Made A Decision

(98)
                                            Freedom from Fear

AA has a lot of glib talkers. People so afflicted will sometimes say things that aren't true in pursuit of a better story. They will claim recovery has taught them to never lie, or that they no longer lose their tempers, or to have any fears about anything.

Hearing such blanket statements should activate our bullshit alarm.

True, we may no longer tell lies in every other sentence. We may also not rage at people anymore, but watch what happens when those who now never lose their tempers stub their toe.

As for losing all fear, remember Bill Wilson himself said:

The achievement of freedom from fear is a lifetime undertaking, one that can never be wholly completed. When under heavy attack, acute illness, or in other conditions of serious insecurity, we shall all react to this emotion - well or badly, as the case may be. Only the self-deceived will claim perfect freedom from fear.

Fear is a big one for us drunks. Many of us (most?) drank mainly to escape the fears that plagued us, that kept us awake in the wee hours and dogged our footsteps throughout every day. Drink let us escape them for a while, so drink we did.

As it says in the 12 & 12:

At heart we had all been abnormally fearful. It mattered little whether we had sat on the shore of life drinking ourselves into forgetfulness or had plunged in recklessly and willfully beyond our depth and ability. The result was the same - all of us had nearly perished in a sea of alcohol.

What were we afraid of?

  Failure; Risk; Pain; Loneliness; Rejection; Intimacy; Abandonment; Appearing or sounding stupid; God's punishment; Poverty; Being homeless; What others might think; Doctors, Being exploited; Missing our one big chance in life; Flying; Leaving our house; Being laughed at; Making mistakes; Lawyers; Wrong decisions; Travel; Loss; Dangerous weather; spiders; diseases; dentists  ... name it, we've feared it.

We can still fear many of those named - and more - long into our recovery. 

The major difference is, we no longer have to drink over it.

When we first face the daunting task of writing a 4th Step, knowing it will be followed by a 5th Step, most of us are instantly filled with fear. Who wants to shine a spotlight on our darker deeds? And who on earth would want to share that knowledge with anyone??? 

Our pride and ego are in for a real hit in doing steps Four and Five - but the mental freedom that follows is the gateway to overcoming fear and finding courage. And it takes courage to stick with a sober journey. It is virtually impossible to progress along the spiritual path without it. But courage is not the absence of fear, it is the willingness to move forward despite it. 

Fears create most of our most insane thoughts and moments. Whenever we're anxious, hyper, or sleepless in Seattle (or elsewhere), we might consider pondering if there is a fear happening beneath it all. Often there is.

Fear gives us fluttering stomach butterflies when we are asked to share our story in an AA meeting. Courage then takes a deep breath, shares its experience, strength and hope, and in so doing set those butterflies free to fly away. 

We gain courage from the examples set by others in our fellowship. We gain confidence, hope and security just by being in a meeting and listening to others share their experiences.

We hear a lot of acronyms for F.E.A.R. in meetings:

False Expectations Appearing Real ...  Frustration, Ego, Anxiety, Resentment ... And, my personal favorite: Fuck Everything And Run.

Much of our recovery deals with letting go of fear.  We do so by learning to rely on the God of our understanding, on our program, on each other, and eventually on ourselves.

Becoming less fearful takes time in recovery, just like every other part of sober living. And just when we think we maybe - just maybe - have got a handle on this fear thing, we get new things to be fearful about - like losing our health, or old age, or how the world will manage to survive after we die.

 But as my first sponsor used to often tell me, "God didn't bring you this far to drop you on your head." (I must still remind myself of that from time to time.)

Author C.S. Lewis once pointed out what we all learn over and over again in AA:  "Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done."

"Courage is fear that has said its prayers."

Recovery requires us to learn to be responsible for - and to control - our thoughts. Our Higher Power stands ready to help us with that when we say (often!) that quiet and powerful prayer, "Thy will, not mine, be done."

When we were drinking we made a lot of foxhole prayers - "Dear God please get me out of this mess and I promise I will never, ever, drink again." But learning how to pray in sobriety is the real deal.This is where we can actually connect with that Higher Power who wants our sobriety every bit as much as we do, and then some.

 God doesn't want or need lengthy petitions. He already knows what we want and, as long as sobriety is at the top of our lengthy WANT list, He will absolutely supply our every NEED.

We alcoholics are not alone in living in troubling times in a troubled world. While the pursuit of material success and possessions remains the focus of many, we find success by seeking spiritual direction through the continual working of our 12-steps. Doing so deepens our faith, which then calms and quiets our minds.

Our Big Book tells us: Faith has to work twenty-four hours a day in and through us, or we perish. We hear in our meetings - The solution is simple. The solution is spiritual.

Our AA founders knew this. Sister Ignatia, the nurse who worked closely with Dr. Bob, pointed out: There was one thing that always irritated (the) Doctor. Some people who were on the program for a length of time would come up to him and say, "I don't get the spiritual angle." I heard him say time and again, "There is no spiritual angle. It's a spiritual program."

We attempt to learn spiritual principles because we must, once we understand our recovery is a live or die situation.
Eventually we accept sticking to our spiritual path, because we've learned it makes our life easier.

And when the road signs found along our spiritual path eventually read "Joyous," "Happy" and "Free," we will have finally learned living a life of obedience to our Higher Power is truly life's easier, softer way. 

Made A Decision

(97)

                                            Turn It Over

AA is all a bit confusing at first.

There's all that friendliness to deal with: "Hi, I'm Bill, Welcome!"

Encouragement: "You are the most important person in this room" ... "Keep coming back!"

Instructions: "You'll need to find a sponsor to take you through the Steps" ... "Read the Big Book" ... "Take it One Day at a Time."

Most of us respond with wariness or relief, fear or hope, confusion or willingness ... or something in between. But as long as we keep coming back, it soon falls comfortably into place.

That first powerless-over-alcohol-step was the big one. The one we had to accept 100 percent, even though many of us weren't yet even sure we were alcoholics. (I was one of those). Coming to understand our powerlessness can take us a bit of time. 

And that's OK, as long as we keep attending meetings to listen and learn. 

The second step immediately gave us a loophole in that "came to believe" wording. 

"Whew," past tense, we won't have to "come to believe" right away, we thought. 

Then - right on its heels - that Third Step arrived, instructing us to turn our will and our life over to that Higher Power, the one we weren't even sure we believed in yet!

How in the Hell are we supposed to be able to do that???

It's was easier than we could believe at first. As it says in our wonderful 12 & 12 book:

No matter how one wishes to try, exactly how can he turn his own will and his own life over to the care of whatever God he thinks there is? A beginning, even the smallest, is all that is needed.

Once we have placed the key of willingness in the lock and have the door ever so slightly open, we find that we can always open it some more.

Though self-will may slam it shut again, as it frequently does, it will always respond the moment we again pick up the key of willingness.

Many of us arrive in AA with a belly full of fed up about God. And our program makes it clear there is no need to have a personal deity to stay sober. There are many agnostics and atheists in AA with long term sobriety.

The only requirement for any of us is to acknowledge our inability to "control" our drinking and accept there may be something more powerful than us for help with that. 

Recovery is a journey, not a destination. The spiritual path is our never-ending story. We learn as we go and we never stop learning. That's why you'll find old farts like me still attending meetings after decades of sober living. "More will be revealed" - remains absolutely true. 

"Wanting what we want when we want it" is part of our alcoholic wiring. Our early superiority complex (hiding our second inferiority one) tells us, "I've got this sobriety thing," even when we have just barely begun our spiritual journey.

And if we are staying sober, we have indeed "got this" - but we've got this for today only. 

Learning that, internalising it, is part of the spiritual rewiring that takes place in recovery OVER TIME.

Our lifetime of self-centeredness can't be reversed all at once. There are many things to be learned and rebellion can dog our every step at first.

Newsflash - that's normal!

There's a funeral involved on our graduation day from AA, so I'm personally in no hurry to get there! Recovery is an adventure. It's interesting, challenging, and much of it (but not all) is downright fun. And the more we turn things over to our Higher Power for higher guidance, the easier it becomes!

An alcoholic can never get well, if by "well" we mean being able to safely drink again. But can we stay sober? Absolutely. We can stay sober every day for the rest of our lives - as long as we do it in manageable one-day-at-a-time chunks.

We first turn our drinking problem (and eventually every other problem) over to a Power greater than us. Millions ask that Power every morning to keep us sober and thank that Power at bedtime for another sober day. It never fails us when we do it, or at least that has been my own experience. You can easily make it your experience, too.

Our Big Book states:

When we became alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is or He isn't.

Our spiritual path is an individual one, lived collectively. We get guidance from our literature, our sponsor, and our AA friends, but we don't find God by reading or word of mouth. We earn our faith by living it in our own individual way - although honesty and carrying the message is always involved. 

AA eventually brought me to a personal God, a companion for my life journey that I can trust to look out for me. It didn't happen overnight.

It didn't happen quickly. I traveled up and down many spiritual by-paths before becoming comfortable with my own quirky, humorous, tough-love, ever-present God.

I am gradually learning to want God's will for me above all else. This requires prayer and meditation on my part to - little by slowly - gain more spiritual understandings.

When I allow my inherent selfishness, dishonesty, fear or resentment to reappear and settle in, I block God's communication with me. Steps 10 and 11 protect me from that. I'll never reach spiritual perfection (damnit), but I can work on improving.

Letting go of our pride allows our Higher Power to get hands-on in dealing with any problems we may face. We can learn to upload our problems onto broader shoulders. Serenity then becomes part of our daily bread.

And joy butters it.

Does God speak to me? Yes, but seldom directly. (He did once, very early in my sobriety, and it - literally - scared the Hell out of me.) Instead I get nudges, whispers in the wind, conversations with AA friends and my sponsor, many magnificent displays from nature, and in songs and books that clearly address my own issues. 

God’s subtle ways of communication are surely true for each of us. We only need to pay attention and life is our school.

The Big Big Book (Bible) gives us the tale of the son who tired of living the life of a wastrel and returned to his family. At the end of the story, the father of that Prodigal Son says: "He was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found."  We alcoholics who have found sobriety in A.A. were certainly in that same category, and it is God - the Father - who restores us to our real, sober selves.

All of us have surely felt the Divine Presence at the seaside, under a spectagular night sky, hiking in breathtakin mountain scenery or planting in our own gardens?

I know that I have.

I've also felt God in a handful of meetings over the years, present as a Force so powerful it changed the hearts of everyone there, including mine.

Keep coming back.

 

 

Made A Decision


(96)


                                                 The Grim Reaper and AA

     The longer we are in AA the more funerals we will attend of those who relapsed and died of our chronic, terminal illness, or of its side effect, suicide.

That's a fact.

And it never gets any easier for those of us who knew and loved them, in or out of the fellowship.

Many of us also have still-drinking friends and relatives. Some make it into recovery. Most do not.

That's also a fact.

So how do we handle their deaths when we get that horrible news?

We do what one of my dearest AA friends, a woman with long-term sobriety, is doing right now following the death of her brother:

She called her sponsor and they cried together.
She took her pain to her home group.
She's praying for him.
She has prayed for his very-emotionally ill ex-wife and for her own strength in having to deal with her right now.
She's examined her feelings of guilt and loss to see if any applied to her.
She is accepting the loss while struggling to release the guilt we all feel after the shock of such news. Her mind has raced down many corridors of self-recriminations, but her heart knows there truly is nothing she hadn't done in trying to help her brother overcome his addiction. 

He had all the information. He chose not to use it.

The end product of that kind of self-examination in the wake of tragedy is acceptance. 

And all the above is what we mean when we say someone is "working the program."

Our program works to keep us sober through all of life's events - when we continually work it.

It is said that: "Grief is love with nowhere to go." 

 We have somewhere to go.
We go to meetings. We go to our sponsor and AA friends. We share.

Pain shared is pain halved.

Suicide is the end result for many caught in a drinking life. Depression, caused by daily consuming a liquid depressive, dogs their heels. Alcohol literally inflames and swells the brain, so drunks make decisions while "thinking" through a swollen brain. They are NOT thinking clearly when they conclude the world would be better off without them. They have no solution for their life's problems other than choosing that permanent solution for essentially temporary problems. 

Alcoholism is the villain here. They are not at fault.
Nor are we who loved them.

Sometimes our friends still inside the rooms of AA chose suicide over staying sober, too. 

Perhaps they suffered "problems other than alcohol" (30 to 50 percent of us do) after the depression they thought would lift in sobriety dug in its heels instead. Long-term drinking is linked to a range of mental health issues, from depression and memory loss, to suicide.

Chronic depression can sap anyone's will to live. Many of us used alcohol to self-medicate against it, unaware booze is itself a depressant. (With the exception of tequila, which appears to work as a stimulant, but few if any of us were exclusively tequila drinkers.)

A few years into my own sobriety, after a series of deaths and other major life losses dropped me into what felt like a bottomless black hole, suicide looked more and more like a viable option. Depression is a killer and drunks suffer from it more than most people. 

(Scientists say people suffering depression are roughly three times more likely to be alcohol dependent than the rest of the population.)

Luckily for me (and for those who love me) I had the fellowship of AA to get me through that dark time, even though I didn't then appreciate those who tried their best to help. I went from wallowing in self pity to drowning in it, too stuck in my grief, anger and self-will to see that others were incredibly worried about me. That's because, as our AA literature tells us, our disease is also one of perception.

My turning point came when, after sitting through a meeting feeling nothing but rage, I didn't even stay for the closing prayer. It was the dead of an Irish winter, but I felt no cold with all that anger burning inside me. I was still in that horrible head space the following morning when from my window I saw a group member walking through the falling snow toward my house. 

I knew the woman lived a good two miles up the road, so her visit - unwelcome as it was - required at least the courtesy of my answering the door. When I did, my visitor smiled and handed me a bunch of daffodils still tightly in bud.

"There are for you," she said, "To remind you that even after the darkest winter, spring always arrives. By the time these are in full bloom, I've prayed you'll be feeling good again."

I don't easily give in to tears, but that morning the darkness inside me broke and ran wetly down my face. Because my plan for that afternoon had been to walk to the nearby train station and artfully "accidentally" fall in front of a train.  She - literally - saved my life that morning.

So do I know the power of AA friendships?
Yes.

Do I value them?
Yes.

Do I wish everyone exposed to AA would "be fearless and thorough from the very start" and embrace this program fully?
A thousand times yes.

But they often don't.

My friend mourning her brother today has lived as a sober example for him for decades. He couldn't, or wouldn't, try sobriety for himself. 

There have been other similar losses this week in my own small group of AA connections. Worldwide there have certainly been many more.

We all hear about riding the pink cloud in recovery, where we float happily above the cares of the world, held aloft by our program and our AA friendships. It's a wonderful place to be and learning to climb back on after we inevitably "fall off the pink cloud and hit the pink concrete" is part of our work in recovery.

Recovery IS wonderful, but learning to live life on life's terms - and God's terms - means there will be "lessons" involved, lessons needed for our continued spiritual growth. Some of those lessons can get pretty harsh. My Higher Power doesn't flinch from Tough Love when it's needed, and nor, I'm sure, does yours.

I hope your recovery is always filled with light and love. But should you ever get to a dark place in sobriety, force yourself to keep going to meetings, keep sharing, keep expecting the miracle of recovery to grab hold of you again - because it will. As we old hippies used to say - "Keep the Faith, Baby."

And as AA oldtimers always say: "Keep on doing the doing.

 It (always) works when we work it!"





 

 

Made A Decision

(95)

      

Rule Number 62 and Other Bits of AA's History

Bill W. and Doctor Bob were highly articulate letter writers. They predated Twitter, of course, where writers go to become non-writers. But I predate Twitter, too, so I thoroughly enjoy their interesting and witty written discourses. 

Many of their letters addressed concerns sent to them by various groups in the very early days of AA, as members tried to figure out what worked - and what didn't. 

They knew that one alki talking to another alki, along with the surrender of self to a Higher Power, did work, and soon adopted suggestions for cleaning house, making amends, and working with others. Groups all used the Holy Bible for behavioural references. After all, there was no Big Book in those first days, weeks and months, and no written Steps or Traditions. 

  

AA's first alcoholics could only gratefully share their message of hope and example, but from that bare bones agenda new groups grew like wildfire.

Dr. Bob, with the help of nurse Sister Ignatia at St. Thomas Hospital is said to have personally treated more than 5,000 alcoholics there at no cost, visiting those patients every day in addition to his regular practice. Bill Wilson called Dr. Bob the “Prince of Twelfth Steppers.” 

Unlike Dr. Bob, who lived a productive, but quiet life, Bill was able to write with real authority those words read at every meeting: We are NOT saints.

Bill wrote (most) of the Big Book and 12 & 12 in powerful prose that changed, and continues to change, millions of lives for the better, but he continually struggled to become the man he wanted to be. 

Bill could make powerful speeches at conventions, even as his eyes looked for the prettiest women in the room. Close AA friends were sometimes even deployed to distract him from chatting those women up. Bill willed percentages of his royalties from ongoing Big Book sales after his death to his wife, but also to his mistress.

AA members tried to deify the founders almost from the beginning, but neither man would have any of it.

Bill W.'s long-lasting depression was said to be caused by his ongoing personal battle with human failings that troubled him deeply. He never set himself up as a role model, and in every way discouraged others from doing so. 

Around 1955 Bill began recording recollections of his life, tapes used posthumously to publish “My First Forty Years.” Following the main text you’ll find this:

There will be future historical revelations about Bill’s character and behaviour in recovery that will be interpreted, by some, as direct attacks on the very foundation of AA. Bill often wished he could be just another AA member with no trace of notoriety. But such revelations will, in the end, only reinforce Bill’s humanness and, most important, the extent to which Bill acted to the best of his ability to protect AA from himself.

In "The Three Legacies of Alcoholics Anonymous" we find:

Even as early as 1945, the solution of group problems by correspondence had put a large volume of work on Headquarters … . It seemed as if every contestant in every group argument wrote us during this confused and exciting period.The basic ideas for the Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous came directly out of this vast correspondence.

Bill was the catalyst for spreading AA's doctrine. He believed it the answer to saving alcoholics worldwide and worked tirelessly to get that message out. Both he and Dr. Bob initially had concerns about promoting "the God thing" too much, fearing it would keep alcoholics away. They were taken firmly to task for this by Henrietta Seiberling.

(Henrietta Seiberling was a member of the Oxford Group, the Christian fellowship that inspired the founders of AA and inspired many of our practices). Hers was a strong voice in the early establishing of AA's principles.)

"Well, we're not out to please the alcoholics," Henrietta told them. "They have been pleasing themselves all these years. We are out to please God. And if you don't talk about what God does, and your faith, and your guidance, then you might as well be the Rotary Club or something like that. Because God is your only source of power." 

The two men finally agreed and Henrietta then said: "It is my great hope that they will never be afraid to acknowledge God and what he has done for them.

(A worried Father Dowling, Jesuit Priest and early supporter of AA, also said:“This is one of the most beautiful things that has come into the world. But I want to warn you that the devil will try to destroy it.”)

Bill W. was born in the late 1800s and his writings reflect that earlier time. Much of the "sexist attitudes" women object to in AA literature (and I was one of them) is due to that. My best advice is to just get over it and use the information in there that keeps all of us sober, no matter what.

 

After all, many churches remain very sexist even today, denying women positions granted only to men. We seem to mainly accept that, sometimes forgetting that in AA our voices, and the service positions we hold, equal those of any member there.

Bill W.'s powerful spiritual experience left him with no doubts about the reality of a God (see  Bill's Story in the Big Book), but he was up against many atheist and agnostic early members. Bill saw they believed in each other and their groups, having been unable to stop drinking on their own. Together they had become more powerful and so could accept the group’s power being "Higher" than their own. 

That same alcoholic spirit of rebellion showed up in power struggles between members in many of the earliest groups. Many thought the anonymity of AA went too far. Others wanted to appear on radio (and later television) to promote AA. And here's where we get our beloved Rule 62, after one member wrote the following to AA Headquarters:

You told us that outside enterprises can be fine and very helpful. But you also said that they could not be mixed with A.A. I figured that they could be, and should be. Well, you folks at Headquarters were right and I was wrong.

With his letter, the promoter sent us a card, which he had already mailed to every group in the United States. It was folded like a golf scorecard, and on the outside was printed, Group so-and-so, place so-and-so. When it was unfolded it read: Rule No. 62: Don't take yourself too damned seriously.

In 1945 work began to codify group experiences into a set of principles which could offer tested solutions to problems of living and working together, and to the world outside of AA. 

A code of traditions could not, of course, ever become rule or law, but it was hoped they might act as a guide for all members, especially for A.A. groups still suffering growing pains.

In the book "Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age" we find this from Bill W, a reminder that tough as our times appear to be, they lived through tough times, too - and stayed sober:

As by some deep instinct, we have known from the very beginning that, no matter what the provocation, we must never publicly take sides, as A.A.'s, in any fight, even a worthy one. All history affords us the spectacle of striving nations and groups finally torn asunder because they were designed for, or tempted into, controversy. Others fell apart because of sheer self-righteousness while trying to force upon the rest of mankind some millennium of their own specification. 

In our own times we have seen millions die in political and economic wars often spurred by religious and racial differences. In many self-governing countries we are now seeing the inroads of ignorance, apathy, and power-seeking upon democratic systems. Their spiritual resources of right purpose and collective intelligence are waning. Consequently, many a land has become so helpless that the only answer is dictatorship. 

Happily for us, there seems little prospect of such a calamity in A.A. The life of each individual and of each group is built around our Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. We very well know that the penalty for extensive disobedience to these principles is death for the individual and dissolution for the group. An even greater force for A.A.'s unity is in the compelling love that we have for our fellow members and for the principles upon which our lives today are founded.

Our fellowship has summed up all the above far more briefly:

The Steps protect me from myself; 

The Traditions protect A.A. from me.

And also:

The steps protect me from suicide.

 The traditions keep me from homicide.

We are all familiar with the Steps of AA. 

It's also a very, very good idea to also learn - and live by - our Traditions.