Taking Actions When I Don’t Want To

Doing Things I Don't Want to Do

I am writing this article not because I want to, but because I ought to.  Not very laudable, you might say, but at least it’s a step up from ‘because I have to’.  Now what, you might ask, has put me in this middling frame of mind?  Well, life basically.  Now, anyone with any experience of AA knows that I have a plethora of spiritual tools at my disposal for dealing with ‘life’.  But, sometimes life is, well, just that.  What to do? 

Usually, although it’s a strain, I will try to do something I don’t want to do – hence this article.  Time after time I have had to remind myself that the solution to low spots in recovery is action.  Maybe I am so flat, mentally and emotionally, that I can’t muster much action.  Never mind, at times like this Bill suggested starting with the ‘irreducible minimum’ and then working for an enlargement of these activities.  Just a bit of positive action is all that is required for a change to be effected in my thinking.  Pretty soon I am able to turn my thoughts to helping others – ‘ah, yes, those other alcoholics’.

You could say, of course, that I started writing this piece to help myself.  And you’d be right.  Other people weren’t on my radar a few short lines ago.  But now they are!  As I look up from this computer screen at my modest collection of AA books and the picture of my wife I can hear daughter No.2 keeping the water meter ticking over in the bathroom, and I realise yet again that I never had it so good.

Did I say that I am writing this article not because I want to, but because I ought to?  Whatever – I’m just glad that I did.

                                               Jon F, Road to Recovery Group Plymouth