Category Archives: AA

37 Ideas to Help You Stay Sober During the Holidays (part 2)

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For tips 1-20, see 37 Tips to Help You Stay Sober During the Holidays (part 1).

Sober Holidays Tip #21 Bring your own beverage.  If a holiday celebration includes the use of alcoholic beverages (such as wine at Passover), make sure in advance that there are substitutes (such as grape juice) for you and anyone else who doesn’t want to drink the harder stuff.

Sober Holidays Tip #22  Stay sober at the party: Don’t go it alone.IMG_1664 Bring along an AA buddy or a hired sober companion. Or take someone at the party into your confidence (the host, a friend, even a waiter); candor will serve you better than pride, embarrassment, or guilt. Tell them that you can’t drink, and enlist them as bodyguard. It will make the event easier for you, and will keep you from winding up in a relapse. If you can’t take someone with you, … Read more...

My Recovery | Carla: Transgender and Alcoholic

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Before she became Carla, she was Carl. Being transgender was private and not something she ever felt comfortable opening up about at meetings, but her sponsors always told her: “It’s no big deal.  In AA we don’t judge. You are one of us.” Says Carla,“They were right. AA became my best support system. Not only for my recovery. For my gender change, too.”

I had my first drink at 12 and at 14 was drinking most weekends. I goofed around in high school, took minimum credits the first half of college and spent the rest of my time partying. Halfway through college, as my girlfriend was breaking up with me she declared, “You’re going nowhere!” Resentment worked. I’d show her and I did.

For the next two college years, I only drank on weekends, and in law school limited myself to one weekend a month and graduated with honors. I … Read more...

Recovery Zone ReCheck – New in The Recovery Book

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The Recovery Zone ReCheck is a simple relapse prevention plan.

In every Recovery Zone, at all times, you will be at some risk of relapse, often when you least expect it. The Recovery Zone ReCheck helps you avoid relapses by regularly taking stock of your life.

Once a month or so, use the three Recovery Zone ReCheck questions to assess your life. They will help you see when changes are coming up—relationships, work, health, medication and so on—that could trigger a relapse. These changes can be almost anything: dental procedure, divorce, getting a raise, having a baby, moving to a new town.

When you spot such road blocks, you move back a Zone or two, brush up on the guidelines of that Zone, re-commit to sobriety, and re-focus on recovery. See pages 18-21 in The Recovery Book for all the details.

The Recovery Book