Hi everyone! I'm Peach, and I am an alcoholic.

Grateful to be here and grateful to be sober. If you're new, I hope you'll stick around and possibly hear something that might help you to stay sober. I like this quote: "If there's a harder way of doing something, someone will find it." Leave it to an alcoholic to try. Give me a few minutes and I can complicate the heck out of an ordinary rock! "Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path." That path is the journey of the Twelve Steps ... working them, learning them, living them. Page 58 of our Big Book goes on to talk about "an easier, softer way." That way does demand "rigorous honesty," and because we like to complicate things, we try to cut corners, take it cafeteria style, and that just doesn't work. Our book gives lots of hope, though. It says also on that page that even those with "grave emotional and mental disorders ... do recover if they have the capacity to be honest." I always thought I was a very honest person before I got to AA. What I really was, was exceptionally good at half-truths and twisted truths, twisting them and making them fit my molds. For me, the easier, softer way, has been to let go of all the stuff I held onto so dearly ... all the prized "abilities" like truth-twisting, to just let go of them and let my Higher Power take them away or take them out of use, and ask Him to not let me play with them anymore, like a favorite toy. AA has taught me real honesty, not halfway, not a good impression of it, but real honesty ... even rigorous! Though I am still, and probably always will be, working on getting that "rigorous honesty" up closer to 100% of the time. Blessings!

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