I recently met with a new sponsee to read chapter 2 of the Big Book, “There Is A Solution”. The chapter begins with “We,” just as 2 other chapters also begin. 

This key word – “WE” – is deliberately used to reinforce the fact that sobriety, recovery, and working the Twelve Steps, are NOT things accomplished alone or in isolation. Rather, “WE” get to trudge the road to happy destiny together, one-day-at-a-time: with our sponsors, with our fellows, and with a Higher Power to guide, strengthen, and Iove us all along the way. 

I find these simple facts amazing – that Alcoholics Anonymous is truly a “WE” program! It is all together, that WE get better! This is the way that Alcoholics Anonymous works: with one alcoholic helping another, providing mutual support to a fellow sufferer, through the hardest of times, and through the very best of times! As my sponsor likes to say, when “WE” are together in an AA meeting, misery is halved, and joy is doubled!

My first sponsor – an alcoholic who, it turned out, had been a lot like me when she was in the disease – was also the first woman that I found myself able to grow to trust. She was, and continues to be, such an AMAZING, kind and compassionate influence upon my life. 

To be perfectly honest, what amazed me the most was that she didn’t run screaming from the room when I shared with her all the crazy things in my head, in my past, and that was going on in the early days of my sobriety, when being a single mom meant a whole lot of fear, financial uncertainty, and tons of doubt that anything would (or could) get better!

But it did get better! And that sweet 3-year old boy, who was forced to be with me, playing or napping at my feet, through all those early years of AA meetings when I was a single Mom – he got to grow up with a sober Mom – one who was responsible, respectable, and reliable! I was able to be there for him! And I could do that because AA and my sponsor were there for ME!

Just like it reads on page 17, in AA “we are people who normally would not mix. But there exists among us a fellowship, a friendliness, and an understanding which is indescribably wonderful. We are like the passengers of a great liner the moment after rescue from a shipwreck when camaraderie, joyousness and democracy pervade the vessel from steerage to Captain’s table.”

The BIG difference is that within AA, that feeling of camaraderie – the phenomenal “WE” effect – never stops! We have a common disease (alcoholism) to which “WE” have a common solution (the Twelve Steps), and “WE” have a Higher Power that some may choose to call “God” (or simply a “good orderly direction”) for their lives! 

According to Tradition 2, this Higher Power is the ultimate authority for our meeting groups, and is “a loving God as he may express himself in our group conscience” – a reflection of our collective wisdom – irrespective of our particular faith, agnosticism, or atheism. WE do get better together because we never need to be isolated or alone again with this cunning, baffling, powerful, progressive, and ultimately fatal disease of alcoholism!

In early recovery, I was amazed how much the people in AA cared that I was there, whether or not I had a sponsor, found a seat in the room, was given a Big Book, or was told about other meetings and meeting groups where I could find strong recovery and loving fellowship. They invited me to be a part of, where many years of insane drinking had only served to teach me how to live apart from!

Yes, learning to trust, and to be part of a group again, was NOT easy! As a result of my alcoholism, I had been in the habit of pushing people away for so long, that I had all but forgotten how to simply be human, let alone sober. 

By working the Twelve Steps with my sponsor, helping to set-up the meeting beforehand, sharing at meeting level, helping clean up afterwards, and spending time amidst my fellows, AA helped me regain my feet, find a way to trust again, and showed me how to become a trustworthy sober woman!

Re-reading chapter 2 with yet another new sponsee, always reminds me of how grateful I am to be sober, and of how grateful I am that AA continues to work to keep its meeting doors open, denying entry to no one! 

Today, AA has grown so modern and readily available that no matter where you may live, or if you may have an accessibility challenge that would make attending an in-person meeting difficult, you can still find other, accessible AA meetings. This includes AA providing ASL meetings for the deaf – or attending an online or meeting by phone. 

Even being incarcerated or institutionalized doesn’t stop AA from making itself available through a variety of means designed to support the still suffering alcoholic who wants to stop drinking – the only requirement for membership.

I love the “WE” of Alcoholics Anonymous! Today, decades later, I have so many sober sponsees I have readily grown to love, a wide variety of highly diverse and fun-loving friends, and some truly close confidantes – all people I came to know through having worked the Twelve Steps and been granted this wonderful gift of sobriety! 

If you are out there and still drinking, I hope that you take a chance and get yourself to one of our AA meetings. You just might find your “WE” and discover the joy of living again!

A joyous “We” member of AA