The Point

By Dee H

My Higher Power is not myself
I’m thankful I don’t need to be right
Today I put my ego on the shelf
Meditation reverses my search lights
I’m glad there’s nothing I must tell

My Higher Power is mine alone
But we often share our Love
Love sets the tone of any gathering
Never a need to push nor shove
Kindness is a skill worth mastering

My Love knows me very well
Wants what is best for me
Hate and fear It does quell
True desires are always fulfilled
This is a truth I need not sell

I found my Love by making a list
After meditation and prayer I wrote
The gist of things I value most
Freedom and positivity made a pact
Spirituality is a natural creative act

Try this too when you are alone
We can be together in spirit
I hope to see you somewhere soon
If you feel generous I’d like to hear it
That list possessed by your own Spirit

No Criticism or Character Assassination
By Rick R.

Hanging on to resentments and criticizing the behavior of others is often a noticeable characteristic of some members of the Program that never find the serenity and peace that is mentioned in the promises. For some people it seems impossible to let their guard down. I think that most of us can understand this, simply because we have all had to face this issue and deal with it as we went through the Twelve Step process. One of the things that I learned when I was faced with this matter was that I had a self-esteem issue and I overcorrected by pointing out the faults of others, to somehow make myself seem normal. This never worked for me as I could not fool my conscience. Things only got worse. I still worked through the Steps and did what I could at the time. No one gets it perfect the first time, but we can make a second effort at it when we have established a record of living by principles. Alcoholics Anonymous meetings are a training ground for how we treat others and if we cannot accept the people there, it is a cinch we will not do it outside of the rooms.

Everyone that comes to A.A. brings with them their own assortment of mental, emotional, spiritual and material problems, and none of us are without these concerns. If we did not have them, we would not need this Program. We all feel vulnerable and establish our own firewalls, with the help of our egos, to protect ourselves from our perception of what those other people are doing, saying and thinking. We each might establish hard and fast protective reactions, mentally and verbally to protect our own turf.

With so many different personalities brought together in one group, it is extremely hard to let down our guards. We all feel justified when pointing out the faults of others. This is what the alcoholic personality does. With the understanding that most forms of criticism and character assassination stem from low self esteem, it occurred to me that I was just as guilty of the very things that I was accusing them of. I likened it to two old men in a convalescent home hitting each other with their canes because one was not walking fast enough for the other. I had to step up to the plate and become strong enough to look deeper into their motives and understand what caused them to behave the way they did, and not be threatened by their outside behavior. I cannot express in words the mental freedom that this principle has produced in me. When I see someone acting out, my first thought is not judgmental in nature but of empathy and compassion. My next thought is” what I can do to help him or her.” In time, I have come to terms with all the people that I interact with on a day-to-day basis and I conflict with no one. To me, they are all like kids just learning how to do life. They all have problems and I am not going to be one of their problems. I need to be strong enough to replace words like resentment, judgment and criticism with empathy, understanding and compassion. Today I have no adversaries that I can think of, and peace of mind is the natural result of this approach.

I find no exceptions to this principle and I cannot be selective about who I apply it to. Everyone gets amnesty in my book. All those mental gymnastics about “those other people” are a distant memory and I cannot think of a single time that practicing this principle did not serve me well. The only one that is sorry for this profound and life changing transition is my ego, but about that, who am I to criticize?

By Christine R.

“Christine, you need eyes for your 9th Step. You need someone to receive your 9th Step amends on behalf of your dead father. Before you go to his tombstone in Reno, make your amends to me.” Thus spoke my sponsor who provided a baseline by which to make amends to those who have departed, as well as opportunities to receive amends from sponsees whose loved ones are dead.

My drinking career began when my father died unexpectedly and I was 15. Unable to handle the grief, I poured myself into a scotch bottle. Some 15 years later, I came pouring back out again. Only this time, the liquid was my tears. Fifteen years of bottled-up grief turned a wounded teenager into a screaming, raging drunk.

Finally, under the guidance of strong sponsorship, I stood at the crest of my drinking history— the memory and hurt of a love lost long ago, my father. With papers ready and in a complete downpour, my sponsor and I scampered out to a little gazebo at a park we often frequented.

The heavens opened up with rain. Water was everywhere outside and inside. Tears were spreading down my sponsor’s cheeks hearing the heart-felt shame, regret, love and forgiveness from that 9th Step. Her tears mingled with mine and were washed away by the rain. Through her eyes, I could feel my father’s eyes. I knew dad heard me.

They say, “Water seeks its own level.” Quite true in sponsorship as countless women enter my life whose parent died early or unexpectedly. We share the pattern of unrequited love. The unfinished business. The “if onlys.” At the deepest of levels, I know these women and they know me.

One woman hated her father so much she did not even have a photo of the guy, so great was her wound. (Thankfully, the 9th Step is a far piece away from the 1st!) By dint of working Steps 1-8, she came to a point of willingness to discover a well-worn, black and white photo of her with her father at a fiesta in Mexico—even the edges were still gilt with tiny specs of salt from the margaritas!

Using her cell phone, she took a picture of the picture. With the phone camera on, the fragile, tattered, black and white photo became part of her 9th Step. The one she was about to give to me. This time I was the dad. Like my sponsor before me, I turned into her father. Like wires in an electric cable, I became the conduit between the living and the dead. After we finished, she printed up her dad’s photo. Now he adorns her altar. Now he has a place in her heart where before there was only turmoil. She has appreciation for her father and feels the “all around forgiveness” promised in our Program.

There is one in our Fellowship who says, “You don’t want to go to your deathbed knowing you could have done something, and you didn’t. The 9th Step is your way out.” 

Through the lens of that kind of consciousness, we can truly see what needs handling right away and what does not. This is why, if our parents are still alive and we have not done our 9th Step, now is the time to get going. Saying the amends to a tombstone is nothing like saying them in person. Up close and personal, you can read in the other person’s eyes you really mean what you say. You are following through to amend your ways. They see what you see—the mend-making is more than an apology—you are creating a new beginning.

However, if the beloved is deceased, find a safe person to receive your amends. Read in their eyes what they read in yours. Only forgiveness and love and eye see you.

By John W

The business man had successfully remained anonymous
City meetings avoided, in his small hamlet, few knew him.
He came and went with ease, OK with the occasional familiar face.
In passing weeks he learned some names, he even shared his.
He still was anonymous, yet he no longer felt anonymous.
Ninety and Ninety had passed with help from his “guy,”
He continued to “walk the walk,” the “talk” part came slower.
The wedding reception challenge, survived with spousal support.
So why must he leave his “cocoon”? Could not this trip wait ??
Alone, five days, client dinners, no home group – FEAR!
The skid-row meeting that hot, summer afternoon – happenstance.
Calmness upon arrival, that true sense of belonging – Unexpected gifts.

By Paula M

Subtext

Bill and Bob introduced an awareness of body-mind connection insofar as the phenomenon of craving and the mental obsession.  In the 83 years since the Big Book’s first publication, in a time typified by vast scientific achievement, little headway has been made in the quest to understand the disease of alcoholism. The founders uncovered the taboos of alcoholism, delineated its expression and provided a design for living for the recovered alcoholic. 

On the heels of the Great Depression and in precursor to World War II, the founders, guided by faith and physics, envisioned the creation of a worldwide fellowship of recovered alcoholics.  As dawn rose in the field of atomic energy resources and weaponry and as Europe unraveled into chaos, the founders of our Program set forth their collective efforts to save humanity, starting with alcoholics with the desire not to drink.  

All the work they did was in preparation for this moment in time, would you believe?  As we stand at the precipice of nuclear war and thick in credence divides, our worldwide fellowship is obliged to stand. For what is the benefit of a new life, gifted to us through this Program if life is extinguished all together?    

Reflection

When a baby first looks in a mirror he becomes happy and excited to perhaps meet a new playmate. There comes a point where he understands that his reflection is him yet not himself.  

At this point a gradual transformation in a blend of his subconscious and consciousness forms  his belief that he can exist outside of his body and furthermore is in control of his body. With or without an actual mirror in hand, we see ourselves in third-party fashion. 

For the alcoholic, the allergy of the body- the phenomenon of craving triggers expression due to a prior selection of false presumptions and selecting non-choices. In other words, before the active alcoholic is in the physical presence of liquor, he/she doesn’t have the ability to not drink.  Drinking was a non-choice many steps back and furthermore, the ‘he’ who exists outside the body, the self who stands as third party, has the disease of perception.

Alcoholism is defined through a pattern of thinking. Whatever image an alcoholic does or does not want to portray in the present time, the obsessive thoughts which drive one to the act of taking a drink sets crave in motion. 

The phenomenon of craving preempts reflection, thoughts, feelings and emotions as outlined in ‘Modernity.’ The automatic, immediate and direct link from basic instincts gone awry to mental obsession is another abnormality beyond the phenomenon of craving.

As if a refined, ubiquitous spade, the spiritual awakening delves back into the unconscious/conscious and restructures the mental form of existence. A true spiritual awakening begins on our outer physical core and bypasses the web of choices and options.  When the compulsion to drink has been lifted, it is as if the detrimental thoughts, emotions and mind pattern have been surgically removed and the alcoholic is recovered

Just as the disease embodies a direct, forged path from character defection to the consumption of alcohol, a spiritual awakening exploits this direct path, taking it in a spherically reverse direction. This deconstruction explains why alcoholics are so grateful to be alcoholics, for they may never find a path from physical action to intuition without the forged path already in place. 

Just as Gollum (Lord of the Rings) played a part in the salvation of all, the deformation of our perception allows a fast track to connect with a source of power intent on our well-being.     

Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy must be viewed as a series of binary choices rather than an end-state of existence.  

The deconstruction of juxtaposed thought, emotion and feeling are backed into, going in the reverse direction of the path the disease forged. 

Hypocrisy does not necessarily have as urgent a need for removal as does the antics of an active alcoholic.  In other words, the lack of perceived desperation may prevent one from having the humility required to change. 

By Jessica M

There is an annual event where people swim from Alcatraz to San Francisco. It is the swim the Anglin Brothers and Frank Lee Morris made in their escape from Alcatraz on the night of June 12, 1962. A friend of mine did the swim and he told me his story about participating in it. What stood out the most to me was that he said the organizers tell the swimmers to head towards Coit Tower to account for the current in the bay. If they aim that way the current will help them get to where they need to land for the end of the event. 

As I continue the work to stay sober, I get still get caught up in the spiritual component: The God word, Higher Power, God’s will and the next right action. I have found surprising comfort in my friend’s story about swimming from Alcatraz. 

At the risk of sounding dramatic, I am trying to escape the prison of my own mind and my own island of isolation that I see as the manifestation of the disease of alcoholism. Coit Tower is what I am aiming for, sometimes it is thinking of others, sometimes it is God’s will, sometimes it is my greatest hope for myself or at least the better parts of myself. 

I don’t actually have to reach it. I just have to continuously align myself with it. 

The current is everything else. It is the things I cannot control, it is my self-interest, humanness, my limited subjectivity. I try not to judge the current as something good or bad as much as I can. I do my best to see it as natural and a neutral part of the reality I am in. I don’t have to fight the current. I don’t expect it to be anything other than a part of the experience. The current is not going to go away, it is not personal, but I do have to account for it in the things I do. 

I don’t have to wish the current or myself or the world was another way than the way it is, but I do have to accept what is there and work with it all the best way that I can. This way I can get to where I need to be. 

By Jillian E.

I was going through a difficult divorce and one of the principles I have learned in A.A. is to do more service when I am feeling shaky. The Big Book says, “Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. It works when other activities fail.” I knew that one way to see more newcomers in my life was to join either H&I or Teleservice. The first commitment to cross my path was as a Teleservice Rep for my home group. The responsibility of the meeting rep is to not only make a weekly announcement about what Teleservice is, but to also attend the Teleservice business meeting in order to learn how Teleservice works and bring pertinent information back to my group.

I began attending the business meeting monthly and found an amazing group of committed people serving the still-suffering alcoholic. They were living the Responsibility Statement. (“Whenever anyone, anywhere reaches out for help, I want the hand of A.A. always to be there.”)

At that first meeting, I took a couple of volunteer phone line shifts and have never looked back. In my years as a phone line volunteer, I have talked to alcoholics from all over the United States. One time, I helped a woman find a meeting near her home in Detroit (using my computer, she didn’t have one) and in another call I talked to a man from somewhere near Dallas and also helped him find a meeting near his home. I have also helped countless people find meetings in Marin and San Francisco. Sometimes potential volunteers tell me they are afraid they won’t know what to say if they take a shift. I say, “Treat them like you would if you met a newcomer at a meeting”. I have the 20 questions available because I always ask a caller, “Do you think you have a problem with alcohol?” 

Since my early inception in Teleservice, I have been a daily volunteer coordinator, the orientation coordinator, the 12-Step worker list coordinator (where I taught a workshop on how to do a 12-Step call) and the Chairperson for the Committee. During the pandemic, the Teleservice committee has continued to be a lifeline for alcoholics as we became instrumental to helping people find and navigate the Zoom meetings and that continue today. 

Teleservice has really changed the depth of my sobriety and has also been a very straightforward and simple commitment. It takes very little time and is unbelievably rewarding to know that I am helping, as The Big Book says, when no one else can. I can secure the confidence of another alcoholic when no one else can. My life has, in fact, taken on new meaning. 

Teleservice and all the other San Francisco and Marin Intergroup committees are in need of more volunteers. There are many to choose from: Sunshine Club, the Tech Committee, The Buzz, The Point, Archives, Fellowship, HelpChat and many more. Take a chance, be brave, be bold, deepen your recovery by volunteering for an Intergroup service committee that fits your life and your schedule.

Accepting the World as It is

By Rick R.

Our primary purpose is to stay sober and to help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. The degree that the individual carries out these two goals is not mandated by A.A. and the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.

The A.A. Program offers suggestions on how to overcome the difficulties brought about by the disease of alcoholism and not simply the act of drinking. These difficulties come in the form of spiritual damage and material wreckage. It seems that our spiritual damage lies in the unseen part of our makeup, such as our thinking, motive, fears, conscience, ego, guilt, shame, self-esteem and the like. Our material wreckage often comes as the result of our spiritual damage and is the residue of our spiritual condition. “Selfishness—self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles.” (pg. 62 Alcoholics Anonymous) That being said, isn’t it apparent that unselfishness would be the solution to our troubles? That seems to oversimplify the solution, but in my experience, it is so simple that it is usually overlooked.

Most alcoholics have spent their lives taking advantage of everything and everyone around them and as a result, have been plagued by the guilt and shame that only a drink could mask. The Program of Alcoholics Anonymous suggests that we live by principles and I cannot find one selfish principle in the Big Book or the 12 & 12. I believe that most of the people that truly have a desire to stop drinking and embrace the A.A. Program start to change the behaviors that they recognize as counterproductive simply because they can hear these things that we all share at meetings and they change the most obvious shortcomings in their day-to-day activities. This is a good start and with time it starts to erode much of the shameful habits of the past that had become commonplace.

Talk of inventories and amends cause us to think at a different level about those material matters. That is usually the only thing that we are aware of in the beginning. When we talk about spiritual matters, it seems that we all have different perceptions of exactly what we mean by “spiritual”. If, for the sake of simplicity, we think of it as our innermost self, such as our ego, conscience, our mind, our heart or soul, if you like, and realize that this is where our spirit resides and where our emotions live and that is also where the pain of our past thrives.

If we want to achieve the peace of mind that is promised in Step Nine, we will have to come to terms with the process of acceptance of the world as it is and of the people in that world. If we want to be accepted and forgiven for our past mistakes, we must be willing to accept all the people that we find fault with and give them the same latitude that we are seeking. To accomplish this, we can stop being judgmental and replace that with an understanding spirit. We will have to replace gossip and character assassignation with compassion and empathy. If we can’t do that, then how can we expect the world around us to accept us and forgive us for our past mistakes?

This is no time to rest on our laurels, so to speak. It’s time to begin cleaning out the attic. This is where we begin to free up that space in our minds that has been keeping us awake at night. This is truly the path to developing the unselfish spirit, and with it come a peace of mind that’s hard to imagine while we were  still playing God ourselves. It costs me nothing to be kind. My wish for those other people is that they can someday find the same peace of mind for themselves that this process has provided for me. What more can I say?

By John W

Many a youth has marveled, upon tossing a large rock into a pond, at the ripples created and how they disperse across the breadth of the pond. Science tells us that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. My journey into sobriety was kick-started by the subtle operation of each of these two principles.

When I was newly sober I received the gift of a tape-recorded share given some 24 years before at the Oregon Summer-Fest A.A. Gathering in 1981. The words which had been recorded I found to be particularly moving and helpful in achieving and maintaining sobriety. The now deceased speaker, Raymond O’Keefe, observed at the time that the ripples of service started by Bill and Bob in Akron, OH, so many years before, had traveled a long way to find that Willamette Valley Summer-Fest in 1981. However, I suspect Ray did not quite imagine how far The Ripples of Service for the “rock” he dropped that day in Oregon would travel to traverse decades and miles only to later wash over me in Mill Valley, CA, in 2005.

So too it was with my experience at the Tam Valley Log Cabin 7:00 a.m. A.A. group. I did not realize as I stumbled in on that Monday morning in November of 2004, a drunken, arrogant, dishonest man, soon to lose home, wife, family and later business, that the meeting I was attending had its start years before in 1986. Although I noted a somewhat amateurish painting of the “Log Cabin” hanging on a wall, many meetings passed under my Sobriety Bridge before I learned about the artist and of his checkered past. The painter, a long deceased, convicted felon named Chuck O’Connor, had himself also found this meeting many years before I had located it. I was told this character’s drunk-a-log spoke to his adventures with the most notorious criminals in America’s underworld, including Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, Godfather Vito Genovese and Whitey Bulger. He had even become friends with the “Birdman of Alcatraz” while confined on The Rock in San Francisco Bay. But when Chuck O’C. received the breath of sobriety, he inhaled it deeply until his death, that of a sober man, whose home group had become The Cabin. 

I learned through “Cabin Lore” that Chuck was an absolute marvel at dealing with the still-suffering alcoholic, often the man with booze on his breath or a belly full of beer. Chuck seemed to have the “just-right” knack for winning the confidence of the newcomer. The halfway house and rehabilitation center in Marin that Chuck founded* was a testament to the value of his service. Chuck dropped his rock into the quiet pool of sobriety and watched for the ripples of the sobriety anniversaries to disseminate from it. While some of those ripples I suspect, by a slip, did too soon hit the shore or cause death from our shared fatal disease, I am grateful, as I believe Chuck would have been also, that our Program is one of progress not perfection. 

Sometime after the The Cabin had become my Home Group in 2005, I found out more about how that group had started in 1986. Although those founders had since moved on, one who lived only a few counties away was actively sponsoring women in the program. I was then fortunate to meet Linda G. and have since had the lovely experience on a number of occasions of listening to her share stories about those early days. The ripples of Linda G.’s service also persist at The Cabin as one of the women she sponsors still frequents it and calls it her Home Group. 

On Unity Day, many can be grateful for The Ripples of Service caused by the rock dropped in Tam Valley in 1986 by Linda G. and her fellow alcoholics when they started the Log Cabin Group. Those ripples continue to disperse because, while The Cabin was closed by COVID-19 in March of 2020, the “Back to Basics” meeting has recently opened at this intimate location. Now the six days a week 7:00 a.m. meeting is again available and providing service to the alcoholic who wants to get or stay sober. Unfortunately, a lingering side effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and the national emergency it caused is that it has demonstrated the fruits of service are not always fully known and are promised to no one. Ray O’Keefe, and Chuck O’Connor never knew how far the ripples of their service would disperse. Linda G. and her fellow drunks could not foresee how far or for how long the ripples of service would travel or that they would provide a home group for Chuck and later for me. Chuck’s picture of The Cabin still adorns the wall where he hung it so many years ago, but whether the legacy started in 1986 will persist, at the moment is anyone’s guess. What is certain is that the service which started the sobriety snowball rolling at The Cabin should neither be forgotten nor overlooked.

On this day of Unity, the Back to Basic group continues to rely upon the will of that one Ultimate Authority which guides the Fellowship, always mindful of the fact that one cannot predict or guarantee that any one meeting of today will be here tomorrow. However, our Program is one of hope. My personal experience from this wonderful meeting serves as a vivid harbinger that service works and that The Ripples of Service do persist and nurture, whether or not the ultimate impact of that service is ever known to the alcoholic who provides it.

* Chuck O’Conner link: http://www.westcoastgangster.com/introduction