Stools and Bottles - Daily Reminder

[bluidkiti]

Day 01 - Stools & Bottles

First Daily Reminder -
Let's be honest today. Let's face facts. Alcohol is a beverage for most people but a drug for alcoholics. Our uncontrolled use of this narcotic has made us sick in body, mind and spirit. We are powerless over it. It threatens our lives and sanity.
Daily Inventory -
How alcoholic are we? Do we drink sanely? Are we all through fighting booze? Have we really hit bottom? Will we accept AA?

Suggested Meditation -
As sick alcoholics, we should join AA. As members, we should recall daily that we are arresting an incurable illness. That we are sick -- not plain crazy. Our uncontrollable drinking has placed us in a very bad spot. To take it or leave it alone -- that is the question. Drinking alcoholics can do neither -- that is our problem. To live sanely, we must leave it alone -- that is a act. Without AA this is impossible. AA is the best solution to our drinking problem.

Spiritual Contact -
Our Father, give us an understanding of our illness. Strengthen our efforts to overcome it. Lead us in the paths of contented sobriety.

Daily Physical Audit -
AA is made up of the persons who are attempting to compensate for a lifetime of mistakes. That is the premise upon which our recovery program is based. Through study and honest endeavor, we arrest our mental and physical illness. The baffling part of alcoholism is our disregard for health. We depend too much upon curing the disease when we should be building up healthy bodies to prevent it.

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Day 02 - Stools & Bottles
Second Daily Reminder –

Sick — Desperate — Hopeless, we call upon AA. Help came. Not later, but that very day. That is how AA works, day by day. With yesterday as “water over the dam: our tomorrow can become a happy, sober one — if we willingly live the AA program today.

Daily Inventory –

Does false pride keep us from admitting our alcoholism? Shall we clean yesterday’s slate? Shall we start a new life in AA today?

Suggested Meditation –

The sad failures which plague our lives today are not the results of chance. They did not occur overnight. We earned them. They are our payoff for a thousand drunken yesterdays. But — they are not the end. We can rebuild new, happy sober lives upon their costly ruins. Twenty-four hour drinking has made us ill. Twenty-four hour AA living will make us well. Our drinking time has about run out. Perhaps we should start living the AA program today.

Spiritual Contact -

Our Father, direct our thinking. Teach us to make right decisions. Start us rebuilding our unstable lives day by day. Grant us the power to do this.

Daily Physical Audits –

Years of hard drinking have robbed us of body building nutrition, minerals and needed vitamins. It will take time to replace then. AA cannot do this. We must design our physical recovery around a systematic daily intake of nutritious, healthy building foods and regular periods of relaxation. Health is essential to our recovery — we should consider it each day.

[bluidkiti]

Day 03 - Stools & Bottles
Third Daily Reminder --
Before AA, alcoholics we faced with lives of untold suffering and despair. An awesome future compared with ours -- for we may choose between drinking and contented sobriety. Why we deserve the miracle of AA is a question too baffling to answer but most worthy of thought and appreciation.

Daily Inventory --
Is AA an inspired program? Are we deserving of it? Do we appreciate its health and life giving opportunities? Are we willing to work them?

Suggested Meditation --
Could God is His dealing with AA have said, "Show Me your willingness to live in sobriety and I will perform the miracle of contented sobriety in your lives. I will give you the book Alcoholics Anonymous. In it are the answers to all your alcoholic problems. You shall have a little wisdom and a little strength, and I will leave the foor to your recovery ajar. I believe in you. Do not let me down!"

Spiritual Contact --
Our Father, we realize that our recovery from alcoholism depends upon our physical and spiritual conditions. Help us to improve them daily.

Physical Audit --
The Big Book tells us to remember that compulsive drinking has damaged us physically--that our health us usually bad upon entering AA. It recommends "hospitalization for the alcoholic who is very jittery or befogged," to clear his mind so that he may comprehend the recovery program which AA offers him. Sponsors should endeavor to follow this policy whenever possible.

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Day 04 - Stools & Bottles
Fourth Daily Reminder --
Hopefully, yet doubtfully, we came to our first AA meeting. There we found understanding and sympathy but gained no peace of mind. Still riding in the driver's seat, we were full of anxiety over the future. We saw AA working for others, but our case seemed hopeless. How could it work for us?

Daily Inventory --
Can loneliness and self-pity prevent AA progress? How can we overcome them? Does anxiety indicate lack of faith? Will AA work for us?

Suggested Meditation --
Loneliness gives us a strong incentive to drink. AA kills it with friendship. It's up to us to cultivate AA friends. Anxiety blocks 12 Step living. It indicates a lack of faith in God and is a form of fear. We need moral courage to live AA -- to vacate the driver's seat and to kill self-pity and fear. It also takes courage to face another drunk. AA works if we choose the right kind of courage.

Spiritual Contact --
Our Father, we pray for faith and spiritual courage to face our problems. Grant us wisdom to know our weakness and strength to rebuild our lives.

Physical Audit --
Alcoholics suffer from dietary disturbances because they have received about one-third of their calories from alcohol which contains no proteins, vitamins or minerals. Rehabilitative life in AA affords us an opportunity to progressively replenish the deficiency with a daily, balanced diet adequate for our physical needs and well-being.

[bluidkiti]

Day 05 - Stools & Bottles
Fifth Daily Reminder --
Our book states that we either kill self-centeredness or that it will kill us; that we are "extreme examples of self-will run riot" -- would-be big shots, unable to run our own lives. This seems unbelievable and hard to admit yet we cannot recover until we do admit and fully believe it.

Daily Inventory --
How about self-centeredness? Will it ruin us? Do we live unstable lives? Is today the time to stop this "I" complex and start living in terms of "We"?

Suggested Meditation --
Self-centeredness opposed every spiritual principle. Alcoholics have always met defeat by defying these principles. By playing God, by drinking and bragging, "I did this - I did that - if it hadn't been for me," we rationalized in alcoholic bunk. We mistook insanity and slavery for power and freedom. AA will help us overcome this slavery. Our first step toward freedom, however, lies in freedom from self.

Spiritual Contact --
Our Father, forgive us our self-centeredness and the harm it has caused others. We pray for knowledge of Thy will for us. Thy will be done.

Daily Physical Audit --
Members often arrive in AA on the verge of delirium and physical exhaustion. They need hospitalization, rest, medical care and physical rebuilding by intravenous and normal feeding.

We should not forget that a narcotic as powerful as alcohol has damaged our bodies. Nature needs our help and cooperation to overcome this damage. We slow up our recovery when we ignore this fact.

[bluidkiti]

Day 06 - Stools & Bottles
Sixth Daily Reminder --
Confused and weakened by compulsive drinking, we vaguely expected AA to cure us overnight. We learned that alcoholism cannot ve cured but can be arrested. We found that contented sobriety comes from the new daily habits which we form in seconds, minutes and hours of simple AA living.

Daily Inventory --
Why is a personality change necessary to our recovery? Can we recover from alcoholism overnight? We study of our AA books improve our thinking?

Suggested Meditation --
Success in AA is in proportion to the 12 Step habits which we form and practice. Alcoholic thinking keeps us in rebellion and slavery. Dishonesty and reservations precede failure. Fear of a life without alcohol is an unconscious desire to control drinking. Our freedom lies in admitting these facts and in surrendering our defects to "God as we understand Him." Our understanding starts with surrender.

Spiritual Contact --
Our Father, open our minds to AA truths. Release from our old habits and fill us with a desire to recreate new AA spiritual habits.

Daily Physical Audit --
Good physical health should not be overlooked as a requisite of alcoholic rehabilitation. Because an AA member is well enough to be out of bed does not imply that he is strong and vigorous or free from signs of disease. Too many of our fellowship become the victims of untimely death because they refuse to repair their damaged bodies and continue to draw upon their limited energy which alcoholic excesses have so nearly depleted.

[bluidkiti]

Day 07 - Stools & Bottles

Seventh Daily Reminder --
We cannot overemphasize the importance of admitting "our powerlessness over alcohol" or that "our lives had become unmanageable" because of our addiction to it. Lasting sobriety demands this admission. We should attribute our illness to alcoholism (a disease), rather than to lack of will power.

Daily Inventory --
Why must we admit our alcoholism? Is this an alibi for drinking? If we must stay sober in AA, why can't we do so through willpower?

Suggested Meditation --
AA starts working the moment we admit our alcoholism and ask for help to treat it. Admitting out need for help energizes the powerful forces of honesty and humility within us. They are the rudiments of recovery. Alcoholism is a disease which sickens our bodies and minds. We should ask God to heal our spiritual illness. We treat our bodies with medical care -- not with will power.

Spiritual Contact --
Our Father, we admit our alcoholism. Help us to recover from it. We wish to co-operate. Teach us how to rebuild our lives -- physically and spiritually.

Daily Physical Audit --
Probably all AA members should examined by a competent doctor to determine their liver conditions. Many have fatty livers and some have mild cirrhosis of the liver. The majority are free from this disease. We should know about our condition, however, and receive medical care when it is needed. Caught early enough, these diseases can be successfully treated.

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Day 8 - Stools & Bottles

Eighth Daily Reminder --
Surely, there is insanity in alcoholism -- not only in the first drink but in the endless drunks which followed. Having failed to stop drinking under our own power, we have reached the end of human resources. AA suggests that we surrender our insane behavior to the care of a Higher Power.

Daily Inventory --
Is there mental illness in our alcoholism? Are we helpless against it? How can we overcome it? Must our help come from a Higher Power?

Suggested Meditation --
As we weigh the insanity of alcoholism, we must face the fact that no matter how honest our resolve or how sane our plan -- we always managed to get plastered. Few persons equaled us in stupidity or self-deception. We alibied our mistakes but refused to profit from them. Filled with liquor and distorted ideas, we lacked the sanity of self-preservation which only God can give to a drinking alcoholic.

Spiritual Contact --
Our Father, make us realize the insanity of our drinking behavior. Give us faith in Your Power to restore in us the instinct of self-preservation.

Daily Physical Audit --
AA tells us that we are sick in body and mind, saying, "in our belief ... any picture which leaves out this physical factor is incomplete." Health aids sobriety. Let's not neglect it. Sensible precaution may save us the unhappy experience of a relapse. It may uncover the presence of disease in time for preventive care.

[MajestyJo]

Another one of the books I had, but passed it on and/or loaned it and didn't get it back.

I wish I had a scanner because I have a lot of material to share but not able to type it out like I use to.

The title reminds me of how many I would say that I had one or two, but didn't distinguish between drinks or bottles.

[bluidkiti]

Day 9 Stools & Bottles

Ninth Daily Reminder -

Reservation, doubt and fear assail the minds of newcomers and impede their recovery in AA. Salesmen doubt their ability to sell without the aid of alcohol. Some fear that their identity will be disclosed. Others wonder how to avoid bars and drinking friends or what alibi to offer for their sobriety.

Daily Inventory -

Can we hold reservations and live the 12 Steps? Is fear a sign of future failure? Do we avoid drinking friends? How does AA answer these questions?

Suggested Meditation -

The book Alcoholics Anonymous holds the answers to all of our recovery problems. From it we learn that distrust and fear are dangerous mental attitudes for alcoholics to hold. It suggests that our security and sobriety will come from faith in God and practice of the 12 Steps. It explains our future conduct with drinking friends and the reason we give them for our abstinence. See your Big Book.

Spiritual Contact -

Our Father, replace our reservations and fear with faith, courage and AA understanding. Inspire us with an honest desire to succeed in AA.

Daily Physical Audit -

After varying periods of sobriety we often complain of physical fatigue, vague pain, arthritis, gastric disturbances and insomnia. We contribute them to the sober lives we are leading and reach for a box of pills or some patented elixir. There are better antidotes for health. Perhaps we should lower our daily cigarette and coffee consumptions, stop living on coffee and dessert and try sleeping eight hours every night.

[bluidkiti]

Day 10 - Stools & Bottles

Tenth Daily Reminder -

A "water over the dam" policy of dealing with our past drinking behavior is the only basis upon which we can rehabilitate ourselves. By living AA we learn how our drinking has affected the lives of others. We feel remorseful, but that does not repay the injury done. AA suggests that we amend it.

Daily Inventory -

Are we trying to rehabilitate our lives? Have we a list of the people whom we have harmed? Are we willing to make proper amends to them?

Suggested Meditation -

Yes, we are trying to rebuild our lives to conform with 12 Step principles and to live in contented sobriety, but not at the expense of others. Live and let live -- that is our motto. The water over the dam is forgotten, but not the injury done. We need forgiveness to recover from our illness. To accept it without return defies all spiritual law and threatens our sobriety. Amends are good for our conscience.

Spiritual Contact -

Our Father, forgive us the harm we have done to others. May we become forgiving. Fortify our minds with willingness to make proper amends.

Daily Physical Audit -

From medical science we learn that the main causes of death are related to our blood and its circulation. Heart trouble ranks high under this category. Alcoholics are not exceptions to the rule. Many members die needlessly because they ignore the warning symptoms of heart trouble and treat it too late. Pain and numbness in the arms, fatigue, labored breathing after mild exercise, heartburn and water in the tissues are symptoms our doctors should diagnose.

[bluidkiti]

Day 11 – Stools and Bottles

Eleventh Daily Reminder –

We have often wished for help and peace of mind during the throes of our hangovers. We have prayed for help but seldom prayed for permanent sobriety. We wanted alcohol’s narcotic effects without its penalties. But our prayers always failed. Some barrier seemed to separate us from contented sobriety.

Daily Inventory –

What was this barrier? Were we unconsciously praying for some form of controlled drinking? Is an inventory in order? Must we list our defects?

Suggested Meditation –

AA forces no ?musts” upon us anymore than drinking would force a drink down our throats. Alcoholics do as they please, either in or outside of AA — that’s why we are here. “Musts” are voluntary. Wise members, recalling the torture of their drinking days, list their character defects. Those awful hangovers were not just nightmares. They can recur. An honest inventory might prevent them.

Spiritual Contact –

Our Father, keep us open-minded and ready to earn the greatest help possible from living the 12 Steps. Help up to write an honest inventory.

Daily Physical Audit –

Thousands of people who have heart trouble live long and productive lives by calmly admitting their illness and cooperating with their doctors in treating it. The great hope for prolonged life among those affected with heart disease is to live within the functional limits of the weakened organ. The chief prescription is rest. Things to avoid are fatigue, overeating, infection, obesity and emotional upsets.

[bluidkiti]

Day 12 - Stools & Bottles

Twelfth Daily Reminder -

"Made a decision." How easy it is to partly fulfill each of the 12 Steps. But how hard to decide that we are sick enough to "turn our will and our lives over to the care of God." How hard to seek our understanding of God's Will. How easy it is to mistake half-hearted lip service for decision and surrender.

Daily Inventory -

Are we in AA for the ride? Have we decided that we need God's help to live soberly? Are we sincere about it or are we just giving lip service?

Suggested Meditation -

There is no middle of the road course for a drinking alcoholic -- he is either wet or dry. AA represents a similar case in the 12 Steps vs. John Barleycorn. Since we cannot drink and live, our choice will be AA. With our lives at stake, we can ill afford to depend upon lip service for protection. Recovery from alcoholism, is a serious matter for us. We need both the 12 Steps and God's help to recover.

Spiritual Contact -

Our Father, deliver us this day from defiance, doubt and indecision. Teach us the value of obedience. Stabilize our thinking according to our need.

Daily Physical Audit -

Nam is a creature of many habits. Alcoholics have formed bad eating and drinking habits which are not conductive to good health. Some of us become overweight from taking more food than our bodies can assimilate. This throws an extra burden on the heart which increases our blood pressure and shortens our lives. We should watch our diet to guard against coronary disease, apoplexy and other ills associated with overweight.

[bluidkiti]

Day 13 - Stools & Bottles

Thirteenth Daily Reminder -

The virtues of anonymity are many and far reaching for our older members. For the newcomer anonymity has a special meaning. Its strong appeal is secrecy. A hideout in which to recover without publicity or blame. Anonymity is our privilege to use but also our obligation to protect.

Daily Inventory -

Have we realized the true value of anonymity? What are some of its spiritual values? Is it our obligation to protect the identity of other members?

Suggested Meditation -

Anonymity is vital to an AA group. Helping another person anonymously is a spiritual act -- the very lifeblood of AA. There should be no breach of anonymity. Secrecy is a part of alcoholic thinking. We tried to conceal our drinking and told lies about hangovers. Nobody could believe them. Anonymity did not work for drinking, but it does work for our recovery. It lets us work with others, also.

Spiritual Contact -

Our Father, we thank You for AA. Help us to live its program, to understand its principles and to learn the spiritual values of anonymity.

Daily Physical Audit -

There is nothing anonymous about a member's poor physical health. It can be detected by his fuzzy thinking, his lack of enthusiasm, the sweaty palms of his hands and his inaptitude toward normal daily recovery. Poor physical health causes nervousness and irritability at meetings. It leads to intolerant and resentful thinking. It can get us drunk. Members are not blamed for being ill, but they owe it to ourselves to get well.

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Day 14 - Stools & Bottles

Fourteen Daily Reminder -

Many of us have stumbled over the term spiritual awakening. By confusing AA with organized religion, we have encountered trouble with the spiritual angle. By trying to define God and to interpret AA according to religious creeds, we have experienced frustration and ineffectual AA living.

Daily Inventory -

Are the objectives of AA and organized religion the same? Is our objective to save souls? Are there signs which identify a spiritual awakening?

Suggested Meditation -

AA offers a 24-hour program borrowed from medicine, religion and psychology by which we arrest alcoholism, an incurable illness. It utilizes physical, mental and spiritual help to maintain 24-hour periods of contented sobriety. It suggests a daily contact with God as we understand Him. AA is not a religion. We see in honesty, sobriety, forgiveness, amends and love signs of a spiritual awakening.

Spiritual Contact -

Our Father, we recognize the latent spiritual power within us and ask Your help to develop it. Awaken us to our spiritual possibilities.

Daily Physical Audit -

There is no written tests to pass in AA. How we recover is a matter of our own choice. We may either sink or swim. But swimming requires good physical health. So does satisfactory recovery from alcoholism. We ought to recognize this fact and live to improve the quality of our health and thus enjoy life to its full capacity. AA members are most effective when in good physical condition.