"We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes!" ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, Into Action, pg. 84~

The reason I call this “The Miracle” is the difference in our attitude (Old to new). This has to be a miracle because the way I see it, the old attitude was a hopeless state of mind. Alcohol ruled our lives and in most cases it was thing main thing that we focused our attention on.

By following the rules of the program laid out as it is in the Big Book that change happened pretty quick too. We went from being drawn towards alcohol, to recoiling from alcohol in a blink, once we became willing to buy into the things we had to do in following the program.

So what is it that we attributed this miracle to? Is it the fact that we all of a sudden decided to quit? No! Is it because we made a decision to attend A.A. meetings? No! Is it because we started reading the Big Book? No! It’s is because we became willing to start to follow direction, with God being the focal point. GOD (Good, Orderly, Direction)!

I hear a lot of people say “Meetings and the people in them are the reason I can stay sober”. Meetings and the people who are attending them are important as far as an atmosphere that is conducive with staying sober, but that is not the way we stay sober. The way we stay sober is by working the steps of A.A. as they are laid out in the Big Book (Located in “How It Works”).

Those steps are up on the wall of most meetings, but they only represent words to most that look at them. They will never keep us sober unless we understand what they represent. The only place that the representations of these words are located is in the Big Book. It is by reading about the program and understanding what it says that brings light to the words in the steps.

If one buys into what those words represent they WILL be changed! They WILL  experience an entire psychic change! They WILL come to understand a God! It is by coming to this understanding that the miracle happens.

We go from acting insane and out of normalcy, to acting sane and normal automatically. We do this without realizing that it happened. It just comes! That is the how and why it. But do these things come by understanding only the words?

No! It is by performing rigorous action. It’s by coming clean with one’s self. It is by accepting that the self is no longer important. It is by performing God’s will for us. It is by sharing those virtues with one another. We all of a sudden realize that a change has happened. This is something that cannot be explained any other way than miraculous. Only because those of us that came into this program were beyond hope.

There was nothing anyone of us could do for ourselves, nor could anyone else do very much for us. Yet just by simply making a few simple changes in the way we thought about things, alcohol no longer was important to us.

Can we contribute this miracle to God? I can certainly think of no other reason other than God did for us, what we could not do for ourselves. We went from being sick both mentally and physically, to being able to function in a relatively normal way. Just by coming to believe that there actually was a Power greater than ourselves. We did that and the miracle happened. It just came!     

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