Writing Assignment for February 5, 2009

Words: solemn oath, sanitarium, asylum, abruptly, humiliated, lurking

Questions: How many times did you try to quit your addiction by using your own will power? Share about your experiences.

What is your will power good for now?

Writing assignment: January 29th, 2009

Writing assignment #1: Read Big Book page 30, Paragraph 2: “We learned that we had to fully concede to our inner most selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people, or presently may be, has to be smashed.”
Is there any delusion left in you at all, that you are like other people, and can drink like them? Have you conceded to your inner most selves that you are a “real alcoholic”?

Writing assignment #2: Read Big Book page 30, Paragraph 3: We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. We know that no real alcoholic EVER recovers control. All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals-usually brief-were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incopprehensible demoralization.”
Can you identify and relate to this statement? Write about your experiences and trying to control your addiction, and write about any doubts you have about your powerlessness.

Words to look up:
vain
obsession
abnormal
illusion
concede
delusion
insanity
incoprehensible
demoralization
progressiveremedy
deception
inability

Writing Assignment for Janary 22, 2009

In the Twelve and Twelve:

Question 1: Read Paragraph 2, Page 21. No other kind of bankruptcy
is like this one. Alcohol, now become the rapacious creditor, bleeds
us of all self-sufficiency and all will to resist its demands. Once
this stark fact is accepted, our bankruptcy as going human concerns
is complete. Write about your experience with this statement.

Question 2: Read Paragraph 1, Page 22. The tyrant alcohol wielded a
double-edged sword over us: first we were smitten by an insane urge
that condemned us to go on drinking, and then by an allergy of the
body that insured we would ultimately destroy ourselves in the
process. Write about your experience with this statement.

Writing Assignment for January 15, 2009

From the AA 12 & 12 on page 15: paragraph #3

AA’s Twelve Steps are a group of principles, spiritual in their
nature, which, if practiced as a way of life, can expel the obsession
to drink and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole.

1. Take each of the twelve steps and in your own words, write out the
principle in each one.

2. How are you going to practice each principle in your life?

3. Do you believe that if you practice these principles in your life
that the obsession to drink will be expelled, and that you will
become happily and usefully whole?

Writing assignment for January 8, 2009

Write about the two parts of step one

1. I admit that I am powerless over ____

2. Life unmanageable ____

Writing Assignment for January 1, 2009

Writing assignment:

1. Page 14 ‘Simple, but not easy; a price had to be paid’

1. what’s simple –

2. what’s not easy.

3. what’s the price you have to pay.

2. “It means destruction of self-centeredness.”

1. What does this means to you, and what have been your experience.

Writing assignment for December 26, 2008

Words:unreservedly
appallingly

1. page 12 Paragraph 5 “For a brief moment,…………… Take each sentence and write about your experience with what Bill is feeling and saying in his story.

2. Page 13 Paragraph 2 “There I humbly offered…………… Do the same thing as above. Write about your experience with what Bill did in surrendering to God in the detox. Can you identify?

Writing Assignment for December 18, 2008

Words:
vestiges
prejudice
antipathy

Writing:
1.In twelve step recovery fellowships we must surrender to win (Step 1) What does this mean to you? What has been your experience with surrendering and winning? What has been your experience with not surrendering?

2. Write on: “Why don’t you choose your own conception of God?” What is your conception of God? Do you like having the choice of choosing your own conception?

Writing assignment for December 11, 2008

Thursdays Words:
atheist
chicanery
trudging
incurable

1. How do you feel about having a personal relationship with God?

2. The 12 steps are moral code for living. To experience a spiritual recovery one must live this way of life in all their affairs, and not adopt those parts which seem inconvenient and too difficult. Am I willing to do the work to achieve this spiritual experience and live it daily to keep it?

Writing assignment for December 4, 2008

Thursdays words:
sots
morass
debauch
catapulted
proffered
temperance

Writing assignment:
We are on page 8 of Bill’s story “No words can tell of the loneliness and despair
I found in that bitter morass of self-pity. Quicksand stretched
around me in all directions. I had met my match. I had been
overwhelmed. Alcohol was my master.” Write on this paragraph. What
is your experience? When you read this, what feelings arise? Can you
relate to Bill’s description? Why is it necessary to relive this
bleak, hopeless, and miserable time in your life?

Writing assignment for November 28, 2008

Writing assignment:

delirium tremens
prodigious
cocksureness
oblivion

questions
1. page 5 Paragraph #4: “I woke up. This had to be stopped. I saw I
could not take so much as one drink. I was through forever.
……..Shortly afterward I came home drunk. There had been no fight.
Where had been my high resolve? I simply didn’t know. It hadn’t even
come to mind. Can you relate to this? Dig deep into your past
experiences with your substance of “no choice”. Write as much as you
can remember, going into as much detail as you can remember. Keeping
in mind we are building our foundation for the rest of the steps on
our deep seeded belief that we are utterly and hopelessly powerless
over ___________(you fill in the blank).

2. page 6 paragraph #1: The remorse, horror and hopelessness of the
next morning are unforgettable. Take each of these feelings and again
dig deep into your core and relive these feelings you experienced
after a relapse. Step one is not a pleasant step, it is a step of
hopelessness. That is the only FIRM foundation that the other steps
can be built on, so if your feeling depressed, good, your getting the
true sense of what it is to not be able to move on to recovery.

Writing Assignment for November 20, 2008

First to answer a question I received this week: Yes, it is o.k. to pass on the “set aside” prayer. In fact it is a act of loving kindness to do so, for it helps a person become teachable and humble and learn what their Higher Power wants them to learn. The author is unknown to me. I received this prayer at a Big Book step study workshop at the Bill Wilson Inn. It’s in Dorset, Vermont.

Thursday night, Nov. 20th writing assignment:
words;
progression
maelstrom
alloy
lunacy
procured
remonstrances
deluded

Questions;
1. pg. 3 Bill’s Story Paragraph 1; “I made a host of fair-weather friends”. What is your experience with these types of friends while you were active in your addiction? While you were in early recovery? Now? Concentrate on what type of friend you were/are.

2. How has delusion of your addiction played a part in your life? How has it prevented you from doing the next right action?

Writing Assignment for November 13, 2008

Words:
precipitates
caldron
seething
entire
pathological
deterioration
scoff
sublime
fancied

writing assignment:
1. What constitutes “entire abstinence” for you and for your fellowship?

2. “I (Bill W) was very lonely and again turned to alcohol?” What did
you turn to when you were lonely? Explore how loneliness has
contributed to you picking up your addiction or addictions.

Writing assignment for November 6, 2008

Words:
aggregate
align
psychopath
manifestation
eradicated
abstinence

writing assignment:

1. All these, and many others, have one symptom in common: they
cannot start drinking without developing the phenomenon of craving.
Write about your experience with this.

2. There are five classifications of alcoholics listed on page 6 of
the Doctor’s Opinion. Write on your experience with the five different types.

3. Write on your experience of “the only relief we have to suggest is
entire abstinence.

Writing assignment for October 30, 2008

Writing assignment:
Explain what a psychic change means to you?

What is Bill talking about “the only effort necessary being that
required to follow a few simple rules”.

Step one is the foundation step for all the other steps. Step one
tells us that putting down the addictive substance/activity is a life
or death proposition. What are the implications of this statement to
you and how you live your life?

Writing assignment for October 23, 2008

Words:
inadequacy
aggregate

Writing assignment:

Have you experienced an entire psychic change? If you have, explain
how the process happened.

If not, what do you think is standing in the way?

Writing Assignment for October 16, 2008

Words:
1. essentially
2. sensation
3. elusive
4. injurious
5. differentiate
6. impunity
7. succumbed
8. phenomenon

Writing assignment:
pg.4 Doctors opinion, last paragraph
To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are
restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again
experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by
taking a few drinks………

Write about your experience with feeling restless, irritable and
discontented before you used your particular drug before you came
into recovery.

Write about your experience with feeling restless, irritable and
discontented after you entered recovery.

Write about letting go of feeling restless, irritable and
discontented and becoming joyful, contented, and serene, and what you
are willing to do to reach this goal.

Writing assignment for October 2, 2008

Chronic
phenomenon
craving
temperate
frothy
suffices
ideals
altruistic

Writing assignment;
We believe, and so suggested a few years ago, that the action of alcohol on these chronic alcoholics is a manifestation of an allergy; Do you believe this statement? What is your experience?

These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all; Do you believe this statement? What is your experience?

Writing Assignment for September 25, 2008

recovered
cured
choice
synthetic
chronic

The writing assignment:
1. Do you believe in your fellowship? Why?
2. Do you believe still more in the Power (God) which pulls chronic alcoholics (addicts) back from the gates of death. Why?

Writing assignment for September 18, 2008

epoch
compulsion
obsession
allergy
altruistic

The writing assignment:
Do you believe that the body is as sick as the mind? Share your experience.

How to use this website

Posts will be added below the description of the facilitator and the workshop. To see posts grouped by subject click the category you wish to access from the links to the right under the title “Categories”. If you are not able to find a writing assignment or phone conference recording it may mean that it is not available yet. To view a post on a page by itself click the headline of the post.

Writing Assignment for September 11, 2008

Words:
1. anonymous
2. avocation
3. afflicted
4. helpful
5. estimate

Writing assignment: Bill W. had to go to treatment for his alcoholism three times before he was able to stay sober and contribute toothers. Write a brief history of your recovery journey up to this point. Write about what you have learned, from your recovery history, that you now need to do on a daily basis to stay sober.

Writing Assignment September 4, 2008

Look up these words:

1.recovered
2.seemingly
3.precisely
4.authentication

Question: What is your vision of being recovered from a seemingly
hopeless state of mind and body?