The 9th Step Promises

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.        

It was a dozen years before I felt the 9th step promises had come true for me.  I was near the end of my 8-month binge in October of 2012 listening to Bruce H read them at my home group when I realized they had come true for me.  It was a completely unexpected pleasant feeling while lacking any sobriety to find I was no longer stuck in horrendous self-pity.


I am grateful that the promises have come true for me.  There are still all-too-frequent intervals of insane thinking, but I a lot better than how it used to be.

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