Hope this cheers up anyone who has had a 'relapse'. I just found it, and it proves it cay come out with this (posted on Amazon):
From the Author
A SALUTARY TALE
The programme of spiritual recovery first elaborated by the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous and advocated in ?No Big Deal? is, amongst other things, a programme that requires of us rigorous honesty ? honesty with ourselves and honesty with our fellows in recovery.
For this reason, it is right that I should advise my readers that, regrettably, after a period of very nearly twenty years in good recovery, I allowed myself (gradually and without premeditation) to slide into a state of desperate and disastrous relapse. I am not the first counsellor to have crashed in this way and, alas, it is unlikely that I shall be the last. I am, excitingly, a ?newcomer? again.
With hindsight and with the benefit of generous feedback from my fellows in recovery, it is clear that, slowly and by imperceptible degrees, I had ceased to heed my own counsel. I began to allow other concerns (work, relationships, family bereavements, financial worries etc.) to take precedence over the daily disciplines that are crucial to maintaining and improving spiritual health. The results were inexorable, predictable and catastrophic.
All this notwithstanding, I do not now retract a single word of ?No Big Deal?. The book itself was, and is, sound.
It was I, its fallible author, who was and (like every other person afflicted with addictive disease) will REMAIN fundamentally unsound.
Without the daily and conscientious practice of ALL of the principles of the Twelve Step programme of recovery, we can become very seriously deranged. And that, over a period of some seven months, is exactly what happened to me.
It need not happen to you.
Paradoxically, I am today grateful for this rather major learning experience. I have begun work on a new book which deals precisely with these issues. I hope to approach them with a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the complex factors involved. The provisional title for this new work, though something of a cliche, is irresistible. My agents, editors and publishers permitting, it will be called (of course) ?The Real Deal?.
Please continue to do what I, for a time, omitted to do. May you allow your own Higher Power to bless and guide you, this day and always. With best wishes,
Yours ever,
John Coats
About the Author
John Coats was in active addiction to alcohol, cocaine and other addictive processes for nearly twenty-five years. He has been in recovery for more than eighteen years and is an Addictions Counsellor.
He holds degrees from St Andrews University and from Cambridge. John is now the Director of Treatment at East Coast recovery, in Suffolk
n happen to the best of gurus.
Hth!!