Living sober (3 page)

Anyone who wants it is welcome to a "free trial period" of this new concept of self. Afterward, anyone who wants the old days again is perfectly free to start them all over. It is your right to take back your misery if you want it.

On the other hand, you can also keep the new picture of yourself, if you'd rather. It, too, is yours by right.

5 'Live and Let Live'

The old saying "Live and Let live" seems so commonplace, it is easy to overlook its value. Of course, one reason it has been said over and over for years is that it has proved beneficial in so many ways.

We AA's make some special uses of it to help us not drink. It particularly helps us cope with people who get on our nerves.

Reviewing once more a little of our drinking histories, many of us can see how very, very often our drinking problem appeared to be related somehow to other people. Experimenting with beer or wine in our teen-age years seemed natural, since so many others were doing it, and we wanted their approval. Then came weddings and bar mitzvahs and christenings and holidays and football games and cocktail parties and business lunches...and the list can go on and on. In all of these circumstances, we drank at least partly because everybody else was drinking and seemed to expect us to.

Those of us who began to drink alone, or to sneak a drink now and then, often did so to keep some other person or people from knowing how much, or how often, we drank. We rarely liked to hear anybody else talk about our drinking. If they did, we frequently told them "reasons" for our drinking, as if we wanted to ward off criticism or complaints.

Some of us found ourselves argumentative or even belligerent toward other people after drinking.

Yet others of us felt we really got along better with people after a drink or two—whether it was a social evening, a tense sale or job interview, or even making love.

Our drinking caused many of us to choose our friends according to how much they drank. We even changed friends when we felt we had "outgrown" their drinking styles. We preferred "real drinkers"

to people who just took one or two. And we tried to avoid teetotalers.

Many of us were guilty and angry about the way our family reacted to our drinking. Some of us lost jobs because a boss or a colleague at work objected to our drinking. We wished people would mind their own business and leave us alone!

Often, we felt angry and fearful even toward people who had not criticized us. Our guilt made us extra sensitive to those around us, and we nursed grudges. Sometimes, we changed bars, changed jobs, or moved to new neighborhoods just to get away from certain persons.

So a great number of people besides ourselves were in one way or another involved in our drinking, to some degree.

When we first stopped drinking, it was a great relief to find that the people we met in AA—recovered alcoholics—seemed to be quite different. They reacted to us, not with criticism and suspicion, but with understanding and concern.

However, it is perfectly natural that we still encounter some people who get on our nerves, both within AA and outside it. We may find that our non-AA friends, co-workers, or family members still treat us as if we were drinking. (It may take them a little while to believe that we have
really
stopped. After all, they may have seen us stop many times in the past, only to start again.) To begin to put the concept of "Live and Let Live" into practice, we must face this fact: There
are
people in A.A, and everywhere else, who sometimes say things we disagree with, or do things we don't like. Learning to live with differences is essential to our comfort. It is exactly in those cases that we have found it extremely helpful to say to ourselves, "Oh, well, 'Live and Let Live.'"

In fact, in AA much emphasis is placed on learning how to tolerate other people's behavior.

However offensive or distasteful it may seem to us, it is certainly
not
worth drinking about. Our own recovery is too important. Alcoholism can and does kill, we recall.

We have learned it pays to make a very special effort to try to understand other people, especially anyone who rubs us the wrong way. For our recovery, it is more important to understand than to be understood. This is not very difficult if we bear in mind that the other AA members, too, are trying to understand, just as we are.

For that matter, we'll meet some people in AA or elsewhere who won't be exactly crazy about us, either. So all of us try to respect the rights of others to act as they choose (or must). We can then expect them to give us the same courtesy. In AA, they generally do.

Usually, people who like each other—in a neighborhood, a company, a club, or AA—gravitate toward each other. When we spend time with people we like, we are less annoyed by those we don't particularly care for.

As time goes on, we find we are not afraid simply to walk away from people who irritate us, instead of meekly letting them get under our skin, or instead of trying to straighten them out just so they will suit us better.

None of us can remember anyone's forcing us to drink alcohol. No one ever tied us down and poured booze down our gullets. Just as no one
physically
compelled us to drink, now we try to make sure no one will
mentally
"drive us to drink," either.

It is very easy to use other people's actions as an alibi for drinking. We used to be experts at it But in sobriety, we have learned a new technique: We never let ourselves get so resentful toward someone else that we allow that person to control our lives—especially to the extent of causing us to drink.

We have found we have no desire to let any other person run, or ruin, our lives.

An ancient sage said that none of us should criticize another until we have walked a mile in the other person's boots. This wise advice can give us greater compassion for our fellow human beings. And putting it into practice makes us feel much better than being hung-over.

"Let live"—yes. But some of us find just as much value in the first part of the slogan: "Live"!

When we have worked out ways to enjoy
our own
living fully, then we are content to let other people live any way they want If our own lives are interesting and productive, we really have no impulse or desire to find fault with others or worry about the way they act.

Can you think right this minute of someone who really bothers you?

If you can, try something. Postpone thinking about him or her and whatever it is about the person that riles you. You can boil inside about it later if you want to. But for right now, why not put it off while you read the next paragraph?

live! Be concerned with your own living. In our opinion, staying sober opens up the way to life and happiness. It is worth sacrificing many a grudge or argument. . . Okay, so you didn't manage to keep your mind completely off that other person. Let's see whether the suggestion coming next will help.

6 Getting active

It is very hard just to sit still trying
not
to do a certain thing, or
not
even to think about it It's much easier to get active and do something
else
—other than the act we're trying to avoid.

So it is with drinking. Simply trying to avoid a drink (or not think of one), all by itself, doesn't seem to be enough. The more we think about the drink we're trying to keep away from, the more it occupies our mind, of course. And that's no good. It's better to get busy with something, almost anything, that will use our mind and channel our energy toward health.

Thousands of us wondered what we would do, once we stopped drinking, with all that time on our hands. Sure enough, when we did stop, all those hours we had once spent planning, getting our drinks, drinking, and recovering from its immediate effects, suddenly turned into big, empty holes of time that had to be filled somehow.

Most of us had jobs to do. But even so, there were some pretty long, vacant stretches of minutes and hours staring at us. We needed new habits of activity to fill those open spaces and utilize the nervous energy previously absorbed by our preoccupation, or our obsession, with drinking.

Anyone who has ever tried to break a habit knows that substituting a new and different activity is easier than just stopping the old activity and putting nothing in its place.

Recovered alcoholics often say, "Just stopping drinking is not enough." Just
not drinking
is a negative, sterile thing. That is clearly demonstrated by our experience. To
stay
stopped, we've found we need to put in place of the drinking a positive program of action. We've had to learn how to
live
sober.

Fear may have originally pushed some of us toward looking into the possibility that we might have a drinking problem. And over a short period, fear alone may help some of us stay away from a drink.

But a fearful state is not a very happy or relaxed one to maintain for very long. So we try to develop a healthy respect for the power of alcohol, instead of a fear of it, just as people have a healthy respect for cyanide, iodine, or any other poison. Without going around in constant fear of those potions, most people respect what they can do to the body, and have enough sense not to imbibe them. We in AA now have the same knowledge of, and regard for, alcohol. But, of course, it is based on firsthand experience, not on seeing a skull and crossbones on a label.

We can't rely on fear to get us through those empty hours without a drink, so what
can
we do?

We have found many kinds of activity useful and profitable, some more than others. Here are two kinds, in the order of their effectiveness as we experienced it.

A. Activity in and around A.A.

When experienced AA members say that they found "getting active" helpful in their recovery from alcoholism, they usually mean getting active in and around AA

If you want to, you can do that even before you decide whether or not you want to become an AA member. You don't need anyone's permission or invitation.

In fact, before you make any decision about a drinking problem, it might be a good idea to spend some time around AA Don't worry— just sitting at, and observing, AA meetings does not make you an alcoholic or an AA member, any more than sitting in a hen house makes you a hen. You can try a sort of "dry run" or "dress rehearsal" of AA first, then decide about "joining."

The activities we often use at first in AA may seem fairly unimportant, but the results prove them valuable. We might call these things "ice breakers," because they make it easier to feel comfortable around people we do not know.

As most AA meetings end, you'll generally notice that some of those present start putting away the folding chairs, or emptying ashtrays, or carrying empty tea and coffee cups to the kitchen.

Join in. You may be surprised at the effect on yourself of such seemingly little chores. You can help wash out the cups and coffeepot, put away the literature, and sweep the floor.

Helping out with these easy little physical tasks does
not
mean you become the group's janitor or custodian. Nothing of the sort. From years of doing it and seeing fellow members do it, we know that practically every person happily recovered in AA has taken his or her turn at the K.P. or refreshment-and-cleanup detail. The results we have felt from doing these tasks are concrete, beneficial, and usually surprising.

In fact, many of us began to feel comfortable around AA only when we began to help with these simple acts. And we were even more at ease, and much further away from drinking or the thought of it, when we accepted some small, but specific, regular responsibility—such as bringing the refreshments, helping to prepare and serve them, being a greeter on the hospitality committee, or performing other tasks that needed doing. Simply by watching other people, you'll learn what needs to be done to get ready for the AA meeting, and to straighten up afterwards.

No one
has
to do such things, of course. In AA, no one is ever required to do, or not do, anything.

But these simple, menial chores and the commitment (only to ourselves) to do them faithfully have had unexpectedly good effects on many of us, and still do. They help give some muscle to our sobriety.

As you stay around an AA group, you'll observe other tasks that need undertaking. You'll hear the secretary make announcements and see the treasurer take charge of the contributions basket. Serving in one of those capacities, once you get a little accumulation of non-drinking time (about 90 days, in most groups), is a good way to fill some of the time we used to spend drinking.

When these "jobs" interest you, leaf through a copy of the pamphlet "The AA Group." It explains what the group "officers" do, and how they are chosen.

In AA, no one is "above" or "below" anyone else. There are no classes or strata or hierarchies among the members. There are no formal officers with any governing power or authority whatsoever. AA is not an organization in the usual sense of that word. Instead, it is a fellowship of equals. Everybody calls everybody else by first name. AA's take turns doing the services needed for group meetings and other functions.

No particular professional skill or education is needed. Even if you have never been a joiner, or a chairman or secretary of anything, you may find—as most of us have—that within the AA group, these services are easy to do, and they do wonders for us. They build a sturdy backbone for our recovery.

Now for the second type of activity that helps keep us away from drinking.

B. Activity not related to AA

It's curious, but true, that some of us, when we first stop drinking, seem to experience a sort of temporary failure of the imagination.

It's curious, because during our drinking days, so many of us displayed almost unbelievably fertile powers of imagination. In less than a week, we could dream up instantly more reasons (excuses?) for drinking than most people use for all other purposes in a lifetime. (Incidentally, it's a pretty good rule of thumb that normal drinkers— that is, nonalcoholics—
never
need or use any particular justification for either drinking or not drinking!)