The Barflies Message Board

Welcome to the Barflies Group Message Board. We encourage all alcoholics to share their experience, strength and hope in a way that is conducive to AA’s primary purpose, which is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety.

PLEASE NOTICE: the Barflies Group maintains the right to block disruptive users and delete posts/replies that do not support our primary purpose as stated above or that we deem harmful to alcoholics. We truly want this board to be yet one more way for alcoholics to help one another, and we want it to be a safe place to go, should the need arise. With that said, we will do all we possibly can to maintain the integrity of the board.

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The "Brand New" newcomer - posted by Pile of Coathangers at 05/14 09:42AM I was sitting in a meeting last night and the topic was the 4th and 5th steps. After a number of people had shared about their experiences with it a newcomer spoke up. She was excited about the whole idea of the soul cleansing and was looking forward to the opportunity. When I first came to meetings it was inspiring to hear everyone talk about how wonderful their lives had turned out after working the steps. I thought to my self that I can do this! Little did I know that a great amount of effort, work and pain, had to occur before those wonderful promises began to occur. I can remember hearing that the 12 promises would begin to occur after the 9th step and my immediate response was WTF!!!! I felt like just showing up for the meetings was plenty of effort and that I should be rewarded, lol. Since then I have been in and out of the program picking up bits and pieces each time seemingly learning more and more, but never putting it all together. This time around things can feel pretty ominous, but I believe that my HP is putting things in order for me today when I let him guide me. Things seem to change gradually for me. I realize today that to enjoy the benefits and rewards of recovery I have to live a spiritual life and there are no guarantees.

POST REPLY: Please submit your experience, strength and/or hope as it relates to the program of AA below.

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While we hope that all our guests share their experience as it relates to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, we remind everyone that the contents of these message strings are strictly personal opinions of the authors. When in doubt about the nature of statements made please consult the Big Book and other AA reference materials... our motto: "If its not in the book, it doesn't count." Thank you all for sharing.