Sobriety Survival101

•  What was the religion that your family of origin practiced or claimed to be a part of?       •  List the positive and negative aspects as you see it of your family’s religion.       •  Have you made a break with your family's religion or have you stayed with it? Explain why you have taken your particular course of action.        •  What other people have helped you to see the unmanageability of your life? Do they believe in a Higher Power and if so describe their belief as far as you know of it.        •  Recall some of your best friends from childhood or adolescence. Describe what you liked best about them and what they liked best about you? Do you think that these qualities have any relationship to a Higher Power? Explain.        •  From the following list of groups, write Yes or No according to whether you could share in their values or not?    Group Sh...

The balance between mind and spirit comes hard for me. The eternal split. Two entities, perfectly aware and yet perfectly unwilling to cooperate. —Mary Casey The program directs our spiritual growth, a human aspect that had atrophied, if ever it had existed, for most of us before abstinence. And the process of developing our spiritual nature is painstaking. Living by our wits, or the fervent application of “situational analysis,” had been our survival tools for months or years. To return repeatedly to the old tools for quick solutions to serious situations is second nature. Learning to rely on spiritual guidance for solutions and to use it to sharpen our analytical focus takes patience and continual effort. Within our spiritual realm we find our connection to God. We have been given the wisdom; all the knowledge we need is at our fingertips. The confidence to move ahead and offer our special talent to others comes from our Spirit. We are all that we need to be. Our mind and our Spirits...

 Our Purpose To support individuals who have chosen to abstain, or are considering abstinence from any type of addictive behaviors (substances or activities), by teaching how to change self-defeating thinking, emotions, and actions; and to work towards long-term satisfactions and quality of life.  Our Approach * Teaches self-empowerment and self-reliance. * Encourages individuals to recover and live satisfying lives. * Teaches tools and techniques for self-directed change. * Meetings are educational and include open discussions. * Advocates the appropriate use of prescribed medications and psychological treatments. * Evolves as scientific knowledge of addiction recovery evolves.  SMART Recovery 4-Point Program SMART Recovery (Self Management And Recovery Training) helps individuals gain independence from addiction (substances or activities). Our efforts are based on scientific knowledge and evolve as scientific knowledge evolves.  The 4-Point Program offers specific ...

Faith is not a series of gilt-edged propositions that you sit down to figure out, and if you follow all the logic and accept all the conclusions, then you have it. —Mary Jean Irion Years ago administrators at a high school in California told some of their teachers at the beginning of the school term that their students would most likely experience an intellectual growth spurt by the end of the academic year. At the end of the term, students of these teachers had, indeed, dramatically improved their academic performance. Administrators revealed that the teachers had been selected at random; there was no particular reason why they or their students had been selected. But because the teachers had expected more from their respective classes, they had subtly communicated this expectation to their students. The teachers showed that they believed in their capabilities, and the students responded to this support. Yet, if the teachers had shown doubt in the students’ success, the outcome would ...

Take It One Day at a Time In recovery, you learn that there are two days that should not concern you: yesterday and tomorrow. Once you let go of worrying about the future or bemoaning the past, you discover that today is rich with possibility. You can do many things sober that you may not have been able to do before: write letters, return phone calls, sleep soundly, make love, meditate, play, and be a good parent or friend. Action for the Day List a few things you enjoy now as you practice living one day at a time without being drunk or high. Keep the list somewhere you can see it every day, such as on your bathroom mirror or in your car. Thought for the Day “All the money in the world cannot bring back yesterday. We cannot undo a single act we performed. We cannot erase a single word we said. Yesterday is gone beyond recall. Do I still worry about what happened yesterday?” Twenty-Four Hours a Day,  July 29 Big Book Read about re-entering the world as a clean-and-sober person on pa...