Remaining Diligent in Recovery

“Of course all A.A.'s, even the best, fall far short of such achievements as a consistent thing. Without necessarily taking that first drink, we often get quite far off the beam. Our troubles sometimes begin with indifference. We are sober and happy in our A.A. work. Things go well at home and office. We naturally congratulate ourselves on what later proves to be a far too easy and superficial point of view. We temporarily cease to grow because we feel satisfied that there is no need for all of A.A.'s Twelve Steps for us. We are doing fine on a few of them. Maybe we are doing fine on only two of them, the First Step and that part of the Twelfth where we "carry the message." In A.A. slang, that blissful state is known as "two-stepping." And it can go on for years. The best-intentioned of us can fall for the "two-step" illusion. Sooner or later the pink cloud stage wears off and things go disappointingly dull. We begin to think that A.A. doesn't pay off after all. We become puzzled and discouraged.  Then perhaps life, as it has a way of doing, suddenly hands us a great big lump that we can't begin to swallow, let alone digest. We fail to get a worked-for promotion. We lose that good job. Maybe there are serious domestic or romantic difficulties, or perhaps that boy we thought God was looking after becomes a military casualty.”- From the chapter on Step Twelve from the AA Twelve and Twelve

When we first receive alcohol rehab  through going to a drug addiction detox, AA, or Above It All Treatment Center many of us have the desperation needed to do the work in order to stay sober. As time goes by, we begin to feel better and get wonderful, busy lives as a result of the hard work we have done in recovery. We start to rest on our laurels sometimes without even being aware of it. While many of us can skate by for a little bit on service work, the fact is that it usually catches up to us and at some point we end up feeling like our world is crashing down around us, and we end up robbing ourselves of the gifts that come from having emotional sobriety. It is up to us to realize we get out what we put in and to remain diligent in our recovery process.