Sept. 9: Wisdom pellets

In early recovery, I spent a lot of time in church basements and parking lots. Like the Roman catacombs during the early church, these basements were filled with a lot of joy, a lot of laughter and a lot of tears. Unlike the catacombs, the laughter came primarily from a speaker telling a story of his drinking or using days, usually one about the foolish or heartbreakingly inappropriate ways he’d acted while messed up.

Interestingly, to me at least, these rooms were also furnaces of insight smelting pellets of wisdom. I’d like to share some of that wisdom, each of which moved me in some way.

• Life is not painful, it’s my resistance to life that causes me the pain 
• If you keep doing what you’re doing – you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.
• Addiction is the total disintegration of the human personality 
• Turn up a stereo to full volume then unplug it. In 2, 5,10 or 20 years later – if you plug it in again, the stereo will come on full volume. That’s what addiction is like. 
• Alcohol plus damage = Alcoholism. 
• Recovery is made up of glorious years and some shitty days. 
• Alcoholics are egomaniacs with inferiority complexes. 
• We are not punished for our sins, we are punished by our sins 
• If you feel guilty – stop doing what’s making you feel guilty. 
• An addict comes apart spiritually, mentally and then physically. You put him back together again in the reverse order. You can put him back together physically in a comparatively short time. It takes a much longer time to put him back together mentally, and a much, much longer time to get him together spiritually. 
• You can act your way into the right thinking, but you can’t think your way into the right action 
• In order to give up my defects of character, I must first give up the benefits of my defects of character. Twenty seconds of ecstasy isn’t worth three weeks of guilt. 
• You don’t get drunk making mistakes – you get drunk defending the mistakes you’ve made. 
• God is a comedian playing to an audience who’s afraid to laugh. 
• Acceptance: What is …IS; what isn’t…ISN’T. 
• Rule 62…don’t take yourself so God damned seriously. 
• Although we are not responsible for our disease, we are responsible for our recovery. (
• I’ve got some good news and some bad news for you:
  • The good news is that you’re not in charge;
  • The bad news is that you’re not in charge. 
• When you enter recovery, you can write down all the gifts you get…when you pick back up you can reverse the pencil and erase each gift one by one. 
• If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. 
• The problem with isolating is that you get such bad advice. 
• If nothing changes…nothing changes. 
• Pain is necessary, suffering is optional!
• Feelings aren’t facts!!!
• In recovery, first we remove the anesthesia, then we operate.
• Don’t compare your insides to other people’s outsides.
• Take an action, then let go of the results.
• Relapse begins long before you pick up the drink/drug.
• If you hang around a barbershop long enough, eventually you’ll get a haircut.
• Expectations are preconceived resentments.
• I thought I wanted to commit suicide, but all I needed was a hamburger.
• What other people think of you is none of your business.
• I’ve found that you cannot save your ass and your face at the same time.
• Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.
• If you want what you’ve never had, you must do what you’ve never done.
• Winners do what they have to do and losers do what they want to do.
• Insanity is not doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results; insanity is doing the same thing over and over again knowing full well what the results will be.”
• Nothing is so bad, a drink won’t make it worse.
• We are only as sick as our secrets.
• Some of us our sicker than others.
• We’re all here because we’re not all there.
• Addiction is an equal opportunity destroyer.
• Decisions aren’t forever.

If any of this is helpful, I’m glad. If none of it is, you might want to reread this.

You matter. I matter. We matter.