Category Archives: 12-step Program

Jerusalem AA/NA

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The Wailing Wall

The Wailing Wall

After traveling for about 2 weeks and attending only 2 meetings, my husband and I were both ready for another boost to our emotional health. In Jerusalem, the online meeting list included one or two English speaking AA meetings every day and only a few English speaking NA meetings each week.

Wanting to attend a meeting to get spiritually fit and centered, we planned our evening around the 6 PM AA.  At 25 and 29 years of recovery, it is not likely that either of us will drink or use, but that is not all of what recovery offers us. There have been very few weeks in a total of more than half a century of recovery when each of us has not attended one or more meetings. (More on travel to Indonesia and other meeting-less places later. Hint: take a book and have your own.) Continue reading →

Tel Aviv, Israel!

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When my husband and I began making plans to visit Israel, about 2 months before the trip, one of the first things I did was look online for AA and NA meetings. No matter what other exciting aspects of the trip we were planning, I knew that getting to meetings would add another dimension.

Having been in recovery for many years, the principles and the connections in recovery are very important to my everyday life. By maintaining both, finding ways to remind myself of some of the basics, as well as stay connected, I not only don’t consider drinking or drugging, but I maintain my spiritual fitness. Continue reading →

Recovery Step 12

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Having Had a Spiritual Awakening 

“Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”

Spiritual awakening? What’s that? You know when you have had one, whether sudden, like a lightening bolt (hit’s forehead and says, ” I coulda’ had a V-8″, thinking, “why did this take me so long?”) or a gradual and subtle infusion of a sense of…connectedness. I am reminded of the cute little saying, “Life is what happens while you are making plans.” Similarly, a spiritual awakening is what happens while you are working the steps. We focus on working hard at the step in front of us, working them in order, struggling to “get a God”, making ourselves write out an inventory and look at resentments, gritting our teeth and looking at our part in these old and new struggles. Then we move on, with the help of a sponsor, someone who has worked the steps and had a serious and positive change in his or her life. We look more at ourselves, at traits we want to remove; we ask for God’s help in hitting “delete” on some of the stuff in our personality and behavior we find objectionable. Continue reading →

Recovery Step 11

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Improve Our Conscious Contact With God

“We sought 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 it out.”

We come into recovery with one of three positions on God.

  1. A belief that God exists, is good and can work positively in our lives.
  2. A lack of belief, or a belief that God does not exist or that we don’t know and don’t care.
  3. A belief that God exists and is not good or caring. We confuse God with Religion and may have been harmed in the name of Religion. We reject the concept that we can have a working relationship with a God who loves and cares for us. Continue reading →

Recovery Step 10

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Continuing Personal Inventory

We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

Pg 84 in the AA Big Book says, “This thought brings us to Step Ten.” What thought? The thought that the promises of recovery will ALWAYS materialize IF we work for them.

I have often said, to my patients as well as in my writings, there are two parts of recovery that require our attention:

  1. getting clean.
  2. staying clean.

Anyone can get clean; staying clean is another matter. Continue reading →