The Point

By The Sunshine Club

The Sunshine Club is an AA service committee that brings fellowship to AA members who are unable to attend meetings due to illness or injury.

In 2007, Carole P. was in a car accident and all the bones in her left foot were broken; she had to keep her foot elevated for 6-months. During this time to alleviate her isolation and the noise in her head her friend David C. started organizing meetings for her at home. Throughout the entirety of her recuperation, folks from her home groups brought her meetings. After her recovery, she and David were at a meeting in the Reno/Tahoe area and they heard an announcement about the Sunshine Club. They asked about it and found out it was a robust AA Service committee in the Tahoe area. Carole and David brought the idea back to San Francisco — just as Carole had been able to have fellowship at home, they could bring meetings to others who were in similar straits.

Carole and David started making announcements in AA Business meetings about the new Service Committee, there were a lot of volunteers raising their hand to help bring fellowship to AAs in need. One of our members worked in UCSF Liver Transplant; they suggested there was a need for folks to receive meetings there too. An AA member from Stockton came to UCSF Neurology for extended treatment for epilepsy and she received Sunshine Club meetings in the telemetry unit while being monitored for seizures. One of our local AAers, Gail A, was diagnosed with cancer in 2015; the Sunshine Club brought her meetings every Sunday for months and months during her treatment. Gail felt the strong commitment to service and fellowship they brought her. She had cancer recurrence in 2022 and some of the same folks brought her meetings again, every week. Gail was in a car accident on Jan 1 2023, and was hospitalized for 1 month, afterward she was unable to get up and down her 30 entry way stairs. Again, some of the same AA members brought her meetings.

The initial Sunshine Club team of Carole and David started the meetings when they saw the need amongst themselves, but in 2009 they published an article in the AA Grapevine and that generated a lot of interest. To better share the Sunshine Club model with other AA Service Areas, they formalized and standardized the coordinator training and intake through the Central Office. They figured out what worked—and what didn’t—and came up with guidelines to safely and reliably bring meetings to AA members. The Sunshine Club continued doing just that, holding meetings in people’s homes, hospitals, long-term care facilities, and even providing support during end-of-life hospice care. Sometimes it was a one-time visit, other times it was a few meetings, or even weekly sessions over the course of a year. Their goal has always been the same: to bring meetings and fellowship to the alcoholic who cannot get out to regularly scheduled meetings due to illness or temporary injury.

During COVID-era restrictions on congregating, Sunshine Club meetings were limited. Post-pandemic, Sunshine Club in-person meetings have resumed but the requests for Sunshine Club meetings have been less frequent. While anyone who is homebound can access AA meetings any time on Zoom, our experience suggests that some members may be too physically limited to do so, but given the reduced frequency of incoming meeting requests we don’t know if the fall off is due to lack of awareness of the Sunshine Club or an actual reduced need. And, as always, the members of in-person meetings may rally around and arrange meetings for regular members informally, aside from the Sunshine Club.

Is there still a need for Sunshine Club meetings? Even for those who can access virtual meetings there may be something intrinsically useful and desirable about in person fellowship at home or hospital bedside. The sense of caring and fellowship is immediate. For those who are unable to access virtual meetings, Sunshine Club meetings may be their only face-to-face contact with AA members.

It may be that the awareness of the Sunshine Club’s services has diminished during the period of COVID shut downs. To reacquaint the Marin/San Francisco fellowship we ask that meeting secretaries, especially large meetings, announce that Sunshine Club meetings are available to AA members who are unable to attend regularly scheduled in-person meetings due to illness or injury.

Those AA members who would like to schedule a Sunshine Club meeting can either call Central Office or send a message to [email protected], or submit a request here: SunshineClubRequest. Any AA member who has at least one year of continuous sobriety can become a Sunshine Club volunteer by contacting [email protected] and asking to be notified of the next orientation.

By Anon.

Tradition 6 – “An A.A. group ought never endorse, finance or lend the A.A. name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.” 

OK, I got the part about we don’t run hospitals or rehabs, but otherwise this Tradition seemed as irrelevant to me as the Steps did when I wanted to stop drinking or the Promises did shortly after I did stop.  Of course with each new day of sobriety came a better understanding of just how the Steps needed to be interwoven into my being so I might have some hope of achieving the Promises in the time I had left on this earth – if I was painstaking. But then there were these Traditions, those which kept me from homicide, as the Steps had kept me from suicide.

After over a decade of being sober and contributing along a number of the many service opportunities that were available and which had been suggested, I had again read the story of the guy who would be the front man for the ad program on “How It Worked” that was to be sponsored by the Spirits Industry and if he would take the job. When finally the light dawned on him that this job quite simply was not the “next right thing,” he was quoted in what became for me an extraordinary insight when told there was no legal impediment to him taking on the job under consideration. 

“But this is not time for legalities, Alcoholics Anonymous saved my life, and it comes first. I certainly won’t be the guy to land A.A. in big-time trouble, and this would really do it.” ¹

I had no way to know how many times I had read this quote over the years, but for some reason it made so much more sense this time. I realized it was because the chord it struck was the “spiritual one,” the “life and death one,” for the same was quite true for me “Alcoholics Anonymous saved my life, and it comes first.” I began to think about how that played out in real time. It was easily more important than sleep and comfort, just thinking about how many times I had gone to that 7:00 a.m. meeting (they met  every day, 365 days a year) when sleeping in felt so good – but AA came first. Ironically, it also seemed that those were the days some newcomer showed up needing what I was fortunate enough to have been given by others. My attendance record wasn’t perfect, but thank goodness we sought to progress, not to perfect. Likewise, I had learned that when AA called, my answer was “yes.” 

But when I saw the “spiritual aspect” of Tradition 6 play out the fog lifted. Our group was in the throes of a rent increase for our beloved meeting place and the group was splintered about leaving behind 20+ years of local tradition to save rent money. Our solution:  the Old Timers suggested we pray for guidance! Pray for guidance, you have got to be kidding me I fumed. Get some comparable prices, focus our “pitch” to the local township for a rent break because of how valuable we AAers were to the community about us. That’s what the situation called for, plans not prayers. But they just smiled, said it would all work out, and suggested that asking for guidance and listening for an answer was the winning plan. 

Sure enough everything did work out. A couple of newer folks really stepped up, did their homework and set upon a serene path that worked. Guidance came from those who had been around forever and who knew what to say, how to say it, when to say it and to whom to say it. In this way obstacles vanished, rough edges were smoothed and everything worked out. I saw our principles being practiced in this important, group-wide affair. The Spirituality of the program, unblocked and unfettered by the business mentality I thought had to control the circumstances, had worked, it really had. In this simple way I had learned a valuable lesson which the group had honored in the best way possible, when it had applied to our problem this tradition which reminded us that we could be Bound To No One.

1. “Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions,” page 159. ↩︎

A member shares their experience cultivating gratitude.

By Anon.

It was difficult for me to see how that small untruth was hurting anyone, it was just helping me to keep peace around the homestead. The lie was after all only allowing me to enjoy a small repayment for why I was working so hard in the first place. I had seen “Dallas” as a kid growing up, the stars always had a drink in their hands. They would walk into a room and the first thing they did was go to a fancy looking table, get a nice looking crystal glass and put some brandy in it. Then they would talk of all manner of life and problems and solutions, always it seemed with a drink in hand. I figured if it was good enough for the stars on TV, it certainly would do me no harm.

So as a young married man, starting a family, when the question was posed: “Did you stop for a drink on the way home?” I always told just a little white lie – I always responded wholeheartedly “No.” Like Dover’s White Cliffs continuing to be eroded over time, I was losing my Integrity little by little and there was nothing I could do about it. I could not stop the conduct which necessitated the lie, despite my best efforts to try. I had already learned the hard way that the trouble that came with my drinking lessons kept me locked in my hidden past. That’s why these little falsehoods were harmless. I could take a gentleman’s pleasure after a hard day at the office before returning to the home that hard work sustained. It was just another of life’s delicate ecosystems, one activity bolstered another, was sustained by a third, so that a fourth could persist, and so on, and so on.

But the erosion of my soul was occurring, just like those White Cliffs. The first time the Truth intervened, at that couple’s session with the ill-fated marriage counsel, when I volunteered out of the blue that I drank the way I did because I was an alcoholic, that was quite a show stopper. Almost two decades later I still don’t know from where that nugget of Truth emerged.  But the admission was a game changer, no doubt about it. It did not save the marriage and has not yet patched things up with the children, but it unlocked a Truth that had been hidden until that moment by the blanket of my denial for all of my waking life until then. So too it was with the first time I admitted I was a Newcomer to the 7:00 am group I had been attending for months, each morning still bent from the night before. The lie not told, the lie of omission, had been just as damaging to my Integrity, as I was later to learn. After I embraced sobriety, I found that not only had these lies taken their toll, but the marks they had left on me became the signposts on the path I was to follow to become the man I always wanted to be, they were the signposts on my road called “Change.”

I had to be searching and fearless with my inventory, and my Decision had given me the courage to accomplish that. But then I had to “admit” this inventory. First an admission to my Higher Power, Who I could not see any way, so that was no big whoop. Then to myself, but I had penned the inventory, so no surprises there. But the admission to another human being, this was raising the bar quite high indeed. I had to be honest with this guy, my sponsor it turned out, face to face, about everything. As if it was necessary to underscore the value and need for this, I heard the horror stories about how those who did not employ Integrity in this admission, that often a drink, a slip, was their dubious reward and for me, to drink was to die. So here it was, put out all my cards face up, no tricks, nothing up my sleeve, nothing, nothing at all, held back. Otherwise, be prepared to pack it in and let my disease do what it wanted to do, take everything from me until I had nothing more to give, then take my last breath too. As I had lost my Integrity, one white lie at a time, so too I gained it back by the daily halting of that practice. Although it had been daunting and difficult, that first Fifth Step [there have been others over the years] gave me the tool I needed to speak the Truth. As the challenges have come since, that tool of Integrity has been often used and it has served me well.  I learned in its use, that it was the Willingness to try that put my Integrity into the space it needed to do its work, a space the Courage I had found in taking my inventory had made for that very purpose.   

By John W.

Those clowns said “You are as sick as your secrets,”
What did they know, his were “confidences to be kept.”
Of course they were of matters important, and of regrets,
But their memory he addressed only alone, silently as he wept.

So why the need to pull the scabs off of these old wounds?
The solace gained from his private affirmations was enough.
No need to “go public,” to raise these dead from their tombs.
“No” this was too much to ask, this suggestion just too tough.

But the affirmation to go to any lengths was at him gnawing
Eroding the peace in his days, the calm of his dreams.
Like “The Tell-Tale Heart” it beat, always time marking.
Its acme so, ‘twas though his soul was bursting at its seams.

Try as he might, with all the self-will he could summon,
No force to quell this invading presence could he muster.
For his plight was different, unique, his sins surely uncommon
And against the suggestion of their disclosure he did bluster.

His dilemma seemed formidable, he could fathom no resolution.
His delay had been costly, as to the brink of a drink he was driven.
Goaded by a “drowning man’s despair” he had sought a solution,
“Seek only the willingness to try” had been the suggestion given.

Yet for reasons he could later neither explain nor deny,
When this “life ring” was cast, he put arrogance and pride aside,
He grasped this chance as though his last, he became willing to try
And somewhere in him, survival and humility commenced to coincide.

In the light of its telling, the darkness of his past began to wither.
The power of owning it, totally, freed him now by his admission.
He had cast off its shackles, silenced its incessant twitter,
And could see his fear now as naught but baseless apparition.

The calm that beset him as this Step he had finally taken,
He witnessed by the sobriety which ensued over years,
As it cemented his faith in a process now rarely shaken
With a gift he had before not owned, a tool to address his fears.

John R. W.
03/08/2018
To Dad – On Your 96th Birthday
May Jesus Hold You close to His Heart

By Anon.

Like many others before me and since, I had heard the mantra: Don’t Drink, Get a Sponsor, Work the Steps – Your Life Will Change. Maybe like others, I thought of this “change” as being of a tangible nature, things would quiet down at home or in the office (in my case maybe in both places), this financial insecurity thing would be gone and I would be good to go, for life. I mean weren’t my difficulties to be taken away, so as to mark this “way of life” to the newbie just struggling in the door?

With my wife and children back, my job roses, my IRA soaring, I could shout the praises of AA from the rooftops (anonymously of course) for anyone with a problem and an interest, this was my plan. My guy, Owen, then with 26 years behind him, smirked as I explained this and gently responded “More Will Be Revealed.” He wouldn’t tell me what he meant by that quip, just said to integrate it into my 11th Step meditation practice and sooner or later I wouldn’t need to keep asking him, I would know. His unexpected passing in 2011 sealed his silence on providing further enlightenment, but not on the wisdom of his retort now seemingly made so long ago. As suggested, I gave this advice some thought and I listened at the meetings to “hear” him. But while the gift of sobriety did indeed change my life and gave me the beauty of days to experience it I am sure it would not have been mine had I continued to drink, my plan of what my sober life would be like must have been great comic relief for my Higher Power.

As I continued to Live Life on Life’s Terms, I found myself confronted with issues, problems, and just plain-old tough stuff, which I was sure should not have been happening to me, a sober man. These had to be exceptions, they had to be the mistakes in God’s world that are not supposed to be there. Yet as one seemed to exacerbate the other or complicate them both and confound any perception of a solution or way out, my hope was fading. The storm clouds were gathering, life was not looking pretty, in fact, it was getting pretty ugly. I thought of Owen’s advice: More Will Be Revealed. So I asked what step applied, was searching and fearless about the moral inventory I took about today’s problems and made my list. I admitted it readily to myself and my Higher Power, but how to another? I should not have been surprised, but I was, about how the answer to my silent, private question manifested itself.

Literally the very next day, an Oldtimer I had not seen in weeks showed up at my new Home Group for his first time there. After hearing my self-pity clothed in justifiable anger and resentment before the meeting when he made the mistake of inquiring “How are you,” he volunteered after the meeting that I really should consider doing a 4th Step on this and discussing that with my Sponsor. I proudly, and a bit smugly, pulled my notes from my wallet and said I was way ahead of him, I had done so already. Smiling, he asked when I was to do my Fifth Step. My fumbling response confirmed I had not decided on that yet. So when he accepted my request to be that “another human being” I felt vindicated. But, when deciding “when,” he rebuffed the notion of “maybe sometime during one of the upcoming weekends” and offered “now” before we each headed off to our respective jobs-oh my! Gone was my veneer of rhetoric, the rubber was meeting the road – right now, in this moment. The admissions that followed were heartfelt and honest, albeit at times unexpected. As we parted company, I thanked my Listener for his time, his ear, and his making exact the nature of my part in the drama, his were observations I of course had wanted to overlook completely or justify righteously.

In the parking lot at work, as suggested, I reviewed what had just happened -It was then that More Was To Be Revealed. For although I had done a 4th Step many years before, this time it was different. This time, as I reviewed what had preceded these recent admissions and the disclosure and discussion of them, I began to feel something different. Whether it was the nearness of my Creator or not, I would be unable to verify with scientific precision, but it was perceptible, it was real, it was there! Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, this day mine it seemed was of the “slow” variety, but with the work had come the materialization, more was being revealed. Life’s difficulties may have remained, but I knew on this day I was no longer alone when dealing with them. From the power of this way of life, I had instead this victory over them.

By Dede H.

Cloistered in my bed where I write
Love visits me everyday on my tray
This food emanates brilliant radiance
I’ve lived a colorful life filled with rage
Over involved valor is now discarded

Radical acceptance is taking its place
My Higher Powers do not need me
Every day I race to find sustenance
They show me where the good food is
Nutrition floats in your eyes with Grace

Bits and pieces of surrender teach me
Enter the galley of this anonymous ship
Sobriety cooks—thank God you’re here
Group of Drunks I revere your seats
It’s a liquid friendship we worship to eat

A member shares their experience moving from “restless, irritable, and discontent” to joy and victory. 

By: John W.

This particular winter had seemed long in the making
Even longer in leaving. . .like an end that never came
The awaited package which never arrived
A Nordic darkness bereft of light or hope. . .only isolation

A day’s sun seemed measured in minutes, not hours
The frigid cold of being alone was itself numbing
Sapping even the latent desire to live
Eviscerating the last hope of a new life, of change

But change would happen, there was no stopping it now
Except a slip of course, a relapse into “before”
It was clear one of those always lurked just out-of-sight
But not as far out-of-mind, so change was the only treatment

Another slip was certainly possible, another recovery against Big Odds
The Decision had been made, the only requirement clearly met
So being fear-less was possible. . .Without Fear, Fearless-so very doable
No false evidence appearing real, the Decision would overrule it!

The suggestion was to take stock, an inventory, a thorough one though.
No longer could I take the inventory of another and blame me on them
I had to take my inventory, all about me, a personal inventory
With a clear head I could be thorough and fearlessly cross the portal to change

The clarity induced by “without” helped me to be searching
I could more easily see the before, through the clear eyes of today
To be no longer afraid of what I would see
Promised I could not regret it or shut the door upon it

The task thus presented clear, likewise the goal,
For tales of those who avoided the task or missed the goal were gruesome
The lore was steeped in hearsay and anonymity, but ever present:
Be thorough and fearless, do the best you can with what you have or die

No “ifs”, “ands” or “buts” about this fork in the road, just the black and white
Starkness of choice, facing newcomers and old-timers alike, who
With the resolve of those in foxholes as the whistle to attack sounds
Engage daily this life and death struggle, where no quarter is given or expected

“You do not have to do this alone” this Army’s motto
My captain, my sponsor, issued the suggestions
These the same he had received as he this task had faced
My battle was his too, that is why he made so much sense to me.

One by one the resentments were sighted and mapped
My part in their making brought them closer, now well within range.
As each was then catalogued, recorded, a sense of progress becalmed me
“You need not be perfect “ I was told, just be the best you can now!

Only now I was not set up for failure, as had always been true before,
This was different, this change was a new outlook, a new attitude
How easy before it had been to blame them or it
Now the mirror of this process always kept me in focus too

The new day was dawning, I could feel it, as no feeling I had ever had,
I knew too I could admit to it, for I was no longer alone.
In the doing I was changing, in the admission
I had hope the change would really come – today.