1. A LOOK AT WILL POWER

October 31, 2010

101 Meeting Starters page 7

In AA, we don't believe that will power can keep us sober. Most of us have tried that route before we get here, and we can say that it didn't work for us. No matter how much we "willed" ourselves to get sober and stay that way, we always wound up drunk. This was a frustrating business, and some of us decided we were just too weak-willed to find sobriety.

But many alcoholics are very strong-willed, and this can even be part of the problem. The will is our power to make choices and carry through with them. In drinking, however, we've acquired a compulsion that is making the wrong choices. The more we fight this compulsion, the more it tightens its grip on us. (People with other compulsions understand this well; hence the saying that "you can't eat just one potato chip.")

The process that seems to work for us in AA is to choose a different path with the understanding that Higher Power is working in and through us, as well as over and above us. Our own will then becomes only the power to choose, but it is not the power that does the actual work of keeping us sober. For this to work, of course, we have to believe in the process and accept it for ourselves. It is simple, but it works.

Now I'd like to ask the group to recall efforts to stay sober on will power alone. Most likely, these efforts worked for a time and then failed. I need a volunteer to start the discussion with an example from personal experience.




2. AM I DIFFERENT?

November 7, 2010

101 Meeting Starters page 9

Most of us think we are different, and in some ways we are. We had similar problems as alcoholics, but we also had different drinking patterns and other special traits. For that reason, one of our biggest jobs is to convince people that they might be alcoholics like the rest of us.

One delusion that has to be smashed is the belief that we might someday find the ability to do controlled drinking. There are people who say that it can be done, but they aren't in AA and they probably don't have many examples for proof that it works.

Some alcoholics are also brighter and more successful than the rest of us. But we have enough bright, successful people in AA to show that these advantages are of little help in overcoming alcoholism. Alcoholism appears to be an equal opportunity disease that targets people at every level in society.

It's also a delusion to believe that we don't have a problem simply because other people had more trouble with alcohol than we seemed to have. We don't have to go through everything that some other person endured in order to admit that we're powerless over alcohol. Just as with any other ailment, we should be grateful that we're dealing with it in the earlier stages.

So, we are the same in having the problem, though we are also different in some respects. Who will start the discussion by explaining how "being different" was a problem that had to be dealt with in getting sober?




3. ARE ALCOHOLICS PERFECTIONISTS?

November 14, 2010

101 Meeting Starters page 11

Now and then we'll hear AA speakers say that they were perfectionists. This is a strange thing to hear from people who may have turned in sloppy work as employees or did other things in a half-hearted way. What is this perfectionism and why is it a personal problem?

One answer may be that we had perfectionist dreams but lived in a reality that was far from perfect. Perfectionists might be thinking of achievements and conditions that are far beyond anything that's attainable in the here and now. Part of our dissatisfaction with life is that nothing measures up to the pictures we carry in our heads.

In our effort to make perfectionism less a problem, we need to find satisfaction in frequent improvements rather than the smashing successes of our dreams. If we can't make home runs all the time, we have to know that games are often won with single-base hits. And most of the people around us don't have the luxury of being perfectionists. They have to be satisfied with progress rather than perfection.

Bill W. did say that the good can be the enemy of the best.

But there's also a saying in engineering that good enough is best. If what we're doing today is good enough, it may be as perfect as it needs to be.

In any case, we have to quit living in perfectionistic dreams and start accepting the reality around us. Who has some thoughts along this line to share?




4. ARE WE PASSING IT ON?

November 21, 2010

101 Meeting Starters page 13

When people met Bill W. for the first time and started to express their gratitude, his usual answer was "Pass It On." This became the title of his biography, published by AA World Services. It has also become a slogan in AA.

One of the unfortunate things in life is that people can pass on bad ideas as well as good ones. A number of recovering alcoholics can feel real guilt over the bad things they passed on while they were drinking. Some are sicker than others, of course, and some have done terrible things while others have injured only themselves for the most part. But the truth is that very little good is passed on while we drink.

In AA, we have the opportunity to pass on principles and actions that can be of real benefit to others, some of them people we will never meet. If we create active groups that really carry the message, we will be passing on things that will endure long after we're no longer in the picture. If our AA experience enables us to take responsibility for our family's wellbeing, our family members will benefit and so will society as a whole. When we "pass it on," we are also paying any debt we might have to the people who carried the message to us.

How do we pass it on, in AA terms? One of the best ways is to keep the group functioning as a place where the newcomer can find hope and recovery. This means that future newcomers---people whom Bill W. called "the million who still don't know" mcan find the same recovery that was presented to us.

Perhaps we can now have a volunteer who will give a personal view of passing it on.




5. ARE WE VICTIMS?

November 28, 2010

101 Meeting Starters page 15

Today's topic is a question: Are we victims? Undoubtedly we've been called victims of alcoholism, and may have even used such terms ourselves as a way of evading personal responsibility for our condition. Most of us don't have much confidence left when we get here, but it may preserve a shred of self-esteem to say that we were victimized by something that was beyond our control from the very beginning.

But as we look over the entire program, we can see that there's not much room for victimhood here. All along the way, most of us thought we were calling the shots. We probably had plenty of warnings, but we plunged ahead with the certain feeling that we weren't like those other drunks who had fallen by the wayside. It wouldn't happen to us.

Then, when it did happen to us, we probably tried to deny it.

And of course it's necessary to cut through this denial phase in order to accept the AA program.

Once we're into the program, nobody gives us much slack at all. We are urged to take a personal inventory, clear up the wreckage of the past, find a Higher Power, and do something to help others. Not much talk of being a victim here.

It is true that we have succumbed to a condition which we choose to call a disease. Other people are more hard-nosed about this and simply say that we did it to ourselves. It doesn't make much difference which view we accept so long as we understand that we are alcoholics and cannot safely take even one drink.

If we were victims, we were really victimized only by our own bad thinking and wrong actions. On the new basis, we can be survivors and leave the victimhood to others.

Is there a former victim who would like to start the discussion?