With office parties and family gatherings it is very easy to be within arms length of Alcohol. Not to mention the gifts (booze) that can keep on giving us trips to jails, institutions or death. These twelve tips published in Grape Vine magazine and Box 459 have been used by our members for years to help survive the holiday season. Print out some copies and take them to the meetings you attend. Even with all my many personal problems swirling in my mind that moment, I stopped for a minute and looked around the church basement. I saw members who didn’t have any family to be with that day.
Helping people who want to stop drinking
Did I want to experience misery, sorrow, grief and loneliness every December? Give me the serenity to change the things I can, I thought. The walk gave me time to think about my ghosts of Christmas past. My father had died on Christmas Eve, not too many years before. My drinking and drug abuse ruined many other holidays before and after his death.
My cousin handed me a beer, and for the first time, the noise in my head stopped. That night, I discovered what I thought was the solution. I arrived at our meeting place early.
Quest for Emotional Sobriety
- My gratitude got so much larger.
- There’s a special feeling of joy at our candlelight AA meeting on New Year’s Eve, knowing that we’ve all lived another year sober.
- Each issue also includes a story on the Traditions and the Steps.
- Together, we began the meeting with the usual rituals.
- When I reach out to help another alcoholic, my own silence breaks.
Friends, especially newcomers. If you don’t have a place where you can throw a formal party, take one person to a diner and spring for the coffee. When I was 13, I picked up the phone and called AA. I lived in California at that time, and I was a real movie buff. Speakers from all 12-step fellowships are welcome and should have the ability to deliver their experience, strength and hope to 600+ attendees.
Recipe for a sober holiday
We agreed on gratitude as the topic, and we shared our experience, strength and hope with each other. We ended the meeting with the Serenity Prayer and a hug. We wished each other a merry Christmas. After we were done, he gave me a ride back to the recovery home. For me, that means prayer, meditation, or simply quiet gratitude. The holidays remind me what is Oxford House what I have — January reminds me to keep it.
The holidays were an excuse for days of drinking without guilt or restraint. The days ended up dreadful and lonely as I reinforced my December misery each year. These days I make it a point to go to the dinners and parties and marathon meetings that happen in my town during the holidays. In contrast to that first year when I felt so alone, now these gatherings are full of friends as dear to me as family.
One Swing at a Time
“Why don’t you go to an AA meeting that day? But in spite of that, I’ve been sober in the program 32 years. And although I still live alone I am not lonely. I have met many other single people in AA who are enjoying the sober life.
- We all go through “firsts” when we get sober.
- The action keeps me out of my head and reminds me I’m part of something bigger.
- Visit us at /store and order yours today.
- Still, I don’t romanticize the silence.
Especially if I don’t feel like it. As a wife, mother, daughter and sister she’s learned to put sobriety first. There’s listener feedback from Ryan and Shari too.
401-438-8860 (R.I. Central Service)
When the holidays are over, the silence settles in. The guests have gone home, the decorations are boxed up, and the last piece of pie is long gone. What’s left is the quiet hum of January — the empty spaces where laughter filled the room a week ago. I’ve always wondered if our emotions and feelings sober holidays are closer to the surface during the Christmas season than other times of the year. Is this because I’m reminded of the hope and joy that Christmas represents?
- I saw alcoholics who really needed a holiday meal.
- I really, really didn’t want to drink.
- A dear AA friend and former sponsor and I decided to have lunch together.
- Service turns the volume down on loneliness.
- That holiday experience changed me.
- Even with all my many personal problems swirling in my mind that moment, I stopped for a minute and looked around the church basement.
It was 1984 and Christmas was approaching. I hadn’t had https://chocomuseumprague.com/2024/05/16/self-run-self-supported-recovery-houses-5/ a visit nor heard from a single friend or relative since I had moved into this recovery house more than three months earlier. No one called to say they missed me or wished I was there. I experienced moments of self-pity, but would not allow myself too much time in that debilitating darkness. I chose to live with the truth that I was the person who left a trail of damage behind me.
