Over the last 35 years I’ve worked with many alcoholics that wished from the bottom of their hearts that there was some sort of magic bullet that could get them to an easy and happy sobriety.

They want a quick fix (we alcoholics are so undisciplined).  They want a ready answer to the woes they are experiencing around getting and staying sober and a solution to the very real fear that they will not be able ever get to the point of being a recovered alcoholic – the kind of alcoholic that the title page of our Big Book says we can become.

For their sake I wish it could be so but alas, there’s no magic bullet to help you accomplish this.

Well, actually, there is, but it\’s a combination of things – starting and ending with developing a relationship with a Power greater than ourselves. Consistent hard work combined with a finely honed determination that we realize that it\’s either a spiritual life or an alcoholic death enabled many of us to arrive at the desired results.

I was sitting in my home group tonight and the chair of the meeting chose a few passages out of the Big Book and one out of the 12 & 12 to share on and they were all basically describing our magic bullet in A.A.: 1.) God 2.) Willingness and 3.) Consistency.

There were many great shares from folks tonight but one stood out to me. One of the men in my home group shared that he used to be fluent in German. He studied German all through school and then went to Germany to continue his studies because he believed that complete immersion in the language was what was going to help him learn. He went onto say that today, he can barely speak it at all because he no longer studies or practices the language. He also shared that when he came into A.A. 2.5 years ago, he sort of \”dabbled\” at our 12 Steps (my words not his) and as a result he went back out. Today, he said he feels that as a result of a complete change of heart and mind along with diligent study of our program of action, he feels he has become fluent in our language of the heart (again, my words not his).

I had to sit down and share this because I feel like consistency is the key to me studying anything and by sitting down and writing this out, it puts an exclamation point on the teachable moments from tonight\’s meeting.

Bill tells us over, and over, and over, and over in our book that God is the ONLY solution to our problem (and if you want a clear definition of what the problem REALLY is, read the top sentence on page 35 in More About Alcoholism (4th Edition) where it starts… \”So we shall describe…\”). He very clearly defines the problem for us and then just 10 pages later in the 2nd full paragraph tells us what the solution is to said problem. As we\’ve heard a million times, repetition strengthens and confirms.

So, if there is a magic bullet in A.A., it 100% starts with God mixed in with a fine dose of willingness and consistency. I\’ve known all of this for some time, but getting to hear it again in such beautiful ways at my home group tonight gave me that all important reminder I needed for THIS 24 hours.

In love & service,