Personality Change
I am celebrating 1 year of continuous sobriety on June 3rd, 2013. I can honestly say it has been the best year of my life. I was at a f2f meeting Saturday morning and we were talking about sobriety being like a flower blossoming.
It doesn’t matter how far down the scale you have gone, or how old or how young. Something that was once so closed off and buried has now opened up to greet the world. That is truly how I feel. It is spring and the flowers are all around me, not only in the natural world, but in the invisible spiritual realm.
One of my favorite pages in the Big Book is 567 & 568. My spiritual awakening has been about “the personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism.” I thought I was a pretty decent person when I came into the rooms. I just had a little drinking problem that could not be self-willed away. I had been lying to myself, of course.
I was so selfish, I couldn’t even see that my biggest problem was me, not the alcohol. After a couple of weeks of meetings, my husband said to me, “I am really proud of you. I like the changes you have made.” I didn’t really understand at the time what was going on inside of me, but it was producing good results. Other people were seeing things in me I could not see. I went to 5 meetings a week during my first 3 months. I stayed close to the program and continue to do so.
I began to form a relationship with my HP that I call God. I realized I had been turned off by religion because of other people’s opinions. It had nothing to do with God. This I learned by reading the bottom of page 568, “the principle of contempt prior to investigation.” After I pushed aside all the opinions which I felt had been pushed on me, I began to realize I had never checked things out for myself.
Today I know that God loves me, as he loves each and every one of you. I have “tapped into an unsuspected inner resource.” With the help of my higher power, I live in the essentials of recovery, willingness, honesty, and open mindedness, 24 hours at a time.
I heard a fellow alcoholic share recently, “This disease is about character defects.” Then another chimed in, “Well I’m definitely a character, and I’m definitely defective. With AA, I’m a whole lot less defective than I used to be.”
Please share about your own personality changes/spiritual experiences or anything on your heart.