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Made A Decision

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                   Here's a Question for You ...

     What have you done for AA - or for a still suffering alcoholic - today?

Have you had a thought today about others still out there caught in the hell of our disease? 

I try to, but it's only because it was once sharply brought to my attention. 

It happened in the building I was living in.

My apartment back then, when I was much younger, was a busy place. People in recovery dropped by regularly for coffee and AA chats. I had sponsees there doing step work. I held weekly studies on books that had helped me in my own recovery. 

But one day an ambulance arrived out front. 

The paramedics were searching for a man who lived in my building, but I didn't know him. His apartment number, however, was from "around back," so I directed them there.

In due course the paramedics wheeled a stretcher from the back apartment to their ambulance out front. 

On the stretcher was a living skeleton, a rack of bones covered with tight yellow skin, topped by an enormously swollen belly. 

My neighbor. 

Dying of alcoholism.

So there I was, Little Miss AA, living the promises while my neighbor was quietly drinking himself to death just a few doors away.

How about your neighbor? 

Is he or she dying of alcoholism? 

Do you know?

 

More importantly, do you care?

Because of my own apartment experience I learned to pay closer attention to the people living near me. And I let people know I'm in recovery from our chronic terminal illness whenever I think that information might be helpful. 

As it says in our Big Book: 

"Near you, alcoholics are dying helplessly like people on a sinking ship. If you live in a large place, there are hundreds. High and low, rich and poor, these are future fellows of Alcoholics Anonymous. 

Among them you will make lifelong friends. You will be bound to them with new and wonderful ties, for you will escape disaster together and you will commence shoulder to shoulder your common journey. 

Then you will know what it means to give of yourself that others may survive and rediscover life. You will learn the full meaning of 'Love thy neighbor as thyself.'" 

That's as true - maybe even more so - than when our Big Book was written.

So what can we do?

 We can invite doctors, nurses, police officers, social workers, and others to our open meetings. We can provide those same people with AA brochures. We can answer their questions. 

Our groups can hold 4th Step and other kinds of workshops offering information about AA. 

And we, as individuals, can carry the message to that person in tonight's news who is now headed to jail after causing a fatal accident while drunk.  

My home group had business cards printed to hand out or leave where they might do some good. They read: 

"If you want to drink, that's your business. If you want to quit, that's ours ... AA has been helping people stay sober for nearly 100 years."

 (And then it gave contact information). 

I recently heard about people in AA who were repelled and repulsed by a wet drunk who showed up at their meeting. Can you even imagine that?

 That drunk was there to show everyone what we were like - so that those there could help him become the sober person he was meant to be. 

That's Our Job!!!

My sobriety - and yours - is given us just for today and is "contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition."

 That means prayer, meditation, step work, book studies, meetings and giving our sobriety away to someone who needs it. That's how we get to keep it, people.

The seats in AA are never empty. Lost members are soon replaced when God points another newcomer in our direction, a person perhaps more willing to do the job we've been given our sobriety to do.

I was fortunate in early recovery to be taken on a lot of 12-step calls. There I got to see late-stage alcoholism up close and personal. I hated those calls at the time, but I'm very grateful for them now. 

It was there I learned those of us who have escaped drinking - just for today - are uniquely qualified to pull others out of the jaws of our ugly disease.

But all of us can, and often do, coast along on our own sobriety, skipping meetings, not calling our sponsor, not being willing to do service in our group ... truly skating along on thin ice. 

We are not ever cured of our cunning, baffling and powerful disease. Not paying attention to the basics of our recovery every single day is truly playing with fire.

Coasting for too long leads many of us back to drinking. That wake-up call sometimes does the trick and we, with new understanding, return to fully embrace our miraculous program. 

But some of us don't make it back, and for us, to drink is to die.

Our lives before AA weren't pretty. Lives of baffled defeat never are. Those of us given a second chance at life in AA are the lucky ones. Most drunks never even get inside the door for their first meeting. 

So every recovering addict is a miracle. Many of us should have been dead long ago. 

We have been given a second chance at life and the promises of AA guarantee us a good one - as long as we continue to give our sobriety away to others.

"Helping others is the foundation stone of your recovery. A kindly act once in a while isn't enough. You have to act the Good Samaritan every day, if need be."

Alcoholics Anonymous 4th Edition

One of my good AA friends, a man with 30-plus years recovery, says he gets choked up with emotion every time he hears the "Responsibility Pledge" read in a meeting. 

Here it is:

"I am responsible. When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of A.A. always to be there. And for that: I am responsible."

My friend takes that pledge seriously. 

I do, too. 

Every single sober one of us owes a debt of gratitude to AA that we can never repay no matter how long we live. 

So my question remains: 

What have YOU done for AA - or for a still suffering alcoholic - today?