Just For Today

In the early stages of sobriety, and throughout life, there are bound to be challenges to your sobriety. As time goes on and you learn how to properly deal with the challenges that life throws at you, those temptations become weaker and have less and less power to threaten your mental health, happiness and sober living. Eventually you should be able to get to the point where no matter what life throws at you, you can say, Is that all you've got?

This episode is about living Step 11 from the Alcoholics Anonymous Twelve Steps which is about about continuing to improve our conscious contact with a higher power. It's not about asking for what we want, but about being willing to want what's right for us. AA is a fellowship of people who work together towards sobriety while accepting that our lives is better off in God's control than our own. This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

This episode is a talk about living Step 12 from the Alcoholics Anonymous Twelve Steps which is about paying forward the help givin by other members of AA while a member is in the early stages of recover and beyond. AA Is a fellowship of people who work together towards sobriety.

Bob and Dan continue to discuss a wide range of topics. They talk about helping other alcoholics who have recently reached their rock bottom and how the first few AA meetings tend to be uncomfortable to people and are met with some denial. Also, they discuss how the fellowship of AA works to get people sober and help them stay that way. The movie Groundhog Day comes up as fable of which the moral is each day is a chance to change.

An excellent interview for this episode of Just For Today. Today Dan talks to Bob J., a Southerner who has been transplanted to Boston. In his upbringing Bob was exposed to a drinking, pot smoking culture which enticed him to join in the fun. Into adulthood Bob realized alcoholism was not fun at all. Bob has been sober for seven years and began his recovery midlife. Bob and Dan discuss a wide range of topics such as pride and asking for help, getting to meetings, losing and keeping jobs, gratitude, bouncing back, and enjoying life again.

Not paying attention to the physical and emotional messages that your body is sending you can put you into a general feeling of neediness. Next time you feel that way ask yourself if you're hungry, angry, lonely, or tired and deal with the issue appropriately and take care of it. Don't let a little hunger, anger, loneliness or tiredness take away your sobriety.

In Part Two of Dan's interview with Monica R., the other side of the coin comes up - trust, letting go, and letting a higher power manage life. These are the things that enable you to remain sober day to day - by trusting that life is good and can work without alcohol, and letting go of the fears that keep us in the bottle.

The first part of Dan's interview with Monica covers guilt, forgiveness, pride, self-righteousness and other personality shortcomings that can keep you locked into cycles of addiction and how following the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous can break these cycles. Monica has been sober for 15 months as of this interview.

The truth shall set you free, as they say. Today Dan talks about denial and how it can keep an alcoholic from recovering and healing. Drawing once again from his own life experiences, Dan shows how being in a state of denial about some problem in your life will slowly lead to nothing but trouble and take away your sobriety.

The subject of Episode 37 is the first month of sobriety. Dan talks about what recovering alcoholics can expect in the early days of sobriety in terms of health, lifestyle, state of mind, etc. as well as what to expect from AA meetings at the beginning. The show finishes up with a list of listener milestones. We'd like to mention your milestone online and maybe interview you for the show. Please visit us online at aajustfortoday.org for more information on how you can be on the show.

Today Dan talks to eight-year AA veteral Suzzane R. Originally a child of an alcoholic Suzzane had early exposure to AA with ten years of Alanon experience. She talks about her early drinking days in school including playing in a rock band and going to keg parties from the age of 16 to 20 even getting to the point of taking a quick drink before school each day. Later in life she went through the usual issues such as losing jobs and a broken engagement. Suzzane stopped drinking eight years ago at the age of 31.

This is the last in series of interviews with AA historian Dick B. Having suffered from depression well into the fifties, Dick says that Bill Wilson began to venture into the worlds of spiritualism and psychedelic drug use including LSD. As Dick's story winds up, Doctor Bob agrees to the incorporation of the 12 Traditions into the fabric of Alcoholics Anonymous for among other reasons to assure the ongoing work of AA after Bill and Bob were gone. Dick talks more about the original tenets of the Oxford Group and the Akron group and how they have evolved though various revisions to become what AA is today and he talks about his feeling that the Biblical roots of AA have been watered down to appeal to a larger audience. DICK B. BOOKS. (index.php?option=com_content task=view id=49 Itemid=)

Anita S. is interviewed in this segment of AA Just For Today. She discusses with Dan her drinking problems as a young adult in college, suicide attempts, and a marriage, and then her sixteen years of sobriety. She and Dan talk at length about how surrender to a higher power is necessary not only at the beginning of the road to sobriety, but along the way as well. Anita also talks about how when you are ready for a teacher, the teacher appears, meaning that until you are ready to surrender to solutions outside of yourself, you cannot see those solutions even though they may be right in front of your face.

A disappointing first release of the Big Book and religious differences are shaping the future of AA and other programs at the turn of the decade in 1939. At that time a man named Clarence Snyder comes into the picture, solidifies the various camps somewhat and achieves a period of strong growth for Alcoholics Anonymous. Even still, Dick says, Bill W. spends the next decade in depression. Dick also mentions The Four Absolutes, early developed principles of AA. (Please note that Dick has broken his lecture into 5 Parts. These parts do not correspond to our show titles.) DICK B. BOOKS. (index.php?option=com_content task=view id=49 Itemid=)

Dick B. gets into the turbulent times that surrounded the formation of AA in the late thirties with tales of Nazis, communism, the Bible, the draft, Rockefeller, and the Salvation Army. He also lays out a fascinating seven point synopsis of the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous penned at that time by Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson, et al. Dick also draws connections between Bill's incorporation of AA, the evolution of the Big Book, and the omitting of the religious rituals used by other groups. (Please note that Dick has broken his lecture into 5 Parts. These parts do not correspond to our show titles.) DICK B. BOOKS. (index.php?option=com_content task=view id=49 Itemid=)