Sunday, July 15, 2012

July 15, 2012 - Just for Today

Just for Today
Sunday, July 15, 2012
 
” …(T)he actual or potential alcoholic, with hardly an exception, will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge. This is a point we wish to emphasize and re-emphasize, to smash home upon our alcoholic readers as it has been revealed to us out of bitter experience.” - Alcoholics Anonymous, 3rd Edition, 1976, Ch 3 (“More About Alcoholism”), p 39.

Just for today, the experience as expressed in the words of the co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous - “unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge” - serves as an omen that I should not continue to drink even though I may still have some power to abstain for even long periods of time. In time, in the experience of the Program’s co-founders in the men and women whose personal travails come later in the Book Book, that ability to abstain will be gone. Noting that the text of the Program speaks to not only to the alcoholic but also to the potential one, I must give up any egotistical thoughts that I am spared the dis-ease of alcoholism even if I am on the threshhold of it. “Self-knowledge” did little to spare me the ravages of full alcoholism; today, pray that I listen to the knowledge of others. And our common journey continues. Just for today. - Chris M., 2012

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