thepoint_202409

The Number One Offender

By Rick R.

In my early months of sobriety, I was asked, a few days in advance, to lead one of my first meetings. At that time, My EGO was already taking control of this new phase of my life, and of course, I immediately wanted to let everyone know just how enlightened I had become in such a short period of time. In our little meeting room, we didn’t have a lot of upper end furniture. Someone donated two rows of old theater seats and they were arranged one behind the other. I seated myself in the center of the front row. I went through all the preliminaries we went through and when it came time to select a topic, I decided to impress everyone and announced the topic to be SELF PITY, for we all know that it is, as stated in the Big Book, the biggest Killer in A.A. We had a lady named Helen B. who always announced herself as “A tough old broad”, and she was. Unfortunately for me, she was seated in the row behind me. When I finished my sentence, she leaned over and shouted in my right ear, loud enough for everyone in the room to hear. “YOU’RE FULL OF S—-, RESENTMENTS ARE THE BIGGEST KILLER IN A.A.” and she was right. She gave me a resentment and I wanted to kill her. LOL. It was humiliating.

I grew to love Helen for what she did to my ego, what I couldn’t do to it myself at the time. (B.B. Pg. 64, Resentment is the “number one” offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else.) One of the things I took away from that little embarrassing experience was that I better know what I’m talking about before I open my mouth. Another thing that came with those little course corrections, was a drive to understand why I do the things I do. If I am still judging others, Gossiping, Rationalizing, Selfish, etc. My EGO is still in control. A friend in the program once stated that: All forms of criticism and Character Assassination stem from Low Self-esteem and my thoughts were: Who Me??? From that day on I have stopped those EGO driven behaviors and I replaced them with Patience, Empathy and Compassion and Understanding.

I now live by the dictates of my Conscience. Most of the progress that I’ve experienced in the A.A. program wasn’t as difficult as it seemed, when I was going through it, but it took a lot longer to have the structure in place, such as honesty, patience, understanding, unselfishness, and so on, to support each level of growth. Intellectually, resentment was one of the things that I could understand, but with all the complicated mental defenses I had bouncing around in my head, my best efforts only produced slow but steady progress. Most of the resentment issues I had while I was still drinking were usually more of the façade I created with my sick mind. When I got sober, my relation was real and even then, I, with the help of my ego, had a hard time accepting the day-to-day interfacing with other people. Does all this mean that I must take abuse from others in my circle of friends? I always thought there was a conflict of values, like “turn the other cheek” or something like that. Well, I found out through trial and error that we, in the A.A. program, are closely related to more people than the average person out there, and we come to know the personality traits and I am not threatened by them anymore. The People that know me, Know me Well.

And it all started with a loving kick in the Butt from a “tough old broad” named Helen B. God bless her. To this day, I thank Helen for setting me straight.

By: Dede H.

There’s a special spiritual charm
In chanting ten thousand names
Of God or of a Holy Mother 
In Its myriad of energetic forms
In some countries it is a norm
We now know indeed it’s true
Everything is a part of the One
See words are an entire ocean
Each one a name that is too
Describing bubbles in the sun
How many words are there? 
In the history of the world? 
Perhaps a quadrillion or more
Maybe every word is sacred
Every single word we share 
What is the lesson here? 
What can I discern from this? 
Speak mindfully and clear 
Talk gently to remain in bliss
Open hearts keep You near

Tradition 9

By Anon.

I was intrigued by the organization of this meeting I had been “invited” to attend. The secretary seemed to take no notes, created no Minutes, and there appeared to be no real agenda, just people talking and chiming in from all over the place. Her aide, the guy at her right, in the seat of honor and power, or so I had surmised, said and did nothing the entire hour – that was the job I would try to land for sure. If I had to attend these meetings to try to keep “she who must be obeyed” (my wife) off my back, then the easiest job available had my name written all over it.

Of course the reality of the “not drinking part,” the purpose of these meetings, was lost on me, and caused me to continue to sink deeper and deeper into my disease. When that changed, thanks to an actual miracle of sobriety, in every sense of the word, months later, through no fault or action of my own, except daily 7:00 a.m. meetings, it began to dawn on me how clueless I was in those first few days about how meetings really worked. As the sober days began to pile up into years, I saw how trusted servants volunteered their time, sometimes at a sponsor’s subtle elbow or nod, to help make things happen every day, 365 times a year, rain or shine. I was even told how, on the morning of 9/11 when the horrors of the Twin Towers and elsewhere were being told in real time the meeting continued, after a brief Group Conscience. After all, sober men and women deal with tragedy a bit better than those not, at least so seems the belief.

In my own recovery I took hard the lesson that if the man to whom the Twelfth Step efforts were directed did not “get it,” we were to move on to the next still-suffering alcoholic. This seemed so hard to me as I read those words in the Big Book. Its authors had recovered. They told us how they did it. They shared their stories, some quite vivid and desperate, promising no matter how far down the scale we might have gone, our experience could help another. So why would we leave the one who did not “get it” behind? Why would we, how could we, abandon even that one? The story of the shepherd going to any lengths to save one sheep astray from the flock was a reverberating counterpoint.

But it was I who did not get it.

As time passed, I realized those who seemed to make it did so because of something within them, something driving them to survive. No one was able to instill that drive within me and I realized I could likewise not instill it in the next man. He or she had to want it all on their own. I could only carry the message. Not make him or her hear it, not make them follow it, not make them live it. So too it seemed with those meetings I attended.

While my Home Group has not changed, often my schedule gives me other alternatives. I have found that those meetings where I “want what they have” all seem to have that same sense of a drive to survive. They seem compelled to do the next right thing as a group to keep their attraction alive.That is not because they just have the best array of cookies or a variety of organic teas, although rigorous honesty demands the acknowledgment I do not find them to be detractions. But it means they have a sense of purpose palatable to me. Hands are quick to be raised for help with cleaning up or grab an open commitment. The awkward silence of waiting for a volunteer, if present, is short. Also, the people in those rooms seem to exude genuine caring, many might call it love for those about them, Particularly ones who might be suffering, whether with just 24 hours or decades of sobriety. They realize that living life on life’s terms is not always easy and  awareness is evident in how they participate in the meeting. That attraction is infectious to me. I seek out those meetings. I return to them. I survive because of them.

I have come to believe they survive because of the same reasons I was drawn to the program in the beginning. Their members share the exact same reality I experienced – that to drink is to die. They know, truly, that the statistics are against the alcoholic’s victory over their disease. So, in the same way for me: Life Depends On It. I see too the life and longevity of a meeting depends on living this reality, one meeting at a time.

By the time I was even able 
to consider making an amend, 
he was long buried, my insults 
and transgressions with him.

How could those wrongs ever 
be addressed, a letter read 
over a cold tombstone seemed 
the best alternative.  

The brilliance of the option 
then suggested was lost on me 
when heard. But I had asked 
this one for help for a reason.

They had already walked this path 
and helped others like me.
Not only did their idea make
sense, they had not been wrong yet.

So, into their eyes I spoke of the
past about which I had such regret.  
In those eyes of the living, I was able 
to gaze into The Eyes Of The Dead.

Not to etched granite in green lea did I 
make this amend, but to a living, breathing
person. Someone who could feel the harm, 
share the hurt I had inflicted before.  

I could say what needed to be said, knowing 
it fell not on deaf ears. Into those eyes 
I looked, seeing neither the forgiveness nor the 
understanding which were not theirs to give. 

In these mirrors to my soul, I saw instead the peace 
which comes from a task well done, I saw instead the 
freedom which comes from an amend well made, I saw 
instead what it means to fearlessly work the steps.

John R. Wallace 

08/23/2024

Dedicated to Barbara C. – She of the Brilliant Idea

By: Christine R.

“What’s your sign?” was the great pick-up line in my day. To keep the patter going, we all knew our Zodiac signs. Like I understood a thing or two, I would tell you in deep cabernet intonations, “Triple Scorpio and proud of it.” Today in AA when I think of signs, what comes to mind are our old-fashioned, beat up, 8 by 12 laminated posters scattered around the walls of my home group, the Cabin. Inscribed in some sort of Edwardian script, they take a while for newcomers’ blurred eyes to home in on, much less comprehend their intent. 

But For The Grace Of God, One Day At A Time, Easy Does It¹. How could any of these save a person from drinking? Little by little, each sign has come to enter my heart in ways both wonderful and miraculous. I love, “But For The Grace Of God.” Grace is defined as an undeserved gift.  Because I go with, “If it were about justice, I’d be dead,” I know grace, that undeserved gift, brought sobriety and keeps me sober today. 

One Day At A Time. So helpful when we want to be well by yesterday. Realizing life truly is lived one day at a time, Easy Does It comes naturally.  We can relax and take it easy.  When traveling two miles into a forest, it takes two miles to return. With many years of drinking behind us, it takes a while for healing to take place. We look for progress not perfection.²

Now we come to another sign not previously listed.  An important one, always found in meetings, is the Exit sign. In my newcomer days, the Exit sign was by my best friend.  By sitting in the back of the room, looking for the Exit sign usually posted next to a big clock on the wall, I could figure out when to leave early thanks to that sign. 

With time, as with so many things in AA, the Exit sign proves to be one of our more valuable assets. Through this vehicle we take the principles we learn out into the world. It is not enough to hole up in AA meetings. Our program flourishes when we move forward and outward. 

We form our future on the foundational principles of the Program. The cornerstone and the keystone are building blocks for a better tomorrow. “Upon this simple cornerstone a wonderfully effective spiritual structure can be built.³  With the keystone in place we create “the new and triumphant arch through which we pass to freedom at last.”⁴

The Exit sign comes to mean more than arriving late and leaving early. Initially my seat was near the Exit sign to leave early.  Now this cat bird seat allows me to follow that early-leaving newcomer out into the parking lot for some good, old-fashioned fellowship – another sign this individual is loved and cared for; a lifeline to not leave in a huff but to stay the course.  

The last person to leave discovers opportunities to take on more signs, like signing up for set-up, clean up, or greeter.  By signing up, we find more chances to share our experience strength and hope with newcomers.  Alone no longer, we can travel through the Exit together.  Now that’s a Great Sign!

1.  Also found in B.B. Page 135 ↩︎
2. B.B. Page 60 ↩︎
3. B.B. Page 47 ↩︎
4. B.B. Page 62 ↩︎