And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone — even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality— safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition (Kindle Locations 1279-1284).

Sanity will have returned. We started the quest at Step Two,
came to believe a power greater than us could restore us…
to sanity. Of course some of us doubted that “restore” word…
we’d never been there, it seemed. Oh, but didn’t we want it,
long for it, crave it as much as we had any substance, any behavior.
Tempted? We recoiled! How neat is that? To suddenly flinch back
in fear, in horror, in disgust from the very substance or behavior
we craved, we sought, we found refuge in…not refuge from.
But to act sanely, to be a normie, automatically! It gets no better
than that. And it just comes. The tricks, the conniving, the colluding,
the intrigue, the scheming we’ve used forever! Gone!
Safe and protected, we look around and it’s gone, temptation removed.
And that promise. Oh, that promise! THIS IS OUR EXPERIENCE!
It just happens…
so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.
Sigh. Not so easy we come to take it for granted.
But we feel it, can remember the past and wish it good riddance,
so long as…