Freedom From Bondage

12/12/2025

12/09/2025

Oldtimer said, "Insanity is sometimes defined as doing the same thing over again and expecting different results. While true in general, the insanity of the addict/alcoholic involves our inability to think rationally, logically, and with reason when it comes to the risk/reward element of the first drink,drug or both. We are mentally incapacitated when it comes to drugs and alcohol. We cannot see and act on the truth about the drink or the drug. This leads to a full flight from reality that brings about several different levels of insanity.

However, it is the first level of insanity that is paramount to our continued existence. It is a lack of sound reasoning that involves our pathological drinking or using An alcoholic/addict suffers grave consequences as a result of their insistence upon using drugs, alcohol or both to a lethal degree. Yet, in spite of the risk, we pursue the pleasure of the first one to the gates of insanity and death.

In the mind of the chronic alcoholic/addict the power of delusion takes over, and we deny the very obvious damage caused by our addiction. This blindness to reality is broken only when we face a crisis that our mind cannot rationalize, justify, minimize, hide, or evade. This is when the First Step review, conducted with rigorous honesty, becomes a stepping stone to a new way of life.

After we have put away the bottle,pipe,line,pill,needle, we are confronted with a greater delusion: the delusion that we can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world by following the dictates of the same mind that believed using and or drinking was a solution to our living problem. In our Second Step review, we find that it was self—our old ideas, emotions, and attitudes—that defeated us. They form the thinking that constantly leads us back to the DOC .

This self-defeating cycle can only be broken by turning our will and life over to a Power greater than human power and keeping our minds under constant review. By doing so, we avoid repeating mistakes that create an environment within us that requires a drink to satisfy. It is this second level of insanity, where we do the same thing over again (self-will) expecting a different result, that we spend the rest of our recovery life exploring.

We employ inventory, prayer, and meditation to uncover, discover, and discard the self-defeating behaviors that are guaranteed to lead us back to the bottle,hit,pill,needle and replace them with a new set of behaviors based on the new ideas, emotions, and attitudes that come as a result of a spiritual awakening. This new mind is rooted in the Sunlight of the Spirit and delivers us from drugs,alcohol or both and opens us to a new way of life that gets infinitely more wonderful as time passes."

12/08/2025

SERVICE

Life will take on new meaning. To watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness vanish, to see a fellowship grow up about you, to have a host of friends—this is an experience you must not miss. . . . Frequent contact with newcomers and with each other is the bright spot of our lives.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 89

It is through service that the greatest rewards are to be found. But to be in a position of offering true, useful and effective service to others, I must first work on myself. This means that I have to abandon myself to God, admitting my faults and clearing away the wreckage of my past. Work on myself has taught me how to find the necessary peace and serenity to successfully merge inspiration and experience. I have learned how to be, in the truest sense, an open channel of sobriety.

From the book Daily Reflections.
Copyright © 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

12/01/2025

Oldtimer said, "When we adopt God's way of life as our own, we recover from a hopeless state of mind and body and are given the power to help other addicts and alcoholics recover from a fatal malady. We are not cured of alcoholism/addiction. Instead, we are granted a daily reprieve. So long as we continue to clean house, trust God, and help others, we will recoil from drugs,alcohol or both as from a hot flame. This is the miracle of recovery. We are granted mastery over addiction
as a result of our surrender to our benevolent Master."

We have identified the weak items in our characters that corrode our relationship with our Creator. It is our selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear that block our spiritual connection to God—a connection we can't do without if we expect to live long and happily in this world.

Every day is a day we deconstruct our alcoholic/addict life and reconstruct a new life based upon spiritual principles. By working with God to discard what we have uncovered and discovered, the manifestations of self no longer fit into our new life in recovery. In doing so, we become a channel for God's grace and allow for the unlimited expansion of our spiritual life.

If nothing changes, nothing changes. Our level of willingness to let go of our shortcomings will determine our level of spiritual growth. The greater our spiritual fitness the more effective we become at understanding how our defects of character bedeviled us and kept us chained to the old behaviors we developed in our addict/alcoholic life.

Step Ten prepares us for Step Eleven by decreasing our connection to our old ideas, emotions, and attitudes, and increasing our connection with God. Step Eleven prepares us to fit God's will and connects us to the power we need to recover and carry the message to the sick and suffering alcoholic/addict. This is the maximum service we fit ourselves to perform when we continue to clean house, trust God, and help others.

11/24/2025

For a seed to mature into a tree, it must first grow roots. Tiny fibers sprout from the seed and descend into the soil where they can access essential nutrients and life-giving water.( His roots grasped new soil BB ) As the sapling grows above the ground, the roots below must expand in proportion. (Roots act as an underground storage tank to aid the tree when water is scarce.) Although most roots are unseen, they are invaluable to a tree’s ability to thrive.

In the same way, our spiritual roots provide stability. They enable us to grow, mature, and eventually become beautiful displays of God’s splendor.

What about you? Are you developing deep roots?Are we developing strong spiritual roots, or are we simply gathering what we can near the surface of our lives (experiencing Sunday worship services or just going to meetings,stopped or not being of service, not working with others , taking them through the work , listening to Christian music)?....Lord, show me where I have grown complacent or stopped growing in my faith journey, and prepare me for every life-storm that may be heading my way. Amen.

11/20/2025

The inability to control the drugs,drinking or both, the physical allergy, is not a moral failing. It is an illness. The spiritual problem that drives the mental obsession is why we do the moral inventory.

11/14/2025

When we quit that's the only time God gets to work !

11/13/2025

So, you finished rehab. You’re sober now. Living in an Oxford house. Waking up early to catch the bus to a job that barely pays the bills. You’re splitting a fridge with three other addicts, listening to them fight over food or relapse excuses, trying to stay focused on your own lane — your own recovery.

You’re hitting your meetings. Three a week. You’re sitting in folding chairs under fluorescent lights, listening to other people’s pain, trying to believe that maybe… just maybe… one day, yours will turn into purpose too.

And I know there are nights when it doesn’t feel worth it. When you’re sitting on the edge of your bed staring at the same four walls, thinking, Is this really what I got sober for? When the silence gets so loud it starts screaming your name. When giving up feels easier than fighting through another day.

But let me tell you something — it takes a rare kind of strength to do what you’re doing.
Because anybody can self-destruct. Anybody can run. Anybody can hide behind a bottle, a pill, or a pipe. But it takes a fighter to start from scratch and rebuild their life one day at a time.

You’re not weak because it’s hard. You’re not broken because it hurts. You’re becoming. You’re laying the bricks for a life that’s going to mean something.

That bus you’re riding to that minimum wage job? That’s not humiliation — that’s humility. That’s faith in motion. Every mile is proof that you’re not who you used to be.
That sober house that smells like burnt ramen and resentment? That’s your launching pad. That’s where your comeback story is being written.
And those meetings you drag yourself to? Those are your classrooms — where pain turns into wisdom, and strangers turn into family.

Listen to me — what God is building in you right now, in this season that feels small and insignificant, is going to blow your mind when it unfolds. You’re not just surviving this chapter — you’re being prepared for the next one.

You might not see it yet, but you’re a walking miracle in progress. A warrior in transition. A Rockstar in recovery.

So don’t quit now. Not when you’ve already made it this far. The world hasn’t even seen what you’re capable of yet.

I see you.
I’m proud of you.
And I promise you — if you just keep going, it gets better. 🫶🫶

Copy & Paste lets keep reaching more, inspiration can come simply with a post showing you can do it.. it worked for me.

Getting your life back is not easy but God gives us evidence through other people, he gives hope to the hopeless and life to the lifeless. 💯🙏🙏

11/11/2025

Do not waste time thinking about what you could have done differently. . .

11/11/2025

Oldtimer said, "Every resentment is an opportunity for spiritual growth that we missed because of our desire to have our way. We selfishly played God and tried to dictate life on life's terms to life itself, and when we did not get our way, we became angry. This anger is deeply rooted in our self-centered psyche, and when we don't get our way, we feed it with our passion. When it arises, we are presented with an opportunity for spiritual growth, but we fail to accept life on life's terms and once again insist life bend to our will. This insane perception of our imaginary omnipotence fails to produce the fruit of life God intended for us."

Step one is our initiation into acceptance. We cease playing God and accept life on His terms. We accept our condition as alcoholics, and surrender a design for living that produces successful sobriety. We have a hopeless state of mind and body that we cannot recover from without spiritual help. This attitude of acceptance has been the missing ingredient for an abundant life born of the Spirit.

We recognize the folly of our pseudo-omnipotence in Step Two when we accept the insanity of our efforts to dictate terms to life. We accept that the omnipotence we desire lies in a power greater than ourselves. So we begin the journey to sanity through acceptance of our impotence. Lack of power is our dilemma. There is One who has all power. That one is God.

Acceptance proved to be the key to all of our problems. We had a defiant will rooted in our opposition to life on life's terms. We thought ourselves supremely resourceful and attempted to skip through life, drink in hand. But our solution to life on life's terms left us in bo***ge to life on alcohol's terms. As a result, we descended into a bitter morass of terror, bewilderment, frustration, and despair.

Acceptance is the answer to our state of pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization that leaves us prey to alcohol's deadly grip. When we finally accept life on God's terms, it releases us from the insanity programmed into our old ideas, emotions, and attitudes that were wired into the falsehood of self-will—a will that believes in the power of drugs,alcohol or both, to solve the very problems it creates.

We are transformed when we surrender our will and lives to God's care and live our lives in service to Him and our fellow man. We fit ourselves for this divine task by applying the Steps to all of our affairs. This acceptance of life on God's terms restores us to sanity, and we find we are easily able to accept life on life's terms.

We are no longer in full flight from reality; instead, we readily adjust to the demands of life. Our mental health is restored when we rid ourselves of resentments through acceptance and forgiveness. As a result, we learn the lessons resentment prevented us from grasping, and we fit ourselves as servants empowered to carry God's message into all of our daily activities.

We then become the depth and weight of the message of redemption granted us through our acceptance of God's will. And wherever we go, we act as His agents, living in accordance with His love, grace, and mercy. When we do so, we are free of the elements of resentment that re**rd our spiritual growth, and we grow in the image of our Creator one day at a time.

11/08/2025

Oldtimer said, "Successful recovery requires a total change in our attitude and our outlook upon life. The addict/ alcoholic who initially graces the doors of the rooms of recovery has a addict mind and, at some point, will drink or use or both , again. Barring an entire psychic change, we remain in the grips of alcoholic/addict insanity and, thus, powerless over alcohol,drugs or both.

This insanity occurs before we take the first hit, drink,line,pill,bang of a spree. At certain times, our strongest desire to stay sober fails to hold our obsession to use any mood or mind altering substance at bay. We cannot bring to bear the pain, suffering, and humiliation we suffered from the last debauch that drove us into the rooms of recovery. Very often, we experience euphoric recall and remember only the good times they provided. There is also the lurking danger of the strange mental blank spot when we start using with very little thought of the consequences.

We cannot muster an effective mental defense against the first drink or drug with a defective, delusional alcoholic/addict mind. A psychic change is essential if we plan to get over using and drinking for good, and this psychic change can only occur as a result of a spiritual awakening. This is the solution to alcoholism/addiction that has produced millions of recoveries from a hopeless state of mind and body.

A successful recovery depends on an accurate diagnosis. Alcohol and drugs impacted our lives on a spiritual level and corrupted our thinking process.This is why we must grow and perfect our spiritual lives. Some of us fail to address the spiritual feature of the disease. In doing so, they offer secular remedies to this spiritual malady because they fail to properly diagnose their condition.

Buyer beware! The solutions they share in the rooms may work for them, but the remedy they offer may well be the byproduct of addictive thinking that has left them in full flight from reality. Rather than face their horrific reality as hopeless addicts and alcoholics, they choose the easier, softer way that has repeatedly delivered some very hard consequences to those who balk at the complete surrender recovery requires.

These alcoholics/addicts0 practice temporary sodriety that sometimes proceeds into a state of permanent insanity. We cannot fool ourselves about values. If we are to recover from our fatal illness, there can be no reservation, nor lurking notion about the price we must pay for our salvation. We must sacrifice our old ideas, emotions and attitudes to bring about the much needed psychic change that guarantees our recovery from a hopeless state of mind and body.

However, we won't let go of these old ideas, emotions, and attitudes without the motivation pain provides. When the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of change, we become willing to let go of our defects of character and let God create a message out of our mess. If we haven't the will to let go, we pray for the willingness to become willing to let go. God will not take from us what we do not offer. But when we offer our all, He gives us His all.

Change is a door that can only be unlocked from the inside. If we balk at change, we pray for the willingness to change, for willingness is the key that brings forth the much-needed psychic change that transforms us from victim to victorious. And it is in this change that we find freedom from bo***ge to drugs and alcohol and grow in the image of our Creator.