GEMS: Meditations on Alcoholism and Recovery

Where did these GEMS come from?

When I am listening to fellow alcoholics share at Meetings, I take notes. Not transcriptions, just notes of things that catch my attention. By jotting a reminder, I can later recall the thought.
One night, my sponsor asked me, “what do you do with your notes?”

“I keep them and reread them, often the next morning during my morning quiet time,” I replied. “They bring to mind the wisdom and humour that I heard. I meditate on the comments and see the insights that I missed. I feel grateful all over again… then I throw them away.”

“You should write your thoughts down and share them,” he said, “you might have some fun and it might do some good.”

So I started writing my meditations. In the beginning, I only shared them with my sponsees, who passed the notes to their sponsees, and then others in the Program. A couple of the recipients, involved in treatment centres with newsletters, reposted them in their newsletters and websites. They seemed to attract attention, so I started a website and posted them online.

One day I thought, “maybe a book is a good idea.”