{"quotes":[{"text":"Who am I? What am I doing here? Who are these others? This trilogy of spiritual conundrums is as practical as it is philosophical. Mindful inquiry devoted to these three questions is as spiritual as it is material and as obvious as it is unanswerable. Knowledge isn’t to comfort our souls; it is to enhance awareness—that is what some call an awakening. Some things have to be believed to be seen. Feelings articulate truth in ways that our brains cannot. We may have a sense about who we are, what our purpose is and how we relate to the rest of the world even without the vocabulary to articulate it. Recovery is visceral as much as it is intellectual. The Eleventh Step is our spiritual barometer, feeding back sensations, feelings and thoughts as we observe our life.","author":"Joe C.","tags":["12-step","aa","atheism","daily","recovery","reflection","spirituality-vs-religion"],"id":92145,"author_id":"Joe+C."},{"text":"Each person in the group said something except for me. My silence became noticed. About halfway through the meeting I started to think, I've got to talk. Today, I've got to talk. Fear racked me so bad that sweat ran down my sides. I thought, After the curly-haired woman stops talking I'll raise my hand. A man with a cocky smile told the curly woman that her story was nothing compared to his, he'd been passed out cold from heroin and God knows what, and I wanted to tell him to quit glorifying hinself. I was just about to say the words, a few faces turned toward me as if they could sense my imminent speech, when a man across the circle interrupted.The opportunity passed; what I wanted to say wouldn't fit now. I tilted on the back two legs of the chair and waited for my desire to speak and be noticed and be part of the group to travel back through my nervous system. Up the synapses condemnation rushed: Why couldn't I spit something out like a normal person?","author":"Daphne Scholinski","tags":["aa","memoir","not-fitting-in"],"id":95149,"author_id":"Daphne+Scholinski"},{"text":"Alcohol is good at disinfecting things It can clean a surface or erase memories.","author":"Richard L. Ratliff","tags":["aa","alcohol","alcoholics-anonymous","clean","drink","drinking","drinking-alcohol","surface"],"id":123117,"author_id":"Richard+L.+Ratliff"},{"text":"Times change and discoveries are made that render earlier techniques and approaches less effective. Change is inevitable. To remain rigid when the whole world is changing and advancing is to invite misfortune. The AA program in particular is challenged with an opportunity of unprecedented magnitude.","author":"Chris Prentiss","tags":["aa","addiction","addiction-cure","addiction-treatment","alcoholics-anonymous","challenge","change","chris-prentiss","opportunity","reading","writing"],"id":139723,"author_id":"Chris+Prentiss"},{"text":"The life of the Addict is always the same. There is no excitement, no glamour, no fun. There are no good times, there is no joy, there is no happiness. There is no future and no escape. There is only an obsession. An all-encompassing, fully enveloping, completely overwhelming obsession. To make light of it, brag about it, or revel in the mock glory of it is not in any way, shape or form related to its truth, and that is all that matters, the truth.","author":"James Frey","tags":["aa","addict","addiction","alcoholics-anonymous","alcoholism"],"id":164213,"author_id":"James+Frey"},{"text":"We create our own reality. The blessing (or problem) with this is that when one creates one's own reality, one must live it! Are you living a blessing or is it a curse?","author":"Gary R. Ryan","tags":["a-course-in-miracles","aa","art","art-work","creativity","punishment","spiritual"],"id":167938,"author_id":"Gary+R.+Ryan"},{"text":"1.\tWe admitted we were powerless over our emotions, that our lives had become unmanageable.2.\tCame to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.3.\tMade a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.4.\tMade a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.5.\tAdmitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.6.\tWere entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.7.\tHumbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.8.\tMade a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.9.\tMade direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.10.\tContinued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.11.\tSought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.12.\tHaving had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to emotionally and mentally ill persons and to practice these principles in all our affairs.","author":"Jerry Hirschfield","tags":["aa","addiction","awakening","enlightenment","freedom","higher-power","life","religion","spiritual-awakening","spirituality","twelve-steps"],"id":197795,"author_id":"Jerry+Hirschfield"},{"text":"By drinking, a boy acts like a man. After drinking, many a man acts like a boy.","author":"Mokokoma Mokhonoana","tags":["aa","act","acting","action","actor","actors","acts","addict","addiction","alcohol","alcoholic","alcoholics","alcoholics-anonymous","aphorism","aphorisms","bar","bars","beer","beers","boy","boys","cocktail","cocktails","drink","drinker","drinkers","drinking","drunk","drunken","girl","girls","hangover","humor","humour","immature","immaturity","made-me-think","make-you-think","man","mature","maturity","men","orgies","orgy","parties","party","provoke-thought","quotation","quotations","quote","quotes","satire","satirical","thought-provoking","underage","underage-drinking","woman","women"],"id":335594,"author_id":"Mokokoma+Mokhonoana"},{"text":"This is the point where the knowing, irony-infused author laughs along with his readers about his time among the aphorisms, how he was once so gullible and needy that he drank deeply of such weak and fruity Kool-Aid. That's some other book. Slogans saved my life. All of them--the dumb ones, the preachy ones, the imperatives, the cliches, the injunctives, the gooey, Godly ones, the shameless, witless ones.","author":"David Carr","tags":["aa","addiction","alcoholism","slogans"],"id":336199,"author_id":"David+Carr"},{"text":"The only way to truly help most drug addicts and most alcoholics is to—instead of them—change reality.","author":"Mokokoma Mokhonoana","tags":["aa","addict","addiction","addicts","alcohol","alcohol-free","alcoholic","alcoholics-anonymous","alcoholism","cannabis","change","depress","depressed","depression","drug","drug-addict","drug-addicts","drugs","escape","escapes","escapism","help","helped","helper","helpers","helping","kill","killed","killers","mind-altering","murder","murdering","reality","rehab","rehabilitation","rehabilitation-center","rehabilitation-centers","rehabilitation-centre","rehabilitation-centres","rehabilitations","rehabs","religion","self-murder","suicidal","suicide","take-one-s-own-life","took-one-s-own-life","weed"],"id":397892,"author_id":"Mokokoma+Mokhonoana"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":11,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}