Coincidences...

are, we say in the rooms, God's way of maintaining anonymity. So, I think it is really no coincidence that the daily reading in Just For Today today is about relapse and the fact that I've had red wine on my mind for several days now.

I've found myself hallucinating about red wine ever since I mentioned it to one of my patients as an example of how recovering people can get blasts of stinking thinking even after years of recovery. I told him that occasionally I will get thoughts that I can drink red wine, with meals, toasts to good fortune, and to chill out after a hard day's work. These are fleeting thoughts, but nonetheless powerful indicators that the disease of addiction lingers within me and can spring out in any number of ways.

"I never got arrested for drinking red wine" I say to myself, or "I never had a problem with black outs or vomiting my guts out or hangovers or any other of a number of things that I experienced with other drugs." So, I sometimes wonder, "What's the big deal?"

Well, there is a big deal. I forget sometimes - unless I play the tape in my head through to the bitter end - that I never had just one glass of red wine with a steak dinner. No, I had a bottle or more. In addition, I forget that I never really bought just one bottle of red wine toward the end of my drinking career, but I used to buy cases of a brand of red wine that I had shipped in from overseas. Moreover, drinking red wine always led to using other drugs. Like they say in the rooms, I did not always drink red wine when I used other drugs, but whenever I drank red wine I always used other drugs. THIS is the big deal.

Even though it has been many years now since my last glass of any alcohol I am vulnerable to the thought that red wine can take me out in an instant. One of the areas that will suffer the most is my spiritual health. As today's reading says, "the spiritual death that we experience when we are separated from our Higher Power" is the big cost to giving in to these hallucinations about drinking.

Today, that is a price I am unwilling to play. Whenever I get these thoughts, I pray, not so much for them to go away, as with the idea behind Step 11 that asks me to only pray for "knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out." When I seek knowledge of my Higher Power's will for me it becomes clear: I cannot drink red wine safely. Then, once armed with the truth, I get the power to carry out that will. Frankly, this is the only thing that keeps me away from red wine and I am eternally grateful for the ability to push myself away from that table.

All the best, Roger