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IF ANYTHING CAN MAKE YOU SMOKE...
Then, anything can make you smoke! (Warning: Spiritual content included-controversy possible)
My dear old AA sponsor “Darby Jack” died from smoking with over 40 years of sobriety. More alcoholics die from smoking than from alcohol. It’s simply the more efficient killer. We talked for hours each week about the tools needed to stay away from that FIRST drink. Sadly, while we were busy not drinking, nicotine was sneaking up from behind us with a fire ax. This amazing man taught thousands of us how to stay sober, and he was taken from us by lung cancer.
Everything he said, and all of his tools would have worked just as good to keep him off sickarettes, as they did to keep him sober. But we just weren’t thinking that way at the time. He always told me that if he lost his sobriety, it probably wouldn’t be for one of the BIG things that happen to all of us. We had trained for that. He said it would probably be something really stupid. He said, “One day, I just might break a shoelace, and that would be all it takes”. And he knew that once he took that FIRST drink, no matter how long it had been since his last one, that it would be “off to the races”.
He was a long time Catholic and I hadn’t been to church in decades. In hindsight I guess I was more of an agnostic, but I thought of myself as an atheist. That didn’t bother Darby Jack. He always stressed the spiritual aspect. But he never tried to sell me his brand of religion. He stressed the importance of asking for help. And of having our own conception of a Higher Power.
He had to teach me how to pray. Very early in my sobriety, we knelt at the foot of his bed one day, under a famous early AA painting called “The Man In The Bed” and asked for help from a Higher Power I had no knowledge of. It was a very emotional experience. I guess it must have worked. That was 20 years ago and I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol since. Then as the day began”, he said, “We say, thank you God for this sober day. Please help me, an alcoholic, to stay away from that FIRST drink, just for today.” And as the day ended, “Out of common courtesy” he said, we say “Thank you”. I use those two prayers to this day. I guess we should have added sickarettes to our prayer. They were killing both of us (me with colon cancer and him with lung cancer) but we didn’t know it at that time.
My prayers seemed to work just as good as Darby Jack’s even though the only time I have been to church, as an adult, was to attend his funeral. I’m not against church, but I get to spend most of my life skiing and recreating in some of God’s most magnificent natural cathedrals. I always say “I’d rather be out skiing and thinking about God, than sitting in church, thinking about skiing.” I’m not saying that’s what anyone else should do, it’s just what I do.
My experience has been that one doesn’t have to have religion, or a certain brand of God, to ask for and receive help from the Universe. It is not necessary that your God have a particular name, or associated dogma, to save you from the horror of addiction. All Higher Powers seem to work. I don’t understand it one bit, yet I have received tremendous benefits and haven’t had to drink since 11/21/1998 or smoke since 2/28/2001.
If you haven’t been able to make it here, without help, you might consider a humble request for help. You don’t have to understand how it works. You don’t have to name it. You don’t have to be able to see it. I can’t see magnetism, but I believe that it works. I can’t see gravity, but here we all are, hanging upside down on a spinning planet. I don’t have to understand my entire car engine to turn the key, and take off in my car.
It just might save your life, as it has mine.
About the painting: Bill Dotson, the "Man On The Bed," was AA number 3. At his death, he had not had a drink in more than nineteen years. His date of sobriety was the date he entered Akron's City Hospital for his last detox, June 26, 1935. Two days later occurred that fateful day when two sober alcoholics visited him: Dr. Bob Smith of Akron, Ohio, and Bill Wilson, a guest of Dr. Bob's from New York. Your friend in Montana
Troutnut1-dennis
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