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One other, alcohol will get you one way or the other.It is a drug.Some can drink a lifetime. Some cannot.What I said way back when is"I'm fine until I take the cap off the bottle." Another is you have to value your sobriety,let no one take that away from you. Somehow you go from being insane to being sober,beware of "dry drunks"stinking thinking came from AA. I like being in this sober state,being sharp aware liking normal feelings.It is the best rush. An alcoholic goes from one addiction to another,make sure it is not harmful to you or others.Peace.

You have to change,friends,hangouts,ideas,one of which,time to get a buzz,buzz,buzz,no one seems to understand. The best one I heard is the difference between alcohol and either,is that alcohol has water.They both are depressants. A recovering Priest said that.Also an alcoholic is insane,why else would you do the same thing over and over?Been there done that.

Something I started to put in an earlier post and never posted relates to something you state Pete, the flip side - Over the years I met quite a few people in the Way who were NOT what I'd call "born again", biblically or otherwise. I don't mean that as a blanket statement because of how this or that and wrong and bad and nasty and cultish or whatever - that The Way is considered to have been and be. Rather that the people weren't clear on their belief and confession of Jesus Christ as savior, redeemer and primary arbiter of salvation. Some folks "got into the Way" via the PFAL class, and took as a kind of self help/positive thinking class. The idea that it was taught from the bible and revolved around Jesus Christ got muddied up with the intense promotion of "The Word of God" as that which a person must cleave to, follow, accept, treasure and learn. The "logos" was actually taught in PFAL but if you just focused on the Written Word part of that as the end result of your effort, you might not in fact ever actually accept Jesus Christ as taught from the Bible. VPW did in fact cover salvation in PFAL but because of the scheduling and bums-rush treatment of hurrying through to the end of the material - sessions 9 - 12 - you could actually not "get born again" or accept Christ as they say and not have the personal committment and confession to God and Jesus Christ - with no time to stop - Rather someone might have a general agreement, a "that's cool" kind of attitude, and complete the class but not have really gone deep on it. Let's face it, the earlier schedules were loose but as time went on the PFAL in 2 weeks schedule was not a good way to do it. So if you didn't, you would still end up in Session 12 getting "encouraged" to speak in tongues. I know a lot of people who simply weren't ready at that point and as a class instructor I wouldn't put a big do-or-die challenge out to people, rather I expected follow up. (I probably facilitated dunno, over 30 PFAL classes at least, taught some sessions live myself and did my own small versions of the sessions many times over the years, piecemeal style) There were people in the Way who had a very flat, one dimensionsal view and understanding of Jesus Christ and salvation. LCM got that way, his whole global view of Christianity seemed - to me - to be paper thin. This could account for the confusion and also for how and why people went along with it and never really engaged. I hesitated to post this - and by my experience it's 100 per cent true and something I struggled with my last few years in the Way with some of the people - because it isn't meant to be a blanket dismissal or explanation and definitely isn't meant to apply specifically to Raf, geisha or others here. It does cover some ground about the Way though - The Way didn't like to admit it but it attracted the same kinds of social "members" as any church would, people who's participation was family driven, social or business reasons, personal, etc. etc. etc.