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                          Sponsorship

From our earliest days in AA we are advised to "get a sponsor." 

 

That's because when we are new to recovery, there is a lot we don’t know. Over time we'll learn it in meetings, but we can get a jump start on all of it by working with a sponsor. 

AA meetings in general promote sponsorship. That's where we'll often hear things like: "I have a sponsor, and my sponsor has a sponsor, and my sponsor's sponsor has a sponsor." 

- or -

"Anyone who thinks they can sponsor themselves has a fool for a sponsor."

We will also get praise from our fellow members when we proudly announce we have found ourselves a sponsor. 

But sponsorship, like many things in AA, has evolved over time:

The meetings of the 1940s fostered participatory sponsorship and many newcomers were sponsored by two or more A.A. members, the sponsor and his or her apprentice(s). Early A.A.’s described this relationship as co-sponsorship. 

I recently heard a devil's advocate point out that nowhere in the first 164 pages of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous does it tell the newcomer, or any other member of A.A., to get a sponsor. 

He pointed out that in the first 88 pages of the Big Book there are only references about working with other alcoholics, specifically meaning a couple of alcoholics working together to put the AA program into action, as pictured below.

(BTW, I have no idea how I managed to get this picture in here. So don't expect fancy high tech stuff like this in the future.) 

       But I'm not a page counter or Big Book thumper. I know what's in it, but I don't use it to try and batter people into my way of thinking. 

From my own reading I've come to believe a sponsor is just someone who takes on the job of walking someone through the twelve steps of recovery.

 That's what I do as a sponsor and have done so for many years. We go through one step a month for one year, my having found that anyone - no matter how busy their lifestyle - can set aside time to take one step a month. 

When we meet, we read, discuss and spend a couple of hours doing the work, as outlined in our 12&12 book. And - of course - if my sponsee runs head on into a problem between our set meeting times, we will meet up to talk about how to use AA's tools of recovery to resolve their situation.

At year's end we will have done all twelve steps together and they are then ready to take on the sponsoring of others. By that time we have become friends who will continue to meet up on a regular basis to chat and - while they usually still call me their sponsor - I believe my actual sponsorship duty has been fulfilled. 

My job - as I define it - is to get them working the steps of recovery in their own lives and to get them ready to sponsor others. 

There is always a need for sponsorship in our program and a person with a year or two of good recovery, having worked all twelve steps and become familiar with our traditions, is far more able to sponsor a raw newcomer than someone with many years of sobriety.

 Old timers can easily forget the pain often encountered in brand new sobriety. Someone who has been there more recently relates better and has a lot more to offer.

I've heard it said that by becoming willing to listen to a sponsor we learn to listen to someone with a higher vision than our own. And that, in turn, guides us toward wanting to listen for direction from our Higher Power. If that's true, it's a great outcome.

Many AA members view sponsorship as a long (sometimes lifetime) commitment of care. If that works for them, that's fine by me.

 But I think caution should always be taken to not become too dependent on a sponsor's wisdom regarding anything other than recovery from addiction. 

All a sponsor really has is more sober time than the sponsee, along with the knowledge on how they got there. No sponsor is all knowing, all seeing, all powerful. 

And if a sponsor starts enjoying being viewed that way - as the old song says - "there may be trouble ahead."

 A pedestal is something anyone can fall from.

 Too much praise from a sponsee can lead to the growth of too much ego in a sponsor. An inflated ego is dangerous for anyone, but is especially so for us drunks. 

Some sponsors demand their sponsees contact them every single day. Maybe that's even a good idea for the first few weeks in recovery. I know it has worked for many. But I don't do it. 

I'm more comfortable when an AA member calls when they are confused or troubled on how to deal with a situation.

 And especially to call if their thoughts start to fixate on drinking! 

 

As a good friend of mine said to me recently, "I tell my sponsees to call me before they pick up a drink, because then I can help them head that off. If they wait and call me after they've had a drink, it's too late."

I've actually heard AA members say they don't make any decision about anything (medical, psychological, financial, legal, spiritual, or their relationships) without first getting advice from their sponsor. 

To me that's a recipe for creating co-dependent AA members unable to function independently in their own lives. 

It's true that we are often immature when we begin our recovery journey, but even so we arrive as adults seeking at long last to grow up mentally, physically and spiritually. 

The sooner we can manage that - with the help of our Higher Power - the better.  

The best way to do that is outlined in our Big Book, where it states:

 In the Morning: 

We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives. Under these conditions we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all God gave us brains to use.

During the day:

In thinking about our day we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision.

 We usually conclude the period of meditation with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be, that we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems.

                             In the evening:

After making our review we ask God’s forgiveness and inquire what corrective measures should be taken. 

       Taking these actions, morning, noon and night, will keep our need for constant contact with a sponsor to a minimum. Our goal, after all, is not dependency on another human being, but to develop our trust in the guidance of our Higher Power.

I was taught early on that we always need a sponsor. So, after my lovely first sponsor left me for that greater meeting on high, I asked another woman to sponsor me. 

We began by again working the steps and eventually met up for her to hear my Fifth Step. I had barely begun when the shaming began. 

She condemned my current behavior regarding a relationship, she outlined the ways in which I "should" behave, and then - before she could stick a pitchfork into my soul and bag it as a keeper - I fired her.

I had been truly fortunate in having had a good sponsor at the onset, good enough for me to recognize this woman wasn't there to help me, but to judge me. It didn't work, because I had already been taught: "As God's people we stand on our feet; we don't crawl before anyone." 

A sponsor is there to support us, encourage us, and inspire us - never to judge or condemn us. Our sponsor takes us through the 12 steps of recovery and teaches us about our traditions. A sponsor will sometimes suggest we change behaviors that can hurt us, but they won't set out to make us feel bad about our choices. 

The first six women I asked to sponsor me turned me down. And, looking back at the me who arrived in AA, I don't blame them.

        But my Higher Power knew I needed that six-pack lesson in humility - and also that the perfect sponsor was out there for me. I found her on the 7th try. We were a perfect fit. 

 

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The 13th Step - and More.

The woman in the meeting was angry and she said so:

"I almost didn't come to this meeting tonight because I knew (name) was going to be here and he's always hitting on me. He hits on half the women who come here. I've let him know I'm not interested, but he keeps at it all the time. I'm sick of it. And there are other women who won't come to this meeting anymore because of him."

The meeting went uncomfortably silent for several seconds. 

Then the chairman looked directly at the man named and said, "It's high time you learned that the women in these rooms are our sisters in sobriety. And we won’t have any incest in here."

That woman was incredibly brave to speak up and the meeting chairman handled it well. Sadly, that isn't always the case.

There are sexual predators in the rooms of AA, of both sexes. Thankfully, there aren't many of them, but they do show up from time to time to prey on the weak and vulnerable.

Newcomers can be very vulnerable.

The worst of those predators are people with some time in recovery, because newcomers are prone to look up to them. It's a respect they don't deserve and can lead to disaster for the person who has placed them on a pedestal.

Other predators can themselves appear weak and needy, seemingly struggling to stay sober. They reach out for help to more seasoned recovering addicts who, thinking the hand of AA is needed, can become trapped in a very sticky web of deceit. (Old timers can be vulnerable, too.)

Predatory behavior in AA is called "13th Stepping," and it is both frowned upon and dangerous. It is an ugly misuse of AA's primary purpose, "... to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers."

So how to stay out of these traps?

When in doubt about anyone's attention and intentions, talk with others in the program who have a bit of recovery time. Don't just talk with one person, talk with many.

Tell them your concerns about the person you are feeling uncomfortable about. Get their input on that person. Get their advice on how to best handle the situation.

In extreme cases, ask for long-time members of the group to have a talk with that person about their behavior.

I had a young sponsee who was actually being stalked by a man in AA. He backed her into corners at meeting's end or followed her to her car afterward and tried to engage in unwelcome conversations.

But it wasn't until she saw him "jogging" through her neighborhood (many miles from where he actually lived) that she told me about it.

I then had a talk with the man. It was not a friendly talk and he stopped bothering her.

I tell you this only to point out a more experienced AA member can sometimes speak directly to the problem in a way that might make a newcomer feel uncomfortable.

Learning to enjoy our own company allows us to become far less vulnerable to those self-centered slick-talkers who prey upon others, both inside and outside the rooms of AA.  

But what about men and women who aren't predators? What about those lovely people in the rooms to whom we are naturally attracted? What about relationships? What about love???

A good sponsor will advise the newly sober to avoid any new relationships, other than friendships, for up to two years in early recovery. By then they'll have a good grounding in staying sober and be enjoying their new way of living.

And, while I know such a leap of imagination may be difficult for you, I wasn't always an old woman in AA. I arrived at the age of 37 with a body full of hormonal juices and a head full of crazy. I haven't died from being celibate during stretches of time in recovery, and neither will you.

Our founding members had quite a lot to say about love and sex after finding sobriety. Blow the dust of your Big Book and 12&12 and have a read.

There is information in the Big Book on getting back together with estranged spouses, about methods to quiet our sexual urges, about pausing when agitated (aka: horny) and asking for the next right thought or action.

The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions book goes into still more detail. Step Five in the 12&12 has a lot to offer about dealing with loneliness. The book touches on the topic in many other chapters, too, offering a great deal on the topic in Step Twelve.

And then there are those of us who have fears about never having a relationship again, or being afraid to even get into a relationship. What do we do about that?

Many who arrive in AA fear they'll never be able to dance again, never mind facing the fear of having sober sex. Both can be terrifying and unnerving to contemplate, but the good news is - like riding that proverbial bicycle - neither is impossible.

When your Higher Power thinks you're ready to deal with being in a relationship, your partner will show up. And when they do, if you have done your AA homework thoroughly, you'll be able to be in a relationship as a grown up, not as a clingy, needy or abusive victim.

Many problems arise when we forget AA is not a social club or dating service. We are here to address the facts about our progressive and fatal disease by applying the steps of recovery - and to help our fellow suffering alcoholics achieve that same goal.

When we jump into a relationship too soon, we set ourselves - and our partner - up for heartbreak. Relationships early in recovery are lived out on slippery ground and many of them end with one or both people drinking again.

(With drinking for us being a potential death sentence, do you really want that in your next fourth step?)

"To sum up about sex: We earnestly pray for the right ideal, for guidance in each questionable situation, for sanity, and for the strength to do the right thing. 

If sex is very troublesome, we throw ourselves the harder into helping others. We think of their needs and work for them. 

This takes us out of ourselves. It quiets the imperious urge, when to yield would mean heartache."
Alcoholics Anonymous 4th Edition
How It Works, pg. 70

Instead of obsessing about being in a relationship (as so many of us do), write down instead how you'd like your entire life to look in a year's time. Include

your health, career, travel, hobbies, housing, friends, romance and more. Put your wish list away to read again in 12 months.

Then get busy working the program of AA: Stay sober, develop AA friendships, help others, and learn in the process what makes you tick and feel good about yourself.

In the 12&12 it tells us, "We have learned that the satisfaction of instincts cannot be the sole aim of our lives."

(Can I get an "amen?")

My first sponsor, Mary Z., was one smart cookie. Early on in my recovery she told me:

"AA is a perfect program full of some very sick people. And we attract what we are. So if you want a relationship, work on becoming the best person you can until your perfect partner shows up."

And I suggest you take my old sponsor's advice and use it, since I didn't. Very early on I opted for having a relationship with a wet drunk instead. That "romance" spiraled me downward into a depression that damn near killed me.

Some people only learn from their own mistakes.

Smart people learn from the mistakes of others.

Be a smart person.

 

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Self-care Equals Self-love 

When was the last time you did something nice just for you?

 Do you even know how to do that?

 Or what that feels like?

If not, there's work to be done ... but this is the kind of recovery work that can feel good in the process.

We do that work because it builds back our self-esteem. And also because, according to many scientific studies, people who don't like themselves find it difficult (if not impossible) to love others. So to want to help other suffering alcoholics - which is our JOB in recovery - we have to begin to find out how to love and care for ourselves. 

After all, none of us gets to AA on a winning streak. We pretty much always arrive battered, angry, frustrated and filled with self-loathing. It takes time to get rid of all that, but meanwhile the people who got to AA ahead of us will love us until we finally learn to love ourselves.

They will, you know. The same way HP does, as in that saying - "God loves us, whether we like it or not."

 In our drinking days we were prone to anger, hostility, rebellion and aggression. Early in our recovery those behaviors often remain our Go To behaviors. The newcomer's first work is to learn how to not be a tyrant or a victim, to learn how to set sane boundaries, and discover through that process that we are special and deserving of having a marvelous life. 

We can then put down the stick and stop abusing ourselves - and others - with unrealistic expectations that can minimize our having success.

 Being both batterer and batteree isn't good for anyone, but it's typical behavior for many newcomers.

Forgiving ourselves for being human is the first step on the path to improving self-esteem. That's how our Higher Power views us. HP knows who we are and knows what we are, no perfection expected. We are loved for just being human. 

We are the only ones expecting perfection of ourselves. Self-improvement and self-acceptance are far worthier goals. That process begins with learning to take care of ourselves, and by learning to care for others in healthy ways. 

We help others initially by going to lots of meetings to stay sober and meet lots of our kind of people, our herd. These are the folks we'll be hanging out with, getting to know and to love, getting to have fun with, and - most of all - getting to care that they stay sober.

 We make time for them. We take an interest in them. We want good things for them. We learn our recovery really isn't "all about me."  We gradually get out of our own selfish heads. 

Self-care also includes making time to get to know ourselves. 

Most of us arrive in AA wearing a variety of masks - sometimes all at the same time - to cover the black hole of loneliness and desperation underneath.

We arrive in AA feeling like damaged goods and we wear our masks to try and keep others from seeing who we really are. 

But when we view ourselves as damaged goods, we truly have no idea yet who the person behind our mask actually is! 

 Once we find the courage to remove our masks, work the steps, and continually do the doing, our beauty will be revealed for all to see and appreciate.

Working all twelve steps takes us to finding a powerful relationship with our personal Higher Power and helps us discover, accept, and then love the person we are becoming. 

Steps four through ten are the meat and potatoes of self-discovery, Steps one, two, three, eleven and twelve get us out of our own way and closer to our Higher Power, and to our fellow suffering alcoholics. 

Or at least that's the way it has worked - and continues to work - for me. 

There are a variety of non-AA ideas that can augment our step work in reaching our goal of self-love. As it says in our Big Book, "Make use of what others have to offer." I have used all of the following to find my way back to myself. I can confirm that they have all helped.

Defining our Higher Power:

My first sponsor once had me make a list of all the qualities I'd like to find in a best friend. I wrote down things like intelligence, humour, honesty, courage, and many more. She read the list, handed it back and said, "There. That's your Higher Power, at least for now. Those are your HP's attributes. Worship that God until you find something better. Stop overthinking this God thing."

Have fun:

I once read we could write down all the things we liked to do, and then ask our closest friends what they think would be fun for us to do together, and then to do them - individually or together - often. 

Gratitude:

Science has shown it is impossible for our brains to hold a negative and a positive thought at the same time. Spiritual law says the same. So every day - and most especially on those days when our brains are out to kill us with negativity - we can escape by making a written gratitude list. 

I've heard some people complain they can only think of about three things to list. Work on that till it reaches a hundred or so! It isn't hard ...

Are we sober today?

Do we know our sobriety is a gift and a miracle?

 Are we grateful for it? 

Do we have sober friends? Do we have a circle of support in a Home Group? Do we have a program guiding our recovery?

 Gratitude!!!

Did the sun come up today? Be grateful we can see it. Be grateful for its warmth. Be grateful for the energy it offers our gardens, our food crops, our planet. 

Is it raining? Be grateful for a quieter day, for the replenishment of our creeks and rivers, for our thirsty plants and wildlife, for friendly conversations with our neighbors about the weather.

Did we laugh today? Do we have friends that bring us the gift of laughter? Are there comedians we enjoy? Did our puppy do something that gave us a smile? Is our cat the best cat ever? Do our children love us? Do we know that? Gratitude!

Did we see something amazing today? A colourful butterfly? A couple in love? A new baby? A sea view? A perfect rose in the garden? A hedgehog? A mountain in the mist? Lambs at play? A falling "star?" 

If we are physically well are we grateful? Good eyesight? Hearing? Our strength? Being able to walk, or run, or climb, or dance? There are people with none of these things, or unable to do any of these. So be grateful.

The list is endless ... and for that, I'm grateful!

Becoming grateful opens the door to more and more things to be grateful about.

Practice being grateful for life's tough lessons, too. For it is from them that we learn and grow the most. 

Never forget when you felt that quitting drinking would be the worst thing that could happen to you. And then how you felt when you discovered it was the best thing that has ever happened for you. 

Gratitude!

Affirmations:

Saying "You are a terrific human being" every time you see yourself in a mirror can feel awkward at first, but affirmations contribute a more positive voice to the negative one already in our head. Over time it can drown it out completely. That's the goal.

Affirmations come in all shapes and sizes: like, "Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better." ... "I am loved and I am loving." ... "I attract the positive." ... "I deserve to have a wonderful life."  ... "I have a spiritual ideal and I seek to reach it." Whatever the ideal you want for yourself can become a daily affirmation designed by you, for you. 

We already use an affirmation when our meetings end and we all say out loud - 

"It works when we work it." 

Gold Stars:

When you do anything that is hard for you to do ... apply for a new job, end a toxic relationship, speak your truth, join a book club, share - or chair - at a meeting, make an amend, visit a dying person in hospice, spend a day without your cell phone, make time to eat properly, or to get enough sleep, or whatever that hard thing FOR YOU might be ... award yourself a gold star. 

Literally.

Get a box of sticky stars and put one in your journal or diary or desk calendar on that date you've done your hard thing. Write down what that hard thing was. Then, when a later day (or week) turns shitty on you, you can flip back through that collection of stars and read what you did to earn it. 

It won't take long for the positive thought - "Yes, I really did do that ... and that ... and that, too ... " to kick in. We will then feel better about ourselves.

 Another person might look at one of our accomplishments and think, "Big deal." This isn't about them or their opinion, especially when their opinion is based on something that might have been easy for them, but was terrifying for us. We all have different size hurdles. 

(Our gold stars are just for us! I have never shown mine to anyone and I don't expect I ever will. It's none of their business.)

Revisit your Childhood

Make a list of all the things you liked to do before the age of eleven. Jigsaw puzzles? Read books? Dance? Roller skate? Ride horses? Swim? Jump rope? Walk in the woods? Be in a pretty garden. Have a dollhouse? Ride a bike? Sing? Go out in a boat? 

Whatever.

Then go do each of them again, one after another, week after week for as long as it takes.

You'll discover that some of them will no longer hold the appeal of your childhood (I found I'd rather fix up the house I live in than have a dollhouse again), but some childhood fun things will still be a good fit. 

Add them back into your life.

Secret Pleasures:

Loneliness is the pain of being alone. Solitude offers the joy of being alone. 

Do more of what you secretly like to do all by yourself, but seldom make time for: Bubble baths? Reading good books? Gardening? Hiking? Napping? Lying in bed and watching the telly? Baking? Trying new recipes? Puzzles?  

Whatever makes you happy in yourself - and by yourself - do it more often (yes, even rude things). That's how we learn to enjoy our own company, to find out how much fun we are to be with.

Self-care leads us to others-care. 

When we feel good about ourselves it's natural to want to share that with others. We'll find ourselves becoming more involved in AA service work - and enjoying it. 

We'll find ourselves reaching out to others who are struggling to offer them a bit of our own experience, strength and hope.

 We'll feel less like "I have to go to a meeting" and more like, "I get to go to a meeting."

We'll feel gratitude whenever we are doing-the-doing.

It all works - when we work all of it.

(Note: Next week's blog will be about the 13th Step and other sexual misadventures in AA ... you won't want to miss it.)

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                               AA Friendships

It is often heard in AA that we stopped maturing when we started drinking, drugging, or both. That was certainly true of me.

I arrived in AA at the age of 37. My 11-year marriage had ended. I had four small children. I had an insatiable thirst for alcohol, my newspaper career was hanging by a thread, and I had all the social skills of a befuddled and unpopular 17-year-old.

 The old-timers who were around to help me in the days, months, and years of my early recovery have all now gone to that great meeting in the sky.  

And many of my own age group who arrived close to the same time are also now members of that higher meeting. 

But, OH, the times we all had together in those early days. I wouldn't trade growing up in AA for any amount of worldly treasure. Together my AA peers and I learned, through our laughter, tears and fury, how to stay sober despite everything! 

Those friendships, especially with those having a sobriety date close to our own, are designed just for us. With 20/20 hindsight, I know mine offered me the purest, craziest, most wonderful friendships I've ever enjoyed in my life.

For starters, we learned how to be honest in our communication, never easy for anyone like me who learned to lie when I learned to talk.

And we learned to grow a thicker skin, to understand that everything said and done wasn't aimed at, or all about, "little old me." We found out others had feelings and opinions, too, feelings and opinions we had to learn to respect. 

It's written in AA literature that we have "a disease of perception." Every person perceives the world in their own way, but an alcoholic's world view can easily become distorted. 

 

We can hear things that weren't meant in the way we heard them, we can see things not as they are, but as we are, and we can often fear things that don't exist. 

Our AA friends help get our distorted vision back to normal when their actions show us they have a disease of perception, too. Their behavior can force us to look at our own behavior - and to learn from it.

During our early (slightly-crazed) recovery we learn to not believe everything we think. 

And we learn to not share everything we think until we have had some time for a long think about it. 

We stop having knee-jerk reactions to things said or done by others (most of the time). And we discover we can "pause when agitated," and then behave differently than we have always done before.

(Note - It works, when we work it.)

I can still remember my embarrassment when an AA friend made an awkward amend to me after he failed to show up to share at one of the first meetings I ever chaired. 

He'd had been in a fight with his wife and decided "I'll show her, I'll kill me," and went off to get drunk. 

As it happened, on the way to buy liquor, his sanity returned and he didn't drink that evening. But the fight and its aftermath made it too late for him to get to our group's meeting. 

My friend called a couple of days later and asked me to meet him at a local coffee shop. There he stared at the table and apologized for letting me down and I stared at the table all the while he talked. It was an incredibly awkward conversation for both of us, but we got through it and came out the other side as better people. 

I'm still grateful for it.

While those wise old-timers (whom we unwisely put on pedestals) were lovely to listen to, it was our AA peer group who kept us sober over the many bumps in the road we encountered during early sobriety.

They were the ones we confided in, argued with, talked with about AA itself (and everyone in it), and they were the same people we loved best - and sometimes hated. 

We were then all still caught up in a lifestyle of high drama and they were, too. Having recently been long-time drunks that was the only kind of lifestyle we knew. 

But we wanted to be sober and we didn't want any of our friends to give up on sobriety and drink again. We learned to care about the struggles of people other than ourselves.

It takes time to slow down and smell the roses for high octane people like newly recovering alcoholics. 

Our revered old-timers don't always remember that. But our peer group remembers. They're often still struggling with it.

There are some very funny incidents in our early AA friendships:  

I had three women friends who all got to the program when I did. We would get together often to moan and groan, with one or two of us usually being bat-shit crazy and the third then becoming the voice of AA wisdom and advice. 

The sane one always managed to glue the other two back together, and any one of us might be the sanest of the three on any given day.

We three once went to an AA retreat out of town and shared the same motel room. One night, while chatting before bed, one said we should have T-shirts printed with "D.S.P." (for Designated Sane Person) on them, so we'd know which one of us was the least crazy when we all got together.

We laughed so hard over this that one of us actually fell out of bed.

 (That would be me).

But there were harsh lessons, too:  

One of our group, a man with six years sobriety to our one or two years, drank again. 

None of us knew how to handle the situation. One or two of us made tentative efforts to talk him back to AA, but mostly we just talked about him among ourselves with a lot of head shaking and tsk-tsking.

I'll never forget how I felt the morning I learned our friend, now separated from his wife and family, had fallen while drunk, ruptured his spleen, and bled to death on the floor of his apartment.

His death was the first experience in our recovery where we got to see close up and personal the deadly nature of our disease. It shook us to the core. 

Sadly, I've had many such experiences since. 

They don't get any easier.

Then there were the sad, bad, and sometimes even crazy-mad experiences we shared inside our group itself:

 Like the time an angry and very irrational group member shouted curses at all of us, started to cry, and reached into her purse for a tissue. 

She then looked up, startled no doubt by the noise we had all made when hitting the floor. Every one of us had thought she'd gone into her purse for a gun. 

I have seen tempers flare into fist fights in AA, have heard many angry shouting matches in the rooms, and I have actually seen guns drawn. 

(I'm an American, after all.)

 One giant of a man arrived one day into our meeting with anger to spare. He was tattooed all over, wore leather and chains, rode a Harley and packed a gun. 

That same man today - transformed by his years in the program - is a lovely old grandfather and model citizen in his community. 

He had to do a bit of hard work between then and now, but 

 -  it always works when we work it!

In my very first home group the person with the longest period of sobriety was my friend with the six-years who drank and died. His unstinted help to me during my first couple of years in AA is the reason I'm alive to write this today. 

He (and his Al-Anon wife) took me to meetings, shared literature and friendship, and loved me even when I was newly stark-raving sober.

From his untimely death I learned none of us is immune from drinking again. We have a daily reprieve contingent on our spiritual condition on THAT day only ... 

one day at a time.

Most of the members of my first home group are now gone, but to the best of my knowledge they all died sober. Two who are still around remain in touch with me on email. They've now been married 40 years. When I met them I wouldn't have given odds on them lasting six months.

They got married in a blackout. Neither one of them remembered the event. When they sobered up (slightly), she panicked and left their northern state and went to stay with friends in the deep south state of Georgia. Those friends happened to be in the fellowship and she began going to meetings with them.

Meanwhile, he spent time and money tracking her down and then made the 1,000 mile (or so) trip to show up at her door. 

They got back together (as we do) and ended up living in a tent on the wildest part of the coastal barrier island where all of us lived at that time. 

She kept on going to meetings and eventually he did, too. They got sober and stayed sober, despite their fierce battles, separations and eventual get-back-togethers.

(Once she even left him and moved in with me and my kids for a time. When he came around to talk with her, my dog bit him.)

Today they are both sane, sober, senior citizens. No one meeting them would ever believe the high drama history we all lived through. But we all sobered up together and our conversations and emails today are full of laughter about those days. 

Survival! It's a beautiful thing.

That same couple, and others from our group in those early days, usually went to a local coffee shop after our meetings. 

There we drank gallons of coffee, ate desserts with a high enough sugar content to make a honey bee flinch, and trashed every single member of our group who hadn't joined us for the meeting-after-the-meeting. 

Such less-than-spiritual bonding helped us to all stay sober.  I can highly recommend it.