to say……………The three legacies of AA - recovery, unity and service - in a sense represent three impossibilities, impossibilities that we know became possible, and possibilities that have now borne this unbelievable fruit. Old Fitz Mayo, one of the early AA's and I visited the Surgeon General of the United States in the third year of this society and told him of our beginnings. He was a gentle man, Dr. Lawrence Kolb, and has since become a great friend of AA. He said, "I wish you well. Even the sobriety of a few is almost a miracle. The government knows that this is one of the greatest health problems but we have considered the recovery of alcoholics so impossible that we have given up and have instead concluded that rehabilitation of narcotic addicts would be the easier job to tackle."

Under the influence in AA Meeting

What Bill W. had to say..................

QUESTION: If an alcoholic comes to an A.A. meeting under the influence of alcohol, how do you treat him or handle him during the meeting?


BILL W.'S ANSWER:

Getting back to basics

The other night when I was in my Web Design Class, I looked at the sheet that I turn in keeping track of the work I do. I noticed that there was an item with a note next to it. It said to copy and turn in. It was my understanding that I didn't have to do this part of the workbook, as I told the teacher that I had experience in this part of Web Design, lol.

Drug Addiction in AA - As Bill Sees it

This is one of Bill W.'s talks and answered by him in 1945. I found it to be quite interesting.

-------------------------------------------------

How many drug addicts are there in A.A. and in the organization similar to A.A. which operates among drug addicts?

Do alcoholics as a class differ from other people

Answered by Bill W. Memphis, Tenn., Sept.18-20, 1947

----------------------------------

Some years ago the doctors began to look at Alcoholics Anonymous and they got about thirty of us together and they said to themselves "Well, now that these fellows are in A.A., and they won't lie so badly, and maybe for the first time we'll get a good look at what the interior of a drunk is like." So a number of us were examined at great length by psychiatrists, and all sorts of tests taken, and the object of this particular inquiry was to see whether alcoholics as a class differed from other people, and if they did, just why and how much.

What did A.A. learn from the Oxford Group and why did they leave them?

Bill W. answer below

--------------------------

AA's first step was derived largely from my own physician, Dr. Silkworth, and my sponsor Ebby and his friend, Dr. Jung of Zurich. I refer to the medical hopelessness of alcoholism - our 'powerlessness' over alcohol.

Just how does A.A. work?

Just how does A.A. work?

Answered by Bill W. below

I cannot fully answer that question. Many A.A. techniques have been adopted after a ten-year period of trial and error, which has led to some interesting results. But, as laymen, we doubt our own ability to explain them. We can only tell you what we do, and what seems, from our point of view, to happen to us.

Stress / Depression

Stress / Depression


What is Stress? We are all familiar with the word "stress". Stress is when you are worried about getting laid off from work, or worried about having enough money to pay your bills, or worried about your mother or father when the physician says she or he may need an operation. In fact, to most of us, stress is synonymous with worry. If it is something that makes you worry, then it is stress.

TIME

From the Zentai Series "Beyond the 12 Steps"

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Time fascinates people like nothing else. Time seems to be as much a part of the human condition as the mind structures themselves. Time is conceptualized as a changing constant. It is never the same, and this provides the greatest intrigue of all. The mind personalizes time and spends great amounts of energy contemplating it. The life of the mind begins at a certain time and ends at a certain time. This is as sure as anything there is. Thus the mind makes time, the unreality; into something so ultimately real that thousands of "feelings" are generated to support the position that time is real. Grief at the loss of loved ones and anticipation of coming events are common examples of feelings that support the position that time is real. I'm stretching you again.

INTENTION

From the Zentai Series "Beyond the 12 Steps"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

INTENTION


You always get what you intend. Intention is a phenomenon that happens outside of ordinary awareness, the purpose of which is to determine the course of your life events. One always gets what one intends, regardless of what the mind says about it. Intention is formulated at a level of awareness that transcends the mind. If you are out of touch with that level of awareness, the events that happen to you in life may come as a surprise. You may or may not like what happens to you in life, but either way you will experience it as a victim, and have no sense that you caused it, unless you are aware. If you are aware, on the other hand, you know that you cause the experience of everything that happens in your life. You have the choice to be satisfied and nurtured by the events in your life or victimized and embittered by them. Either way you got the experience you intended to get.

Caretaking

As long as we take care of others, solve their problems, and supply their needs, we are not required to look at ourselves and we absolve them of personal responsibility. As this trait becomes more pronounced, we lose our own identity. As children, we took on the concerns and problems of others far beyond our years and, in many cases, were deprived of a normal childhood. The attention we got caused us to believe we had some power. Taking care of others boosted our self-esteem and made us feel indispensable. It gave purpose to our life. As caretakers, we are most comfortable with chaotic situations in which we can be reassured that we are needed. We often end up as martyrs and never experience the joy of taking care of ourselves.

What does a caretaker look like? Feelings and Behavior:

Confusion

Blurry Thinking - Identifying the Static in your mind

You know things are working well when images on the TV screen are sharp, clear, and accurate. When the picture is fuzzy, wavy, snowy, or has lots of static, something's wrong. There is a lot of interference. There are problems in seeing the shows the way they are really meant to be viewed. They are distorted pictures. When you have strong feelings, it is common for you to have fuzzy, unclear, and inaccurate views of yourself, your experiences, other