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Made a Decision 

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Parts of the following blog were printed in a blog last April, but a lot of you hadn't started reading these blogs then, so I thought it might be time to recycle it. 

It might help you men understand your sisters in sobriety a bit more, too. That can only be good. 

             

                 Women in the “Fellowship.”

(Dictionary: "Fellow - noun - informal meaning - a man or boy.")

Women in AA should always remember “The Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous was written in an earlier time, penned by white men for white men. 

A lot of my friends in recovery are neither white nor men and I've witnessed first hand some of their problems with our AA literature.

AA's Founding Fathers initially weren’t even sure women could get and stay sober in the AA program, as evidenced in the following written in the book "Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age:"

"... In the beginning we could not sober up women. They were different, they said ..."

And we are different, in ways I'll get to a little further on.

But first:

I was a working journalist when I got sober. During my first year or two in recovery I absolutely wanted to rewrite the Big Book. I thought the language in there was dated at best and sexist at worst.

But I was still living a life on fast forward for much of my early recovery, so I never found the free time to tackle a project that size.

I appreciate HP's hand here in keeping me so busy, because over time I have learned everything a woman needs to stay sober is already right there in the book “Alcoholics Anonymous,” just as it was written.

We just have to become open enough to receive it.

Even so, being female, I’m pleased that in recent decades other recovering women have written books geared more toward helping women in recovery.

Among them, the book A Woman’ Way Through the 12 Steps, by Stephanie S. Covington, has become a recovery classic that has helped scores of women. Its chapters on Relationship and Sexuality are worth the price of the book alone.

I also believe the most important thing a woman in recovery can do for herself is to join an all woman AA group - or to start one if necessary.

 I’ve helped start three of them, two in the USA and one in the UK. The UK group faded away, as did one in the states, but the one in Savannah, Georgia - now more than 35 years around - remains a big healthy group.

(When I arrived in AA I was told all you needed to start a new group was "a resentment and a coffee pot." Clearly I knew a lot about resentment as I've started, or helped start, ten AA groups, most of which are still thriving.)

 Women’s groups themselves have been around since the 1950s, by the way, so if you are trying to get one started in your own area don’t let anyone bully you into thinking they’re something “new.”

 My sisters-in-sobriety are vitally important to me and my own recovery, but I adore the men in AA, too. Nearly all of the people around me in my early recovery were men. Without them I would never have stayed sober.

The courage, direction, compassion and humour of those men in my first AA group propped me up and got me safely through my weakest moments. I will always remain in their debt.

And there are many lovely men in my life in AA today, including my Sunday Guys, three men I absolutely count on to guide me further along in my sober journey.

But many men in AA still sometimes get all huffy when local women decide to form a group just for them.

They'll give all kinds of reasons why a women's group isn't necessary, too. I've heard them all:

They'll say a woman alcoholic is no different from a man alcoholic, or ...

that women think they're special (dangerously "unique") in thinking they might need their own group ...

and some men will even more bluntly ask, "What's so damned secret you women can't talk about it in a regular meeting?"

(I suspect those same men fear we want our own meeting just so we can talk about them! Relax fellows, we don't.)

The fact is we still live in a male-dominated society where something as basic as equal pay for equal work continues to remain controversial.

That condescending kind of stuff rankles at a very deep level. Men seldom give much thought to this, but trust me, women do.

I'm going to digress here (as I often do) and leave AA for a moment to tell you about a social study of men and women that may help shed a little light on this subject of male/female differences and needs:

Each person in that study was asked what they most feared regarding the other sex when they were involved in an intimate relationship.

Most of the men questioned said they feared if they let themselves be vulnerable their woman partner might ridicule or laugh at them.

Contrast that with the majority of the women who confessed their biggest fear was their partner might at some point become angry enough to kill them.

With that information in mind we will return now to the subject of recovery.

While it is obviously true that both men and women can become alcoholics, the results of "our" disease - and our fears - can impact our lives in very different ways.

All drunks are shamed by the society they live in, but until they’ve reached the lowest point in their drinking men are perceived as “someone who just doesn’t know when to quit.” 

Women at that late stage (or often long before) are perceived as bad women. Period.

A drunk man staggering along the street is even today often seen as a figure of fun, someone to be laughed at. (That "funny drunk" in the movie or TV sitcom is always a man.)

A woman staggering from drink along a street is seen as disgusting, even as a viable target for sexual assault. 

Once while drunk I managed to hide from a group of men with that intent who were themselves too drunk to find me. I learned there's some truth to that phrase "scared sober." I wasn't suddenly sober, but I managed to become very alert - and stay hidden.

Women alcoholics who live with physical abuse in their homes often turn to the bottle for comfort, thereby inviting a whole new level of verbal abuse, too.

When told regularly we are "terrible mothers, rotten housekeepers, lousy cooks, disgusting, fat, lazy bitches, whores, scum ..." - or worse - we don't walk away from that unscathed. A woman who finds she can not stop drinking feels like a shameful failure already, so verbal abuse of that kind just adds to her existing mountain of self-loathing.

I have been a member of regular AA groups in several countries and in every one of them there have been women who never spoke. They were always there, they listened, they continued to stay sober, but they never spoke aloud in a meeting.

They couldn't.

These were women who had been abused as children by male family members and later (often when quite young) went on to marry abusive men. Their voices had been silenced by men all their lives.

It was only when those women became members in women's groups, and came to believe their thoughts and feelings had some value worth sharing, that they began to speak.

I have known such women. I have sponsored such women. So I am now, and always will be, a champion of women's AA groups.

Because here's the best news.

Once the silent women discover their self-worth inside their women's meetings, they then venture out into regular AA meetings.

They bring with them a powerful wisdom and level of compassion that benefits everyone in our program of recovery.