01.05.05

I have been seriously considering the fact that I need to stop smoking. My cough has come back and I really am not enjoying it anymore. Yesterday after the noon meeting William asked me if I had ever heard of Alan Carr. I said 'The producer of 'Can't Stop the Music'? With Valerie Perrine, Bruce Jenner and the Village People? The guy that married Liza?' No, it turns out this Alan Carr has a stop smoking program. Then last night as I was fondling blog sites I ran into a link to Alan Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking website. William told me when I am ready to quit he would loan me the book. Synchronicity. I think it's time to read it and take some action, as much as I really don't want to deal with smoking cessation. I did quit once. So was living with me and Garry when I quit. Years later when I mentioned to her that I thought I handled it okay, she told me 'You were a bitch!' So much for selective memory. I think that time I was smokeless for a couple of years. Then I started dating a phychiatric intern who was waiting tables at Birra Pioretti's so he could afford therapy. One morning when I left his apartment I picked up one of his Kool's and it was back on.

I now have this network of people from whom I can get a lot of information. Not just program related information. There is such a diverse group of drunks and addicts at Lambda, someone there will usually know something or somebody that knows something or somebody that has a friend that knows something, about just about any subject. This is one of the promises the Big Book doesn't mention.

Here are the 9th Step promises the Big Book makes:
• If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through.
• We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
• We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
• We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.
• No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.
• That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.
• We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.
• Self-seeking will slip away.
• Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.
• Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.
• We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.
• We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us-sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.

I am grateful for the 12 Promises and seeing all of them manifest in my life to some degree.