GETTING OUT OF THE IF TRAP
Emotional entanglements with people are not the only way we can get our sobriety
dangerously hooked to something extraneous. Some of us have a tendency to put
other conditions on our sobriety, without intending to.
One A.A. member says, We drunks* are very iffy people. During our drinking
days, we were often full of ifs, as well as liquor. A lot of our daydreams started out,
If only... we were continually saying to ourselves that we wouldn't have gotten
drunk if something or other hadn't happened, or that we wouldn't have any drinking
problem at all if only..
We all followed up that last if with our own explanations (excuses?) for our
drinking. Each of us thought: I wouldn't be drinking this way...
If it wasn't for my wife (or husband or lover) ... if I just had more money and
not so many debts... if it wasn't for all these family problems... if I wasn't
under so much pressure... if I had a better job or a better place to live.., if
people understood me... if the state of the world wasn't so lousy.., if human
beings were kinder, more considerate,
more honest... if everybody else didn't expect me to drink.., if it wasn't for
the war (any war)... and on and on and on.
Looking back at this kind of thinking and our resultant behavior, we see now
that we were really letting circumstances outside ourselves control much of our
lives.
When we first stop drinking, a lot of those circumstances recede to their proper
places in our minds. At the personal level, many of them really clear up as soon
as we start staying sober, and we begin to see what we may be able to do about
the others some day. Meanwhile, our life is much, much better sober, no matter
what else may be going on.......
