thepoint_042025

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.

By: Anon.

The cerebral Mr. Spock tells Captain James Kirk in a time clothed in the fantasy of the future, that “Change is the one essential principle of the Universe.” Of course this alien also did not consume alcohol. To one blessed with neither that insight nor that physical constraint, change came hard. This was so even when the circumstances of change had been thrust upon me by a doctor’s medical warning and a Divorce Court’s “Kick Out Order.” Undaunted, I would lie in my tub of blissful denial that the test was a “false positive” that the doc has simply mis-read it and wallow in the legalities that would prevent me from being thrown out of a residence which I alone owned, just check the deed.

When the tsunami of these changes broke upon me and I finally stopped drinking and started trudging the road, I began to accept all of them and the new reality that had come with them – almost.  Of course there had been the admission followed swiftly with a coming to believe. I had become convinced of my insanity and knew I alone had no defense, mental or otherwise, against it. Thus The Decision had made much sense. Only then did my Sponsor begin to discuss the real change that I was now to confront. My old way wasn’t working and hadn’t been working for a long, long time. So it seemed like my sponsor had the rather easy task of convincing me of the obvious, one pretty simple proposition: Be prepared to change or it is likely you will drink again and, if you drink, you will die.  Simple, straightforward – his laughter, as I seemed to actually be pondering this proposition, was the dose of reality I needed to accept it too. With Decision made and inventory done, the admission thrice had then opened the door to a new way of thinking, I hoped for a new way of living.  But as to this, I was admonished that only time would tell. As the days went by, I then came to find out that time passed for A.A.ers in a very wonderful way, it passed “One Day At A Time.”

As the days passed and life happened, most of those things about which I had then been so worried, never even happened. Those that did, in some instances struck with harsh consequences and even cruel efficiency, but the Steps I had taken had prepared me. I dealt with them as best I could, with all the honesty and integrity I could muster, for I had not then been alone. I found to my surprise and comfort, that with each disaster, someone in my groups, at my meetings, had been there before, had survived that calamity, had weathered that storm. They told me they had done so – sober, and thus I could too, if I didn’t drink and I went to the meetings.

But those who are not busy living are often busy dying, so it was I discovered that life being lived, sober, was still living on life’s terms, not on mine. I found that even in sobriety, calamities can happen, the floor upon which you are so comfortably standing one minute can suddenly vanish and leave only the abyss. Where then does one turn? What rope does one grasp to shinny up to safety? As my newest abyss loomed, my sponsor’s words began to ring in my ears “With any problem I must confront, I first ask myself-Which step applies?” How do I bring the steps to bear to address this new problem or, as seems to be so with me now, these new disasters?

Step 4 was the answer. For while I was so prepared to exhaustively take the inventory of those with whom my relationships were now souring, I had to then ask myself, what was my part in all of this? The difficulty of asking myself these questions quickly became dwarfed by the answers honesty compelled me to give to them. Then the kicker: I had to forgive these ill doers also. It was then an echo of this Step once taken so many years before now began to reverberate. Forgiveness, better to give it than to seek it. But I had not done so then and was not ready to do so now over a decade later, still the anger had patiently lingered. So where was this “change” about which I had been so confident, about which I wanted to be so proud? Taking my inventory today about new problems had revealed this omission of my prior effort, and had displayed how that effort had not been completely thorough, despite my best intentions. “Do not be Discouraged” a good friend extolled. So I was not. I asked to be shown the next right thing and be given the courage to do it. More will surely be revealed if I just don’t drink and go to the meetings.

By: Dede H.

Undertaking a courageous inventory
Of myself and my previous actions,
An attraction foolhardy for glory,
What could possibly be the reason?
Certainly it’s not in the name of fame!
I’ve been very angry with the patriarchy
Blamed my stupid husband for everything 
I’ve really resented rich corporate America 
Thought my parents should’ve let me sing
Was an underserved growing little thing 
So I had to fight for my right to party
Took a position so my voice was heard
Shouted how things were supposed to be!
Was misinformed my opinion mattered 
Nobody gave a damn but me…
Folks are entitled to their own reality

By Anon.

Long before I became a Grateful Alcoholic (“no” I never thought I would describe myself in that way), in another dimension of life I had heard the gift of Courage described as Fortitude. I had an intellectual sense of what “fox-hole courage” was intended to mean, but having never been in the military, much less in battle, I had no literal reality in which to frame the term. When I began losing with increased intensity and consequences my battle with the disease of alcoholism, my fruitless, solitary struggle, my Bottom, led me to the AA program and there I experienced the miracle which allowed me to achieve a daily reprieve from my disease. In that awakening, with the help of others, I worked on The 12 Steps, sought to live The 12 Traditions and even learned of The 12 Concepts.

But as I trudged and strove to practice these Principles in all of my affairs, I had to ask myself what on earth did that really mean? Dearest Maggie, a darling octogenarian with over half of that time sober, occasionally would drive my Home Group to tears of laughter, when sharing about how she thought at first that compliance with this suggestion meant she needed to increase her liaisons with different members of the male gender. But when the laughter subsided, she would put the joke aside and burn into your consciousness as only she could what it had been like when she drank, how she had come to AA, and what her life was like now because of AA. She would put flesh on bones of the Skeleton of The Principles, but never a name to them.

Although he had pointed to no particular location in the literature, as if only by virtue of the oral tradition of AA, my sponsor had conveyed to me The 12 Principles: Honesty, Hope, Faith, Courage, Integrity, Willingness, Humility, Brotherly Love, Justice, Perseverance, Spirituality and Service. As I had then worked the Steps and continued to do so in the many days that have followed, each Principle had become so easily recognizable in each Step, yet their collection in one place as elusive as a finger of fog ‘neath the Bridge on a blossoming October morn in The City. They were like a good friend who timely arrives with help when trouble is afoot, always there to shed light on the problem at hand or to guide to the next right thing when doubt or fear permeates the senses.

So it is no surprise to me now, as I Zoom from one virtual meeting to the next in these shuttered times, in a March that had come in like one lion and was exiting into April as a Pride of them, with not a lamb to be seen, that The Principle of Courage is on the nearing horizon.

Born from a Faith which embodies the awareness, to paraphrase FDR that “The only thing to Fear is Fear itself,” Fortitude needs now to be summoned to carry this alcoholic through these troubled times. This too is The Principle of Courage, the knowledge and belief that no difficulty need be so great as to preclude the ability to confront it with Integrity. I was hearing The Principle of Courage expressed by those sharing their experience, strength and hope in my Zoom Rooms and I needed to hear it. Whether I attended a Zoomer in my home town to strike back at the feeling of loneliness the Shelter In Place mandates had fostered or tuned in elsewhere just for a change of pace, the response in the end was always the same – Have Courage, You Are Not Alone in this Battle. I saw in my Zoomers how vital and necessary it was to have been Searching and Fearless when I had taken that inventory. That tool in my spiritual kit, that Fourth Principle, Courage, was now being put to use in ways I had never confronted, ways I had never contemplated, ways I had not a mere few weeks before even imagined possible. Courage, the Principle of Step Four, honed so many days passed in the inventory’s making, today was confronting the fears of the pandemic, this was in real time for me Practicing These Principles in All My Affairs. This was me in real time practicing the principles in all my affairs to build “the arch through which we passed to freedom” (Big Book, p. 62).