The writing assignments and recordings available there.

Audio for Week 20 Feb 5, 2009
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Questions: How many times did you try to quit your addiction by using your own will power? Share about your experiences.

What is your will power good for now?

Audio for Week 19 Jan 29, 2009
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Writing assignment #2: Read Big Book page 30, Paragraph 3: We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. We know that no real alcoholic EVER recovers control. All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals-usually brief-were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incopprehensible demoralization.”
Can you identify and relate to this statement? Write about your experiences and trying to control your addiction, and write about any doubts you have about your powerlessness.

Words to look up:
vain
obsession
abnormal
illusion
concede
delusion
insanity
incoprehensible
demoralization
progressiveremedy
deception
inability

Question 1: Read Paragraph 2, Page 21. No other kind of bankruptcy
is like this one. Alcohol, now become the rapacious creditor, bleeds
us of all self-sufficiency and all will to resist its demands. Once
this stark fact is accepted, our bankruptcy as going human concerns
is complete. Write about your experience with this statement.

Question 2: Read Paragraph 1, Page 22. The tyrant alcohol wielded a
double-edged sword over us: first we were smitten by an insane urge
that condemned us to go on drinking, and then by an allergy of the
body that insured we would ultimately destroy ourselves in the
process. Write about your experience with this statement.

Audio for Week 18 Jan 22, 2009
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Audio for Week 17 Jan 15, 2009
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AA’s Twelve Steps are a group of principles, spiritual in their
nature, which, if practiced as a way of life, can expel the obsession
to drink and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole.

1. Take each of the twelve steps and in your own words, write out the
principle in each one.

2. How are you going to practice each principle in your life?

3. Do you believe that if you practice these principles in your life
that the obsession to drink will be expelled, and that you will
become happily and usefully whole?

1. I admit that I am powerless over ____

2. Life unmanageable ____

1. Page 14 ‘Simple, but not easy; a price had to be paid’

1. what’s simple –

2. what’s not easy.

3. what’s the price you have to pay.

2. “It means destruction of self-centeredness.”

1. What does this means to you, and what have been your experience.

Audio for Week 16 Jan 8, 2009
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Audio for Week 15 Dec 26, 2008
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1. page 12 Paragraph 5 “For a brief moment,…………… Take each sentence and write about your experience with what Bill is feeling and saying in his story.

2. Page 13 Paragraph 2 “There I humbly offered…………… Do the same thing as above. Write about your experience with what Bill did in surrendering to God in the detox. Can you identify?

Audio for Week 14 Dec 18, 2008
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Writing:
1.In twelve step recovery fellowships we must surrender to win (Step 1) What does this mean to you? What has been your experience with surrendering and winning? What has been your experience with not surrendering?

2. Write on: “Why don’t you choose your own conception of God?” What is your conception of God? Do you like having the choice of choosing your own conception?

Audio for Week 13 Dec 11, 2008
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1. How do you feel about having a personal relationship with God?

2. The 12 steps are moral code for living. To experience a spiritual recovery one must live this way of life in all their affairs, and not adopt those parts which seem inconvenient and too difficult. Am I willing to do the work to achieve this spiritual experience and live it daily to keep it?

Audio for Week 12 Dec 4, 2008
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Writing assignment:
We are on page 8 of Bill’s story “No words can tell of the loneliness and despair
I found in that bitter morass of self-pity. Quicksand stretched
around me in all directions. I had met my match. I had been
overwhelmed. Alcohol was my master.” Write on this paragraph. What
is your experience? When you read this, what feelings arise? Can you
relate to Bill’s description? Why is it necessary to relive this
bleak, hopeless, and miserable time in your life?

delirium tremens
prodigious
cocksureness
oblivion

questions
1. page 5 Paragraph #4: “I woke up. This had to be stopped. I saw I
could not take so much as one drink. I was through forever.
……..Shortly afterward I came home drunk. There had been no fight.
Where had been my high resolve? I simply didn’t know. It hadn’t even
come to mind. Can you relate to this? Dig deep into your past
experiences with your substance of “no choice”. Write as much as you
can remember, going into as much detail as you can remember. Keeping
in mind we are building our foundation for the rest of the steps on
our deep seeded belief that we are utterly and hopelessly powerless
over ___________(you fill in the blank).

2. page 6 paragraph #1: The remorse, horror and hopelessness of the
next morning are unforgettable. Take each of these feelings and again
dig deep into your core and relive these feelings you experienced
after a relapse. Step one is not a pleasant step, it is a step of
hopelessness. That is the only FIRM foundation that the other steps
can be built on, so if your feeling depressed, good, your getting the
true sense of what it is to not be able to move on to recovery.

Audio for Week 11 Nov 28, 2008
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Thursday night, Nov. 20th writing assignment:
words;
progression
maelstrom
alloy
lunacy
procured
remonstrances
deluded

Questions;
1. pg. 3 Bill’s Story Paragraph 1; “I made a host of fair-weather friends”. What is your experience with these types of friends while you were active in your addiction? While you were in early recovery? Now? Concentrate on what type of friend you were/are.

2. How has delusion of your addiction played a part in your life? How has it prevented you from doing the next right action?

Audio for Week 10 Nov 20, 2008
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writing assignment:
1. What constitutes “entire abstinence” for you and for your fellowship?

2. “I (Bill W) was very lonely and again turned to alcohol?” What did
you turn to when you were lonely? Explore how loneliness has
contributed to you picking up your addiction or addictions.

Audio for Week 9 Nov 13, 2008
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