Oct. 14, 2012 - Just for Today

Just for Today
Sunday, Oct. 14, 2012

"My alcoholic problem began long before I drank. My personality, from the time I can remember anything, was the perfect set-up for an alcoholic career. I was always at odds with the entire world, not to say the universe. I was out of step with life, with my family, with people in general. I tried to compensate with impossible dreams and ambitions, which were simply early forms of escape. Even when I was old enough to know better, I dreamed about being as beautiful as Venus, as pure as the Madonna and as brilliant as the president of the United States is supposed to be. I had writing ambitions, and nothing would do but that I'd write like Shakespeare. ...Inside, I went right on being a mass of unlovely self-pity, queasy anxiety and sickening self-debasement. Naturally, I succeeded at nothing." - Alcoholics Anonymous, 3rd Edition, 1976, "They Stopped in Time," Ch 13 ("Stars Don't Fall"), p 400.

Just for today, like this "titled lady" whose witness is published in the Big Book, I must be honest and bold enough to understand that my alcoholism was rooted long before my first drink. My "job" of being perfect in everything, whether I expected it of myself or it was expected by others, left no room for other than "self-pity, queasy anxiety and sickening self-debasement" when I failed to reach the highest of heights. And alcohol became my self-medication. After having come to the Program of AA, God grant that I understand now that I can attain something higher in sobriety than drunkeness but that perfection, in my personality's view, can never be attained and, when it isn't, that I do not have to internalize a sense of failure. To do so will likely ignite that engine of "self-pity, queasy anxiety and sickening self-debasement" - and its fuel is alcohol. Today, I ask only for progress; perfection can wait another day. And our common journey continues. Just for today. - Chris M., 2012