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                                      The Courage to Change

           Courage is the willingness to accept fear and act anyway.

It takes courage to face the harsh fact that we are powerless over alcohol and that our lives have become unmanageable. 

Facing the truth about our addiction wasn't easy, nor is the process of embracing a new way of life without alcohol, but once we've made that decision a new and better way of living can begin.

The best news is that our Higher Power hands out courage like gumdrops to those who actively ask for it - and then apply it. We don't have to face any of the changes required of us in sobriety alone. 

Alcohol is a depressant. Our drinking life became a life of depression. Today we are too blessed to be depressed. And it was change that set us free.

As  Bill W. said way back in 1965: 

Let us never fear needed change ... once a need becomes clearly apparent in an individual, in a group, or in A.A. as a whole, it has long since been found out that we cannot stand still and look the other way. The essence of all growth is a willingness to change for the better and then an unremitting willingness to shoulder whatever responsibility this entails.

And what does changing to get and stay sober entail? 

At its most basic it means we make a daily commitment to remaining sober. 

For some that means asking our Higher Power for sobriety each morning upon awakening, and thanking Him that night for our having had another sober day.

Many AA members devote a considerable amount of time to prayer and meditation to get their day started right. Others just check in with their Higher Power throughout the day as needed. 

Meetings become a priority and we list in our daily planner which ones we'll be attending that day. We'll list our AA service commitments there, too. 

Hanging out with our friends in recovery is also important. They need our support after all ... and we need theirs! Our AA friendships -  formed on the anvil of learning how to actually be a good friend - are a vital component of staying sober in our early sobriety. It is where we learn (quite possibly for the first time ever) that friends are not required to be our clones. It is where we begin to learn about acceptance!

We all have different opinions, different ways of living, and different ways of working our program. But as long as we're staying sober and doing our best to help others, all of that is OK. 

In fact, it's as it should be. 

As Bill W. himself also said - 

        Our very first problem is to accept our present circumstances as they are, ourselves as we are, and the people about us as they are. This is to adopt a realistic humility without which no genuine advance can even begin. Again and again, we shall need to return to that unflattering point of departure. 

This is an exercise in acceptance that we can profitably practice every day of our lives. Provided we strenuously avoid turning these realistic surveys of the facts of life into unrealistic alibis for apathy or defeatism, they can be the sure foundation upon which increased emotional health and therefore spiritual progress can be built.

A drinking life is not a normal life. When we drink heavily our bodies take real punishment. Drunks don't eat properly, sleep well, and live in continual mental turmoil. Excessive alcohol intake physically causes our brains to actually swell, so we go through life thinking with a swollen brain. No wonder we used to make some pretty bad decisions! 

A few weeks into sobriety we will begin to  notice the difference as our minds clear up and our bodies start to relax. By the time we approach our second sober anniversary we'll probably have more mental and physical energy than we've ever had before.

Progressing in sobriety has been compared to building a house. First the foundation is poured (quitting drinking). Then rooms are added one by one as we begin to work the steps and practice the program.  Over time our building skills vastly improve and we are able to furnish our homes comfortably.

 I also like the analogy of living sober being a lot like baking a cake. We read a recipe, add the ingredients in order, mix it thoroughly, bake it for a period of time and - voila - we get a cake.

 In recovery we read the Big Book (recipe), do what it suggests in order, stir it around though every experience life offers us, and then "bake" it one sober day at a time until - voila - we find ourselves living that life beyond our wildest dreams. 

When we arrived in AA a sober life seemed like an impossible dream. It felt unnatural. But as our sober journey progresses we marvel that we ever sought escape in a bottle - or anything else.

Fact - No comfort can be found in "what was" once "what was" has became a death sentence.

Fact - We can't make any progress without making decisions.

Fact - Our program of recovery gives us a blueprint on How to Change for the better.

 

Fact -  Change offers us power.

Fact - Life is about movement. It is meant to be exciting and adventurous.

Live yourself a factual sober life!

 

 

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                      Alcoholism Never Goes Away

There's no vaccine, no pill, no medical treatment to permanently cure our illness of alcoholism. There may be one in the future, but there's never been one throughout history and there's not one now.

We alcoholics have a chronic, progressive, terminal illness for which there is no cure! We can have a daily reprieve from our illness by not drinking during that 24 hour period, but that's not a cure. That's a gift.

We talk a lot about our Higher Power in AA, how using the "tools of AA" give us a good sober life, but I have come to believe there is a lower power busy in the world, too, and it looks to me like addiction is one of the best tools in its own tool kit.

When we were drunk we were said to be wasted, smashed, polluted, destroyed, fucked up, tanked, hammered, soaked, wrecked, pissed, blind drunk, boozed, fried, loaded - and the list goes on. There are actually nearly 200 historical words used to describe someone who is drunk. None of them I've found are complimentary.

But when we arrived in AA and heard the word "alcoholism," it was no longer a judgement, it was a diagnosis. We weren't crazy when we kept on drinking after all, we were sick. What a relief it was to learn that.

The long-established picture of the broken down drunk living in a cardboard box beneath a railroad bridge seems to be branded on the brains of everyone in a drinking society. Young alcoholics use that image to reassure themselves every time they pick up a drink that they're obviously not an alcoholic. 

What isn't common knowledge is that image of the drunk in the cardboard palace is actually living out the final stages of our disease. Ours is a progressive disease. We don't start out as late stage alcoholics. 

We start out looking like social drinkers, although drinking a bit on the heavier side of that description. We soon progress to having sporadic problems from our drinking (social embarrassments, run-ins with the law, family problems), but unless we die in a traffic accident or domestic "incident," or speed up our progression by using other drugs in addition to alcohol, we can continue our "social drinking" for quite awhile.That's life in Stage One Alcoholism.

Stage Two gets uglier. That's when our "hangovers" become actual alcohol poisoning. That's when we start to reek of booze. No one wants us around anymore, so we isolate from family and society. That's when we might try to stop drinking and find that we can't. That's when suicide starts to look like a viable solution for our problems.

Stage Three is the short one. It ends in 

(a) "wet brain," where we drool in our soup, wear adult diapers and get locked away in a mental institution for whatever length of life is left to us. Or (b) death. 

An alcoholic death is an ugly death to have - or to witness. But it's the probable outcome for an alcoholic who continues to drink. 

Our disease wants to isolate us, take away everything we hold dear, and then kill us. If I'm right about our "lower power" also being at work in the world, booze shows itself to be a great  tool for that nefarious purpose.

Sadly, after a while in AA, we can so easily resort to our one-time thinking about drinking. And we can start to place conditions on our priceless sobriety like "I'll stay sober as long as ... "

Yes. I've actually heard people in the program say that, basically telling their Higher Power not to allow anything bad to happen in their lives - "or else."  Such thoughts totally ignore the unchangeable nature of our illness, our biochemical predisposition to abusing alcohol once it's in our systems. 

As our Big Book states:

We know that while the alcoholic keeps away from drink, as he may do for months or years, he reacts much like other men. We are equally positive that once he takes any alcohol whatever into his system, something happens, both in the bodily and mental sense, which makes it virtually impossible for him to stop. The experience of any alcoholic will abundantly confirm this. 

All of our AA's literature stresses that above point. And we'll hear it in meetings, too, in statements like: 

Once you've soaked a cucumber in vinegar long enough it changes and becomes a pickle and will never be a cucumber again. I soaked me in alcohol long enough to become a pickle. I can't go back and become a non-alcoholic again ... 

The very first time I drank I had an alcoholic blackout, so because I now know that not all alcoholics have alcoholic blackouts, but NO non-alcoholics have them, I clearly was born with my disease just waiting for me to prime the pump.

For the next twenty years of my life I kept priming it and continued to experience all the rewards for that behavior - divorce, single-parenthood, driving drunk, wrecked car, court, etc. - but like most of us I believed I could eventually learn to manage my drinking. 

I couldn't, didn't, and now know for sure there's no hope for any alcoholic to ever "learn" control over their addiction. 

Oh sure, we might experience one night at an important occasion of being able to white-knuckle our hand around only one drink that evening, but that's not control. That's an obligation to that one event. And even then, with the boss in attendance or an angry spouse eyeballing our glass - there's no guarantee we'll be able to keep it to one drink until that occasion is over. Over time, after a diet of endless defeat, we seldom bother to try.

I've seen dozens of people come to AA, get sober, make huge progress in gaining good and productive lives, and then start to grumble and gripe a bit in meetings. Life isn't perfect. Their dog died. They lost their job. Their partner left them. 

Soon, because life isn't perfect, they begin to show up  infrequently in meetings (including their home group). They then no longer showed up in meetings where they were formerly regulars. Silence follows about them for awhile. Then the dreaded AA grapevine confirms they've picked up a drink. 

The pattern is a familiar one and it always ends badly, often fatally. The lucky ones return to AA and, as those who know me have often heard me say, they never return with a story about how great it was when they were back drinking again.

But here's your good news  - once alcohol is our of our systems our decision to pick up a drink is just that, a decision, and it's one we never ever again have to make. We can, instead, hang on to our decision to remain sober.

Keep Coming Back! 

 

 

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(Please forgive any typos you may find. I am in the middle of moving house and have had  to clear out sooner than planned when the house I'm moving from flooded very badly today. So the first day of 2023 has been a bit chaotic, but as they say where I come from - "Bad start, good finish - meaning in the bigger picture it's going to be a great year).

                                     Wishing You All A Happy Sober New Year!!!

 I asked my Higher Power throughout 2022 for ways in which I could have a lighter footprint on our planet. So in May my Higher Power brought me to rural Portugal and I am right now in the middle of moving from my flat, with all its mod-cons, into our purchased house (Rocksalot) with virtually none.  

Change, change, change ... I am reminding myself today that "change is always the invitation to a richer life!"

Rocksalot hasn't had an upgrade since roughly World War II, and it was built long before The Great War (WWI) was even underway. It is an old, old pile of rocks with lots of potential hidden inside its bones. So our extensive renovation is on right now.

Because my teenage grandchildren live there along with their Mom, two mod-cons went in immediately. The first was electricity and the other is the Internet. Both are very important to me, too, as all my meetings today take place on Zoom.

Are any of you old enough to remember "the nettie?" How about "the out house?" Rocksalot does not yet have indoor plumbing or running water, and the heat is from an open fire in the kitchen, which is also used for cooking. 

One by one, one day at a time, those things deemed most important will be added (the running water project is already well underway). It's an exciting new year for all of us here and by this summer I expect to be living in my own comfortable "granny flat" in the downstairs portion of the house. 

Now. What about you?

 What have you and your own Higher Power got cooking up together for the New Year? Over the holiday season have you reflected on all the changes that have taken place in your sober life in 2022? Are you looking for expanding on those in the New Year, 2023?

Most New Year's Resolutions just "go in one year and out the other." But when we reflect upon what AA has given us, and think on how we can open up new vistas in the year ahead through our program of recovery, that's when we start to design the kind of life we want for ourselves. And we get to do it all with HP's help.

In 2023 we may decide to go back to school; pursue a new career; commit to a relationship; adopt a pet; learn to garden or add to the one we have; write a book; take an art class; tackle learning a new language; take up hiking; become a hill climber; learn to sail a boat; get and furnish a dollhouse; become politically active; go camping; read more; learn to cook, bake or expand on what we already know of the culinary arts.

We might adopt a different lifestyle; deepen our spirituality through daily meditation; start a program of Tai Chi, or aerobics, or QIgong and Louhan Patting; devote more time to self-care; spend more time with our children, our grandchildren, or any other child we're fortunate enough to have in our lives .... the list of choices is, truly, unlimited. 

When we drank we may have thought about doing many of those things, but we seldom put thought into action. Early in our addiction it was just easier to escape from our life than to try and improve it. At the end time of our drinking it was impossible to even try. 

In recovery the sky's the limit. Our Higher Power will make sure we have everything we need so we can focus on pursuits we find interesting. In AA that's known as being joyous, happy and free.

In addition to my house project I also plan to finish writing the book I'm well into at the moment and then get cracking on a second one. I'll have a brand new garden space to get stuck into, too. And, as always, I'll give my service to AA the priority in my life it deserves, for without my sobriety none of the things I hope to bring to fruition this year will happen.

Our AA literature tells us we MUST give it away to keep it. We must share our experience, strength and hope with others to keep our own sobriety.  AA is an organization of volunteers who step up to keep it alive for its primary purpose of helping the still suffering alcoholic find what has been so generously given to us. Add more service to the fellowship to your own list this year - your life will be all the richer for it.

In this nice fresh new year we can genuinely try to live one day at a time, making every effort in that one day to focus on becoming the person we know our Higher Power wants us to be. We then follow up on that goal by taking those actions that will allow us to blossom. 

And I'll close with the following lovely message sent to me this morning from my dear AA friend, Jeremy, In Ireland: 

"Good morning family. We are booked on flight 2023. 

 We are prepared to take off into the New Year. Please make sure your Positive Attitude & Gratitude are secure & locked in the upright position. 

All self-destructive devices; pity, anger, selfishness & resentment should be turned off at this time. All negativity, hurt & discouragement should be put away. Should  you lose your Positive Attitude under pressure during this flight, reach up & pull down a prayer. 

Prayers will automatically be activated by faith. Once your faith is activated, you can assist other passengers who are of little faith. 

There will Be No Baggage allowed on this flight.  God, our Captain, has cleared us for takeoff.... Destination -- GREATNESS!! 

 Wishing you & your families a New Year filled with new Hope, new Joy, & new BEGINNINGS!!  

  Stay blessed & welcome in 2023." 

 

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   It's Christmas Day. Thank God I haven't missed it.

In homes across the world today people are gathered around brightly lit bejeweled trees to give and receive gifts and to feast on holiday delights, all to celebrate the birth of the God of Love into the world. 

In other homes the Menorah candles are lit (also in surrounding days) for the Festival of Lights -  Hanukkah - offering celebrants many traditional games, gifts and wonderful foods.

Pagans light bonfires this week to celebrate the turn of the year back toward longer sunlit days, a return to the light.

December is a month of numerous religious and cultural ceremonies for many faiths and people. Christians celebrate several other days this month honoring various saints; Buddhists meditate for enlightenment on Rohatsu (Bodhi Day); Zoroastrians honor the death of the Prophet Zarathustra; people of African ancestry celebrate their heritage and identity during Kwanzaa - and these are only a few.

The theme of the majority of these winter celebrations is birth, rebirth, light in the darkness, cultural and religious identity, enlightenment and love.

                                 Always love.

It's good to remember today that all over the world people are celebrating the return of light to the world. 

AA's theme today - and every day - is also one of  love, and in the new birth found in our rediscovered compassion and service to others. 

There are meetings around the world today, in person and on zoom, and in them there will be joy, celebration, laughter - and love. There will also be enlightenment, words of wisdom, and hope shared to keep the darkness at bay.

We remember our darkest days, too. Our December celebrations that were once filled with drunken behavior, guilt, anger, frustration, cynicism, self-loathing and regret. AA set us free by giving us a blueprint for sober living that allows us to feel and share the actual joys of this season.

AA gave us fellow travelers on our spiritual journey to encourage us, laugh with us, cry with us, and share their strength with us when we most need it.

How blessed are we???

I know of people in recovery on this holiday enjoying the company of once bitterly-estranged family members. And I know of one young man sitting right now at the side of his mother's Hospice bed, able to be there and be present for her today. 

Gifts come in many different kinds of packages.

Look around? Are we sober today? Blessed with a roof over our head? Food on the table? Family and friends nearby? If so, we are blessed indeed. So many in our world have none of these things. 

Are we able to reach out today to share our story of recovery? Will we help another suffering alcoholic find the life we have found in AA? If so, our blessings are without number.

 Love is a power, a gift from our Higher Power. But there are many in the world not feeling much love today. We who do are called to share that love with our troubled world. We in AA are blessed to be able to witness the power of Love at work in saving the lives - and more importantly, the souls - of others. We get to see dull eyes brighten, sad faces smile again, hope lift and straighten shoulders as people are restored to lives of fulfillment and true purpose.

We welcome our newcomers with that kind of power and then get to watch one more miracle unfold - moment by moment, day by day, year by year - right before our very eyes.

Some of us may be struggling today under the stress that also accompanies society this month. If so, please scroll down to Blog Number 83 for some tips on getting through the holidays sober. Most of us will. All of us can. The prayer is that all of us do.

I wish you every possible joy of this season of joy.

And I encourage you to dig even deeper in 2023 to find much more of what the program of Alcoholics Anonymous has to offer. And also to feel the love surrounding all of us today.

Pass it on.

 

 

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                         What a Healthy AA Group looks Like

A healthy, thriving, productive, supportive AA group is a beautiful thing. It is made up of an eclectic mix of people having long-middle-and-new lengths of sobriety who stand ready to welcome and help the brand-newcomer by sharing their collective experience in staying sober.

Members of a healthy AA group sponsor and have sponsors; participate in service work for their group and AA as a whole; offer educational programs about AA for themselves and for the public; know the 12 steps and 12 traditions of AA; share when asked to share, chair when asked to chair; and hang out with one another socially outside of meetings.

They also step aside without resentment when it's time for younger members to more fully participate in service positions inside the group. 

Google says there are currently more than 123,000 AA groups around the world, that AA literature has been translated into more than 100 languages, and there are more than two million people in AA recovery today. 

AA depends on each and every one of those members to do his or her fair share, because the work inside AA groups is 100 percent voluntary. 

Newcomers, of course, have to find their feet and are allowed to sit on the sidelines soaking up recovery for a bit, but once they are over their initial fears and confusion they're encouraged to do their share and to participate in 12-step work. Once they do so they become a vital part of AA.

(Note: I wasn't "encouraged" by my all-male first AA group. I was told to do a variety of service jobs in ways that left no escape hatch.) 

Being an active sober member of an active healthy AA group is exhilarating. We can't wait to get to our meetings where we participate fully. In our supportive group's atmosphere we learn by doing how to live a life of "right actions," and from them we soon start to feel good about ourselves.

As Seamus, my dear Irish friend in recovery, once told me: "Learning and teaching are players in the same game. If either one stops, everything becomes heavy and ceases to be fun. Learning is the reward for respecting life and teaching is the fruit of experiencing life."

Healthy AA groups offer a mixture of meeting programs, from personal sharing from one speaker; to topic meetings where steps, traditions, gratitude, service, sponsorship, and other related AA topics are opened for group discussion; "study meetings," where AA's literature is read and hashed over; and general discussion meetings about what's going on in each of our lives and how we're applying our program of recovery to our life situations.

Healthy AA groups offer special workshops, too, to further educate its members - and even the public - about what AA has to offer. Members invite people in the legal, teaching and medical professions to attend their "open" meetings (open to all, not just alcoholics) to learn what AA is all about and what it has to offer.

    (Note: I'd personally like to see a lot more of this done.)

A healthy group doesn't skip over the basics. The AA Preamble, How it Works, the 12 Traditions and very often The Big Book Promises are read aloud at every meeting. A favorite prayer brings  the meeting to a close.

While AA members do network among themselves and often employ one another's legal, artistic, building, plumbing, or other skills outside of meetings, we don't focus on such activities inside 

our meetings. We are not an employment agency. 

Nor are we treatment centers, social service practitioners, religious institutions, or medical advisors.

We are one-time drunks who have escaped the ravages of alcoholism who meet to share our knowledge of AA recovery with one another and to help newcomers find sobriety. 

We - each of us - have all the qualifications necessary to share our own story of suffering and escape from our disease in a manner newcomers can identify with. 

Protecting AA's primary purpose is an enormous responsibility and a healthy AA group recognizes that fact. Its members know there are millions of suffering alcoholics in need of what AA has to offer. Carrying that message to the still-suffering alcoholic remains its priority. 

Are there unhealthy AA groups?

Sure. Fortunately they are fairly uncommon. But even though they usually don't last long, they can do plenty of damage while still in operation. 

These are those groups made up of one, or sometimes a small clique, of "bleeding deacons," old-timers who offer "my way or the highway" advice to newcomers, then talk (and talk, and talk) at length when it's their turn to share, and discount (or don't even know) AA's written traditions. 

My best advice, once you're sure a group is unhealthy for you, is to go find yourself a healthy one - even if that means having to start a group yourself.

Because, as is said in the "Big, Big Book" .... "Where two or three are banded together, I will be there in the midst of them." 

And when our Higher Power has a healthy AA group of people banded together with the single purpose of helping others and themselves, miracles can - and do - happen. 

. 

 

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                                  Under the Lash of Alcoholism

We sober alcoholics can be quite amusing in our smugness. Cocky in our sobriety, overconfident of our virtues, proud, vain, arrogant and patronizing in our superiority, especially over "normal" people having no wonderful program of recovery like ours for getting the most out of life.

Don't think so? 

 Then stop thinking about what YOU are going to say when it's your turn in a meeting and listen more to what others are saying. 

You'll hear a lot of people who laugh when they say, "We are not saints," but their subtext is they think they're pretty damned close.

That wonderful book Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age has this to say about it:

We of A.A. sometimes brag of the virtues of our Fellowship. Let us remember that few of these are actually earned virtues. We were forced into them, to begin with, by the cruel lash of alcoholism. We finally adopted them, not because we wished to, but because we had to. 
Then, as time confirmed the seeming rightness of our basic principles, we began to conform because it was right to do so. Some of us, notably myself, conformed even then with reluctance. 

It takes most of us a very long time in recovery before we get to the place about which that same book states:

But at last we came to a point where we stood willing to conform gladly to the principles which experience, under the grace of God, had taught us.

Yes, we should all celebrate that AA is a wonderful program, but we need to remember we didn't rush to join it. 

And, as long as it took for any of us to arrive here, it also takes a while to not only stay sober, but to manage achieving a modicum of emotional sobriety. 

Many of us talk-the-talk wonderfully in meetings, but once we leave we don't make it a city block without flipping off someone in traffic. We continue to try to dominate others, yell at our children, mentally attack (sometimes more openly) those who don't agree with us - and otherwise act out our sainthood. 

Believe it or not, all of this is OK, at least in the beginning. As long as we stay sober, better behavior will follow as we learn to use the tools for living AA teaches us. 

It takes time, thought, prayer, meditation, desire and work for our Higher Power to excavate the person we created and turn us into the person we were designed to be.

SLOW-briety!!!

Those of us who have earned our seat in AA had to first live through some pretty painful life experiences. Our drinking years were the stuff of nightmares, a time filled with fear, worry, guilt, failure, loneliness, struggle and finally hopelessness. 

Life was a frightening maze where there seemed to be no way out other than unconsciousness - or death.

We remember that time as we celebrate our daily surrender to a Higher Power who then arrives to make us - and all things - new for us. Each new sober day is a gift, given to us so that we may enjoy our lives and help others to find joy in their lives, too.

But none of us escapes occasional temptation to give in to bad behavior, up to and including the temptation to give up and pick up our drug(s) of choice. Sometimes we even dream about giving into it. So we are wise to expect and be ready for it - in all its forms - when it arrives.

We defend against temptation by paying attention to our thoughts, correcting them when necessary (especially when we don't want to!), and asking our Higher Power to assist us in that. 

And when it comes to drinking we can never, ever, entertain the thought of it for more than the split second it occurs to us. The ethanol (drug) in booze of any kind, in beer, wine, hard liquor, in any pretty bottle or attractive fruity drink, is all poison for us. 

Conquering temptation requires that we see it clearly and turn our backs on it. 

We must also guard against dwelling upon the faults of others, which is merely a perverse form of self-satisfaction. That's because when it's "their fault," it can hardly be "our fault," can it? Our Higher Power stands ready to help us with that kind of twisted thinking, too.

 When we find ourselves struggling with any reappearing character defect(s) we can have a look at Steps Six and Seven again. Not the short form, the long form, as found in the Big Book and the 12 & 12. 

Acceptance is the key. It is always the key. Accepting who we are, how we live, and the behavior of the people around us - at home, work and in meetings - allows us to achieve a realistic humility about our lives. And a by-product of humility is contentment.

Acceptance doesn't happen overnight, either. We will have to return to it over and over again during our sober journey as we encounter new situations that call for it. But serenity - its other by-product - is soooooo worth it!

We keep on trudg'n and can relax once we know for sure that we are safe in AA and embarked on a lifetime journey of joyful discovery. There's no hurry. No one is keeping score. 

We can learn and grow at our own pace and accept that this process of building back better is going to take awhile. 

 SLOW-briety!!! 

 

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                               Merry Meet(ings) and Season Sober

Some are already tired of the current topic de jour being "How to stay sober through the holidays," but listen up anyway. All these same-topic meetings are being held for a 

reason. It's more the ice in the glass and not on the pavement that causes "slips" this 

time of year.

Holiday parties and family gatherings plus seasonal stress loom like minefields for a 

sober alcoholic - especially for those in recovery facing their first sober holiday season.

 It can feel pretty overwhelming when every other ad on TV seems filled with people hoisting glasses of "cheer" in their perfect homes with their perfect families and lovely friends all happily toasting the season.

Spoiler alert: There are NO families like that. 

Nor is the alcoholic world celebrated in those ads. None show the family drunk knocking

 over the Christmas tree, spilling the Hanukkah wine all over the spotless white tablecloth, telling inappropriate stories, snogging in a closet with another drunken guest, puking 

beside the toilet, or burning the Christmas dinner to a crisp.

Those of us who have done those things - and worse - rightfully fear doing them again. 

That's when we need to haul ass to our safe place, our meetings. They become our refuge -

 and sometimes even hiding place - until all the seasonal madness is over.

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."

We need to remember to thank our Higher Power for Zoom meetings 24/7 around the 

world, for our local in-person meetings, our own home group, and our AA network of 

friends - all ready, willing and able to help us get through the holidays sober.

Back-to-back marathon meetings in AA clubhouses offer a warm welcome for those alone when it feels like anything but "the most wonderful time of the year." 

 AA holiday celebrations are held in big cities, small towns and even in very rural areas worldwide. The sharing and celebrations are there for any of us if we're in need - or even

 if we just want to hang out with those people who most understand us.

A lot of AA groups offer us sober fellowship of all kinds this month. There are AA dances, holiday parties, potluck dinners and other special gatherings. I've personally brought in 

many a brand new year in my local AA clubhouse and would do it again this year were

there an AA clubhouse nearby.

 We can head for a meeting anytime we need to escape from the seeming non-stop round 

of family gatherings, shopping marathons, office parties, and other places where we fear hearing those incredulous faces saying - "Surely you can have just one at CHRISTMAS?!!" 

Making our sober plan is more important than sending out cards, buying candles, or 

wrapping presents. Sober planning requires many meetings, remembering to H.A.L.T 

when we are feeling hungry, angry, lonely or tired, and for planning beforehand a way

 out of situations when we start feeling stressed. 

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 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.

Family gatherings can be more tricky. One or two people there may be supportive of our sobriety, but others - especially those who drink like we did - may feel threatened by it 

and continually push us to have "just one glass."

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 works equally well for quickly escaping the often dreaded office party.

The good news is we have our A.A. family to validate, support, encourage and get us safely through the holiday season (and all other life events). With them we don't have to explain

 our discomfort at being surrounded by people drinking, with trays full of more drinks on offer. 

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

                                      And they're right!