The Point

The Point, San Francisco.

A member shares their experience finding joy in fellowship. 

By Anon.

That we are to learn from history so as to avoid repeating it may help in many facets of life, but it certainly did not help with my history of drinking. The embarrassing moments in high school, which were cute or funny, transformed into embarrassing moments in college which ranged from badges of dubious honor to moments best tolerated by friends just looking the other way. After graduation this proclivity to imbibe translated into a wrecked car [my first] and arrests, more than I care to acknowledge even after over a decade sober. Like so many I was later to hear also describe, I arrived at the doors of AA, not on the Wings of Victory. My stop, like it had been for these others, was at the last house on the block, literally the end of the line. 

Before I could comprehend that there indeed was a solution, I needed to cross the threshold of unmanageability. In my case, as heard from more and more when the sober days began to mount, this I could do by accepting I was powerless over alcohol. My lack of power was my dilemma. I was not a moral weakling. I was just suffering from a disease that was out to kill me and, while performing its treachery, was bent on telling me I was fine. This message was like a wave breaking off the sea wall at Ocean Beach. It rolled in every morning when I showed up at my 7:00 a.m. meeting, hung over, and it hit that sea wall. It then receded as the day progressed, taking the oath to make this Day One of never, ever drinking again with it.As the next swell built, I consumed my daily swill and history dutifully repeated itself.

Praying alone did not seem to work for me. The luster of swearing had paled with those to whom I offered it to replace the trust lost in the downward spiral of dishonesty and betrayal my drinking had spawned. Yet the conversations I began to hear at my morning meetings were different. Even though I certainly was not an alcoholic and was just as surely more successful in business than almost everyone in the room [My fantasy world in “Hi Gear,”] they were each doing that which I could not. They had stopped drinking and were staying stopped. This was a new frontier for me.    

As my days at meetings began to pile up, even though my continued drinking was to take me to still new lows, the gift of Faith which I had somehow been given began to become unwrapped. I began to believe that if these men and women could do it, then maybe, just maybe, so could I. As the days became weeks and then months I heard how they did it – One Day at a Time. So too I heard the horror stories of those who slipped and managed to make it back – sadly  I also heard the reports of those who did not.

I realized once I experienced that miracle of a sober day, that day the Obsession actually vanished, that I was either in it for the long haul or the end would soon be upon me. A member of our program was asked to read one day, and they turned to Bill’s story: “But just underneath there is a deadly earnestness. Faith has to work twenty-four hours a day in and through us, or we perish.” (Alcoholics Anonymous, pg. 16)  Faith not only in the admission that my life was unmanageable because I was powerless over alcohol, but Faith that I could be restored to sanity. Faith that if I was painstaking, I would comprehend the word serenity and I would know peace. With each passing sober day this new frontier upon which I had embarked revealed a new and wondrous landscape.  While I had heard these wonders described, to actually have them become a part of my life, I see now was entirely a product of my gift of Faith continuing to be unwrapped as I followed the suggestions set forth in the Big Book.

My sponsor told me many times, “Faith without works is dead.” (Alcoholics Anonymous, pg. 88)  His actions and those I witnessed in the other members of my group each day, personified what it meant to lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. As I tried to follow their lead, which thankfully asked me to focus upon progress, not perfection, my Faith grew too. I cannot say how it happened, nor when it happened, only that it happened. I heard the words “We know that when we turn to Him, all will be well with us, here and hereafter.” (Twelve and Twelve, pg. 105.) I do not know what these words mean to others who might hear them, I can only say what they have come to mean for me. Simply, I have Faith that all will be well when I turn to Him.  Finally, bare of all its wrapping, I can freely partake in this gift of Faith our Program has given to me. 

By John. W

The comic’s skit at this point was simply hilarious.
One hardly needed to juxtapose the alternatives to see
That the choice between letting one eat cake could be
On one hand with death on the other so bluntly obvious.

I could hear in my mind’s recesses the audience laughter
As a soon to be headless French Queen lost to reality.
The comic’s revised order to soldiers the option of civility:
Offer them Cake or Death, a treat now or the eternal everafter.

Who would ever choose to die, with another selection so attractive?
There of course was the innate humor in the comic’s query.
Yet I had faced that liquid choice daily, choosing death and misery.
The sweetness of Cake rejected, the result so self-destructive.

The gauntlet to my guillotine marked by taverns and recycling.
The stats to my block, papered with broken promises and lies.
In the end, alone, only myself to thank, only myself to despise.
Abandoned hope accelerating my relentless downward spiraling.

From whence the whisper came, I doubt I shall ever know.
But clear and definite it was, like a long lost, dear friend.
Breathing in silent earnestness, “This is not your end.”
Cajoling me to listen and in my veins let this spirit flow.

Once again the Decision was upon me, I had to make a choice.
Though the battle was again joined, something had changed in me.
I had abandoned myself to this Power Greater than Me to be free
Of the booze and its trappings, to seek instead that new Voice.

By Anon.

After struggling with high school chemistry and biology, I threw in the towel before entering the Realm of Physics. Still, although I never truly appreciated what Newton meant, I was familiar with his Third Law: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. I also had no clue how this principle applied to my disease of alcoholism. Quite the contrary, I thought I could get away with any number of actions while drinking and that none of them, in fact, actually caused any reaction anywhere else.That was the fantasy in which I had lived for decades indulging my disease and slowly killing myself in the process.

When my bottom left me no alternative and I was miraculously able to start on the Steps of recovery and stick to them, I like so many other lucky ones found things turning around for me. My life was getting better, just as I had heard others describe had happened for them. As I progressed in working my program and got to that point of considering what ironically were alternatively described as “extravagant promises,” my reflections at the time reminded me of just how far I had trudged in my journey. Neither time spent, miles walked nor sober days achieved were the milestones of measure. Rather the changes in me were the benchmarks of my progress and I had been warned at the outset of the changes I would need to make. This warning was delivered when I had naively asked my new-found sponsor simply what things in me I would have to change to be as successful as he had been in the program. The equally simple reply of “Everything!” was daunting to say the least.

However, I found that by the time I could honestly and heartily respond “We think not” to the question posed about the nature of those promises, I knew they were coming into my life. They were becoming a vital part of me. They were becoming the new milestones in my progress towards a new life, a sober life. I discovered too that in my progress, while not perfect in my attempts, it seemed as if the fighter in me more often than not, did not come rushing forth when the bell of a “new round” rang. Instead and with growing frequency, he would retire to a neutral corner, draped in a cooling towel comfortably around his neck, all the time longingly looking outside the ring, hoping he soon would be there. 

Regardless of the phase of my development, I was still, like anyone else both above ground and breathing, dealing with life on life’s terms. Thus it was with some surprise when, one morning after a particularly cantankerous meeting with a member of my local fellowship, I realized that I was still fighting some things and some bodies. Even moi, spiritual giant that I was, had room for improvement – an honest assessment: a lot of room for much needed improvement. Although that day’s lesson sank in hard, I found as I had learned it to so often happen, that with the dawn of the new day, came new hope. That hope to live this new day successfully, started at my 7:00 a.m. home group meeting where the selected reading could not have been more appropriate and spot on.

The reader shared the observation that, as we came to this phase of our development, we had found that we had ceased fighting anyone and anything. There it was, the problem boldly laid out before me. Of course so too was the solution, this being found in working the steps and, on that day, my listening to others who had confronted the problem I was having and hearing how they had arrived at a solution to it. One solution offered was to remember, as the member said was their frequent practice, that because they had made a decision to turn their will and their life over to the care of a Higher Power, they were now able to report they had achieved some peace with one of their character demons and no longer needed to fight everyone about everything. They proclaimed that their action in making the decision had contributed greatly to this later experienced change in their attitude and outlook upon life. This was a revelation which had until that point, completely eluded me. 

It was then I remembered that long-ago high school lesson on Newton’s Third Law and saw how it now applied to my own action in making my decision. If I was prepared, really prepared, to take the action to decide to turn my will and my life over to the care of my Higher Power, then the equal and opposite reaction was that I would cease fighting anything and anybody. Talk about a change in my whole attitude and outlook, this was it. The more I began to see the import of my action, the more I was comfortable with the effect of the reaction. The magic of the moment, of the listening and hearing at my meeting, was that I was being challenged to broaden the scope of what my mind had accepted as truth for so long and allow my spirit to behold that truth in a manner previously unknown by me. No longer was my decision, as I had made it to combat my disease, solely for that phase of my development. Now I could see that decision as one permeating how I was to practice those principles by which I desired to live in all of my affairs. Simply by the timely voice of one person in this fellowship who had shared at one of my meetings, so much more had been revealed and all I had needed to do was show up and be willing to listen.

///

By Dede H.

I move with a drumming heart

I dance with electrified atoms

You know that you do too! 

In truth, nothing can keep us apart

I am so very happy you’re my friend

A loving relationship from the start

For we are friends sharing recovery

Before that I was my father’s daughter

I came into this world whole I think 

There is so much more to this story

I heard Mother beg him not to drink

Later she poured alcohol down the sink

I’ve inherited both of my parents’ genes 

I picked them in extraterrestrial dreams

This seems silly to you an atheist agnostic

Sorry for putting you in man-made categories

A belief in nothing is a knowing something 

Light is supported and loved by darkness too

By John W.

By Anon.

Proud of the fact that I had been born in San Francisco, it seemed to cut to the essence of my heritage when pulmonary problems – that my later to become ex-wife had developed – caused us to consider, and eventually move, across the Golden Gate Bridge to Marin County to raise our growing family, now numbering three, all under age eight. The ravages of my problems with alcohol, unbeknownst to me at the time, had moved with us.

The office where my thriving business was continuing to grow despite my shortcomings stayed behind, requiring a commute each day. Two prior premarital DUIs, over ten years apart, by now “ancient history”  had caused me to learn how to better control my drinking so it would no longer obviously affect my driving. Because not driving when I had been drinking was lost on me despite my arrests. I sought and found a local spot, over the GGB, where I could drink but avoid contact with the law. I gave no concern for whom I might hurt, I was “sure” I would drive well, my concern was to not get caught. I was a selfish drunk, my veneer was that of a well-educated, respected, professional, father of three – but on the inside, in the marrow of my bones, I was a selfish drunk, plain and simple.

After the successful change of location to Mill Valley, with the perfect watering hole located a short drive up an easy mountain road, life could not have been better, or so I had thought. But the drinking I believed was having an effect only on me, was tearing my family apart. Even though I had finally gotten sober, after months of daily 7:00 a.m. meetings and despite the evening blackouts, the Kick Out Order was on its way from the Marin Family Law Court. I had no friends, or at least so it had seemed. Without the booze to take the edge off, I was itching restless, oh so irritable, and, make no mistake, very discontent. The folks that had what I wanted, that were licking their disease one day at a time, said “Keep coming back” and “Don’t quit before the miracles” but just how was I to do that. The sponsor helped and with his guidance I started on the steps, not knowing then the timing probably was what kept me sober in the Tsunami that was to hit.

Because of my profession, I was keenly aware that Marin City, just on the West side of Sausalito, due to the boom in WWII shipbuilding, caused Marin Ship to be built, literally overnight, with Marin City constructed in the same haste to provide housing for the needed workers. Of the 4.5 million Americans who entered the shipyards to aid in the war effort, the deep South provided many to the Bay Area, laborers looking for a chance to work, alongside many a Rosie doing her riveting. But when the war ended, a ‘final bullet’ casualty was Marin Ship which closed entirely within weeks, leaving thousands unemployed overnight, playing much more than havoc on the neighborhood dependent upon the shipyard for wages.

The night in question, when I Came to Believe, started like so many before it. My morning meeting was in the books. The 4:30 at The Marina Dock on the way home sure helped, but as I crossed the GGB, I was getting “thirsty” – You know what I mean. Desperately I perused the schedule and found Marin City 6:30 – 6 Nights a Week. Off the freeway like normal, but left to the meeting, not right to the bar. It took a bit to find the classroom used as the meeting location and I knew not a soul, but I felt welcome before I could find a seat. Everyone but me lived in Marin City, or so it seemed. They were laughing and joking with each other and their attitude was contagious. But when that single mom told my story, that was when I Came to Believe. She told us how she had drank herself out of home and family, and how through the program, working the Steps, she had gotten those shattered relationships repaired. While the husband was still a work in progress, the children had finally “come home to momma.”  Oh, did I need to hear that hope that night. When we talked a bit after the meeting, she told me something I had heard before but from her that night I “heard” in a different, a special way. She said “Don’t drink, you go to the meetings, that thing with the kids will work out.”  I never saw that woman again despite getting to that meeting many times over the years that have followed. As I have heard her advice in my head so often in those years, each time I have taken the same hope from it. Though these family circumstances of mine quite a few years later are also still a work in progress, the hope is not. It has replaced the marrow in my bones with a belief that is vital to my successful day, that my Higher Power will restore me to the sanity I have but to seek His help. Looking back, I now know that my HP sent that woman on just that day to Marin City so I could hear her advice which I needed to hear to keep me out of the bar to which I had been headed.  The Power of one drunk talking to another I see day after day as a Miracle of this AA program – I Came to Believe that miracle one night in Marin City, a night I will never forget.

By Dede H.

Don’t fight!
Don’t take the bate!
I yell at my dogs
My husband’s snarky
I get barky
So what!

My cortisol level is up
My immune system down
I shop for dopamine
Run all around town
What to do, what to do?

Stop fighting everything
Stop taking the drink
Surrender my will to my One
Peace is just around the corner
Sobriety and serenity are mine
Victory!

In A Sea of Confusion.

By Rick R.

When greeting newcomers, we all want to do what we can for them with the hope that they will all get sober, and live happily ever after, but oftentimes, that’s not what happens. In the grip of the withdrawal symptoms and the awful awakening to face the hideous four horsemen, the new member is often swimming in a sea of confusion and bewilderment, wondering what they have gotten themselves into and wishing they could have a few drinks to settle their nerves, but they know that never turned out well. In my earlier days in AA I would have started by talking about the steps, higher power, one day at a time, and all the other clichés I knew, to pull them out of their hopeless state of mind. That was the best I had to offer at that time. Today I realize that they are already mentally overwhelmed and it’s unlikely that they will translate those ideas into anything constructive in the mental state they are in.  I remember how I felt on the day that I came to my first encounter with those who welcomed me. They were Kind, Considerate, Compassionate, Understanding, Patient, and Comforting. 

Today, when I have the opportunity to greet a newcomer, I want that person to experience the same safe harbor that I experienced. First, I ask them if they’ve been here before, and if they say “no” I have a chance to make their first experience in AA one of hope. I do a lot of listening, so I can get a fix on exactly what they are dealing with at the time, be it, divorce, DUI, loss of job, financial problems, or whatever else they are dealing with that has driven them to AA. Next, I offer them a cup of coffee and find a comfortable place for them to sit and experience their first meeting. I assure them that they will probably have a different perspective after the meeting is over, as most of us do. I let them know that most of us have been where they are and, as impossible as it seems, we all got through it in fine shape and that most of us are comfortable in our own skin. I don’t start giving them advice, other than to sit back and enjoy the sharing. I find it better to let them form their own idea of what we do, by not giving them my opinion of what they should get out of it.

After the meeting is over, I might ask if they enjoyed what they heard and was it different than what they had expected. It usually is and they usually experience the sincerity of the people who shared, and it doesn’t feel that they are being sold a bill of goods. I make sure they have a meeting list before they leave, and I might ask if they have transportation and if they plan to come back for a second helping. I may offer him some literature and even a Big Book, if I feel that it’s appropriate. If they do come back for his second meeting, they won’t feel uncomfortable and, if nothing else, they should see some friendly faces and my main goal is to let them know that we can be trusted. Our only agenda is to help.

When I was in the Navy, they sent us to First Aid classes. The first thing they taught us was, when we arrive on the scene of a personal injury, to “First, Stop the Bleeding”. All the rest is useless if he bleeds out. That analogy seems appropriate for our new members, and I always want to, First, Stop the Bleeding, and make them feel comfortable and safe. I want them to want to come back. The collective sharing of the group will be more effective than any one person’s opinion. Sponsors and mentors will come in due time and only after they understand what they need.