Abstinence Is Not Recovery

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Abstinence is not always recovery. What?!? Many people want to believe that abstinence is the end-all of a Twelve Step program. While it’s extremely important, abstinence is the result, not the goal. Recovery is not born of abstinence. Abstinence grows from recovery. Rather than focusing on how long we’ve been abstinent, our emphasis should be […]

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With God, Nothing Is Impossible

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Doing abstinence with God—putting Him in charge of defining it, letting Him guide us in applying it, relying on His strength to live it—elevates abstinence to a holy sacrament. With God, the spirit of abstinence becomes one of joyful surrender, as our willingness to live the truth becomes blessed and sanctified by Him. When you […]

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Practicing Abstinence

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And thus mercy . . . encircles them in the arms of safety. (Alma 34:16) Learning how to be abstinent is like learning how to walk on a balance beam. At first, you are very, very clumsy. You gain your balance for a moment, take a couple of shuffling steps, and then fall off. But […]

A New Year of Baby Steps

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A new year is upon us and many of us are taking inventory and making plans to change. We desire to be better, to do better, so we make long lists of resolutions, detailed itemizations of things we need or want to change in our lives. I think that taking inventory and having a plan […]

The Quickest Way to Become Abstinent

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And out of small things proceedeth that which is great. (Doctrine and Covenants 64:33) For most people, the one sure way to quickly become abstinent and then to consistently continue in abstinence is to start with a humble, simple abstinence. We must view our beginning efforts as the Lord does, with mercy and humility. Like […]

Celebrating Abstinence

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Verily, this is fasting and prayer, or in other words, rejoicing and prayer. (D&C 59:14) Fasting is not meant to be a negative experience. It is more than just refraining from eating. Fasting is as much about attitude as about action. It refocuses our hunger and thirst on the spiritual life, rather than on […]

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Abstinence Increases as We Share Our Experience, Strength and Hope with Others

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My abstinence has changed a lot over the years. What and how and when I eat now is nothing compared to what and how and when I ate 25 years ago. If I had met my current self then, I would have been so impressed with me. The kind of abstinence I have now would […]

Abstinence From the Inside Out

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When you’re doing abstinence from the inside out, you are hardly even aware of doing it. Why? Because you’re not actually doing anything! Instead, it’s more like you find yourself doing it! Automatically. Easily. There is no white-knuckling, hanging on by your toenails sensation. You find yourself just walking away, because even though a part […]

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Slips

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Slips. Backsliding. Falling off the wagon. Whatever you call them, it happens to all of us. So what do we do when we find we’ve ebbed away from full recovery? We prayerfully acknowledge that we’ve slipped. It’s hard to do, but do it we must. And prayerfully is the operative and absolutely essential word here. […]

Abstinence: It Takes Time

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We think that the mighty change of heart is going to mean an immediate mighty change of habit. The truth is that there is a distance to go between the heart, which is the seat of our desires and willingness, and the brain, which is the seat of our habits. We often say that the […]