Alcoholics Anonymous
Members Login
Username 
 
Password 
    Remember Me  
Post Info TOPIC: We don't have to die that way anymore


Veteran Member

Status: Offline
Posts: 96
Date:
We don't have to die that way anymore
Permalink  
 


 

We have not seen the best day of our sobriety yet.

 

We have one ultimate authority in A.A. and it is not one of us, thank God.

WE DONT HAVE TO DIE THAT WAY ANYMORE

Do you remember when?

We died of pneumonia in furnished rooms where they found us three days later when somebody complained about the smell.

We died against bridge abutments and nobody knew if it was suicide and we probably didnt know either except in the sense that it was always suicide.

We died in hospitals, our stomachs huge, our livers distended and there was nothing they could do.

We died in cells, never knowing whether we were guilty or not.

We went to priests and ministers, they gave us pledges, they told us to pray, and they told us to go and sin no more, but go.

We tried and we died.

We died of overdoses, we died in bed.

We died in straitjackets, in the DTs seeing God knows what, creeping skittering slithering shuffling things.

And you know what the worst thing was? The worst thing was that nobody ever believed how hard we tried.

We went to doctors and they gave us stuff to take that would make us sick when we drank, on a principle so crazy that it just might work, I guess, or maybe they just shook their heads and sent us to places like Dropkick Murphys.

And when we got out we were hooked on the drugs they gave us, or maybe we lied to the doctors and they told us not to drink so much, just drink like me. And we tried, and we died.

We drowned in our own vomit or choked on it, our broken jaws wired shut.

We died playing Russian roulette and people thought wed lost, but we knew better.

We died under the hoofs of horses, under the wheels of vehicles, under the knives and boot heels of our brother drunks.

We died in shame.

And you know, what was even worse was that we couldnt believe it ourselves, that we had tried. We figured we just thought we tried, and we died believing that we hadnt tried, believing that we didnt know what it meant to try.

When we were desperate enough or hopeful or deluded or embattled enough to go for help, we went to people with letters after their names and prayed that they might have read the right books that had the right words in them, never suspecting the terrifying truth, that the right words, as simple as they were, had not been written yet.

We died falling off girders on high buildings, because of course ironworkers drink, of course they do.

We died with a shotgun in our mouth, or jumping off a bridge, and everybody knew it was suicide.

We died under the Southeast Expressway, with our hands tied behind us and a bullet in the back of our head, because this time the people that we disappointed was the wrong people.

We died in convulsions, or of insult to the brain.

We died incontinent, and in disgrace, abandoned. If we were women, we died degraded, because women have so much more to live up to.

We tried and we died and nobody cried. And the very worst thing was that for every one of us that died, there were another one hundred of us, or another one thousand who wished that we could die, who went to sleep praying we would not have to wake up because what we were enduring was intolerable, and we knew in our hearts it wasnt ever gonna change.

One day in 1934 in a hospital room in New York City, one of us had what the books call a transforming spiritual experience, and he said to himself "Ive got it," (No you havent, youve only got part of it) "and I have to share it." (Now youve almost got it!) and he kept trying to give it away, but we couldnt hear it.

We tried and we died. We died of one last cigarette, the comfort of its glowing in the dark. We passed out and the bed caught fire. They said we suffocated before our body burned, they said we never felt a thing. That was the best way, maybe, that we died, except sometimes we took our family with us.

And the man in New York was so sure he had it, he tried to love us into sobriety, but that didnt work either. Love confuses drunks and he tried and we still died.

One after another we got his hopes up and we broke his heart, because thats what we do.

And the worst thing was that every time we thought we knew what the worst thing was, something happened that was worse.

Until a day came in a hotel lobby and it wasnt in Rome, or Jerusalem, or Mecca or even Dublin, or South Boston, it was in Akron, Ohio, of all places.

A day came when the man said, "I have to find a drunk because I need him more than he needs me." (Yes, now youve got it!).

And the transmission line, after all those years, was open. The transmission line was open. And now we dont go to priests, and we dont go to doctors and people with letters after their names.

We come to people who have been there, done that. We come to each other.

We come to try and we dont have to die because the right words have been written in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.

 

Source unknown 

http://www.internationalfellowshipofhope.org/index.php/archies-corner/37-aa-messages/560-we-dont-have-to-die-that-way-anymore101513.html

 


__________________


MIP Old Timer

Status: Offline
Posts: 2731
Date:
Permalink  
 

Powerful stuff....I love it MOH.

__________________

When all else fails...Follow the directions.



MIP Old Timer

Status: Offline
Posts: 12357
Date:
Permalink  
 

Ditto, I love it too ... thanks MOH ... yep, powerful stuff ...



__________________

'Those who leave everything in God's hand will eventually see God's hand in everything.'

Page 1 of 1  sorted by
 
Quick Reply

Please log in to post quick replies.