Mark S

John A. from Dallas, TX speaking on step 1 at the Glasshouse Group in Fort Worth, TX – August 1st 2002

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Scott L. from Nashville, TN and Bob D. from Las Vegas, NV doing a Big Book Workshop Weekend in Altamore Springs, FL – January 21st-23rd 2005

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Can you ask your Higher Power to take all actions necessary to bring you to the point of surrender?
Can you allow yourself to come to a place of full dependency, like a newborn child?
Can you look within until your reflection is Love and acceptance?
Can you practice Love toward others with no manipulation?
Can you play the part assigned to you in life without complaint?
Can you move from having, to doing, to just being?
Living sober teaches us to Love without a selfish agenda, to give without expecting anything in return, and to lead without dominating.
It is in the surrender of expectations that we find acceptance.
This is called the highest of virtues.

Tonight, we talk about the Surrendering Expectations.

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A man of thirty was doing a great deal of spree drinking.  He was very nervous in the morning after these bouts and quieted himself with more liquor.  He was ambitious to succeed in business, but saw that he would get nowhere if he drank at all.  Once he started, he had no control whatever.  He made up his mind that until he had been successful in business and had retired, he would not touch another drop.  An exceptional man, he remained bone dry for twenty-five years and retired at the age of fifty-five, after a successful and happy business career.  Then he fell victim to a belief which practically every alcoholic has-that his long period of sobriety and self-discipline had qualified him to drink as other men.  Out came his carpet slippers and a bottle.  In two months he was in a hospital, puzzled and humiliated.  He tried to regulate his drinking for a while, making several trips to the hospital meantime.  Then, gathering all his forces, he attempted to stop altogether and found he could not.  Every means of solving his problem which money could buy was at his disposal.  Every attempt failed.  Though a robust man at retirement, he went to pieces quickly and was dead within four years.

    This case contains a powerful lesson.  Most of us have believed that if we remained sober for a long stretch, we could thereafter drink normally.  But here is a man who at fifty-five years found he was just where he had left off at thirty.  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.

    Young people may be encouraged by this man’s experience to think that they can stop, as he did, on their own will power.  We doubt if many of them can do it, because none will really want to stop, and hardly one of them, because of the peculiar mental twist already acquired, will find he can win out.  Several of our crowd, men of thirty or less, had been drinking only a few years, but they found themselves as helpless as those who had been drinking twenty years.

    To be gravely affected, one does not necessarily have to drink a long time nor take the quantities some of us have.  This is particularly true of women.  Potential female alcoholics often turn into the real thing and are gone beyond recall in a few years.  Certain drinkers, who would be greatly insulted if called alcoholics, are astonished at their inability to stop.  We, who are familiar with the symptoms, see large numbers of potential alcoholics among young people everywhere.  But try and get them to see it!  

    As we look back, we feel we had gone on drinking many years beyond the point where we could quit on our will power.  If anyone questions whether he has entered this dangerous area, let him try leaving liquor alone for one year.  If he is a real alcoholic and very far advanced, there is scant chance of success.  In the early days of our drinking we occasionally remained sober for a year or more, becoming serious drinkers again later.  Though you may be able to stop for a considerable period, you may yet be a potential alcoholic.  We think few, to whom this book will appeal, can stay dry anything like a year.  Some will be drunk the day after making their resolutions; most of them within a few weeks.

    For those who are unable to drink moderately the question is how to stop altogether.  We are assuming, of course, that the reader desires to stop.  Whether such a person can quit upon a nonspiritual basis depends upon the extent to which he has already lost the power to choose whether he will drink or not.  Many of us felt that we had plenty of character.  There was a tremendous urge to cease forever.  Yet we found it impossible.  This is the baffling feature of alcoholism as we know it-this utter inability to leave it alone, no matter how great the necessity or the wish.

    How then shall we help our readers determine, to their own satisfaction, whether they are one of us?  The experiment of quitting for a period of time will be helpful, but we think we can render an even greater service to alcoholic sufferers and perhaps to the medical fraternity.  So we shall describe some of the mental states that precede a relapse into drinking, for obviously this is the crux of the problem.

    What sort of thinking dominates an alcoholic who repeats time after time the desperate experiment of the first drink?  Friends who have reasoned with him after a spree which has brought him to the point of divorce or bankruptcy are mystified when he walks directly into a saloon.  Why does he?  Of what is he thinking?

    Our first example is a friend we shall call Jim.  This man has a charming wife and family.  He inherited a lucrative automobile agency.  He had a commendable World War record.  He is a good salesman.  Everybody likes him.  He is an intelligent man, normal so far as we can see, except for a nervous disposition.  He did no drinking until he was thirty-five.  In a few years he became so violent when intoxicated that he had to be committed.  On leaving the asylum he came into contact with us.

    We told him what we knew of alcoholism and the answer we had found.  He made a beginning.  His family was re-assembled, and he began to work as a salesman for the business he had lost through drinking.  All went well for a time, but he failed to enlarge his spiritual life.  To his consternation, he found himself drunk half a dozen times in rapid succession.  On each of these occasions we worked with him, reviewing carefully what had happened.  He agreed he was a real alcoholic and in a serious condition.  He knew he faced another trip to the asylum if he kept on.  Moreover, he would lose his family for whom he had a deep affection.

    Yet he got drunk again.  We asked him to tell us exactly how it happened.  This is his story: “I came to work on Tuesday morning.  I remember I felt irritated that I had to be a salesman for a concern I once owned.  I had a few words with the boss, but nothing serious.  Then I decided to drive into the country and see one of my prospects for a car.  On the way I felt hungry so I stopped at a roadside place where they have a bar.  I had no intention of drinking.  I just thought I would get a sandwich.  I also had the notion that I might find a customer for a car at this place, which was familiar for I had been going to it for years.  I had eaten there many times during the months I was sober.  I sat down at a table and ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk.  Still no thought of drinking.  I ordered another sandwich and decided to have another glass of milk.

    “Suddenly the thought crossed my mind that if I were to put an ounce of whiskey in my milk it couldn’t hurt me on a full stomach.  I ordered a whiskey and poured it into the milk.  I vaguely sensed I was not being any too smart, but felt reassured as I was taking the whiskey on a full stomach.  The experiment went so well that I ordered another whiskey and poured it into more milk.  That didn’t seem to bother me so I tried another.”

    Thus started one more journey to the asylum for Jim.  Here was the threat of commitment, the loss of family and position, to say nothing of that intense mental and physical suffering which drinking always caused him.  He had much knowledge about himself as an alcoholic.  Yet all reasons for not drinking were easily pushed aside in favor of the foolish idea that he could take whiskey if only he mixed it with milk!

This week, our recovery topic will be “Surrendering Expectations.”

Scott L. from Nashville, TN and Bob D. from Las Vegas, NV doing a Big Book Workshop Weekend in Altamore Springs, FL – January 21st-23rd 2005

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Nov 2019 talk at the women to Women conference.

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I’ve been sending out water bottles to Premium Members who request them.  The bottles are 26 oz. Custom aluminum water bottles – white with the Recovered Logo.  Just let me know if you want one.  I have about 5 left, so hurry