Sunday, December 5, 2021

 

Made a Decision

(42)

                                Meeting Makers Make It

A couple of facts for you: 

 (1) The first alcoholic drink showed up about 9,000 years ago in China. We took to it right away.

(2) Ethanol (alcohol) today remains the most abused drug in the world. 

After I had been sober for a few years I began to think I didn't need to go to more than one meeting a week.

 (Yes, I really thought that). 

So I did that for a while.

 Before long that became one meeting every other week. Eventually I was only getting to meetings sporadically, when I felt like it. 

Shortly after that I became suicidal. 

That's because alcoholism is a three-part illness - spiritual, physical and MENTAL. We treat all three components by attending our AA meetings.

Surviving that few-meetings experience taught me that I absolutely need meetings, regular meetings, lots of meetings. I still need them. I always will. I'm an alcoholic in recovery and I want to stay there.

 What I now find most interesting is when I was out there experimenting with how few meetings I might need, I had no memory of all those times I'd heard a person returning to AA after a relapse who said they drank after they "quit going to meetings."

                               "Cunning, Baffling, Powerful!!!" 

I need a home group to hold me accountable and I need to be there whenever it meets. I need additional meetings, too, because my blind-spot kind of head can so easily forget I have a chronic, terminal illness. 

We, of course, also need to follow all of AA's other suggestions for staying sober and for getting a high quality life in the process; like getting a sponsor, working the steps, doing service, sharing when asked, etc. 

Meetings need to be right there on that list, preferably near the top, because book, step and service work build the scaffolding beneath our ongoing recovery - but meetings are our medicine. 

The insights we get there, along with the laughter, are the cherries on top that makes the medicine taste better. 

All meetings are good for us. Even the ones we find a bit boring can teach us something about patience and tolerance (which most alcoholics have in short supply). 

And even when we feel like we didn't get much from any meeting, we have at least given others the benefit of our supportive presence there. 

We have no way of knowing how important that may have been for someone in that very moment. 

A great meeting, on the other hand, is one of the best experiences we can have in recovery. It offers us laughter, friendship, service, recovery ideas to put to work in our own lives, along with the gifts of giving and receiving love.

We'll leave a great meeting knowing others have learned something new from us about applying AA principles and we will have received constructive ideas to use for enhancing the quality of our own sobriety. 

Meetings can be the quick fix for minds that need what they need when they need it. I can't count the number of times I have arrived at a meeting stark raving mad and left afterwards stark raving sober, in other words restored to what passes for sanity in my head. 

I wrote the following in an earlier blog about meetings being our ongoing first aid for our alcoholism and I stand by it:

"... start watching the faces of your friends in recovery when they arrive at a meeting wearing stressed or angry faces. Watch as their expressions change over the length of the meeting, first smiles, then even laughter. By meetings-end everyone leaves relaxed and filled with renewed hope. Medicated! 

"I recently heard someone say, 'Sometimes my Higher Power needs to have skin on it.' Mine does, too. While I have many lovely moments of silent communion with the God of my understanding, I only actually hear God's direct messages when they are spoken by other AA members in meetings."

Many of us have returned to in-place meetings, but many of us have not. Some of us who now have friends in AA all over the world are doing both. The time of Covid gave us the gift of Zoom meetings and what a boon they have been and still are to us all. 

One click opens meetings to us on a global scale! 

If you don't find that exciting I wonder what it might take to excite you? 

Besides - surprise, surprise - online meetings are not new. 

(Neither, BTW, are women only meetings which have been around since the 1950s). 

Here's what our Big Book has to say about going online. If it sounds familiar, good for you for reading the Big Book, because it's right there following the Foreword in the Fourth Edition:

Taking advantage of technological advances, for example, A.A. members with computers can participate in meetings online, sharing with fellow alcoholics across the country or around the world. Fundamentally, though, the difference between an electronic meeting and the home group around the corner is only one 

of format. 

In any meeting, anywhere, A.A.'s share experience, strength, and hope with each other, in order to stay sober and help other alcoholics. Modem-to-modem or face-to-face, A.A.'s speak the language of the heart in all its power and simplicity.

During my own time in A.A. I've noticed the truth in that old A.A. adage, "Meeting Makers Make It." People I see week after week and month after month, I also tend to see in meetings year after year. 

But recently I've heard a new phrase - "I'm taking a break from A.A." - a sentence said over the shoulder by those who walk away from meetings. I wonder if they think their alcoholism will take a break, too? 

Spoiler alert - it won't.

The lucky ones will return to meetings, more battered by their disease and - hopefully - more teachable. Some won't make it back. Their obituaries will read they died from "a short illness" ...  "in a car wreck" ... "from natural causes" ... and so on. 

Alcoholism is seldom, if ever, mentioned in obituaries (along with deaths by drunken domestic violence), but all the same it's often the underlying cause of those kinds of untimely deaths.

Meeting Makers, in addition to racking up long-term sobriety, also tend to be people who eventually accomplish goals in other areas of their lives. They become motivated to do better things, like going back to finish school or adding some more degrees. 

Sometimes they write books, or organize workshops, or charities, take up skiing, parachute out of airplanes - or even learn to fly them.

Filled with sober new self-confidence, AA members regularly have mid-life career changes, often embracing work in medicine, especially in addictions recovery, social work, or to fill some other need in the mental health field. 

Many enter their first ever long-term satisfying romantic relationships, get married, have children, or build a healthy loving relationship with partners who stuck with them through their years in addiction.

 We'll hear about such accomplishments and think, "If they can do that, I can do that," and then we do. 

We are able to accomplish our new goals because we have established a pattern of action by staying sober. We learn to apply the same tools of recovery in building better lives for ourselves. 

When we go to meetings and work the program we change our outlook, our goals and our accomplishments. As a good friend of mine with long term sobriety said recently, "If I go to meetings for 30-plus years and don't change for the better, I'd be a shit student." 

 I'm going to leave you now with that thought. After writing all the above - and losing 2/3 of the copy forever from "the cloud" (a black cloud!) at one point ... 

                      I need a meeting.

 

Made a Decision

(35)

                    Prayers and Some A.A. History

You wouldn't think A.A. members would fight about prayers, but they have - and they do - and they will  - because we're nothing if not a contentious bunch.

At almost every meeting we hear that we are to pray "only for the knowledge of His will for us, and the power to carry that out!" So confusion about prayer shouldn't be an issue, but we often make it so because - in addition to being contentious - we alcoholics are also able to complicate the inner workings of an anvil.

Both Bill W. and Dr. Bob believed God had saved them from the hell of alcoholic drinking. Our founders were Christians (although to their great credit they never tried to shove that down our throats), so they quite naturally plugged various prayers into the A.A. program where they felt prayers were needed. 

 Thus we find the Third Step prayer:

  God, I offer myself to Thee to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life.

And the Seventh Step prayer: 

 My creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength as I go out from here to do your bidding.

(I just learned my computer doesn't know its scripture. It keeps trying to change all thy-s, thou-s and thee-s into thighs, thousands and trees. Bloody heathen).

You'll find many Christian-like prayers throughout A.A.'s literature, always with that qualifier that we're praying to "God as we understand Him." 

(BTW - "Her" works in that last sentence instead of "Him," too. Many in recovery use it). 

In early recovery I was no big fan of the often then-quoted Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi ("Lord make me a channel of thy peace, that where there is hatred, I may bring love; that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness; that where there is discord, I may bring ... etc. etc."). I called it the co-dependent prayer, along with a number of other disrespectful things. 

I also took exception to that prayer because to me it was so obviously a Christian prayer, although no one else seemed to mind. So I was especially annoyed when they eventually took The Lord's Prayer out of meetings because, "they" said, it was "a Christian Prayer."

"Seemingly it's possible to have it both ways in A.A.," I said, scathingly. 

I did scathingly well in my early recovery when I was always willing to give you a "piece" of my mind with no "peace" behind it. (Good news: I hardly ever "scather" anymore.)

For a long time into my early recovery meetings began with the preamble, then the Serenity Prayer and then the meeting ended with The Lord's Prayer. 

Our Father, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth,
As it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive them that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
The power, and the glory,
For ever and ever.
Amen.

Then a few groups started ending their meetings using the Serenity Prayer. As more and more meetings began doing it, I started questioning the reasoning behind it and was told by others (scathingly) that The Lord's Prayer was "too Christian" and the Serenity Prayer was not. 

Go back up now and read it again - see any Jesus in there?It's true when people asked Jesus how they should pray he offered them The Lord's Prayer as a template, but I have never considered it a Christian prayer. Others, however, certainly do - and did - because members have been fighting about its use almost since the beginning of A.A. 

Here's what Bill Wilson himself had to say about its use in a letter written in 1955: 

Of course there are always those who seem to be offended by the introduction of any prayer whatever into an ordinary A.A. gathering. Also it is sometimes complained that the Lord’s Prayer is a Christian document. Nevertheless, this Prayer is of such widespread use and recognition that the argument of its Christian origin seems to be a little far-fetched.

It is also true that most AA’s believe in some kind of god and that communication and strength is obtainable through his grace," Bill continued. "Since this is the general consensus, it seems only right that at least the Serenity Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer be used in connection with our meetings. It does not seem necessary to defer to the feelings of our agnostic and atheist newcomers to the extent of completely hiding ‘our light under a bushel.’ 

However, around here, the leader of the meeting usually asks those to join him in the Lord’s Prayer who feel that they would care to do so. The worst that happens to the objectors is that they have to listen to it. This is doubtless a salutary exercise in tolerance at their stage of progress. 

Commenting about Bill's letter after they started getting questions about how to handle members who refused to stand during recitation of the Lord's Prayer, the A.A.'s General Service Office noted the issue had been controversial in some circles since the 1940s. Their solution was: "Participation–or non-participation-in recitals of the Lord’s Prayer should be considered a matter of personal conscience and decision.” 

(I remind you that we alcoholics are a contentious bunch, but while we "are not saints," the General Service Office folks generally are.)

 My brother (sobriety date April 3, 1981) and I recently got into a discussion about the prayers used in A.A. Since we've both read a lot about the early history of Alcoholics Anonymous, it became quite a lively discussion. Here's a bit of history for you on The Serenity Prayer that he sent me afterward:

"The Serenity Prayer as said in meetings - God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and the Wisdom to know the difference - is just the first verse of the prayer known as the Serenity Prayer. 

 The rest of the prayer reads as follows:

Living one day at a time;

Enjoying one moment at a time;

Accepting hardship as the

Pathway to peace.

 Taking, as He did, this

Sinful world as it is,

Not as I would have it.

Trusting that He will make

All things right if I

Surrender to His Will;

 That I may be reasonably happy

In this life, and supremely

Happy with Him forever in

The next.  

"The Serenity Prayer was written in 1929 by Karl Reinhold Niebuhr, a Lutheran pastor and theologian, who lived between (1892-1971). The prayer became more widely known in 1941 after it was brought to the attention of A.A. by an early member who came upon it in an obituary. Bill Wilson and his staff liked the prayer and had it printed in modified form. It has been part of Alcoholics Anonymous ever since. 

Before it was modified, the original text for that first verse read:   "Father, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know the one from the other."

And while the "we" version of the Serenity Prayer still confuses me when it's used (my friend Lisa will vouch for this), I quite like this next version and often use it at the personal level: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one that I can, and the wisdom to know that person is me."

There's a non-Christian poem/prayer occasionally heard in meetings that was written by KĀLIDĀSA, a fifth-century Indian dramatist and poet (literary figure of the Sanskrit tradition who set the standard for classical Indian poetry and drama). His poem entitled Look to this Day is every bit as valid now about living one day at a time as when it was written:

Look to this day.

For it is life, the very life of life.

In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence.

The bliss of growth, The glory of action, The splendor of achievement

Are but experiences of time.

For yesterday is but a dream.  And tomorrow is only a vision;

And today well-lived, makes yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well therefore to this day.

            I no longer think it matters in what religious tradition a prayer originated. What matters is using the prayers that most resonate with us in our daily lives. Perhaps the most important prayers are the ones we will actually do.

My dear friend, Butch W. (deceased), once told me, "More things are wrought by prayer than we would ever believe possible." I think he was spot on. As the Big Book itself tells us: 

Be quick to see where religious people are right. Make use of what they offer.

In 1990, A.A.'s World Services embellished that statement by adding we have much to gain in keeping an open mind along our spiritual journey. Our sobriety is enriched and our practice of the Eleventh Step is made more fruitful when we use both the literature and practices of the Judeo-Christian tradition, along with the resources of other religions. 

My brother told me poetry and prayers have been "my two guiding lights for coping with the uncertainties of life. Both give direction for daily living life on life’s terms, turning the good, bad or ugly into learning opportunities for spiritual growth. Both have given me much stability and peace of mind on my journey."

 To which I can only add - Amen!

 

     (All of this information in this blog can also be found on YouTube in the 10th video of Sober OK Moments.)

Made a Decision

 

                     Tiz the Season

    Happy Upcoming Navihanukwanzasolstikkah ... also known as the season for meetings-about-staying-sober-while-surviving-the-holiday(s). 

In the run up to the holidays these meetings are held because ghostly and ghastly memories of holidays past start to dance through our heads along with fears about the holidays just ahead. 

These fears are especially strong in those who haven't yet faced a sober holiday season. But, as in most things, the holidays are just another paper tiger once we face up to them by having a plan in place to get through them. 

Making our sober plan is more important than getting cards in the mail, buying candles, or wrapping presents.

 The first part of that plan is to step up our attendance at meetings throughout the holidays. We're fortunate today in having 24/7 meetings available to us on Zoom around the world. 

I should note there are also a small number of A.A. members who will go into the holiday season with perhaps a bit more confidence than is warranted. Confidence is a good thing, but it's always a good idea to be on guard against the cunning, baffling and powerful nature of our disease.

As it points out in the book, "Living Sober, regarding the "biochemical, unchangeable nature of our ailment:"

"Alcoholism respects no ifs. It does not go away, not for a week, for a day, or even for an hour, leaving us nonalcoholic and able to drink again on some special occasion or for some extraordinary reason - not even if it is a once-in-a-lifetime celebration, or if a big sorrow hits us, or if it rains in Spain or the stars fall on Alabama. Alcoholism is for us unconditional, with no dispensations available at any price."

Over the holidays we'll probably be invited to parties where people will be drinking; or we'll have to get through another session with family members who drink (often the way we did); or we'll be tempted seemingly beyond hope by all the Christmas "cheer" ads on television that can spiral us downward into depression.

(More on this fake cheer stuff further along.)

Even holiday chocolates filled with genuine booze can be a booby trap when we don't pay attention! When in doubt about the candy - or the big bowl of holiday punch - ask!!!

First and foremost, get in touch with your own personal brand of Higher Power before you head out to a holiday event. It's the way to renew your courage and to know with that kind of backing you will be victorious over any situation you may encounter.

If we're single and invited to a plus-one party, we can take along a friend in recovery. Decide with them on a signal and excuse for leaving beforehand should one of you start to get uncomfortable. Long time couples can use this same plan.

Family gatherings can be more tricky. While one or two people there may be supportive of your sobriety, others - especially those who drink like we did - may feel threatened by our sobriety. They're the ones who mock our "inability" to drink while forcibly pushing "just one glass" at us. 

The key here is to let people know on arrival that you have another holiday party to go to after this one. (No one needs to know your other gathering is an AA meeting). Then get the basic must-do part of the visit out of the way (exchanging gifts, eating dinners, lighting candles, whatever) before heading out as soon as possible to your "next holiday party."

Everyone knows there are many parties around the holidays, some of them on the same afternoons or evenings, so the "next holiday party" ploy outlined above works equally well for quickly escaping the often dreaded office party.

As for all those seasonal "Hallmark Moments" on the telly mentioned earlier  - the ones where perfect families gather around perfect tables filled with perfectly cooked comfort foods ... or joyfully exclaim over perfectly-wrapped, perfect gifts from comfy couches in perfectly decorated living rooms ... they don't exist. 

Tell yourself that. 

             No one - NO ONE - has families like that. 

Most of us have families where in close quarter situations there's at least one snarky member verbally trashing other relatives while others argue about politics (with and without fist fights), get drunk, apologise for the undercooked vegetables, or otherwise devote their time to making everyone else feel uncomfortable.

Some of us have families supportive of our need to stay away from booze and other mind-altering chemicals, but many of us do not. Usually our non-alcoholic blood kin can't even stand up in our shoes, much less take a walk in them. They continually say things like, "I really don't get it. Surely you can have just one?" 

Others at the family party, the ones worried about their own drinking, are made very uncomfortable by our sobriety because they don't want to look at their own intake. We are seen as a danger to them. We're the family odd one they'd happily not have to spend time around.

Sometimes, even after we've done our Step 9 and it has been accepted, our family members (who are not in recovery after all) can't let go of the person we were when drinking. We remain the butt of the family jokes because they hold tightly to resentments made at those long ago ruined family events.

We, after all, were the embarrassing ones who knocked over the tree, blew out the sacred candles, punched our father-in-law, fell asleep at the table, upchucked in the sink, made a pass at somebody's partner ... and so on. 

We've put those memories behind us (or don't even remember them), but others have not. They still watch us warily for more of the same. In their eyes we will always remain the family bad guys.

Under the burden of all that baggage, family gatherings - or just family, period -  often remain the hardest place to navigate in our sober lives. 

Or, as I once heard in a meeting, "If it's not one thing, it's another. If it's not another, it's your Mother." 

The good news is, we now have another family - our A.A. family - to validate, support, encourage and get us safely through the holiday season and all other life events. 

Our A.A. family members "get us." We don't have to explain our discomfort at being surrounded by people drinking, trays full of drinks on offer, and people gulping down drinks while eyeing us like we're the weird ones. 

All the meetings about holiday hazards help get us centered for the tinsel-strewn days ahead. There will be people in them who have lived through all the dangers of holidays past and still stayed sober. They assure us if they could do it, we can do it. And they're right!

 

A.A. members in our holiday meetings are there to share their experience, strength and hope on how to safely get through "the most wonderful time of the year" ... 

               and to top up their own sober resolve in the process.

    So go laugh and be merry. The holidays only roll around once a year after all - Thank God!

 

 Made a Decision

(34)

                           SLOW-briety

Alcoholism is a progressive illness, a play in three acts of social drinking, troubled drinking, and merry-go-round drinking.

(I went into troubled drinking right out of the gate and only got off the merry-go-round when I stumbled into AA)

As drinkers we often land in hospitals or jails. We may lose our homes, families, jobs and self-respect - but, despite all losses we kept on drinking.

The final act can find us either in an insane asylum, prison, the morgue - or - our finding a way to live in total abstinence from all mind-altering chemicals, including the deadly drug ethanol found in booze. 

Most alcoholics on the abstinence train get on board in AA, but I recently heard that only one in every 26 of us stay there for the long haul.

And I already knew most alcoholics never even get to AA to have a shot at it.

What about you?

Will you be the one in 26 who holds tightly to their decision to never take that first drink no matter what?

Will you realize the most important possession you have is your sobriety? So much so that you'll do whatever it takes to keep it?

That's where "working the program" comes in.

That's when every single day we again make that decision to stay sober.

That's when we do the steps; and then do them again whenever a second look is needed;

and when we carry the message to others;

when we have a sponsor; a home group;

and when we practice, practice, practice "living the program" by daily using the tools of recovery.

That's when the changes not only start to happen - they continue happening.

Good news - it gets easier with practice!

 

Toddlers don't learn to walk by giving up the first, second, or even hundredth time they fall onto their little nappy-padded baby butts. They pull themselves up and practice, practice, practice this walking thing again and again.

Top athletes, musicians, artists, dancers, etc. only get to be the best by practice, practice, practice.

We must practice living life on God's terms, too! Then, just like a rosebud, we will slowly open up, petal by petal, to a new and better life. We become beautiful in recovery

 (and we smell good, too!)

When we drank and/or drugged for years, or even decades, we shouldn't expect to change overnight the behaviors that got us to our point of desperation. 

But we often DO expect it

 and become frustrated when that doesn't happen immediately. 

Many will give up and drink over it.

Bur when a mega-ton ship going at top speed has to come to a stop, it takes roughly two miles to manage it. Just like bringing that kind of tonnage to where it can safely change course, it takes us time and distance to be comfortable with our new direction for living. 

There's our own momentum to deal with for starters. Alcoholics are notorious for living life on fast forward. We are excitement junkies. And when adrenaline is one of the few drugs left to us, we'll often even ramp up its use.

Doubt it?

Do you regularly leave the house five minutes or more later than you should to get somewhere on time? Even knowing how long it takes to get there? Do you then drive impatiently through traffic, fume at stoplights, take chances when overtaking ... and finally arrive right on time after downing shot after shot of that pure adrenaline? 

Many of us do just that, until we learn that our home-grown adrenaline (like any other drug when abused) is truly very bad for us.

It takes time to "become a human being and not just a human doing."

It takes time to change behaviors that used to work for us, but no longer do.

 

It takes time to let go of high drama and become comfortable with serenity. 

So relax and just keep doing-the-doing. When we don't drink, go to meetings and work the program to the best of our ability, recovery will prevail.

I wrote the following about some of these thoughts just recently. 

I've written some quite good poems in my life once or twice, but this isn't one of them. 

It's pure doggerel, but it sums up SLOWbriety:

The Narrowing Way

The highway is broad at the start, wide and encompassing.

It's a welcome home moment, scarey, but brief.

No garments are rendered, no ashes, no fasting

Just a few simple steps to bring us relief.

A new way to live, one of hope, even glory

But trust me on this, 

there's more to this story.

We'll soon find a sponsor for guidance and teaching,

Where we learn to rely on another. 

First sponsor, then God, and with minimum preaching

we then share what we've learned with each other.

Not ‘cause we want to, it’s just that we must.

That's how we learn that in God we can trust.

Truth-telling, while sharing, get us quite far,

While resentments bring dangers that breed.

Secrets now sicken and anger's the bar

where our negatives all go to feed.

One by one we release them, first our anxiety.

Our path becomes clear when we just want sobriety.

Days become weeks, weeks become months,

The more we examine, the more there's disclosure.

“It’s all good,” we say. "It's good on all fronts.

The lessons we've learned to keep ourselves sober."

And soon we will sponsor to teach what we've earned.

Passing to others what we've gratefully learned.

Against all the odds we have found our life's place,

With miracles seen as routine.

The hand of AA gave us this safe space,

(Where our strongest drug now is caffeine).

And "God talk" that's shared is no longer a platitude,

It's the source of our hope and the roots of our gratitude.

 

Sunday, October 3, 2021

 Made A Decision

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                                   The Hand of AA 

Cling to the thought that, in God's hands, the dark past is the greatest possession you have - the key to life and happiness for others. With it you can avert death and misery for them.

The above quote in our Big Book chapter about The Family Afterward is perhaps the motivator for AA's mission statement. It was first heard by our members at the 1965 AA International Convention in Toronto, Canada, and 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.” 

Have you taken that to heart? 

Has it become part of your AA experience?

 Do you step up to help your home group, your friends in recovery, and the suffering newcomer? 

If not, you are not only ignoring a key and important part of your continuing recovery - you are missing the best thing AA has to offer apart from your sobriety.

In 1990 our World Service Office put it this way:

When I talk with a newcomer to A.A., my past looks me straight in the face. I see the pain in those hopeful eyes, I extend my hand, and then the miracle happens: I become healed. My problems vanish as I reach out to his trembling soul.

Powerful - even poetic - words, but the experience of helping an alcoholic out of the sea of suffering and safely onto dry land, IS powerful.  It is the stuff of miracles. 

It is why we are sober and it's the foundation for our own continuing recovery. 

It is the ultimate God Job, the one our Higher Power has assigned us.

In my early recovery I felt inadequate for doing 12-step work, but I did it anyway. I wasn't given a choice. There were very few sober women in my community at that time, so whenever a call came in from a woman alcoholic I was taken along with a more seasoned male AA member to let her know her problem had a solution.

I wasn't grateful for those opportunities then, but I am today. They gave me an up-close-and-personal view of  the late-stage horrors of our disease. They taught me compassion. They gave me an education on how a 12-step call should be handled. They bolstered my shaky courage. And they kept me sober. 

One woman called me a few days after we had visited her. At her request I returned to talk with her alone (an AA 12-step no-no). She told me she didn't want to attend meetings, but instead - radiating her agonizing alcoholic loneliness - she wanted to pay me to come over every evening and keep her company! 

I told her I couldn't accept her offer, but that I'd be there to take her to a meeting that very night.

When I picked her up later she was very, very drunk. But I, in my desire to fix her (all eagerness without experience), practically forced her into my car. 

Once at the AA clubhouse she did her best to turn the meeting itself into a shambles, but more seasoned AA members took her aside to another room for a quiet talk. 

And they then took her home after the meeting. 

I suspect my enthusiasm was perhaps then seen as a liability, but no one actually said so. I was only told (reminded!) it was best to not go on 12-step calls alone in future.

 I my early recovery I probably did some good every now and then by learning to at least try to help others. But, perhaps more importantly, I eventually learned where any talents I might actually have could best be used for helping others. 

I've never really had any talent for doing 12-step work with drunks who haven't yet taken the First Step, but that's OK. Many others do. 

I've always done better working with members who already want what AA has to offer.

We all have 12-step gifts:  

Some of us are great sponsors. Others are terrific at making a newcomer in a meeting feel at ease. 

Many of us have the energy to start and keep a new meeting going. 

I've known members who always contact members they haven't seen in a while, just to let them know they are needed and missed. 

Others are organization-minded and take on the home group burdens of secretary, treasurer, GSO - or making sure the coffee, tea and biscuits are ready-and-waiting at in-person meetings. 

These abilities for service work, and many more, are what keep AA dynamic and able to continue meeting its primary purpose  - to help other alcoholics get, and stay, sober. 

Our reward for applying our abilities inside our program is, first and foremost, a strengthened ability to stay sober ourselves. 

The second, and perhaps greater reward, is to see those around us become the people their Higher Power intended them to be all along.

But, just as when we make our personal 9th step amends, it doesn't matter how the other person receives it. 

What matters is that we've done our part to clean up our side of the street. 

The same is true when we've reached the hand of AA to a newcomer who then doesn't stay sober. 

We've offered, they've  refused. Not our fault. 

(Our job then becomes to warmly welcome them back if they are eventually able to return.)

I think we are all just Godbits - pieces of a larger spiritual body - so the people I meet are as close to my hanging out with God as I get to experience here on earth. 

Since we're all in various stages of our own spiritual growth, this applies even to those people I find hard to like. 

They are after all - like me - a work in progress. 

At the end of our lives we don't get to take any material thing with us. It won't matter then what our bank balance looks like or how lush our homes are. 

But every spiritual book I've ever read assures me that on our final journey we get to take along those things we have given away.

If we have helped others, that goes into our suitcase. If we have given time and money for the good of AA and others, we can pack that, too, right there beside the good deeds we've done (and not told anyone about). 

Your gifts, your story, and your recovery are unique.  AA needs what you - and you only - have to offer. 

When you reach your hand out to help another alcoholic you are doing the work of - and for - your Higher Power.

“The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few."

Keep reaching ... YOU are the hand of AA.