Earlier this year the General Service Office (GSO) of Alcoholics Anonymous in New York, NY published guidance on “Safety in A.A.”. The paper was entitled "Safety and A.A.: Our Common Welfare". Printed on January 25, 2017, this paper laid out the A.A. philosophy and helpful suggestions for keeping A.A. groups safe.
Step 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.”
I deployed to Tallil, Iraq in January of 2007. When my transport plane landed, I got worried. Would I hold up under combat conditions? Would I remember my training or, would I wither in the face of fire? I deplaned and stood on the tarmac to get my bearings and there a few hundred meters from my location I saw a church steeple. I thought to myself “before I do anything else, I’m going to go into that church and just say a quick prayer of gratitude to God for getting me safely to Iraq.”
We all know that addiction, whether to alcohol or other drugs, is brutal. Not everyone is sure that, in recovery, we get better. I believe that we can all get better in recovery. Life gets better for the alcoholic and addict who embraces Twelve Step recovery. Life also gets better for those who leave behind the alcoholic and addict who chooses not to recover, and seeks their own recovery.
I would like to share some of my thoughts on the long tradition of cooperation that the U.S. Armed Forces have enjoyed with Alcoholics Anonymous. As you probably know, the program of AA was co-founded by a former WWI Field Artillery officer of the U.S. Army - Lt. Bill Wilson. I have often wondered how Bill's war time experiences may have intensified his alcoholism and his subsequent recovery therefrom. If you doubt that WWI had a profound affect on Bill, you need only look at the first word of the first chapter of the Big Book - "War fever ran high..."
The disease of alcoholism and addiction shows up in our lives in the form of a voice in our heads. That voice is like a channel of discouragement that is hard to totally eliminate. The addictive voice doesn’t have to make any sense to be effective. Because it has been there so long, and because its messages are so consistently depressing, we come to accept it, just because it wears us down.
