To be an Alcoholic is to know misery and dispair. It is a form of self-flagellation that scars the body, the mind, and the soul.

It is sitting in a church pew full of guilt and remorse, silently crying out to God for help in the midst of helplessness.

It is cusing injury and suffering not only to self but to others.

To be an alcoholic is to kill yourself, slowly, insidiously, and by degrees.

It is wondering, hazily, why you even wanted to stop at only three or four drinks when more make you feel so good.

It is a knife-thrust of anixety the next day when you remember the horrors of the night.

It is hanging onto your job at all costs because that is proff that you aren't alcoholic.

It is losing the respect of your children.

It is losing the love of your spouse.

It is mine-wrenching agony.

It is lying, conning, evading responsibility, conning others and yourself, and mostly doing everything you dispise most in others.

To be an alcoholic is to be the life of the party until the guests leave-then the nightmare begins.

It is crying in the dark.

It is asking God to forgive you, to take you, to end it.

To be an alcoholic is to deny the disease, to resist logic, to argue, to become angry with the trueth.

It is an usher with a hangover hoping he won't trip going up he aisle.

It is a Sundy school teacher foolish because he hasn't read his leson.

It is a Christian wondering why God has allowed this to happen.

It is vomiting in the car.

It is insulting a friend.

It is striking your wife.

It is cursing your children.

It is not remembering what you said.

It is hating yourself.

It is fear.

It is loneliness.

It is ugliness.

To be an alcoholic is to cry from the soul,"Help me, Lord, help me,/lord,help me. Lord......"

It is taking only one drink or maybe just another one.

It is having a disease characterized by progress deterioration of spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical health.

To be an alcoholic is to be cynical, sincere, funny, cruel,happy, depressed, loving, hateful-depending on whether you're drunk or sober.

It is total and complete surrender to alcohol.

It is alienating those whom you love the most.

It is shame.

It is a Christian groping for help.

Finally and inevitably, it is death.

This was writen by by Bob R. who was an editor and also a member of A.A. in chellangeing the church to inform awareness of the disease of Alcoholism and the suffering it causes to victims of the disese and there loved ones.

I chellange pastors to learn how to provide support when and where it is needed.

I chellange congregations to invite alcoholics who have their disease under control into their pulpits and classrooms. No sermonizing, no temperance lectur, no guilt-inducing address-only the shareing of a life's experience that may reach a soul in anguish.

I think it's time to acknowledge that all can be alcoholics. These people need more than prayer and preaching. They need you.

This was written way back when A.A. was not understood or made aware of as much as it is today.

Food For Thought on the 12 Steps

1. Acceptance of my powerlessness to control.

2. Realization that I am not yet completely sane or whole and that I need help.

3. Surrender to a Higher Power.

4. Honestly, objestivity.

5. Courage.

6. Complete openess of mind.

7. Humility

8. Forgiveness of self and others, generosity.

9. Reconciliation, tolerance.

10. Self-knowledge, vigilance.

11. Dedication, self-dicipline, belief in the meaning and value of life.

12. Happiness has to be shared. We carry the message by the way we live.

Higher Power

My Higher Power is a combination of a whole lot of things that have become part of me and the strength I now have today. It is, perhaps, a state of mind. It is the awareness of incidents that have tken place over whick I had no control, when other people or circumstances played a major role in my life, without my awareness.

My Higher Power ws in those members swho, when I first came to Al-Anon, assured me that I would get help and gave me the incentive to come out of my shell and be less afraid. They gave me the courge to try, and the fear gradually left because I did succeed in some things.

Or, in the case of failure, there wew those around me who would tell me that it was not the end of the world, that this too, shall pass. And now my Higher Power is the confidence within me that makes me unafraid, even unafraid to make mistakes.

My Higher Power is the joy that is sometimes with in me when I know that I am glad to be alive and can appreciat what is beautiful. It is the sense of peace that comes to me when I take the time to have quiet time and relax and be a peace with the world.

Or it is the intangible force that helps me say the right thing when someone in need cries out for help and I feel inadiequate on my own to give that help!

My Higher Power is the unexpected telephone call when I am feeling blue or full of self pity, or the sun coming out to brighten the day, r that line in some piece of literature that springs up from the page and is just what I need to help me over a sticky patch. I am not a religious, but that does not matter. This is a spiritual, not a religious program. I still don't understand; it is often:God as I don't understand Him"

But I have a Higher Power and my Spirit that was dead is now alive, active and unafraid. It WORKS.............Anonymous