Tolerance
The most lovable quality any human being can possess is tolerance. . .
It is the vision that enables one to see things from another’s viewpoint. . .
It is the generosity that concedes to others the right to their own opinions and their own peculiarities . . .
It is the bignesss that enables us to let people be happy in their own way instead of our way.
THE UNHAPPIEST PERSON in the world is the alcoholic who has an
insistent yearning to enjoy life as he once knew it, but cannot picture life without alcohol.
He has a heartbreaking obsession that by some miracle of control he will be able to continue to drink with no ill effect.
SOBRIETY is the most important thing in your life, without exception. you may believe my job, or my home life, or one of many other things, comes first. But if you do not get sober and stay sober, chances are you won’t have a job, a family, sanity or even life. If you are convinced that everything in life depends on your sobriety, you have just so much more chance of getting sober and staying sober. If you put other things first, you are only hurting my chances.
Here are some tips that help some members of Alcoholics Anonymous stay sober and ENJOY LIFE:
- We cultivate continued acceptance of the fact that our choice is between unhappy, drunken drinking and doing without just one small drink.
- We cultivate gratitude that we have had the good fortune of finding
out what was wrong with us before it was too late. - We expect, as being natural and inevitable, that for a period of time
(and it may be a long one) we may recurrently experience:
a. a conscious, nagging craving for a drink;
b. a sudden, compelling impulse to take a drink;
c. a craving, not for a drink as such, but for the soothing glow and warmth a drink or two once gave us. - We remember that the times when we don’t want a drink are the times in which to build up the strength not to take one when we do want it.
- We develop and rehearse a daily plan of thinking and acting by which we live that day without taking a drink, regardless of what may upset us or how hard the old urge for a drink may hit us.
- We don’t for a split second allow ourselves to think, “Isn’t it a pity or a mean injustice that I can’t take a drink like so-called normal people?”
- We don’t allow ourselves to either think or talk about any real or imagined pleasure we once got out of drinking.
- We don’t permit ourselves to think a drink or two would make some bad situation better, or at least easier to live with. We substitute the thought, “One drink will make it worse – one drink will mean a drunk.”
- We minimize our situation. We think, as we see here or there a blind or otherwise sorely handicapped person, how joyful such a person would be if his problem could be solved by just not taking one little
drink today. We think gratefully of how lucky we are to have such a simple solution to our problem. - We cultivate the enjoyment of sobriety:
a. How good it is to be free of the consequences of a drunk just
ended or a coming drunk we have never before been able to prevent.
b. How good it is to be free of what people have been thinking and whispering about us, and of their mingled pity and contempt.
c. How good it is to be free of fear. - We catalog and re-catalog the positive enjoyments of sobriety:
a. the simple ability to eat and sleep normally, and wake up glad we are alive, glad we were sober yesterday and glad we have the privilege of staying sober today;
b. the ability to face life as it is. - We cultivate a helpful association of ideas:
a. We associate a drink as being the single cause of all the misery, shame, and mortification we have ever known;
b. We associate a drink as being the only thing that can destroy our new-found happiness and take from us our self-respect. - We cultivate gratitude:
a. that so much can be ours for so small a price;
b. that we don’t have to drink;
c. that AA exists and we found out about it in time;
d. that we are only a victim of a disease called alcoholism; that we are not a degenerate, immoral weakling, or the self-elected victim of a vice, or a person of doubtful sanity;
e. that since others have done it, we will see it come to pass that we will not want, or miss, the drink we are doing without. - We seek ways to help other alcoholics—and we remember that the first way to help others is to stay sober ourselves.
- And we remember, when our hearts are heavy and our resistance is low and our minds are troubled and confused, there is much comfort in a true and understanding friend standing by. We have that friend in AA.
Courtesy of Santa Rosa and San Francisco Intergroup