Author Topic: ADDICTION - Drugs, Alcohol & AA's Twelve Steps (Read 6114 times)

patrick jane · « **on:** May 01, 2021, 08:12:42 am »

THE TWELVE STEPS OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become
unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to
sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we
understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature
of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make
amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do
so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly
admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with
God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and
the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to
carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our
affairs.

https://www.aa.org/assets/en_US/smf-121_en.pdf

Copyright  1952, 1953, 1981 by Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing
(now known as Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.)
All rights reserved.

HOW IT WORKS

Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who
do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple
program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with
themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born
that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which
demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average. There are those, too, who
suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have
the capacity to be honest.
Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and
what we are like now. If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to
any length to get it — then you are ready to take certain steps.
At some of these we balked. We thought we could find an easier, softer way. But we
could not. With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was
nil until we let go absolutely.
Remember that we deal with alcohol — cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too
much for us. But there is One who has all power — that One is God. May you find Him now!
Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked His protection and care with complete abandon.

Many of us exclaimed, “What an order! I can’t go through with it.’’ Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these
principles. We are not saints. The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines.
The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather
than spiritual perfection.
Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures
before and after make clear three pertinent ideas:
(a) That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives.
(b) That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.
(c) That God could and would if He were sought.

https://www.aa.org/assets/en_us/p-10_howitworks.pdf

Reprinted from pages 58-60 in the book Alcoholics Anonymous.
Copyright © by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. 1939, 1955, 1976, 2001.
www.aa.org

patrick jane · « **Reply #1 on:** May 02, 2021, 12:12:35 pm »

patrick jane · « **Reply #2 on:** May 04, 2021, 08:35:30 am »

patrick jane · « **Reply #3 on:** May 04, 2021, 04:57:11 pm »

Prayer for Serenity

https://www.celebraterecovery.com/resources/cr-tools/serenityprayer

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time,
enjoying one moment at a time;
accepting hardship as a pathway to peace;
taking, as Jesus did,
this sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it;
trusting that You will make all things right
if I surrender to Your will;
so that I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen.

The AA Serenity Prayer

https://www.hazeldenbettyford.org/articles/the-serenity-prayer#:~:text=The%20Full%20Serenity%20Prayer,-God%20grant%20me&text=To%20accept%20the%20things%20I%20cannot%20change%3B,wisdom%20to%20know%20the%20difference.&text=Forever%20and%20ever%20in%20the%20next.

These simple words ring clear through the hearts and minds of Alcoholics Anonymous members across the world:

God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can, and
Wisdom to know the difference.

This often used AA prayer is an excerpt from a longer prayer commonly attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr. Although its origins are a bit unclear, its impacts are not. The Serenity Prayer serves as a focal point for the very spirit of AA, anchoring its members to its quintessential teachings about surrender and acceptance. Below, we provide the full Serenity Prayer along with an examination of its history, meaning and importance so that we all might carry its lessons closely and transform common hardships into a calming surrender.

The Full Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change;

Courage to change the things I can;

And wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;

Enjoying one moment at a time;

Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;

Taking, as He did, this sinful world

As it is, not as I would have it;

Trusting that He will make things right

If I surrender to His Will;

So that I may be reasonably happy in this life

And supremely happy with Him

Forever and ever in the next.

Amen.

AA, the Twelve Steps and the Serenity Prayer
Members of Alcoholics Anonymous have enthusiastically embraced this prayer—known as the Serenity Prayer—almost from the moment they discovered it. In fact, these 25 words are heard in most every AA meeting and widely taken as a succinct statement of a path to sanity and sobriety.

The Serenity Prayer meshes perfectly with the spirituality of AA's Twelve Steps. And, although the origin is thought to be Christian, the Serenity Prayer is applicable to your daily life regardless of religion or spiritual belief system. There are several versions of the Serenity Prayer, each with slightly different wording that support groups have adopted. The full Serenity Prayer text has stronger religious overtones.

Also there are conflicting accounts of the prayer's origin. The Serenity Prayer has been variously attributed to an ancient Sanskrit text, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Francis of Assisi and others. Many AA members were first exposed to the prayer in 1948, when it was quoted in the Grapevine, an AA periodical. There it was credited to American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971). The Serenity Prayer spread both through Niebuhr’s sermons and church groups in the 1930s and 1940s, and was later adopted and popularized by Alcoholics Anonymous and other Twelve Step programs.

Living the Serenity Prayer in Recovery from Alcohol or Drug Addiction
For many, the first verse of the Serenity Prayer serves as a daily touchstone, reminding us that to achieve serenity, we must approach each moment with wisdom and courage. The Serenity Prayer accurately expresses a central problem of addiction and prescribes a timeless solution.

The prayer’s message about acceptance echoes insights from Bill W., cofounder of AA. In the book Alcoholics Anonymous (published by AA World Services), Bill described the core trait of alcoholics as self-centeredness—something he called "self-will run riot." He further described the alcoholic as "an actor who wants to run the whole show; is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery and the rest of the players in his own way." Bill's solution: "First of all, we had to quit playing God."

What blocks some alcoholics and addicts from achieving serenity is their intense desire to achieve a sense of absolute control—one that is simply not possible for human beings. This need for control has two aspects. First is an attempt to control the behavior of others, a strategy that addicts cling to despite its repeated failure. Second is the attempt to control feelings by medicating them with mood-altering chemicals. This strategy, too, is doomed to failure.

An alcoholic’s quest for absolute control can lead to misery, which may contribute to substance abuse problems. Ironically, the need to control may also be a response to the unmanageability caused by their out-of-control use of drugs. And the vicious cycle continues until the addict accepts that there will always be external circumstances that we cannot change. The prayer instead points us to examine our inner life: We cannot directly control our feelings. However, we can influence our feelings through what we can control—our thinking and our actions. By focusing on those two factors, we can attain the final quality promised by the Serenity Prayer: courage.

The Serenity Prayer is a wide door, one that's open to people of all faiths and backgrounds. It speaks wisdom to addicts and non-addicts alike. People who live this prayer discover how to strike a dynamic balance between acceptance and change. This gift is precious, and it's one that we can enjoy for a lifetime of serenity.

patrick jane · « **Reply #4 on:** May 11, 2021, 04:46:01 pm »

I've been sober since 4/18/21 - I don't want pats on the back or accolades of any kind but I'm thinking of Journaling in this thread, periodically. Each day is a new challenge and I stay focused on God, the 12 Steps and recovery.

patrick jane · « **Reply #5 on:** June 19, 2021, 07:10:42 am »

Quote from: patrick jane on May 11, 2021, 04:46:01 pm

I've been sober since 4/18/21 - I don't want pats on the back or accolades of any kind but I'm thinking of Journaling in this thread, periodically. Each day is a new challenge and I stay focused on God, the 12 Steps and recovery.

Today is 61 days sober, thank God.

guest8 · « **Reply #6 on:** June 19, 2021, 10:17:35 pm »

Quote from: patrick jane on June 19, 2021, 07:10:42 am

Quote from: patrick jane on May 11, 2021, 04:46:01 pm
I've been sober since 4/18/21 - I don't want pats on the back or accolades of any kind but I'm thinking of Journaling in this thread, periodically. Each day is a new challenge and I stay focused on God, the 12 Steps and recovery.
Today is 61 days sober, thank God.

Our prayers are with you.

Blade

patrick jane · « **Reply #7 on:** July 01, 2021, 06:59:58 pm »

How I overcame alcoholism | Claudia Christian | TEDxLondonBusinessSchool

A hugely successful actress who saw her personal life and career tested by addiction, Claudia shares her journey of overcoming alcoholism and offers fresh perspectives on alcohol use disorder treatments.

Claudia Christian landed her first TV series at 18 on NBC’s nighttime drama Berringers and her first studio feature at 20 in New Line Cinema’s cult hit “The Hidden.” Over 50 films, hundreds of TV shows and 5 music albums later, Claudia has worked with George Clooney, Kirk Douglas, Faye Dunaway, Nicolas Cage and countless other luminaries.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.

14 minutes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EghiY_s2ts&list=WL&index=17

patrick jane · « **Reply #8 on:** July 04, 2021, 05:56:07 pm »

WHAT ALCOHOL DOES TO YOUR BODY

In this video, Justin from the Institute of Human Anatomy discusses the various structures ethanol interacts with as it journey's through the human body after consumption.

27 MINUTES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q1RH8A3O3c&list=WL&index=1

patrick jane · « **Reply #9 on:** July 18, 2021, 03:15:02 am »

90 days since my last drink.

patrick jane · « **Reply #10 on:** November 06, 2021, 07:49:11 pm »

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2021/november-web-only/mark-schrad-smashing-global-liquor-machine-prohibition.html

Prohibition: A Movement of Prudish Killjoys or Righteous Revolutionaries?

A new book reenvisions temperance as a global struggle on behalf of the oppressed and exploited.

Now that cool pastors drink craft beer, American Protestants’ erstwhile obsession with banning booze can seem downright weird. Or maybe just quaint? Was the nation’s brief experiment with Prohibition an instance of no-fun church folks run amok, one of the last gasps of an overweening Puritan superego?

That’s what the true villains of the story would want you to think, or so Mark Lawrence Schrad argues in his new book, Smashing the Liquor Machine: A Global History of Prohibition. Taking aim at the widespread perception that temperance movements were all about “moralizing ‘thou shalt nots,’” he proclaims that they were, on the contrary, “a progressive shield for marginalized, suffering, and oppressed peoples to defend themselves from further exploitation.”

Crucially, in Schrad’s telling, prohibition was never about raining on the individual drinker’s parade. Rather, it was a tactic to combat predatory liquor traffickers and the empires that benefited from their nefarious work. It is only because the capitalists and imperialists so often prevailed in these struggles, Schrad suggests, that we remember temperance activists as prudish killjoys rather than righteous revolutionaries.

Resisting ‘alco-subjugation’

United States historians have tended to reinforce such misconceptions, Schrad contends, because they have usually failed to view American temperance movements in wider world context. To be sure, this is not easy to do. For Schrad it meant tracking down leads in 70 different archives housed in 17 different countries and strewn across five continents. But the payoff of that hard work is tremendous: a story that is, as the subtitle promises, truly global.

One of its central themes is that alcohol—and especially distilled liquor—functioned as a powerful tool of empire. This was in no small part because the sale of spirits kept the ruling class’s coffers full. In Tsarist Russia, Schrad observes, “the vodka monopoly was the largest source of imperial finance.” But booze was more than just a moneymaker. It also facilitated what he calls the “alco-subjugation” of the world’s peoples, many of whom had no prior exposure to “industrial alcohols.” Everywhere distilled liquor was introduced, epidemics of intoxication and addiction followed, rendering entire societies ripe for conquest. In this sense, “colonialism in Africa, Asia and North America was achieved with bottles as much as bullets,” Schrad states.

Little wonder that, across the globe, temperance and anti-imperialism activism were so often of a piece. In the years just before Ireland’s Great Famine, Father Theobald Matthew traveled the countryside and collected an astounding 5.5 million temperance pledges, building a movement that became closely associated with the fight for Irish independence. In early-20th-century Russia, Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks urged the masses to abstain from vodka in a bid to starve the regime of revenue. South Africans registered their objections to colonial rule in the 1920s and 1930s by boycotting beer halls, while in India, for Hindu and Muslim dissenters from the British Raj, “abstinence became synonymous with patriotism.”

Notably, Schrad goes on to argue, the United States was not an exception to this global rule. Here, too, temperance movements were powered not by stern divines and dour church matrons but by staunch defenders of the poor and the oppressed. Indigenous leaders led the charge, with the Choctaw, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole tribes, for example, agreeing to “cooperate in suppressing the sale of strong drink.” Similarly committed to the cause were abolitionists, women’s rights activists, social gospelers, and more. Indeed, Frederick Douglass’s line, “All great reforms go together,” is one of Schrad’s favorite mantras. He supports this claim by underscoring the temperance credentials of not only Douglass but also the likes of William Lloyd Garrison, Susan B. Anthony, and Abraham Lincoln. “These are the heroes of American history, not its villains,” Schrad declares.

There is no doubt that he has a point. Smashing the Liquor Machine’s provocative reframing of temperance and Prohibition as “part of a long-term people’s movement to strengthen international norms in defense of human rights, human dignity, and human equality” represents a persuasive challenge to conventional wisdom. It should change the way that historians think and write about these subjects going forward. But one wishes that Schrad had not been content to flip an unsatisfying script. What if temperance activists were neither heroes nor villains, but rather finite, fallible humans, fighting for what they understood to be right, even as they were caught up—in ways that they did not fully recognize—in deeper-seated social sin?

One of the great tragedies of American history is that, whatever Douglass’s noble aspirations, all great reforms have not in fact gone together. One finds some evidence of this in Schrad’s book, notwithstanding his assertions to the contrary. In a chapter on the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), he discusses how the organization’s leaders sought to navigate the racism that was so pervasive among its white rank-and-file members, and also how the WCTU leadership was itself hardly immune. Longtime president Frances Willard loved to tout her abolitionist heritage and “Do Everything” reform philosophy; but while she championed the causes of women’s suffrage and labor reform, one thing she refused to do was support Ida B. Wells’s courageous campaign to mobilize white Christians against the scourge of lynching.

Willard’s failings on this front were hardly unique. Another of Schrad’s temperance heroes, William Jennings Bryan—or the “Great Commoner,” as he liked to be called—was a fierce defender of white farmers and workers at home, and a ferocious critic of American imperialism abroad. But when President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to the White House for dinner, Bryan declared it “unfortunate, to say the least.”

Walter Rauschenbusch, one of the great theoreticians of the social gospel, provides yet another case in point. As Schrad underscores, in addition to propounding temperance, Rauschenbusch wrote voluminously about the threat of spiraling economic inequality. Yet he said next to nothing about the rising tide of mob violence and anti-Black racism. As he reflected in the final decade of his life, “the problem of the two races in the South has seemed to me so tragic, so insoluble, that I have never yet ventured to discuss it in public.”

A daring argument
The issue is not only that many temperance reformers fell short of heroism when it came to other causes. It is also that the temperance fight itself was more morally complex than Schrad allows. There was unmistakable synergy, for one, between campaigns against “the liquor power” and others targeting Catholics, immigrants, and labor radicals. The Germans who participated in Chicago’s Lager Beer Riot of 1855—sparked by a nativist mayor’s decision to close taverns on Sundays and to raise the fee for liquor licenses—felt this viscerally, but the perspective of working-class immigrants like them is largely absent from Schrad’s narrative.

Also missing are the important ways in which the brunt of temperance activism fell not only on “the man who sells” but also on countless ordinary people. The heyday of temperance reform was, not coincidentally, also the heyday of “scientific charity,” whose proponents often saw anyone who frequented the saloon as unworthy of material aid.

Saloons themselves were more complicated than Schrad lets on. Waving off the suggestion that they might have had redeeming features, he insists that they must be understood as “an actual, real blight on the local community.” At points his description sounds a lot like what one might find in a late-19th-century temperance pamphlet. “They were dark and smoky,” Schrad writes, “with overflowing spittoons and sticky floors.”

Saloons were certainly not above reproach. Yet historians have found overwhelming evidence that they served a wide variety of social roles, not all of which were objectionable. They were places where information was exchanged and public questions debated; where immigrants created space that they could call their own; and where the poor found shelter from the streets, a free lunch to fill their bellies, and sometimes even access to prohibitively expensive technologies such as the telephone. Schrad is a political scientist, and in his introduction he clarifies that Smashing the Liquor Machine is “not a history book” but rather “a work of comparative politics.” His treatment of the saloon is one of the points where it shows.

But Schrad’s disciplinary expertise is also the source of extraordinary insight. Crisscrossing the globe and assimilating vast evidence along the way, he advances a daring argument, one that historians will be reckoning with for years to come. This book deserves a wider audience, too. It is a fun read, thanks to Schrad’s eye for colorful characters such as William “Pussyfoot” Johnson, who lost one of his eyes while on mission preaching the temperance gospel in England. During a melee between law enforcement and college students—who were, predictably, none too excited about his message—a rock hit him square in the face. He was good-natured about it afterwards, telling a group of remorseful student well-wishers who visited him in the hospital, “You had a good time; I had a good time. I have no complaints. But if you want some real fun, get into the game against the greatest enemy of the human race—drink.”

Cheers to a book that offers a new and sharper sense of that game, including what, exactly, was at stake and why so many millions once poured their lives into playing.

Heath W. Carter is associate professor of American Christianity at Princeton Theological Seminary. He is the author of Union Made: Working People and the Rise of Social Christianity in Chicago.

patrick jane · « **Reply #11 on:** November 19, 2021, 04:30:46 pm »

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/podcasts/quick-to-listen/opioid-crisis-fentaynl-church-christians-podcast.html

There’s No Good Plan to Stop 100,000 Opioid Deaths a Year

The Christian call to hard friendship in a national emergency.

100,000 Americans died from April 2020 to April 2021 due to opioids, according to numbers released this week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The majority of the deaths have come via fentanyl, which accounted for more than 75 percent of all fatalities. Most of the time fentanyl has been used in combination with drugs like methamphetamine or ****.

Who were those who lost their lives? According to The New York Times:

The vast majority of these deaths, about 70 percent, were among men between the ages of 25 and 54. And while the opioid crisis has been characterized as one primarily impacting white Americans, a growing number of Black Americans have been affected as well.

There were regional variations in the death counts, with the largest year-over-year increases — exceeding 50 percent — in California, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, West Virginia and Kentucky. Vermont’s toll was small, but increased by 85 percent during the reporting period.
This week on Quick to Listen, we wanted to talk about the opioid crisis. What is our response as Christians who are in relationship with those affected? What is our responsibility when we are far away?

Andrea “Andi” Clements is professor and assistant chair of the psychology department at East Tennessee State University and is cofounder of Uplift Appalachia, which helps churches care for addicted people. She is on the leadership team of the Strong BRAIN Institute, which studies childhood resilience.

Clements joined global media manager Morgan Lee and executive editor Ted Olsen to discuss when she first realized that opioid addiction had entered her community, why churches are part of the solution to the crisis, and how being in relationship with the addicted has changed her faith.

What is Quick to Listen? Read more.

Rate Quick to Listen on Apple Podcasts

Follow the podcast on Twitter

Follow this week's hosts on Twitter: Morgan Lee and Ted Olsen

Read Ted's Precious Moments article: What Steadfast Looks Like in a Revolution

Music by Sweeps

Quick to Listen is produced Morgan Lee and Matt Linder

The transcript is edited by Faith Ndlovu

patrick jane · « **Reply #12 on:** March 08, 2022, 05:08:47 pm »

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Author Topic: ADDICTION - Drugs, Alcohol & AA's Twelve Steps (Read 6114 times)

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ADDICTION - Drugs, Alcohol & AA's Twelve Steps

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