Recoveries Anonymous

04/14/2026

.A. member shares how reading about scientific prayer in Emmet Fox's The Sermon on the Mount has changed their life:

🗝️ "Scientific Prayer will enable you, sooner or later, to get yourself, or anyone else, out of any difficulty on the face of the Earth."
— Emmet Fox, The Golden Key

What if the answer to your deepest problem wasn't to fight harder, think longer, or worry more — but simply to look away from it entirely and turn your mind toward God?
That is the radical, tender invitation of Emmet Fox's Golden Key. Not to deny that the problem exists. Not to pretend the pain isn't real. But to understand that when we fix our gaze on a difficulty — turning it over and over in our minds, rehearsing our fears, counting our losses — we give it power it was never meant to have. We become so absorbed in the darkness that we forget the light is still there, still available, still waiting.
The Golden Key asks us to do something that feels almost too simple: stop thinking about the trouble, and start thinking about God. His wisdom. His love. His power. His presence in this very moment. Not because the problem will magically vanish, but because something in us shifts when we stop placing ourselves at the centre of the storm and remember that there is One who presides over all things — and that One is not troubled.
Emmet Fox's writing was a profound influence on the early founders of Alcoholics Anonymous. IN R.A., I have come to believe this truth: that no difficulty — however large, however long, however hopeless it appears — is beyond the reach of a Power greater than ourselves. The Golden Key is not a technique. It is a practice of surrender. And surrender is where the real freedom begins. 🕊️

04/12/2026

An R.A. member shares:
"There is scarcely any form of trouble and misery which has not been overcome among us."
(R.A's Multilith Big Book, p. 7)

Read that again slowly. Scarcely any form.
Not just addiction. Not just one particular struggle or one specific kind of pain. The pioneers of program had seen it all — the wreckage of broken homes and broken bodies, of shattered careers and severed relationships, of spirits so crushed that hope had become almost unimaginable. They had sat with people who had lost everything. People who had done things they could never imagine forgiving themselves for. People who had tried and failed so many times that trying again felt like cruelty.
And still they wrote these words. With confidence. With conviction. With the quiet authority of people who had witnessed it with their own eyes.
There is something almost breathtaking about that. Because the temptation, when we are in the deepest part of our suffering, is to believe that our particular misery is different. That our case is the exception. That the darkness we are sitting in is somehow beyond the reach of what can offer. We become so intimate with our own pain that we mistake its familiarity for permanence.
But the f says otherwise. Across decades, across continents, across every conceivable form of human struggle — people have come to R.A. carrying what felt like the unbearable, and they have been met with something that could bear it. Not because the people in those rooms were extraordinary. But because the Power working through them was.
Whatever you are carrying today — however heavy, however long, however convinced you are that yours is the one story without a happy ending — there is a fellowship of men and women who would gently, lovingly disagree. They have seen trouble like yours. They have seen misery like yours. And they have seen it overcome. 💙
You are not the exception. You are exactly who this was written for.

04/10/2026

Another R.A. member shares:
"I must turn in all things to the Father of Light who presides over us all."
(R.A.'S Multilith Big Book, p. 6)

Notice the word all.
Not some things. Not the manageable things, the comfortable things, the things we feel ready to hand over. All things. The big fears and the small irritations. The relationships we are struggling to control. The outcomes we are desperate to shape. The parts of ourselves we are still too ashamed to show anyone. The future we keep trying to plan and the past we keep trying to fix. All of it. Every last corner of our lives.
For those of us who have spent years — sometimes a lifetime — relying on our own will to navigate the world, this is perhaps the most challenging invitation recovery offers. We became experts at self-reliance. We managed, we maneuvered, we pushed through. And still, somehow, we ended up broken and bewildered, wondering how someone so capable could feel so utterly lost.
The answer, it turns out, was never that we needed to try harder. It was that we needed to turn more completely.
To turn to the Father of Light is not a single dramatic act of surrender, though sometimes it begins that way. It is a quiet, daily, moment-by-moment practice of looking upward instead of inward. Of pausing before we react and asking for guidance. Of releasing our white-knuckled grip on outcomes and trusting that the One who presides over us all — over every soul, every story, every struggle — sees what we cannot see and holds what we cannot carry.
There is something else worth sitting with in this line. Who presides over us all. Not just over the strong or the faithful or the ones who have it figured out. Over all of us. The newcomer trembling at the door. The old-timer worn down by years. The one who has relapsed again and is certain they are beyond saving. The Father of Light presides over every single one. No exceptions. No conditions. No one left outside that circle of grace.
We do not have to earn our way into that light. We only have to turn toward it.

04/08/2026

An R.A. member shares:
"Simple, but not easy. A price had to be paid. It meant destruction of self-centeredness."
(R.A.'s Multilith Big Book, p. 6)

There is a beautiful and humbling honesty in these words. The path is simple — the Steps are clear, the direction is given, the way has been walked by thousands before us. And yet anyone who has ever truly tried to walk it knows the second truth just as deeply: it is not easy. Not even a little.
Because what is asked is something far more radical. It asks us to loosen our grip on the very thing we have clung to our whole lives — ourselves. Our need to be right. Our need to be in control. Our carefully constructed image of who we are and how the world should treat us. Our resentments, which we nursed like they were precious. Our self-pity, which felt so justified. Our endless, exhausting habit of placing ourselves at the center of everything.
The destruction of self-centeredness is not a single moment. It is a daily surrender. It is choosing, again and again, to ask not what do I want but what does God want for me today. It is the slow and sometimes painful process of becoming less occupied with ourselves and more available to others — to life, to love, to whatever our Higher Power has been trying to offer us all along.
And here is the wonder of it: in losing that self-centeredness, we do not lose ourselves. We finally find ourselves. The real self. The one that was always there beneath the fear and the noise and the grasping. Lighter. Freer. More alive than we ever imagined possible.
The price is real. But so is the reward.

04/06/2026

What's stopping you from finding newcomers? Growing your group? Working with others?
Could it be just plain fear? And how can you be free from fear?

04/04/2026

Is your group registered?
If not, no one can find you. Newcomers won't be atracted.
Pleased register your group today.

04/02/2026

03/31/2026

One R.A. member shares this verse from a plaque on the desk of program co-founder, Dr. Bob.

Humility is:
Perpetual quietness of heart.
It is to have no trouble.
It is never to be fretted or vexed, irritable or sore;
to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing
done against me.
It is to be at rest when nobody praises
me, and when I am blamed or despised,
It is to have a blessed home in myself
where I can go in and shut the door
and kneel to my Father in secret and
be at peace, as in a deep sea of calmness,
when all around and about is seeming trouble.

As recorded in “Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers”, page 222. The verse was first written by Andrew Murray, a So. African religious leader, ca. 1828-1917.

Having a blessed home in myself is something that can be achieved by working the Twelve Steps. "I can be at peace ,as in the deep sea of calmness when all around and about is seeming trouble". These are promises of the program if I practice the spiritual principles. The emphasis is on repeated practice. It demands discipline and perseverance. But the rewards are endless.

03/29/2026

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The subject is: 🔶Expect a Miracle— An R.A. Recovery

R.A.’s Solution Focused Books     Move up to the next step in your search for recovery by downloading and reading the PDF versions of R.A.'s Solution Focused Books. We do not charge for the PDF versions of our books. Instead, we give the passwords needed to open our books to thank those who su...

03/26/2026

They recovered in R.A., and so can you:
https://www.r-a.org/Nb_Shar3.htm

03/24/2026

She was ready to die before she found R.A. and a new life:

I thought, "This is my life? This is the rest of my life? I would rather die than go on this way." That Saturday night, I was having dinner with a friend. She told me that she had heard about some people in a fellowship called Recoveries Anonymous who went through the Steps fast. That night I ran in...

03/22/2026

Start your week with this inspiring story:

For as long as I can remember, I didn't think I was OK. I didn't think I was good enough, or smart enough, or thin enough, or nice enough. I found ways to escape that pain. They included gorging on food, drinking to intoxication, sexual promiscuity, and immersing myself in daydream fantasies about t...