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   It's Christmas Day. Thank God I haven't missed it.

In homes across the world today people are gathered around brightly lit bejeweled trees to give and receive gifts and to feast on holiday delights, all to celebrate the birth of the God of Love into the world. 

In other homes the Menorah candles are lit (also in surrounding days) for the Festival of Lights -  Hanukkah - offering celebrants many traditional games, gifts and wonderful foods.

Pagans light bonfires this week to celebrate the turn of the year back toward longer sunlit days, a return to the light.

December is a month of numerous religious and cultural ceremonies for many faiths and people. Christians celebrate several other days this month honoring various saints; Buddhists meditate for enlightenment on Rohatsu (Bodhi Day); Zoroastrians honor the death of the Prophet Zarathustra; people of African ancestry celebrate their heritage and identity during Kwanzaa - and these are only a few.

The theme of the majority of these winter celebrations is birth, rebirth, light in the darkness, cultural and religious identity, enlightenment and love.

                                 Always love.

It's good to remember today that all over the world people are celebrating the return of light to the world. 

AA's theme today - and every day - is also one of  love, and in the new birth found in our rediscovered compassion and service to others. 

There are meetings around the world today, in person and on zoom, and in them there will be joy, celebration, laughter - and love. There will also be enlightenment, words of wisdom, and hope shared to keep the darkness at bay.

We remember our darkest days, too. Our December celebrations that were once filled with drunken behavior, guilt, anger, frustration, cynicism, self-loathing and regret. AA set us free by giving us a blueprint for sober living that allows us to feel and share the actual joys of this season.

AA gave us fellow travelers on our spiritual journey to encourage us, laugh with us, cry with us, and share their strength with us when we most need it.

How blessed are we???

I know of people in recovery on this holiday enjoying the company of once bitterly-estranged family members. And I know of one young man sitting right now at the side of his mother's Hospice bed, able to be there and be present for her today. 

Gifts come in many different kinds of packages.

Look around? Are we sober today? Blessed with a roof over our head? Food on the table? Family and friends nearby? If so, we are blessed indeed. So many in our world have none of these things. 

Are we able to reach out today to share our story of recovery? Will we help another suffering alcoholic find the life we have found in AA? If so, our blessings are without number.

 Love is a power, a gift from our Higher Power. But there are many in the world not feeling much love today. We who do are called to share that love with our troubled world. We in AA are blessed to be able to witness the power of Love at work in saving the lives - and more importantly, the souls - of others. We get to see dull eyes brighten, sad faces smile again, hope lift and straighten shoulders as people are restored to lives of fulfillment and true purpose.

We welcome our newcomers with that kind of power and then get to watch one more miracle unfold - moment by moment, day by day, year by year - right before our very eyes.

Some of us may be struggling today under the stress that also accompanies society this month. If so, please scroll down to Blog Number 83 for some tips on getting through the holidays sober. Most of us will. All of us can. The prayer is that all of us do.

I wish you every possible joy of this season of joy.

And I encourage you to dig even deeper in 2023 to find much more of what the program of Alcoholics Anonymous has to offer. And also to feel the love surrounding all of us today.

Pass it on.

 

 

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                         What a Healthy AA Group looks Like

A healthy, thriving, productive, supportive AA group is a beautiful thing. It is made up of an eclectic mix of people having long-middle-and-new lengths of sobriety who stand ready to welcome and help the brand-newcomer by sharing their collective experience in staying sober.

Members of a healthy AA group sponsor and have sponsors; participate in service work for their group and AA as a whole; offer educational programs about AA for themselves and for the public; know the 12 steps and 12 traditions of AA; share when asked to share, chair when asked to chair; and hang out with one another socially outside of meetings.

They also step aside without resentment when it's time for younger members to more fully participate in service positions inside the group. 

Google says there are currently more than 123,000 AA groups around the world, that AA literature has been translated into more than 100 languages, and there are more than two million people in AA recovery today. 

AA depends on each and every one of those members to do his or her fair share, because the work inside AA groups is 100 percent voluntary. 

Newcomers, of course, have to find their feet and are allowed to sit on the sidelines soaking up recovery for a bit, but once they are over their initial fears and confusion they're encouraged to do their share and to participate in 12-step work. Once they do so they become a vital part of AA.

(Note: I wasn't "encouraged" by my all-male first AA group. I was told to do a variety of service jobs in ways that left no escape hatch.) 

Being an active sober member of an active healthy AA group is exhilarating. We can't wait to get to our meetings where we participate fully. In our supportive group's atmosphere we learn by doing how to live a life of "right actions," and from them we soon start to feel good about ourselves.

As Seamus, my dear Irish friend in recovery, once told me: "Learning and teaching are players in the same game. If either one stops, everything becomes heavy and ceases to be fun. Learning is the reward for respecting life and teaching is the fruit of experiencing life."

Healthy AA groups offer a mixture of meeting programs, from personal sharing from one speaker; to topic meetings where steps, traditions, gratitude, service, sponsorship, and other related AA topics are opened for group discussion; "study meetings," where AA's literature is read and hashed over; and general discussion meetings about what's going on in each of our lives and how we're applying our program of recovery to our life situations.

Healthy AA groups offer special workshops, too, to further educate its members - and even the public - about what AA has to offer. Members invite people in the legal, teaching and medical professions to attend their "open" meetings (open to all, not just alcoholics) to learn what AA is all about and what it has to offer.

    (Note: I'd personally like to see a lot more of this done.)

A healthy group doesn't skip over the basics. The AA Preamble, How it Works, the 12 Traditions and very often The Big Book Promises are read aloud at every meeting. A favorite prayer brings  the meeting to a close.

While AA members do network among themselves and often employ one another's legal, artistic, building, plumbing, or other skills outside of meetings, we don't focus on such activities inside 

our meetings. We are not an employment agency. 

Nor are we treatment centers, social service practitioners, religious institutions, or medical advisors.

We are one-time drunks who have escaped the ravages of alcoholism who meet to share our knowledge of AA recovery with one another and to help newcomers find sobriety. 

We - each of us - have all the qualifications necessary to share our own story of suffering and escape from our disease in a manner newcomers can identify with. 

Protecting AA's primary purpose is an enormous responsibility and a healthy AA group recognizes that fact. Its members know there are millions of suffering alcoholics in need of what AA has to offer. Carrying that message to the still-suffering alcoholic remains its priority. 

Are there unhealthy AA groups?

Sure. Fortunately they are fairly uncommon. But even though they usually don't last long, they can do plenty of damage while still in operation. 

These are those groups made up of one, or sometimes a small clique, of "bleeding deacons," old-timers who offer "my way or the highway" advice to newcomers, then talk (and talk, and talk) at length when it's their turn to share, and discount (or don't even know) AA's written traditions. 

My best advice, once you're sure a group is unhealthy for you, is to go find yourself a healthy one - even if that means having to start a group yourself.

Because, as is said in the "Big, Big Book" .... "Where two or three are banded together, I will be there in the midst of them." 

And when our Higher Power has a healthy AA group of people banded together with the single purpose of helping others and themselves, miracles can - and do - happen. 

. 

 

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                                  Under the Lash of Alcoholism

We sober alcoholics can be quite amusing in our smugness. Cocky in our sobriety, overconfident of our virtues, proud, vain, arrogant and patronizing in our superiority, especially over "normal" people having no wonderful program of recovery like ours for getting the most out of life.

Don't think so? 

 Then stop thinking about what YOU are going to say when it's your turn in a meeting and listen more to what others are saying. 

You'll hear a lot of people who laugh when they say, "We are not saints," but their subtext is they think they're pretty damned close.

That wonderful book Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age has this to say about it:

We of A.A. sometimes brag of the virtues of our Fellowship. Let us remember that few of these are actually earned virtues. We were forced into them, to begin with, by the cruel lash of alcoholism. We finally adopted them, not because we wished to, but because we had to. 
Then, as time confirmed the seeming rightness of our basic principles, we began to conform because it was right to do so. Some of us, notably myself, conformed even then with reluctance. 

It takes most of us a very long time in recovery before we get to the place about which that same book states:

But at last we came to a point where we stood willing to conform gladly to the principles which experience, under the grace of God, had taught us.

Yes, we should all celebrate that AA is a wonderful program, but we need to remember we didn't rush to join it. 

And, as long as it took for any of us to arrive here, it also takes a while to not only stay sober, but to manage achieving a modicum of emotional sobriety. 

Many of us talk-the-talk wonderfully in meetings, but once we leave we don't make it a city block without flipping off someone in traffic. We continue to try to dominate others, yell at our children, mentally attack (sometimes more openly) those who don't agree with us - and otherwise act out our sainthood. 

Believe it or not, all of this is OK, at least in the beginning. As long as we stay sober, better behavior will follow as we learn to use the tools for living AA teaches us. 

It takes time, thought, prayer, meditation, desire and work for our Higher Power to excavate the person we created and turn us into the person we were designed to be.

SLOW-briety!!!

Those of us who have earned our seat in AA had to first live through some pretty painful life experiences. Our drinking years were the stuff of nightmares, a time filled with fear, worry, guilt, failure, loneliness, struggle and finally hopelessness. 

Life was a frightening maze where there seemed to be no way out other than unconsciousness - or death.

We remember that time as we celebrate our daily surrender to a Higher Power who then arrives to make us - and all things - new for us. Each new sober day is a gift, given to us so that we may enjoy our lives and help others to find joy in their lives, too.

But none of us escapes occasional temptation to give in to bad behavior, up to and including the temptation to give up and pick up our drug(s) of choice. Sometimes we even dream about giving into it. So we are wise to expect and be ready for it - in all its forms - when it arrives.

We defend against temptation by paying attention to our thoughts, correcting them when necessary (especially when we don't want to!), and asking our Higher Power to assist us in that. 

And when it comes to drinking we can never, ever, entertain the thought of it for more than the split second it occurs to us. The ethanol (drug) in booze of any kind, in beer, wine, hard liquor, in any pretty bottle or attractive fruity drink, is all poison for us. 

Conquering temptation requires that we see it clearly and turn our backs on it. 

We must also guard against dwelling upon the faults of others, which is merely a perverse form of self-satisfaction. That's because when it's "their fault," it can hardly be "our fault," can it? Our Higher Power stands ready to help us with that kind of twisted thinking, too.

 When we find ourselves struggling with any reappearing character defect(s) we can have a look at Steps Six and Seven again. Not the short form, the long form, as found in the Big Book and the 12 & 12. 

Acceptance is the key. It is always the key. Accepting who we are, how we live, and the behavior of the people around us - at home, work and in meetings - allows us to achieve a realistic humility about our lives. And a by-product of humility is contentment.

Acceptance doesn't happen overnight, either. We will have to return to it over and over again during our sober journey as we encounter new situations that call for it. But serenity - its other by-product - is soooooo worth it!

We keep on trudg'n and can relax once we know for sure that we are safe in AA and embarked on a lifetime journey of joyful discovery. There's no hurry. No one is keeping score. 

We can learn and grow at our own pace and accept that this process of building back better is going to take awhile. 

 SLOW-briety!!! 

 

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                               Merry Meet(ings) and Season Sober

Some are already tired of the current topic de jour being "How to stay sober through the holidays," but listen up anyway. All these same-topic meetings are being held for a 

reason. It's more the ice in the glass and not on the pavement that causes "slips" this 

time of year.

Holiday parties and family gatherings plus seasonal stress loom like minefields for a 

sober alcoholic - especially for those in recovery facing their first sober holiday season.

 It can feel pretty overwhelming when every other ad on TV seems filled with people hoisting glasses of "cheer" in their perfect homes with their perfect families and lovely friends all happily toasting the season.

Spoiler alert: There are NO families like that. 

Nor is the alcoholic world celebrated in those ads. None show the family drunk knocking

 over the Christmas tree, spilling the Hanukkah wine all over the spotless white tablecloth, telling inappropriate stories, snogging in a closet with another drunken guest, puking 

beside the toilet, or burning the Christmas dinner to a crisp.

Those of us who have done those things - and worse - rightfully fear doing them again. 

That's when we need to haul ass to our safe place, our meetings. They become our refuge -

 and sometimes even hiding place - until all the seasonal madness is over.

I should note there are also a small number of A.A. members who will go into the holiday season with perhaps a bit more confidence than is warranted. Confidence is a good thing, 

but it's always a good idea to be on guard against the cunning, baffling and powerful nature

 of our disease.

As it points out in the book, Living Sober, regarding the biochemical, unchangeable nature

 of our ailment:

"Alcoholism respects no ifs. It does not go away, not for a week, for a day, or even for an

 hour, leaving us nonalcoholic and able to drink again on some special occasion or for 

some extraordinary reason - not even if it is a once-in-a-lifetime celebration, or if a big

 sorrow hits us, or if it rains in Spain or the stars fall on Alabama. Alcoholism is for us unconditional, with no dispensations available at any price."

We need to remember to thank our Higher Power for Zoom meetings 24/7 around the 

world, for our local in-person meetings, our own home group, and our AA network of 

friends - all ready, willing and able to help us get through the holidays sober.

Back-to-back marathon meetings in AA clubhouses offer a warm welcome for those alone when it feels like anything but "the most wonderful time of the year." 

 AA holiday celebrations are held in big cities, small towns and even in very rural areas worldwide. The sharing and celebrations are there for any of us if we're in need - or even

 if we just want to hang out with those people who most understand us.

A lot of AA groups offer us sober fellowship of all kinds this month. There are AA dances, holiday parties, potluck dinners and other special gatherings. I've personally brought in 

many a brand new year in my local AA clubhouse and would do it again this year were

there an AA clubhouse nearby.

 We can head for a meeting anytime we need to escape from the seeming non-stop round 

of family gatherings, shopping marathons, office parties, and other places where we fear hearing those incredulous faces saying - "Surely you can have just one at CHRISTMAS?!!" 

Making our sober plan is more important than sending out cards, buying candles, or 

wrapping presents. Sober planning requires many meetings, remembering to H.A.L.T 

when we are feeling hungry, angry, lonely or tired, and for planning beforehand a way

 out of situations when we start feeling stressed. 

First and foremost, get in touch with your own personal brand of Higher Power before 

you head out to a holiday event. It's the way to renew your courage and to know, with that

 kind of backing, you will be victorious over any situation you may encounter.

If single and invited to a plus-one party, we can take along a friend in recovery. Decide 

with them on a signal and excuse for leaving beforehand should one of you start to get uncomfortable.

Family gatherings can be more tricky. One or two people there may be supportive of our sobriety, but others - especially those who drink like we did - may feel threatened by it 

and continually push us to have "just one glass."

The key here is to let people know on arrival that you have another holiday party to go to 

after this one. (No one needs to know your other gathering is an AA meeting). Then get 

the basic must-do part of the visit out of the way (exchanging gifts, eating dinners, lighting candles, whatever) before heading out as soon as possible to your "next holiday party."

Everyone knows there are many parties around the holidays, some of them on the same afternoons or evenings, so the "next holiday party" ploy works equally well for quickly escaping the often dreaded office party.

The good news is we have our A.A. family to validate, support, encourage and get us safely through the holiday season (and all other life events). With them we don't have to explain

 our discomfort at being surrounded by people drinking, with trays full of more drinks on offer. 

All the meetings about holiday hazards help get us centered for the tinsel-strewn days ahead. There will be people in them who have stayed sober through all the dangers of holidays past. They assure us, if they could do it, we can do it. 

                                      And they're right!