The Point

By Megan B.

Before sobriety, I was hollow. I had a presentable exterior, a shell; a big kid job, a car, my own apartment, a boyfriend (sometimes), cute clothes, a nice butt. I was proud of the life I had built, proud of how it looked, without realizing it was only a facade. 

I showed up to that job high and hungover every morning and wasted my days mostly pretending to work, reading Buzzfeed listicles and bullshitting with colleagues on Skype. The car was a family hand-me-down, nothing earned. The apartment, a hideaway where I spent hours each evening alone, sunken into the middle cushion of my enormous green corduroy couch, drinking wine and smoking weed out of an apple while I vacantly binged Netflix and wondered when life was going to get good. The attention from men, the clothes, the body: they were all things I prioritized obsessively, driven by a need to measure up. I walked around feeling deeply satisfied with how I imagined my life looked from the outside, but inside I felt mostly shame and fear. 

By the time I hit my bottom, things were getting embarrassing. I’d made a career change, convinced it would fix me. Now I was back on the bottom rung in a job I believed I was above, but somehow I was fucking that up too. The guy who I thought for sure was The One was getting sick of my nonsense, which dashed my ambitions to be married by 30. I spent most nights sequestered in the guest bathroom of the house we shared with a beer and a laptop on the floor, alternately watching episodes of terrible reality TV and myself getting high in the mirror.

Seeing my face like that, looking into my own eyes, I saw how sad I was. And scared. Because by that point I wanted to quit. I’d been trying. I’d tried therapy (and hypnotherapy), yoga, journaling, and my own willpower which was by that point only good for about eight miserable hours of abstinence. I desperately wanted to stop and couldn’t do it. It didn’t make sense. In that desperate state, I found the willingness to try the very last thing on my list, which was this Program.

When I started going to meetings, I didn’t know what to do. You all showed up and you showed me. A woman offered to sponsor me. I was scared of her, so I just did what she told me to do. If she told me to read a thing, I read it. If she told me to meet her somewhere, I showed up and I was on time. Until then, I was late to everything. I was just a late person, unreliable, that was how I thought of myself. I started to see that I could be on time to things. I started to see myself as a person who showed up. 

In a meeting about a year in I heard someone share, “We build self esteem by doing esteemable acts.” That’s when it clicked for me. How I see myself, how I feel about myself, relies on my actions. By that time I’d found I could show up for things beyond my scary sponsor. I could show up for meeting commitments and coffee with newcomers, and eventually for sponsees. The trust those women placed in me, their vulnerability and gratitude, that felt like something real. It had weight.

I wasn’t hollow anymore. 

Today, I’m made of something, of many small imperfect actions. I still mess up, and I still get caught in my own ego. But each time I show up for this Program, I’m released from agonizing self-obsession for that moment. If I’m in the present with my feet on the ground, looking to see where I can be useful, that’s who I get to be. And that’s a person who, for today, doesn’t need to drink.

By Anonymous

When told How It Works, we are warned that alcohol is “cunning, baffling and powerful.” Often old-timers have suggested that the word “patient” be added to this list of John Barleycorn’s attributes. The history of those who marked the path which all recovering alcoholics trudge, also made it clear that mental issues can persist even after the obsession to consume alcohol has lifted and the desire to drink relieved.

So it is that we learn in the program that sometimes even those who have heard of the suggestions and exhibited a great desire to follow them, have not always been successful in achieving that goal. As such, it has also been the unhappy experience to hear that a life has been lost and that it was taken by one’s own hand, not solely by the ravages of alcohol. 

Not being a psychologist or psychiatrist or even knowing the difference between the two, I am by no means able to opine on the deepness of the medical and psychological conditions that might cause someone to take their own life. My own experience, both in the throes of my alcoholism and even after getting sober, was enough to validate how real the thoughts can be and how vital  it was to not feel alone in those thoughts. For the loneliness I found to be the driver of these feelings for me, the intercession with another human being became in my case the prescription for a cure. Yet despite the interactions we can have with our fellows, a tragic end can still be the unwanted result, where what was in life really only a temporary problem leads to a permanent solution. Such has been my experience and only of this can I speak. 

Whether you have 27 years of sobriety as did my dear friend and conga drum player or are struggling to no longer be a newcomer, as was the recent painful case of a dear member of my home group, the powerful nature of this disease and its patience persists. 

It leaves those behind to wonder, often in anger: Why did this happen? Why was it that what appeared to be a temporary problem would succumb only to the horrible permanent solution? 

I have no answers to these questions. I do not know why this becomes the will of a Higher Power in the life of a person near and dear to so many. The presence of so many mourners at our member’s memorial was a testament to the fellowship in which they were enveloped during life before they decided to end it. The simple answer at which to jump is that by all appearances this tragedy made no sense, it was a waste and otherwise unexplainable. 

When reflecting in meditation over the most recent loss, I took great solace in the observation  shared under similar circumstances decades before by one who then was over two decades sober, although my junior in age. He also knew my dear friend the Conga Drummer. His experience and strength told me that sometimes the spirit just needs to be free. While so sad for those left behind now that the drum beat was forever silenced, the spirit of our conga drumming was now set free. My friend’s advice and his belief, which then became my hope, was that my Conga Drummer’s spirit would now be at peace. 

I have come to learn on too many occasions since that drum beat stopped, that if we persist in the program, we will hear of the passing of another member. That is Life on Life’s Terms.

But the presence of psychological problems an individual may have before succeeding in getting sober, as I have seen and heard, do not always simply resolve because one has achieved sobriety. That the help of professionals outside of the program could be vital for someone attempting to achieve sobriety or for someone newly sober might seem to be self-evident. However, the stark reality, so poignantly brought to light in the painful recent event of loss, is that it is perilous to ignore the fact that the help of such professionals may be called for or absolutely needed even after the plug has been put into the jug. I believe that the loss experienced, under the circumstances where the desperation of life seem to leave only one permanent alternative as the unavoidable conclusion, deserves comment. 

While frank acknowledgement and discussion of the event’s occurrence may not alleviate the pain of the experience, it might serve as a lighthouse for someone caught up in the storm who needs help. That is truly my hope. 

The sad, tragic, unthinkable reality of the event now passed can be a beacon for the next man or woman trudging the road. If this transparency can help save that next traveler in this lifetime who feels they have lost their way and are contemplating this permanent solution to a temporary problem, then the loss will not have been in vain, despite the hurt of the passing.

By Sandy B

I have always (until recently) fought with the opening of all our meetings and Chapter 5 in the Big Book. What was I fighting with? 

“Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves.” 

I thought that the words themselves were negative and could turn off newcomers as they came to meetings. 

Recently as I sat in a doctor’s office I started thinking about those words and myself prior to going to my first meeting. Suddenly a light bulb went on. Of course, I had to get honest with myself otherwise A.A. would never have worked for me. That is one day at a time! I had to:

     See It
     Acknowledge It
     Own It
     Before I could seek to change it.

That was December 1, 1981. I did not have the vaguest notion of how to change but I knew I had to do something. So, I ran to A.A. friends that day. They guided me through that day and that night I went to my first A.A. meeting.

WOW! Graduation Day! If A.A. could work for me then I was an alcoholic and not a besotted drunk. I finally:  

     Saw my alcoholism and what I was doing to myself
     Acknowledged the effects of my alcoholism 
     Owned my alcoholism
     I owned it to the core of my being
    I was seeking to change my besotted drinking into sobriety

That night I knew nothing. You did! You taught me that it was a 24-hour Program that I did not have to quit drinking for the rest of my life—just today. You helped me to see that I had a disease and that I was not crazy.

You showed me I had a new family, one that would step up to the plate and help me get sober.

But like all newcomers there was an immediate problem. There is always an immediate problem. Mine was on the wall in Step 2 and Step 3. Back in the day, priests and nuns always taught that we had to adore God and be in His service. But do not go to Him with your problems. He was too busy helping others. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps and solve your own issues.

I was afraid that A.A. could never work for me. Step 2 said: “Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Step 3 said: “Made a decision to turn our will and lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” 

God did not want my problems. Yes, I knew He got me to the meeting but at the door it was as if He said: “there you go kid. Listen, learn, do what they tell you. Good luck!” 

Early on someone suggested that I could make a beginning on my alcoholic problem by surrendering to the group when it came to alcohol. In a flash, you became my Higher Power. 

That was over 40 years ago. My faith in a Higher Power morphed from the group to my God. He has become “Father” and for me this is the most precious gift of this program. It ranks first to the second precious gift. For the last 15 years of her life, my mom knew she had a sober daughter. 

I could feel my spirituality grow under your direction. Now I understood that I was the daughter, and He was the Father. I was safe. However, I could not put it into words. Then I tripped over a book called The Souls of Animals and there it was. 

Spirituality is the awareness of self within a larger universe. A sense that the universe is a big place, and I am a small cog with a job to do. It does not get any better when this is accompanied by a sense of wonder about it all. 

My friends you taught me, held my hand and lifted me up when the going got tough. You are responsible for my sobriety. You showed me how to be accepting and forgiving. You led me in a 40 plus year search for spirituality. I am so grateful to you! All my love. 

My name is Sandy and I am a very grateful alcoholic.

by Christine R

We sure do a lot of turning in this Program. Out of the 46 known instances for “turning” or “turn” in our literature, here are a few you might recognize: “We stood at the turning point.” “A great turning point in our lives came when we sought for humility.” “Turning our will over to a Higher Power.” With this dizzying array of turning going on I decided, in turn, to look up “turning point” in the Cambridge Dictionary which reads: “the time when a situation starts to change in an important, especially positive, way.”

One “important and especially positive way” for turning our lives around comes when we realize we don’t need to wait until Friday, New Year’s or next week to begin that turn. The big journey begins with small steps that include lots of turns along the way. The turning point, so often discussed in our meetings, can be any time—day or night. 

We don’t need to wait until morning. At any second, we can start to turn our lives around. As an alcoholic, the time to stop drinking is “later.” “Tomorrow.” “Next week.” As Mark Twain so aptly put it. “I know how to quit drinking. I’ve done it a thousand times!” 

My first turning point happened at the Cabin—a 7 a.m. meeting in Mill Valley—shivering and sick, sitting on a hard, wooden bench. Across from me a woman announced she had a year of sobriety. A year of sobriety!! What a shock! I could not believe it! After picking my jaw up from the floor, came my tear-filled share, “I cannot imagine being sober for a whole year much less these 3 days.” Through holidays, birthdays, heartaches and triumphs, beyond my comprehension was a full year without drinking. After the meeting, the woman crossed the floor saying, “I’m finishing up my 12th Step. I’m looking for someone to sponsor and you’re it.”

Her demonstration of how it works was a big turning point in my sobriety. A real-life example of someone turning across the floor, with love unconditional, to help bring my life back. A beginning. 

Beginnings and endings are part of the human experience. Between each beginning and ending is the space we call “The Now.” Each precious now is an opportunity to turn and listen to our Higher Self. More often than not, my turning points involve gratitude. Gratitude to be granted a way up and out. Not just “out.” But “Up and Out.” Turning upward to be reminded of the spacious presence of my Higher Power. 

A new day, a new turning point, is here and now. Through the fog of alcohol, I couldn’t see a new day dawning right in front me. Today, as my turning points arise (and they do), I seek a time for pause to ask my Higher Power for “protection and care” to persevere and continue. Even if it’s a short, “God help me!” And do so, “with complete abandon… and let go absolutely.” 

The cabin meetings are located across from the Fernwood Cemetery. Recovery is on one side of the street. Death on the other. Illumined like a lantern in the early dawn, you see the cabin with bright windows, porch and doorways. On the other side, the darkened cemetery. 

It’s the same for us. With alcoholism, you either show up early and turn into the cabin meeting. Or you turn and head for the cemetery. Over the last four months, three members died of this disease. They thought they had “nowhere else to turn.” Their memorials were heard at Fernwood. 

Sometimes the turning points are just that stark. And just that simple. Only the alcoholic is silly enough to sit in the middle of the road and think about it. For us, there is no middle of the road solution. Sit long enough, you’ll get run over anyway. That’s when all the turning stops.

By Christine R.

“You aren’t giving up the booze, you are getting your life back.” That’s what “Happy” said to me as I trudged through the door of happy destiny. Happy lived up to her name. She was always irritatingly, inspiringly and invariably happy. A sponsor to many and a warm welcome to newcomers like me.

While at a meeting recently, I shared this little quote. The following morning, a woman with only three days of sobriety revealed how the words saved her from drinking the night before.

Here is her story: “Yesterday was my daughter’s 14th birthday. For dinner, she wanted to go to her favorite Mexican restaurant in San Francisco, on Valencia St. Last night, with the summer evening being soft and fine and COVID standards still in place, everyone was dining outside. Block after block, margaritas were flowing everywhere. Everyone was drinking but me. At first I was upset, angry and envious. How come those people can drink and I can’t? What’s  wrong with me that I can’t have a drink? Then I remembered, ‘I’m not giving up anything. I’m getting my life back.’ It saved me. 

Later on at my daughter’s birthday party, party goers noticed how much better I looked. How much happier and collected I seemed. All because I did not pick up that first drink. All because I saw I was getting my life back.” As the newcomer said those words, I could again see and hear my friend, Happy. More deeply understanding how she acquired her name, listening to this pass-it-on experience, I was Happy. In the chapter Working With Others, our Big Book says we work with other alcoholics … “to live and be happy.” Here was living proof that morning we were alive and happy. 

In our Program, we don’t know which phrase or sentence will sustain us in rough going. Sometimes it’s “Easy does it.” Or “This too shall pass.” Our disease is one of perception. How we view things determines a successful or not so successful outcome. Running out the door without my glasses, I can chide myself and say, “Shoot! I forgot my glasses.” Or I can be uplifted in the memory and say, “Thank God, I remembered my glasses.” Either way, I’m right. I can look at giving up drinking as giving up something. Or I can view it like I’m “getting my life back.”

“A. A. is not for everybody” “A. A. doesn’t work for me.”

When we hear these from someone, how do we react?

By Jamie M.

Once at a meeting I heard a young man talk about having been sent to rehab and returning home to live with his parents. He had been told that the price of free rent—no small thing in the Bay Area—was that he had to attend A.A. meetings. He told his mom, “I can’t be a member of A. A. because the requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.” The mom, who I suspect had some Al-anon under her belt, replied, “Then go as a guest!” That got a laugh, of course, because we all knew by the way he told the story he had decided he was a member after all.

How often have we heard people say that “A.A. is not for everybody?” We have encountered folks in meetings, perhaps coming back from a slip, who may have said “A.A. doesn’t work for me.”Well, if you’re reading this it’s pretty likely that you think A.A. is for you and that it works for you. So if you’re like me, you may think “I don’t care if people think A.A. is not for them, because I know it is for me and I also know that it works for me, so what do I care about what those people say?” After all, our Tenth Tradition states that we have no opinion on outside issues, right? And we all know the old saying that the Program isn’t for people who need it, the Program is for those who want it. But if you’re like me, you recognize that you needed the Program long before you decided to want it.

Here’s the wrinkle, though: if I am an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous, then a key part of my own sobriety is working with newcomers—the alcoholic who still suffers. So that means I may meet these statements again and again working with newcomers—or just talking to a stranger at a meeting. When I greet someone at a meeting, they might be a member, a new member or a guest.

Of course, many of us will have our own personal stories about how we dealt with the questions, “Is A.A. for me?” and “Will A.A. work for me?” When we share our personal experience of how we dealt with these issues, we’re generally on solid ground. But how we share can be just as important as what we share. I was captured by Big Book thumpers on first coming to the Program and didn’t know it, of course, until weeks later. I was willing, I was open-minded about whether or not the Program could work for me. Honesty, I’ll admit, came a bit later. So when someone says A.A. is not for them or not for everybody, I mostly just nod and agree. But I also remember that when I first went to those first few meetings, the absence of sales pressure was intriguing to me. In a world where we are under relentless, ubiquitous pressure to take sides, to join, to buy, to advocate for or against causes, the absence of that was a mystery and it felt sort of like when you go to push open a heavy door and it turns to have no weight—I sort of fell in to the Program. Partly because of this, it worked quickly and well for me.

Because I was a bona fide “pink cloud” member, there was a time when I was insufferable and might have sharply asked, “Then why are you here?” if someone expressed doubt about the Program—and perhaps condemned some court-ordered alcoholic to years more of suffering just to avoid self-righteous jerks like me. In some ways, my lack of doubt about whether or not A.A. was for me, or whether or not it would work for me were potential handicaps in working with newcomers—or talking to guests.

With someone who is at a meeting or someone I’ve met socially says, “A.A. doesn’t work for me,” I can take a relaxed approach of asking in all sincerity what the person has done and not done to get and stay sober. I can hope to add helpful suggestions, as well as sharing that I’ve known people to simply go to a lot of meetings and hang out a lot with sober people without getting a sponsor or working Steps. I may not tell them (yet) that people typically end up getting a sponsor and working Steps. If they come around enough, they’ll find out for themselves. If someone is court ordered I’ve told them to get legal counsel and fight the case instead of coming to A.A. When they say they don’t have the money, I agree that going to meetings is definitely cheaper than fighting a court case and sympathize with their plight. Like those who 12th-Stepped me, I can thank the person for allowing me to talk to them and honestly say that it helps me stay sober. When I’m polite and welcoming to our guests they may be intrigued as I was and they may decide they want to be members.

Written by Guru P

Read by Michelle G

A member shares their experience of service in H&I, gratitude for diversity, and being able to keep connected online.

The Bad Days are but Distant Memories

By Rick R.

I am seven years old and every adult in my immediate environment is drinking daily and it is not hard for me to get a taste of beer, if I wanted, but I do not necessarily like the taste, so no problem. I am 10 years old and beer is beginning to taste better but still not my favorite, but a little sip of whiskey now and then tastes okay but it is harder to get the adults to give it up. I am 13 years old and my friend and I talk an old drunk into buying us a few quarts of beer and we commence to get drunk for the first time in our lives and now I know why all those adults drink this stuff every night. I was giddy, sloppy, stupid, sick and eventually unconscious. I woke up the next morning and went off to school with a nasty hangover. I was in the eighth grade at that time. Still, it was no problem.

From that time on my mind was consumed with thoughts of how I was going to repeat that wonderful experience. As I started high-school I worked in a bowling alley from 6:00 p.m. until 10:30 p.m., setting up pins (in the old days) and when we got off, we would go straight to a sleazy bar where we could get someone to buy beer for us. From there, we would go to an abandoned school building and drink till all the beer was gone, get into fist fights with each other, wake up the next morning with black eyes, skinned up knuckles and elbows, go back to school and come up with some ridiculous story about what had happened.

I am 16 years old, and I am allowed to party with the adults and shortly after getting my driver’s license, I am asked to drive someone home and on the return trip, I missed a turn and smashed into a parked car. I continue to drink unabated. I quit school in May of my senior year with almost no resistance, join the navy in August of that same year, get locked up for gang fighting, have my second drunk driving accident when I drive into a gas station and hit a car at the pump.

I continue this kind of behavior for 10 more years and am lucky to have survived after more trips to jail, failed marriage, broken bones, cuts and bruises and broken relations with everyone that means anything to me. I am 28 years old, surrender and show up at A.A. coming out of a blackout. I am greeted on the front lawn of a little yellow house in the suburbs that is being used to hold meetings by three people who welcome this stranger with open arms as though they are expecting me. They began to listen patiently to my tales of woe, nodding as they seem to understand. Their eyes are soft and gentle and I feel their compassion.

At the early age of 28, I believed my life is over, but one of them says “life isn’t passing you by nearly as fast as you think it is.” They say, come inside and have a cup of coffee. They were right: I had a profound change of perception. From that moment on I have never wanted a drink and all those bad days are but a distant memory. My hope is that all who arrive at the doors of A.A. can be accepted with the same love and kindness that I experienced. I have been sober 52 years. I am 80 years old—on my way to 100—and life is good.