thepoint_202503

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