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One Day at a Time in Al-Anon:

During the dreadful drinking days, the anxiety over what was happening in our family was certainly the most important thing in the world to us. How could it be otherwise? We were living with it, saddled with it. We knew there was a world outside, where people lived in some degree of order and peace, but if we thought about it at all, it was with only a passing pang of envy. We were swamped, drowned, in troubles that left no room for thinking of anything else.

In Al-Anon we discover there is a way out of the most hopeless-seeming situation. We find friends to give us help and to give encouragement; we find opportunity to help others. And so, slowly, we climb out of the pit in which we thought we were buried.

Today’s Reminder:

When it suddenly dawns on us that Al-Anon has something we can use, we leap from hopelessness to hope and confidence. We give up despair, we catch a glimpse of hope — and then we know. It is up to us to make it work in our lives.

“Let me realize that the Al-Anon program is not a magic potion that will instantly cure all my ills, but a pattern of living that will serve me to exactly the degree that I work at it.”

From the book “One Day at a Time in Al-Anon”. © Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc. 1973