As his head hit the pillow this night Knowing this day he had fought the good fight, He paused to reflect the discipline it required To see the triggers and not by them get mired.
On Awakening he turned to his daily ritual So different from the Before and now habitual. His requests for help with his day’s tasks unspoken, Their hearing, not granting, witnessed by another annual token.
Each day he found his token, just by the door. Each day he was sober, now, each day since Before. No small price to pay on The Toll Road called life, The fare for his passage, a sober reply to joy or strife.
At a speaker meeting early in my sobriety I was to hear a claim that puzzled me greatly at the time, because I was on no “pink cloud” and the wreckage of my present lay strewn about me. The speaker had observed that: “You can take the alcohol out of the alcoholic, but you can’t take the alcoholism out of the alcoholic.”
I had wanted so desperately of course to not be an “alcoholic,” you know what I mean, one of those falling-downers, wearing a trench coat on a hot summer day, slumped over in dark places, trying to bum spare change. That was an alcoholic and that sure wasn’t me. I had some trouble with the law, that crashed car in my history was never an easy memory, but I lived in a nice house, had a wife and kids, and a good job. I may have had trouble with booze every once and a while, but nothing I could not handle, nothing I could not fix.
The rude awakening of my bottom replaced my fantasy of life with reality. While the spiritual awakening which I was to find as a result of working the Steps was on the horizon, it was still quite a distance off when I heard this speaker’s comments. These words had dashed my hope of the “miracle cure” I had been expecting and caused me to wonder if I would ever be OK again. As the sober days began to mount, I was graced with a sponsor who has managed to stick with me through thick and thin. But at our first meeting, after my affirmation that I was willing to go to any lengths, he asked me what I thought things would look like in 365 days. Ruling out a PowerBall winning ticket or Bill Gates giving me his fortune, he asked for my realistic future outlook.
After some reflection I gave my reply. To this he responded that I had underestimated the benefits of the program on which I was beginning to embark. He then guaranteed me that things would be so much better than I had just declared I would consider it fantastic if they materialized in the next year. In the days and with the work that followed, when my reticence to do the next right thing confronted me, he would remind me of the affirmative reply I had given him before. These reminders became the antidote for my fear when it reared its ugly head, disguised as uncertainty or “wrong place, wrong time.” So although our journey was indeed painstaking, his guarantee to me proved no idle ploy, he made good on his promise. Though my play had not followed the script I had written, I had won a personal Tony nonetheless.
As we had then moved to Step Ten, my question to him was “Now what?” His reply was as if set to a familiar lilt: “Keep on Trudgin’!” What I had started to integrate into my daily life with his help, would be with me for the rest of it he said, there was nothing I needed but to Keep On Trudgin’.
However, because I am the kind of person I am, always in search of the easier, softer way, I sought a second opinion. I asked a fellow with time and who “had what I wanted” how he kept on trudging over the years despite the hurdles in his sobriety. I wondered and asked him what the key to Step Ten was for him: “Discipline” was the one-word reply. After he let that sink in, he said I would never be cured of alcoholism (Oh where had I heard that before) and that my best hope was for a daily reprieve. But he said that for him, an atheist, his focus on the spiritual challenges of this task required him to stick to it in a rigorous, disciplined way. As a result, he said he had found that regardless of one’s concept of a Higher Power, in his time he saw that those people who “worked the steps” and did not just “talk the steps” seemed to persevere. He said that I was likely to find, as has proven to be the case, that the traits I exhibited when I was drinking were still behind that face I saw each day in the mirror. My demons were there, ready to ensnare me in sobriety if I failed to stay focused on the program that had brought me that gift in the first place.
My sponsor, my “second opinion” and now so many others too, have all echoed the words of that speaker from my past. Those comments however were now no longer a puzzle to me, they had become an insight into my disease. They bespoke too that the Spiritual Awakening of which they had been a harbinger could and would be achieved, today, as long as I was willing to Keep On Trudgin’.
Everyone is all gone now I’ve made certain of that People are forgiving too But I’m a particular brat Cloven hooves often lose I scan, scrimp and cheat Never satisfied with you I stomp and cry and bleat I can’t even please myself Fair weather friendly deceit Angrily returned to the shelf Love’s sweet breast is tough God forbid I should find fault Mother’s milk is never enough Life’s lessons assaulted me It is none of my business What people do or seem to see To what they say I only witness Not guessing what they think This thing that I am learning is: I’m successful without a drink
If someone were to ask me what brought me to the doors of AA, my answer would be: “Alcohol had got the best of me. I was desperately circling the drain and I didn’t want to die young.” Not everyone who comes to AA has that degree of desperation. I got sober on October 15, 1969, just before alcoholics were offered rehabilitation clinics. Up to that point most of our members who came there were looking for answers. The success rate at that time, according to the Foreword of the Second Edition of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, says: 50% of those who came looking for answers got sober and never drank again. 25% got sober after a few relapses and stayed that way. The rest 25% showed improvement. To me, 75% sounds like a surprisingly good ratio of success.
The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking. (Tradition Three) Not everyone who came to AA from the court system or from a rehab environment has the same amount of desperation as those original members had. This does not mean they were not invited back, for we treat them with respect. But a significant percentage of them relapsed and we welcome them back with open arms so as not to be considered an AA failure and eventually many of them did stay sober.
The amount of desperation is often consistent with the depth of thoroughness a person is willing to go through as he takes the steps, and when I was faced with the suggestion that I do a fearless and thorough moral inventory, in the Fourth Step, I began to resist and did what I would call a shallow facade just to get my ticket punched.
Being in the Navy at the time, I was abruptly flown out to the Western Pacific during the Vietnam War and assigned to a tanker replenishing fuel on ships in the Tonkin Gulf Fleet and I had four months to think about what I was going to do on my return home. My conscience told me to discard my original inventory and do it right the second time around. That is, I think, what made the rest of this program easy for me. Accepting accountabilities for all those disgusting behaviors of the past and to make restitution has been the answer to all those alcoholic behaviors in the past. If we have completed a good Fourth and Fifth Step and again in the Eighth and Ninth Step, how do we approach the Tenth Step, which suggests we continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it?
Early in my sobriety, my wife came home from an Al-Anon meeting excited about the topic they shared. She said, “We should examine our motives for all the things we do,” and that made perfect sense to me. I have been living a life based on Unselfish Principles and never finished examining my motives. All my outside behaviors (short-comings) are the result of my thinking (motives). So long as I am willing to continue this path it has taken all the fight out of me.
“Selfishness – Self-Centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity we step on the toes of our fellows, and they retaliate.” (BB pg. 62) What a profound statement! Living a life based upon unselfish motives has restored my self-esteem. The final and most important result is peace of mind. Never thought that would happen!!! This is my understanding of Step Ten.
In my early months of sobriety, I was asked, a few days in advance, to lead one of my first meetings. At that time, My EGO was already taking control of this new phase of my life, and of course, I immediately wanted to let everyone know just how enlightened I had become in such a short period of time. In our little meeting room, we didn’t have a lot of upper end furniture. Someone donated two rows of old theater seats and they were arranged one behind the other. I seated myself in the center of the front row. I went through all the preliminaries we went through and when it came time to select a topic, I decided to impress everyone and announced the topic to be SELF PITY, for we all know that it is, as stated in the Big Book, the biggest Killer in A.A. We had a lady named Helen B. who always announced herself as “A tough old broad”, and she was. Unfortunately for me, she was seated in the row behind me. When I finished my sentence, she leaned over and shouted in my right ear, loud enough for everyone in the room to hear. “YOU’RE FULL OF S—-, RESENTMENTS ARE THE BIGGEST KILLER IN A.A.” and she was right. She gave me a resentment and I wanted to kill her. LOL. It was humiliating.
I grew to love Helen for what she did to my ego, what I couldn’t do to it myself at the time. (B.B. Pg. 64, Resentment is the “number one” offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else.) One of the things I took away from that little embarrassing experience was that I better know what I’m talking about before I open my mouth. Another thing that came with those little course corrections, was a drive to understand why I do the things I do. If I am still judging others, Gossiping, Rationalizing, Selfish, etc. My EGO is still in control. A friend in the program once stated that: All forms of criticism and Character Assassination stem from Low Self-esteem and my thoughts were: Who Me??? From that day on I have stopped those EGO driven behaviors and I replaced them with Patience, Empathy and Compassion and Understanding.
I now live by the dictates of my Conscience. Most of the progress that I’ve experienced in the A.A. program wasn’t as difficult as it seemed, when I was going through it, but it took a lot longer to have the structure in place, such as honesty, patience, understanding, unselfishness, and so on, to support each level of growth. Intellectually, resentment was one of the things that I could understand, but with all the complicated mental defenses I had bouncing around in my head, my best efforts only produced slow but steady progress. Most of the resentment issues I had while I was still drinking were usually more of the façade I created with my sick mind. When I got sober, my relation was real and even then, I, with the help of my ego, had a hard time accepting the day-to-day interfacing with other people. Does all this mean that I must take abuse from others in my circle of friends? I always thought there was a conflict of values, like “turn the other cheek” or something like that. Well, I found out through trial and error that we, in the A.A. program, are closely related to more people than the average person out there, and we come to know the personality traits and I am not threatened by them anymore. The People that know me, Know me Well.
And it all started with a loving kick in the Butt from a “tough old broad” named Helen B. God bless her. To this day, I thank Helen for setting me straight.
There’s a special spiritual charm In chanting ten thousand names Of God or of a Holy Mother In Its myriad of energetic forms In some countries it is a norm We now know indeed it’s true Everything is a part of the One See words are an entire ocean Each one a name that is too Describing bubbles in the sun How many words are there? In the history of the world? Perhaps a quadrillion or more Maybe every word is sacred Every single word we share What is the lesson here? What can I discern from this? Speak mindfully and clear Talk gently to remain in bliss Open hearts keep You near
I was intrigued by the organization of this meeting I had been “invited” to attend. The secretary seemed to take no notes, created no Minutes, and there appeared to be no real agenda, just people talking and chiming in from all over the place. Her aide, the guy at her right, in the seat of honor and power, or so I had surmised, said and did nothing the entire hour – that was the job I would try to land for sure. If I had to attend these meetings to try to keep “she who must be obeyed” (my wife) off my back, then the easiest job available had my name written all over it.
Of course the reality of the “not drinking part,” the purpose of these meetings, was lost on me, and caused me to continue to sink deeper and deeper into my disease. When that changed, thanks to an actual miracle of sobriety, in every sense of the word, months later, through no fault or action of my own, except daily 7:00 a.m. meetings, it began to dawn on me how clueless I was in those first few days about how meetings really worked. As the sober days began to pile up into years, I saw how trusted servants volunteered their time, sometimes at a sponsor’s subtle elbow or nod, to help make things happen every day, 365 times a year, rain or shine. I was even told how, on the morning of 9/11 when the horrors of the Twin Towers and elsewhere were being told in real time the meeting continued, after a brief Group Conscience. After all, sober men and women deal with tragedy a bit better than those not, at least so seems the belief.
In my own recovery I took hard the lesson that if the man to whom the Twelfth Step efforts were directed did not “get it,” we were to move on to the next still-suffering alcoholic. This seemed so hard to me as I read those words in the Big Book. Its authors had recovered. They told us how they did it. They shared their stories, some quite vivid and desperate, promising no matter how far down the scale we might have gone, our experience could help another. So why would we leave the one who did not “get it” behind? Why would we, how could we, abandon even that one? The story of the shepherd going to any lengths to save one sheep astray from the flock was a reverberating counterpoint.
But it was I who did not get it.
As time passed, I realized those who seemed to make it did so because of something within them, something driving them to survive. No one was able to instill that drive within me and I realized I could likewise not instill it in the next man. He or she had to want it all on their own. I could only carry the message. Not make him or her hear it, not make them follow it, not make them live it. So too it seemed with those meetings I attended.
While my Home Group has not changed, often my schedule gives me other alternatives. I have found that those meetings where I “want what they have” all seem to have that same sense of a drive to survive. They seem compelled to do the next right thing as a group to keep their attraction alive.That is not because they just have the best array of cookies or a variety of organic teas, although rigorous honesty demands the acknowledgment I do not find them to be detractions. But it means they have a sense of purpose palatable to me. Hands are quick to be raised for help with cleaning up or grab an open commitment. The awkward silence of waiting for a volunteer, if present, is short. Also, the people in those rooms seem to exude genuine caring, many might call it love for those about them, Particularly ones who might be suffering, whether with just 24 hours or decades of sobriety. They realize that living life on life’s terms is not always easy and awareness is evident in how they participate in the meeting. That attraction is infectious to me. I seek out those meetings. I return to them. I survive because of them.
I have come to believe they survive because of the same reasons I was drawn to the program in the beginning. Their members share the exact same reality I experienced – that to drink is to die. They know, truly, that the statistics are against the alcoholic’s victory over their disease. So, in the same way for me: Life Depends On It. I see too the life and longevity of a meeting depends on living this reality, one meeting at a time.
September is upon us here in San Francisco, and that means a change in the seasons as we transition from the summer fog (“Fogust?”) to more balmy weather. Of course, “balmy” to us is relative, just ask someone in Texas this time of year! September is also the ninth month of the year, and when us AAer’s turn our attention to step nine. This step is also about change, a change in our attitude and outlook on life.
When I was first exposed to the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, they seemed strange indeed. All the mentions of God, prayer, and inventory did not have much to do with quitting drinking as far as I could tell. At this early stage of recovery, I was still running the show, so I had not yet surrendered. Sound familiar?
I was in residential treatment at the time, and my fellow residents and I were making the rounds of the local AA meetings. We heard members share about working the steps and when they would share about making amends to those they had harmed, fear set in among us. We would talk amongst ourselves back at the house about how scary that was and if we could even do such a thing. I started going over in my mind the people I had harmed because of my drinking and just how scary it would be to make amends to them. I still did not see what this had to do with quitting drinking, but my attitude would soon change.
When I got home from treatment and started to go to meetings on my own, the ninth step still loomed large. When I heard it read at meetings I cringed in fear. I got a sponsor and started working the steps, dreading number nine the whole time. My sponsor cautioned me not to look ahead and to focus on the step we were working on, reminding me they were in order for a reason. When we got to step eight, we looked back on the inventory from step four to make a list of all the persons I had harmed. With the help of my sponsor, I went through the list thoroughly to determine those to whom I would make amends. So, when we got to step nine, I was ready.
I set about making amends to people and the reaction was overwhelmingly positive. This was a cathartic process for me, and I felt a tremendous weight lift from my shoulders. Practicing humility and taking responsibility freed me from the guilt and shame which so often leads to relapse. I finally saw what it had to do with my not drinking!
If I continue to practice humility and accept my part in things the promises can come true, and I will be amazed before they are halfway through.
