Most of us have believed that if we remained sober for a long stretch, we could therefore drink normally… We have seen the truth demonstrated again and again: “Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.” Commencing to drink after a period of sobriety, we are in a short time as bad as ever. If we are planning to stop drinking, there must be no reservation of any kind, nor any lurking notion that someday we will be immune to alcohol.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 33
Even after fourteen years of sobriety… or should I say, especially after fourteen years… the notion waits in ambush for me to allow ego to tell me I am different... I had a drinking problem but I have taken control of it. I could have “just one” now and then. I have to admit that there have been times when self-pity, resentment, or self-centered ambition has also overwhelmed me and I considered a drink (or, more commonly some form of dangerous prescribed opiates). In times like these the habits I formed in early sobriety draw me back into a reasonableness that sees the insanity of such notions. Close contact with the Fellowship can sometimes be the only thing that awakens me to the hazards of isolation. The honesty and close contact with the spirit of the Fellowship has saved my ass on several occasions. Ego tells me that I have found God and that ought to be enough but it isn’t. Because of the insanity of my condition this contact with God is easily eroded if a stray from my fellow alcoholics and addicts.
geo 5,143
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