The Point

Finding a Higher Power when capitalized words have a negative affect on an alcoholic with an on-again off-again relationship with formal religion.

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“Be quick to see where religious people are right, make use of what they offer.” (Alcoholic Anonymous, pg. 87)

Photo by John L

St. Mary’s Church, Nicasio, CA – December 2022

By Dede H.

If only my spouse treated me better
What if my candidate became president?
If my dog didn’t pee on the carpet
I wouldn’t drink today

If only my friend would call soon
What if global warming could be abated?
If it didn’t snow so much
I wouldn’t drink today

If only my mother was a kind woman
What if organizations ran better?
If my cat didn’t shed on my chair
I wouldn’t drink today

If only neighbors were dependable
What if war became obsolete?
If my car ran perfectly
I wouldn’t drink today

If only I didn’t drink everyday!
What if I never drank to not care?
If I don’t drink today
I won’t be ashamed tonight

By John W

Drawn in the Sand
A spent wave obliterating
The once fine border
Until the water recedes
Revealing…The Line, resolute!

Hell is a relative state
Here today, gone tomorrow, for eternity
Never leaving me alone
Always here, Hell is alone
Worse, when Hell is with you

Or is Hell a Line?
My Line, not Yours
Waiting beneath my almost spent wave
Waiting resolute, waiting to spring
Anew, fresh and distinct

Unavoidable, A Line one cannot
Walk around or jump over,
Fueled by Ego, driven by Fear, tempered by Drink,
Hardened by Life, impervious to emotion
The Line is somewhere, waiting….waiting

Like a siren, it beckons to me
It lures me for a sucker punch
My Line, not yours, is waiting, calling me
Come to It I can, Come to It I will
Come to It I must…It calls to me, calls to me…

Can I survive It, this Bottom, this time?
Have I crossed The Line?
Have I stepped too far…
Have I crashed too hard…
This time does only Death await me?

My time has come,
My choice is at hand
My time has come,
No longer can I go without change,
For only despair, only darkness awaits.

A willingness to change
Bespeaks hope
Still today I cannot help but cross The Line…
NO! Today I will not cross..
The Line…

Today, with help, I choose to say “No”!
Today, with help, I see My Line, not yours
Today, with help, I choose to stay sober.
Today, with help, just for today, I won’t pick up.
Today, with help, will be a lifetime of tomorrows.

Living by the Dictates of My Conscience
By Rick R.

“Desperation” has been the great motivator for me in the thoroughness I have applied since the day I surrendered and came to Alcoholics Anonymous searching for solutions to my out of control drinking problem. Not everyone that comes to A.A. has this degree of desperation. That, I believe, is the difference in the degrees of success that we have when it comes to abstaining from alcohol. 

The reality is that not everyone gets it on their very first attempt. With time comes understanding and once I got beyond the initial stages of recovery it became clear to me that alcohol did not cause my problems, although it eventually became a problem. My mental and emotional troubles started surfacing long before I ever started drinking and I now realize that the drinking masked most of my mental and emotional difficulties for a long time. My tolerance for alcohol started to dissipate and the heavy drinking became an obvious problem. I failed at marriage, jobs, friendships, parenthood and trust with just about every one that knew me. I burned so many bridges that finally I had no place to turn. By some miracle, I woke up one morning and with no other options I desperately called A. A. for help. 

I was finally ready and from that day on over 53 years ago, I have never wanted a drink since. The obsession to drink has never showed its face again but had I not recognized the reason that drinking seemed to work in the early days and the mental and emotional problems would be exposed when I stopped drinking and would need to be addressed if I was ever going to be at peace with myself and with the world around me. I feel fortunate that from that very first day I have not been in denial about my condition and have embraced what I recognized to be the solution to my disease and the pathway to a future of the contentment that I enjoy today as the result of that thoroughness that I have applied to every facet of my life. 

I had to relearn how to be a husband, a father, a brother, a friend, an employee, a neighbor, a partner and a citizen. I had to become an asset and not a liability. I had to question my motives for everything I did and assure that I stayed on the unselfish side of the ledger. I found it helpful to revisit the spirit of the things that I learned as a child in church, school, and in the Boy Scouts… and apply them where the selfish and dishonest habits had ruled my life. 

I came to understand how my ego had taken over all my mental properties and I had to let my conscience slowly regain control of my virtues. The A.A. program was there when I was ready to throw in the towel and it helped me to recognize all of these changes. It doesn’t go into detail about how to meet these noble goals of how to be a good husband, father, friend… so I had to learn from other experienced sources about the details of these issues and go about reprogramming my inner self to incorporate all these components of right living. These things take time and they do not happen overnight, but I could not let that stop me from beginning this new journey and giving me a purpose for living. I am extremely grateful that the A.A. Program was established just in time to be available to save this broken spirit and turn me into the person that I am today as I override my ego and simply live by the dictates of my conscience.

The Continuing Search for Connection
By Roman R

I’m over six years into recovery and have been swamped with contradictory feelings. I feel grateful to no longer feel as much of a draw towards thinking about the next time I can get drunk or find weed. If I see young people in public going from bar to bar talking loudly, not paying attention to personal space, I wince knowing that was once me. I do feel the sense of missing out when I hear laughter or sense genuine bonding happening over drinks, especially as the pandemic has moved me to become more isolated.

I’m flooded with memories and realizations of my past. Trying to have compassion for my younger self and wishing I could be there as I am now, to hold a younger me through the lonely times. When I was 26, I left a job I’d had for three years. It’d been my first full time, long term job with benefits I’d had since graduating college in 2002. I was living in New York City, still recovering from the previous autumn with government officials embracing a new strain of xenophobia and militarism. There has never been an easy to time to be authentic and/or “make it as an artist,” and with people on edge, I imagine it was even less so then.

The job I’d had was at an advertising agency and one of our clients was Crown Royal. So yes, at times we would have alcohol around the office. Not to mention monthly gatherings at local bars where the company had an open tab. Instead of supporting workers by raising our wages or improving working conditions, we were given unlimited alcohol on that one special night a month. I don’t have to say more about that to show how destructive and coercive some workplace environments can be with fostering addiction and dependency on alcohol.

In the eight months between when I quit the job and decided to transition, every single day I had drank alcohol and/or smoked pot. I kept a tally as if I knew I was working through something. Looking back I could not have been able to stay at that job and transition. Being mocked for simply keeping a vegan diet was enough to know folks would not be able to wrap their heads around me using a different name and going on hormone replacement therapy.

While working, I was enrolled in improv classes, attended shows, performed stand up, made it to the gym a few days a week. It’s a way that someone in their twenties with that energy could do that now seems unthinkable. I kept myself so busy that I wouldn’t have the time to really face myself. After leaving the job, I began using every day so I would not have to sit with my Feelings.

While I was able to stop for a bit after coming to terms with myself, it was transphobic reactions from people that opened up fresh wounds that made it easy to start drinking heavily again. I have compassion for myself, in that I was to a degree self medicating. And I know if we lived in a society that ensured people had their basic needs met (housing and health care as a start), I would not have gone back to drinking and using with such force. Not having a stable place to stay for months at a time over the course of several years and floundering in medical debt crushed the self esteem and hope I was trying to hold onto.

And buying a few drinks or a couple grams of weed is far more affordable than a security deposit. Not being in the present could momentarily help soothe my sense of sadness and grief. I was so happy and at peace as being able to live authentically. It was the transphobia from certain health care providers and society as a whole that made living authentically become that much more arduous.

I look back and can blame behavior on being drunk and/or high as if to distance myself from it. Even though at the end of the day, I said and did certain things I was not proud of – I feel less shame around it. “Oh well, I was young and I’d been drinking…” Now when I make mistakes or say something I regret I have to accept that it is me and me alone who is responsible.

Drinking and drug use are not uncommon in the stand up/improv/art world and while part of this could be easily connected to the idea of how difficult it can be to be an artist in a capitalist and punitive country, alcohol is so incredibly ubiquitous. So much that the majority of the venues where one performs (theaters, clubs, bars) sell alcohol. Often times performers are not paid, except for with drink tickets. As someone who often interned in exchange for classes, I was often the one serving the beer and wine. I do not think of these venues serving alcohol as doing so because of malevolent intent – it’s the reality of having to keep doors open, as art spaces are notoriously underfunded.

There’s the belief that the opposite of addiction is connection. And connection can be so hard to establish if we’re continually taught we are different, if there’s a lack of safe and sober spaces, if we’re so busy trying to make ends meet that we are unable to be in the present moment. 

By Dee H

Why do I turn from the light?
Why is a happy day followed
With a dark night of the soul?
Is my God too bright?
Why do I need my shadow?

Many people have shown me
Though awful faces seem shallow
To have an opinion of their own
They have claimed their rights
As branches of the same tree

An Earth God has bestowed
Upon those who are in power
It seems as they in their might
Cause me to in weakness wallow
In much self-pity I suffer so

No one is coming to shower me
With love’s sobriety and kindness
It is up to me to care for others
To know a home where I can be
Aware that loving blessings flow

Faithful—comfortable with myself
There is a place for each of you
Providing space for this to be true
Allows me to renew God’s love
With you friends that love me too