The Right Number of Meetings

A fellow celebrated his first anniversary at my home group the other night and posed a question that I had not thought about for a while: "How do I know the difference between right and wrong, especially now that I can see more than one possible right answer?" At first the question seemed a bit naive, until I reflected that at around my first year I had a similar issue. Early on in sobriety I realized that the quandary was no longer distinguishing between what is right and what is wrong--that had been the question when I was drinking. Before sobriety it was: Would I lie, cheat, manipulate, and use others? Would I do something harmful and self-destructive? Would I get drunk and rationalize my behavior? Or would I do something else? Because "something else" was usually harder, and drinking was always an easy way out, I would normally choose the wrong thing to do. But once I stopped drinking, I found that since I no longer had my rationalizing and escaping tool, I was being compelled to choose not to lie, cheat, manipulate, or use others, and then drink to escape. Now the issue was choosing the right thing to do.