"You can take your slogans and..."

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always had a cynical attitude, the flavor of thinking that, for example, if something can break it probably will. When anyone tells me to look for the silver lining in all of those clouds, I usually reply, “Yeah, right!”

So that’s how I was feeling during those early days of rehab some years ago. A counselor was talking about some of the slogans that get tossed around in AA meetings, phrases like, “Keep it simple,” “One day at a time,” or “Easy does it.” In one group session, we were discussing what a few slogans meant to us, personally. Myself, I was one who had a smirk on his face, not taking things all that seriously, thinking that those kinds of slogans were so cornball. Well, that’s how I felt about slogans back then. Today I feel quite differently about them.

Slogans talked about in 12 step programs are short phrases that can carry much more wisdom than can normally come from so few words. They can be useful, valuable in their brevity and depth of meaning simply because they are so easy to remember. Personally, “Easy does it” is a slogan that applies to me, my personality, in so many ways.

Slogans can act as reminders to us as we go about our daily activities, and “Easy does it” works for me that way. When I get caught up in the rush of things, trying to do too much in a brief amount of time, that slogan can sometimes pop into my thoughts and remind me to put on the brakes a little, to slow down and be more considerate of what I am doing. And I guess we all know a few of those “other drivers” on the rush hour freeways, whom we think ought to follow similar advice.

Before sobriety, most of us developed our own set of so-called ‘triggers’, events and our own personal reaction sets that could set us off and then attract us to drink or use to find relief. Some drinkers will pick up the bottle right after they hear bad news, while others might do the same when they hear any news at all. Once into sobriety, it’s important to become aware of some of these triggering events that can get us to drink in response. We need to learn how to cope with life’s hills and valleys as they come along, learning to cope without drugs or booze.

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