OKaysez

 

Made A Decision

(49)

                                        Look for the Similarities ...

When we stick around AA long enough we will one day hear someone who - in sharing their story - tells our own story of drinking and recovery. 

It's an amazing moment when it happens, and it's worth sticking around awhile just to have that experience.

But even before that special share we'll hear bits and pieces of our personal story spoken by others in meetings, certainly enough to identify with and marvel at. But only if we're able to listen with honest ears. 

Many of us in the beginning aren't looking for the similarities in our stories. We're looking for the differences, hoping for some proof we're maybe not really an alcoholic after all. 

(Rest assured - non-alcoholics don't do much - if any - worrying about their drinking. We alcoholics do. If you've made it to AA, odds are you're one of us.)

Right before the start of my very first AA meeting I picked up one of the brochures laid out on the table. When I read it later it contained a test to determine if we were - or were not - suffering from alcoholism.

I took the test, answering the questions with total honesty (something quite new to me at the time)    and got an A+ on it. 

I then folded up the brochure and put it in my purse.

In the months that followed, whenever I'd start to doubt I was actually a real alcoholic, I'd take out that brochure, read my test answers, and decide  once again that - yes - I did indeed belong in AA.

That brochure eventually fell to bits from being unfolded and refolded. My alcoholism, however, is still with me. 

But thanks to AA I haven't had to continue being a drinking

alcoholic.

Meetings at first were hard for me. I had never been a joiner. I liked solitary pursuits (then and now), but once I realized I had found my herd in AA - the only place in the world where people thought the way I thought  - I've never wanted to leave. 

I had decided I wanted to live, and that the people who had been sober a while in AA could teach me - not only how to live, but to live well - so I became an AA groupie.

But that early "I'm different" idea can cause us a lot of misery. So can the idea that "they" - those people over there - are different," a situation that has also reared its ugly head during AA's long history.

After all, it was four whole years after AA began before a woman got sober in AA. The men thought it was because women were "too different." 

"Low-bottom skid-row drunks said they were different. 

Socialites thought they were different, too. 

So did professional people, artists, plumbers, journalists, sail makers, bus drivers, sales people, rodeo riders, gay men and women, actors, the rich, the poor, churchgoers, atheists, veterans, convicts ... the list is endless.

                         

                         But the fact is this: 

   "Alcoholism is an equal opportunity destroyer."

When we recognize our disease is found in all groups of people, we can then - and perhaps only then - recognize how much alike all us alcoholics truly are.

One of the first things I was taught was that to stay sober I had to contribute to AA itself. AA was keeping me alive and well so I owed it my service. 

Our wonderful book, The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (aka - The 12&12) puts it like this:

"Most individuals cannot recover unless there IS a group. Realization dawns that he is but a small part of a great whole; that no personal sacrifice is too great for preservation of the Fellowship ... It becomes plain that the group must survive or the individual will not."

Recognizing our commonality is the key. After all, everyone in our group has experienced the pounding headaches, jitters, hot and cold sweats and dry mouth of hangovers.

We've all known what it's like to wake up afraid to face people and situations because of shame over our behavior the night before.

We remember our fear in having to face up to the consequences of our drinking. The fear we felt when in jail, in court, or in having to face up to our families - and eventually to ourselves.

                All of those feelings - and many more - get removed once we settle 

                                                      into our new life in AA.  

So are we still grateful? I only ask because denial is built right into our disease. We perfected it every time we lied about the extent of our drinking. 

When we stop being grateful and start taking our precious sobriety for granted, we can easily start to again lie to ourselves about how bad our drinking actually was. 

      First the lie - then the belief - then comes another round of drinking hell.

                                Honesty is the backbone of our recovery. 

                    Self-honesty is the greatest gift we can give to ourselves. 

But rigorous honesty, like every other part of our recovery, takes time to develop. We become honest by becoming honest - and that takes practice.

Self-honesty takes even more practice, because it involves getting to know who we really are after having spent years, even decades, running away from that knowledge. Drinking, after all, helped us escape it. 

                      Sobriety has been granted to us all, but it's not a gift. 

                             A gift is something we can keep forever. 

                      A grant is contingent on us doing things to keep it. 

           As our AA literature tells us, our continued sobriety is contingent 

                          on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.  

                Remaining grateful keeps that spiritual doorway wide open.