Living sober (15 page)

It has been said that these meetings are the workshops in which an alcoholic learns how to stay sober. Certainly, one can pick up at discussion meetings a broad range of suggestions for maintaining a happy sobriety.

Step meetings

Many AA groups hold weekly meetings at which one of the Twelve Steps of the AA program is taken up in turn and forms the basis of the discussion. AA's Twelve Traditions, the Three Legacies of AA, AA slogans, and discussion topics suggested in AA's monthly magazine, the Grapevine, are also used by some groups for this purpose. But other topics are almost never ruled out, especially if someone present feels an urgent need for help with an immediate, pressing personal problem.

In conjunction with the books "Alcoholics Anonymous" and "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions,"

Step meetings afford perhaps the most easily grasped insights into and understanding of the fundamental principles of recovery in AA These sessions also furnish a wealth of original interpretations and applications of the basic AA program—showing how we can use it, not only to stay sober, but to enrich our lives.

State, regional, national, and international A.A. conventions and conferences
Attended by anywhere from hundreds to more than 20,000 AA members, often accompanied by their families, these king-size AA gatherings usually are weekend affairs consisting of many kinds of session. The programs often include discussion workshops on varied topics, as well as talks by guest experts on alcoholism, and usually a banquet, a dance, entertainment, and time for other social or recreational activities, all the more highly enjoyed because they are alcohol free. They show us how much fun we can have sober.

They also give us a chance to meet and learn from AA's who live in other areas. For many members, these occasions become favorite holiday weekends, as well as highly prized, peak experiences in recovery. They provide inspiring memories to cherish on ordinary days, and often see the start of close, lifelong friendships.

Do we have to go to those meetings for the rest of our lives?

Not at all, unless we want to.

Thousands of us seem to enjoy meetings more and more as the sober years go by. So it is a pleasure, not a duty.

We all have to keep on eating, bathing, breathing, brushing our teeth, and the like. And millions of people continue year after year working, reading, going in for sports and other recreation, frequenting social clubs, and performing religious worship. So our continued attendance at AA meetings is hardly peculiar, as long as we enjoy them, profit from them, and keep the rest of our lives in balance.

But most of us go to meetings more frequently in the first years of our recovery than we do later. It helps set a solid foundation for a long-term recovery.

Most AA groups hold one or two meetings a week Casting about an hour or an hour and a half). And it is widely believed in AA that a new AA member fares best by getting into the habit of regularly attending the meetings of at least one group, as well as visiting other groups from time to time. This not only provides a big choice of differing AA ideas; it also helps bring into the problem drinker's life a measure of orderliness, which helps combat alcoholism.

We have found it quite important, especially in the beginning, to attend meetings faithfully, no matter what excuses present themselves for staying away.

We need to be as diligent in attending AA meetings as we were in drinking. What serious drinker ever let distance, or weather, or illness, or business, or guests, or being broke, or the hour, or anything else keep him or her from that really wanted drink? We cannot let anything keep us from AA meetings, either, if we really want to recover.

We have also found that going to meetings is
not
something to be done only when we feel the temptation to drink. We often get more good from the meetings by attending them when we feel fine and haven't so much as thought of drinking. And even a meeting which is not totally, instantly satisfying is better than no meeting at all.

Because of the importance of meetings, many of us keep a list of local meetings with us at all times, and never travel far from home base without taking along one of the AA directories, which enable us to find meetings or fellow members almost anywhere on earth.

When serious illness or natural catastrophe makes missing a meeting absolutely unavoidable, we have learned to work out substitutes for the meetings. (If s amazing, though, how often we hear that blizzards in sub-arctic regions, hurricanes, and even earthquakes have
not
prevented AA's from traveling a hundred miles or more to get to meetings. With a meeting to reach, getting there by canoe, camel, helicopter, jeep, truck, bicycle, or sleigh is as natural to some AA's as using cars, buses, or subways is for the rest of us.)

As a substitute for a meeting, when attendance is impossible, we may call AA friends on the telephone or by ham radio; or we may hold a meeting in our minds while reading some AA material.

For several hundred isolated AA "Loners" (such as armed services personnel far from home), and for several hundred seagoing AA "Internationalists," special services are provided free by the General Service Office of AA to help them keep in close contact with AA They receive bulletins and lists that enable them to communicate with other members (by letter or sometimes tape) between the times they find it possible to go to regular AA meetings.

But many of those who are on their own do something even better when they find no AA. group near enough for them to attend. They start a group.

The money question

Alcoholism is expensive. Although AA itself charges no dues or fees whatsoever, we have already paid pretty heavy "dues" to liquor stores and bartenders before we get here. Therefore, many of us arrive at AA. nearly broke, if not heavily in debt

The sooner we can become self-supporting, the better, we have found. Creditors are almost always happy to go along with us as long as they see we are really making an honest, regular effort to climb out of the hole, even in tiny installments.

A particular kind of expenditure, however—in addition to food, clothing, and shelter, naturally—has been found extremely valuable in our first sober days. One of us has given his permission to print here his

Investment Counsel

In the first few weeks without a drink When the wolf is at the door, And the sheriffs at the window And you're sleeping on the floor, And life looks bleak and hopeless From a monetary angle, It's time to
spend,
in certain ways, To solve the awful tangle: That token or that bus fare To get you to a meeting, That dime to use the telephone For that necessary greeting, That nickel for "expenses" That makes you feel you matter, That dollar for the coffee shop For after-meeting chatter. All these are wise investments

For the neophyte to make.

This "bread," when cast upon the waters,

Always comes back cake.

30 Trying the Twelve Steps

"When all else fails," said the old country doctor, "follow directions."

We have not talked about the Twelve Steps offered by AA as a program of recovery from alcoholism, and they are not going to be listed or explained here, because anyone curious about them can find them elsewhere. Their origin is striking, however.

In 1935, two men met in Akron, Ohio. Both of them were then considered hopeless drunkards, which seemed shameful to those who had known them. One had been a Wall Street hot shot; the other, a noted surgeon; but both had drunk themselves almost to death. Each had tried many "cures"

and been hospitalized over and over. It looked certain, even to them, that they were beyond help.

Almost accidentally, in getting to know each other, they stumbled onto an astonishing fact: When each of them tried to help the other, the result was sobriety. They took the idea to an alcoholic lawyer confined to a hospital bed, and he, too, decided to try it.

The three then kept on, each in his individual life, trying to help one alcoholic after another. If the people they tried to help sometimes did not want their aid, they nevertheless knew the effort was worthwhile, because, in each case, the would-be helper stayed sober even if the "patient" kept on drinking.

Persisting at this avocation for their own benefit, this nameless little band of ex-drunks suddenly realized in 1937 that 20 of them were sober! They cannot be blamed for thinking a miracle had happened.

They agreed they ought to write a record of what had happened, so their experience could be widely distributed. But, as you can imagine, they ran into real difficulty in reaching agreement on what precisely had taken place. It wasn't until 1939 that they were able to publish an account they could all subscribe to. By then, they numbered about 100.

They wrote that the pathway to recovery they had followed up to then consisted of twelve steps, and they believed anyone who followed that pathway would reach the same destination.

Their number has grown to more than two million. And they are virtually unanimous in their conviction: "Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. It works when other activities fail."

Many of us had long been booze-fighters. Time after time, we had stopped drinking and tried to stay stopped, only to return to drinking sooner or later and find ourselves in increasing trouble. But those Twelve Steps of AA mark our road to recovery. Now, we do not have to fight any more. And our path is open to all comers.

Hundreds of us had only a vague idea of what AA was before we actually came to this Fellowship.

Now, we sometimes think there is more misinformation than truth about A.A. floating around. So if you have not looked into AA firsthand, we can imagine some of the distorted, false impressions you may have picked up, since we had so many of them ourselves.

Happily, you need not be misled by such misrepresentations and rumors, because it is perfectly easy to see and hear the real AA. for yourself. AA publications (see page 70) and any nearby AA office or meeting (see your local telephone directory) are original sources of facts which surprised many of us a whale of a lot. You need not take any second-hand opinions, because you can get the straight dope, free, and make up your own mind.

Really getting a fair picture of AA may be one instance in which willpower can be put to very good use. We know for sure that alcoholics do have tremendous willpower. Consider the ways we could manage to get a drink in defiance of all visible possibilities. Merely to get up some mornings—with a rusting cast-iron stomach, all your teeth wearing tiny sweaters, and each hair electrified—takes willpower many nondrinkers rarely dream of. Once you've gotten up with your head, on those certain mornings, the ability to carry it all through the day is further evidence of fabulous strength of will. Oh yes,
real
drinkers have
real
willpower.

The trick we learned was to put that will to work for our health, and to
make
ourselves explore recovery ideas at great depth, even though it sometimes might have seemed like drudgery.

It may help if you try to remember that A.A. members are not eager to question you. We may not even seem to be listening to you much, but spend more time laying on you the unvarnished facts of our own illness. We are in pursuit of recovery, you know, so we talk to you very much for our own benefit. We want to help you, all right, but only if you want us to.

It may be that problem drinking is, indeed, as some psychological experts say, an ailment characterized especially by egocentricity. Not all alcoholics are egotistical, although many of us have learned to see that tendency in ourselves. Others of us felt inferior most of the time; we felt equal or superior to other people only when drinking.

No matter which type we were, we realize now that we were excessively self-centered, chiefly concerned about
our
feelings,
our
problems, other people's reactions to
us,
and
our
own past and future. Therefore, trying to get into communication with and to help other people is a recovery measure for us, because it helps take us out of ourselves. Trying to heal ourselves by helping others works, even when it is an insincere gesture. Try it some time.

If you really listen to (not just hear) what is being said, you may find the person talking has quietly slipped inside your head and seems to be describing the landscape there—the shifting shapes of nameless fears, the color and chill of impending doom—if not the actual events and words stored in your brain.

And whether this happens or not, you will almost surely have a good laugh or two in the company of AA's, and you'll probably pick up a couple of ideas on living sober. If you want to use them, that is up to you.

Whatever you decide to do, remember that making these ideas available is one of the steps toward recovery for us.

31 Finding your own way

We hope this booklet has made it eminently clear that we don't consider drinking a frivolous subject Alcoholism deserves and gets dead serious attention from us. We do not find jokes told at the expense of sick problem drinkers funny, except those we tell on ourselves from our vantage point of sobriety. We aren't amused when someone teasingly threatens to get drunk. That's like teasing about Russian roulette.

In spite of our serious attitude toward alcoholism, you will find we can usually talk with humor and detachment about our past and our recovery. This is a healthy approach, we think. Certainly, it does not weaken our resolve to get and stay well.

Most of us have seen death close up. We have known the kind of suffering that wrenches the bones.

But we also have known the sort of hope that makes the heart sing. And we hope this booklet has conveyed to you more encouragement than pain. If you are a problem drinker, you already know enough about pain and loneliness. We'd like you to find some of the peace and joy we have found in meeting the reality of life's ups and downs with a clear head and a steady heart No doubt we have made just a bare beginning in the business of living sober. Time and again, we learn additional ideas that can help.