Author: An Alcoholic

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Every year during the holidays, a moment hits where I find myself thinking back on how my alcoholism had ruled my life and how my alcoholic drinking (and thinking) impacted everyone around me despite every bit of my youthful (and ridiculously arrogant) denial. 

It’s been more than 3 decades since I hit my bottom. Thankfully, a savvy psychotherapist sent me to Alcoholics Anonymous where I worked the Twelve Steps with a sponsor, and was gifted with sobriety. But I will never forget what I heard at that first AA meeting about “surrender” that made all the difference to this stubborn drunk!

At my first AA meeting, a crusty old guy in a beat-up leather jacket got up to the podium to share. Back then, noting his advanced years and his worn out clothes, I never imagined him having anything I might care to hear. But, boy-oh-body, was I ever wrong!

In a deep, rumbling voice, he said the following words that changed my life forever, “Despite all the crazy problems that came with it, I was NEVER interested in “surrendering” my drinking. Forty years later, It’s very clear to me now that I didn’t understand the word. “Surrender” isn’t about “giving in” to the enemy. Surrender is letting go of control – just agreeing to try another way.” 

His words really hit me. Trying another way. That’s all that AA was asking me to do – try another way. Clearly, after another night of drinking (that had ended VERY BADLY), it was time for me to “try another way.”

I had grown up in a very small, rural community where alcoholics were everywhere (and many of them were related to me). I wasn’t raised in a home impacted by divorce. In retrospect, that would have likely been quite a blessing! Instead, my parents remained married. But they absolutely hated each other – and they and fought constantly! 

At only 5 years of age, I could tell their marriage was NOT hearts and flowers. It was broken dishware, yelling at the top of their lungs, and viciously shoving one another! I begged them to stop! But the best I could do was stand by helplessly, and watch.  

Given their near-endless fights and all the work on the farm, I was often made responsible for my younger sister (even though I was barely 2 years her senior). When things got especially rough, I was shuffled off to the creepy neighbor, where bad things happened to me under his lecherous care. The insanity just never seemed to end. It’s a wonder that “trauma” isn’t my middle name!

Growing up certainly wasn’t fun. Consequently, my first drink of hard liquor couldn’t come fast enough. It was a BAD drunk. But it was a HUGE awakening and MASSIVE escape that I had longed for! So, although I was horribly sick and hungover after that first binge drinking spree, I did it again. And again. And again. High school and college were filled with drunken nights and black-out weekends where I would awaken not knowing where I was or where I had been. Not exactly the safest way of life for anyone, let alone a young woman wanting to escape life on the farm for the big city! 

The responsibility of giving birth slowed me down, but it didn’t stop me. My bottom turned out to be a drunken night that ended with me driving my car into a pole in my own parking garage. 

Finding AA gave me relief from all that unrelenting insanity. It taught me to seek something greater than me – a Higher Power – for strength and wisdom. AA taught me to take responsibility for my actions, behaviors, and choices – what my sponsor refers to as the “ABCs” of what IS within my control. And AA taught me to clean house (by working the Twelve Steps. AA  then taught me to work with others. I learned how to could carry the message, and to remain sane and sober while doing so – pretty GREAT STUFF!

Today, I’m a sober member of AA who serves at both the level of my local meetings, as well as at the general service level, where I’m active on the PI/CPC committee, helping to inform the general public and professionals about AA so that anyone who wants to stop drinking can come to know who we are, what we do, and how to find us. 

Thanks to AA, I’ve come to know peace, and something I thought I’d never experience: happiness, joy, and freedom from the bondage of self! Working the steps cracked me open to the sunlight of the Spirit. It led me to see and own my part in the crazy alcoholic life I had come to live. AA helped me become entirely ready to have my Higher Power remove my defects of character – and then humbly ask they be removed. And, AA taught me how to make direct amends for the harms I had caused, and to continue to take a daily inventory to keep my side of the street clean!

AA, and my wonderful sponsor, also helped me to seek “outside help” for the things that happened to me as a child, things over which I had no control, or part. What an amazing journey of recovery and healing that I’ve been blessed to know!

The disease of alcoholism is never cured. But the life of a sober alcoholic in AA can be one of sweetness, great friends, and loving service. That’s a life truly worth living!

I am forever grateful to AA for teaching me about surrender. I just needed to let go of control, and try another way: the way of AA and the Twelve Steps to a spiritual awakening!

A grateful, sober AA Member

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