How do you or do you celebrate your anniversary?

[Graystone]

I will cross the one year mark in October - for the third time.

Here the custom is to pass a card around for signatures during meeting with birthday cake & metallic medallion marking the year for the person after the meeting. Twice before I’ve celebrated in the usual fashion one and two years before slipping.

My plan is to pick up the generic plastic blue chip without fanfare at a Saturday meeting I attend.

[GeoffS]

On my anniversary I try to share my experience strength and hope at a meeting of alcoholics anonymous.

Quietly mentioning it can give hope to others that sobriety is possible.

[Dallas]

On my sobriety birthdate -- I try to figure out how I can double up on doing what I did the year before -- that kept me sober.

If alcoholism is a progressive condition -- and I do believe that it is -- my alcoholism gets stronger each year -- and I'm normally unaware of it -- because I'm living in sobriety.

Cunning. Powerful. Baffling. Even when sober. If it wasn't -- would you be crossing the one year mark -- for the third time? Something to think about.

Perhaps, what's getting you through the first year, the cards, signatures, candles, cakes, chips, dips, the meetings, the work, whatever you're doing, etceteras... is not enough to get you through the second year.

Best wishes,

Dallas B.

[GeoffS]

Good point Dallas.

The Big Book of alcoholics anonymous doesn't mention candles and cakes and chips and dips (mentions slips alright).

Maybe if we focus less on the ego inflating bells and whistles that were added later and more on the ego deflating nuts and bolts that Bill and Bob talked of, we might all do better at this thing.

[Tim]

The Big Book of alcoholics anonymous doesn't mention candles and cakes and chips and dips (mentions slips alright).

Let's get rid of the AA meeting coffeepot, too, while we're eliminating things not mentioned in the Big Book

[DebbieV]

Keep coming back Tim.

[Tim]

Keep coming back Tim.

It's probably best with some posts to read them and move on. And I should remember the lines from the AA Grapevine Statement of Purpose, and apply them to this forum as well.

"The awareness that every AA member has an individual way of workng the program permeates the pages of the Grapevine, and throughout its history the magazine has been a forum for the varied and often divergent opinions of AAs around the world."

[GeoffS]

The coffee pot is mentioned elsewhere in AA approved literature Tim, as I'm sure you know.

[Tim]

The coffee pot is mentioned elsewhere in AA approved literature Tim, as I'm sure you know.

Thanks for the information, Geoff. And thank you for your monthly AA history posts. I look forward to reading them each month.

[Dallas]

Before anyone gets any ideas of bailing out on meetings... THEY ARE mentioned in the Big Book:

"In addition to these casual get-togethers, it became customary
to set apart one night a week for a meeting to be at -
tended by anyone or everyone interested in a spiritual
way of life. Aside from fellowship and sociability, the
prime object was to provide a time and place where new
people might bring their problems."

pg 159-160, Big Book

Dallas B.