OKaysez

To comment on this blog please email:

o.kay.dockside@gmail.com

Made a Decision

(92)

                               We've Found Our Herd

I am not a joiner. I've never been a groupie. I'm by nature a loner and still enjoy mainly solitary pursuits. But, as I heard in a meeting long ago, "When I got to AA I found my herd."

There is a huge difference between isolation and being solitary, but to stay sober we need to embrace the full support of our AA fellowship. Here are the people who think like we do, feel like we do, and understand the world as we do. Together we can achieve the sobriety we were never able to do on our own.

Enjoying solitary pursuits does not equal being lonely, but a drinking life - particularly as we reach the latter stages of our chronic, terminal illness - is a lonely life indeed. Drinking cuts us off from society, and it cuts us off from any kind of spiritual connection (other than that found on the dark side). In the final months of my own drinking I often held long one-sided conversations with people who weren't even there! 

As our Big Book puts it: 

There is no more 'aloneness,' with that awful ache, so deep in the heart of every alcoholic that nothing, before, could ever reach it. That ache is gone and never need return again. 

Now there is a sense of belonging, of being wanted and needed and loved. In return for a bottle and a hangover, we have been given the Keys of the Kingdom.

AA also gave me the ability to embrace friendship by giving me the best friends I've ever had. Probably the first things I noticed at my very first AA meeting was the friendliness, the laughter, and being welcomed. That first taste made me greedy for more and I've never been willing to leave. Good things can be addictive, too!

 I accept today - fully - that I am forever powerless over alcohol. I know that if I drink again I will die. Once that knowledge - and acceptance - takes hold of any alcoholics, the work and joy of recovery truly begins. Thankfully AA provides us with great companions - every step of the way. 

As the lovely little book "Just for Today" states: The most unlikely people form friendships, sponsor each other, and do service work together. We meet in the rooms of recovery together, sharing the bonds of past suffering and hope for the future. We meet on mutual ground with our focus on the two things we all have in common—addiction and recovery. 

Since alcohol is an equal opportunity destroyer, AA offers us a cross section of all humankind. But we are all recovering alcoholics and that's the most important part of our AA resume.'

I've sat in meetings with Blacks, Whites, Native Americans, Asians and people from many different nations. Also homosexuals, hetrosexuals, and every other sexual group now identified, plus with church leaders, atheists, every age group and representatives from possibly every profession. 

I'm grateful for every single one of them! 

From the boring, I've learned patience. From the outrageous, I've learned tolerance. From the pushy, I've learned restraint. From the unteachable, I've learned acceptance. And from the AA "winners," I've learned pretty much everything I've needed to know about living a happy sober life.

AA's winners - the ones it's suggested we stick with - are easy to spot. They respect the program and each other, they laugh and smile a lot, they are active in AA service and they have many interesting pursuits outside of AA.

AA's winners face difficult life challenges with humor and courage. And they absolutely insist on having a great life, which they achieve by having learned in recovery who they are, what they enjoy, and how to create that reality for themselves. 

AA gives us a faith and philosophy to live by and it gives us real, loyal and wonderful friends to laugh with - and sometimes cry with - in any situation. All of us learn in AA that our greatest joy comes in helping others, not only to stay sober, but in any other way called for.

We - even the introverts among us - become groupies when it comes to our Home Group. We soon learn most people cannot recover from alcoholism without a group. We learn our involvement is what keeps our group thriving, and if our group doesn't survive we may not survive, either. 

As our very first tradition states: 

Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon A.A. unity.

 

Finally, AA gives us a relationship with our Higher Power that many of us come to embrace as a friendship. My Best Friend, this God of My Understanding, supplies me with the strength and courage to stay sober no matter what. 

I didn't know that at first. I didn't believe it at first. But over time I have come to rely on that Friend to guide me in all my daily activities. I feel His approval when I reach out to help another, I feel His delight when I delight in the world He has given us, and I hear His voice in the conversations and shares of my AA friends.

I remain amazed at the many ways my Higher Power is revealed in my life, from gifts of awe inspiring magnitude to tremendous insights delivered all wrapped up in laughter.

 Without this higher friendship, underpinned and supported by His agents in recovery, we can very easily give up on our sober journey. But, because of all the AA friendships available to us, we can be lifted over life’s hurdles time and time again.

Go call an AA friend today!