Just lookin’

How many times have we responded with this “just lookin'”  to a sales person while out shopping. This translates to  a fact that I probably won’t buy anything. At least that is the way that it works for me.

When I was trying to figure out why I was addicted to this or that and couldn’t get the monkey off my back I began to look for relief.  I would go here and there, read this and  that  finally realize  that my will power alone would not deliver me from  my problem. It would not deliver me from my addiction to alcohol. Finally, when my life fell totally apart, I was given a choice by my employer, go into treatment or go to the local 12 Step program of AA. I crawled into the local AA meeting. I had to go so I went with the attitude that I’m just lookin’. I have a problem, but nothing I really can’t handle. Well, I finally realized that I couldn’t handle my addiction without help. I finally admitted that I am an alcoholic. One drink was too many and a thousand wasn’t enough as the saying goes.  I learned that because of “my self-will run wild” that my life was in the shambles that it was.

Resultant of attending meetings week after week that I found my help and the solution to my alcoholism in the 12 Step program of recovery. I finally came to realize that  if I didn’t stop drinking I would either end up dead or continue a life filled with misery, lies and shame. I realized that I didn’t need to go lookin’ any further. I had found what I was looking for. I found a group of men and women who had also found what they were looking for, namely, sobriety  and serenity. We all found it  in living out the spiritual principles of recovery laid out for us in the 12 Steps of AA.

Now this brings me to Depressed Anonymous and how it can be the solution for those of us who are “lookin’ for help and deliverance from life threatening grip of depression. And it isn’t too strange to say that most persons who come to a Depressed Anonymous meeting for the first one or two times don’t come back. Why? I don’t really know. But I have a clue to the why. They are “just lookin’ and feel that they don’t need a group of other depressed persons who probably will make them more depressed. So, they don’t return.
Then there are others who come for a season and leave. They thought that they would be coming to a class and learn the ropes, and then move on and out no longer depressed. Well, in time, they learnt a different lesson. They learn that it takes time, work  and a daily program of recovery to leave their  prison of depression. It is the “miracle of the group” where they hear others tell of how attendance at meetings, plus the fellowship of persons who daily live out the spiritual power of the Steps in their own lives, who get well and begin to live with hope. These people also stay with the program and now believe they have a real solution to the pain and misery of depression. I am one of them. I have not been depressed for 30 years but I want to help anyone out there who, like me, is looking for hope and help.

And if you are a person who comes   “just lookin’ for help and hope, please read the many powerful stories who came and stayed. These wonderful stories of real people, with real problem s,  is found in our Personal Stories section of Depressed Anonymous,3rd edition.

If you go to VISIT THE STORE, here at our site,  you can order the Home Study Kit which will provide you with an in-depth Workbook plus the Depressed Anonymous Manual used at all our meetings around the world.  The Home Study Kit will help launch you into a DA group if and when you choose to start your own group, in your own community.

No more will you be “just lookin’ ” but now will have found what you’re lookin’ for. Check it out!

Hugh

SOURCES:

Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011)  Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.

 The Depressed Anonymous  Workbook(2002) Depresses Anonymous Publications. Louisville.

Believing is seeing: 15 ways to leave the prison of depression. (2014)  Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.

I’ll do it when I feel better. (2013) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.

For more literature go to the website @ VIST THE STORE.

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