Fundamental Change

Fundamental Change

By the time I reached AA, I knew I needed a fundamental change in my life. Quite how radical I didn’t know until I started reading the Big Book and discovered that selfishness and self-centeredness were the main cause of all my worries. I was so utterly destroyed by my alcoholism that I pretty much saw it and believed it straight away.

All my life I had been seeing the world through the eyes of a chronically self-centred individual. I was consumed by myself and if I was not satisfied someone or something other than me was to blame. I simply couldn’t take responsibility for my circumstances.

This inability to see things as they really were; my belief that I was the centre of everything and that the world should bend to my will, was the cause of the mental torture that made me turn to drink to make myself feel better. But of course I am an alcoholic of the hopeless kind; I cannot use alcohol to change the way I feel because I have no control over how much I drink or even if  I take a drink.

So as I say I ‘got it’ pretty much straight away: I needed a fundamental change in my outlook on the world in order to live life free from alcohol. Solve the living problem and the alcohol problem simply ceases to exist!

This was the second part of “getting Step 1,” realising just how big my problem actually was, not just that I am powerless over alcohol but that I cannot live my life based on ‘self’ if I want to live a life free from alcohol.

For me, the rest is history. From the moment I really decided I would do the Steps; from the moment I asked a man to sponsor me and from the moment I actually became sponsorable, everything began to change.  My experience has been that taking the steps and recovering from alcoholism was not just easy, it has been the biggest hoot of my life!

To see the world through new eyes, to not be plagued by debilitating fear and obsession, to quite literally have a whole host of new friends! 

My spiritual awakening happened over 10 years ago and I have never gone back to seeing the world as I once did. I have had a complete transformation in thought and attitude; a fundamental change.