Meeting 35: Remembering

I’ve been battling with a couple of dangerous thoughts. After living clean for a stretch now, I still feel in danger of walking too close to several hair-triggers. I mean I now feel comfortable drinking bottomless cups of freshly-brewed coffee in bars and happily socialising with the drunken sots at any hour of the day. But for how long? How long before I think my ability to drink responsibly is back in my head and from there, down the slippery slope of my fogged-thinking sidling around the curve of my elbow to the vodka-swilling grasp of my once-resolute hands?

The venue: Church hall. Cheap coffee. About 50 souls in this room.

The topic: Reading from the third tradition in the 12&12 (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions). I listened keenly to the story of Ed the atheist, an AA pioneer. From the 12&12:

“In a neighboring state, Ed had holed up in a cheap hotel. After all his pleas for help had been rebuffed, these words rang in his fevered mind. ‘They have deserted me. I have been deserted by my own kind. This is the end . . . Nothing is left.’ As he tossed on his bed, his hand brushed the bureau nearby, touching a book. Opening the book, he read. It was a Gideon Bible. Ed never confided any more of what he saw and felt in that hotel room. It was the year 1938. He hasn’t had a drink since… So the hand of Providence early gave us a sign that any alcoholic is a member of our Society when he says so.”

As several historical accounts relate, Ed’s real name was actually known:

“This was Jim Burwell, a famous early AA figure, who had his last drink on June 16, 1938. He founded the first AA group in Philadelphia in February 1940, and helped start the first AA group in Baltimore. He participated in the debates over the pre-publication manuscripts of the Big Book in 1938 and 1939, and he is the one who is credited with the insistence that the phrase ‘as we understood Him‘ be inserted into the 3rd and 11th Steps.”

Every time I remember that phrase ‘as we understood Him‘, I thank my own higher power for that man’s resolute determination to “get” recovery with or without personal faith!

Ed’s story evokes a sense of rebellious non-conformity. That’s exactly how I used to be, as an active drinker. In fact I’m still like that in active recovery! But I also remember the fear and the self-loathing. I remember the excitement and exhilaration of getting pissed (rat-faced fall-down drunk) and the buzz of being comfortably numb. For a while anyways! However, I really don’t want to go back there, to that crazy, crazy, crazy space. But the dangers of picking up again haunts me daily – and especially in the tough times.

Change can be good. It can also be terrifying. Hopefully, as I absorb the impact of juggling the two, I am learning how to stay on guard against a familiarity that might send me slip-sliding towards (self)contempt and the first fatal drink. With a slight amendment I do believe that recovering addicts rush in where angels fear to tread! 90M

Meeting 26: Long Time No See

So it’s been a while since I last penned a thought. You may wonder: Why such a long time? Possible excuses. Nope, I wasn’t out bar-hopping while I did “more research”. No, I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself and in a long, resentful sulk. Nope, I haven’t been missing 12-step meetings because of family commitments. No, I didn’t fire my sponsor. And nope, I didn’t get fired by my sponsor either!

I promise you I’ve been attending regular meetings and doing service in The Rooms. I’ve just been finding it incredibly hard to write cogently about what I know is such a Huge Big Fat Elephant in so many meeting rooms. Not a pink elephant (those were the DT days indeed). But this is an elephant so huge because it always naturally inflates itself to God-sized proportions. Yep, I’m talking about God. Not the “higher power” that recovering folks talk about so often but “that” God – the religious God – the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

The venue: Small meeting hall in a leafy suburb of the Cape Town City Bowl. It’s an early-ish meeting so mostly for the die-hards and those desperate to recharge before weekend family commitments (I’m guessing) or needing a meeting real bad after a hectic Friday night out make it. Because this meeting happens on a Saturday morning at 7:30 AM. You heard me right! That means I get up earlier for this Saturday morning meeting than I do most workdays! Woo Hoo!

The topic: What was shared? Well, like many meetings, the format of this one tries to tackle a step each month as well as a tradition. And fills in with the speaker’s choice at alternate meetings. Because it happened in March, month three, the day’s thoughts were around Step Three:

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care
of God as we understood Him.

I like this step. It keeps me focused. It reminds me that many people in recovery summarize the first three steps of the program as:

1. I can’t.
2. My higher power can.
3. Let him/her/it give me the serenity to accept and the courage to change.

What I don’t like is when speakers at meetings and then those who share afterwards, use this step to fuel what they regard as a God-given opportunity to Bible Bash – to shove a redemption message down as many recovering gullets as possible and to call lost sinners to repentance and thence to redemption.

That offends me. If I wanted an evangelism altar call, I’d get my ass to a Jesus-preaching Sunday service and scream hallelujah. Or sit in a comfortable couch-potato armchair and watch GOD-TV. But I go to 12-step meetings to learn how to manage my alcoholism and learn how not to pick up that first poisonous drink or use that first drug of choice again. Granted, some will tell me that by finding God, I find recovery. Maybe so for some but is that the only possible means to recovery for all? Surely not!

I was so outraged by this thinly-veiled proselytizing that I left the meeting early and went off for a coffee at a nearby café. About ten minutes later, one of my AA friends, who is a “born-again” atheist joined me. What she said, as I heard her speak, was: “I can’t take this bullshit any more. I used to like this meeting. It was working for me. It really was. I liked it. But I’ve had enough. I’ve got to find another meeting. Or start one of my own, where like minded atheists and agnostics feel accepted.”

You may strongly disagree with me. That’s okay. I respect your belief in a personal God. Yet I know so many people who’ve been horribly wounded, emotionally maimed and resentment-induced by people who called themselves “God-fearing Christians”. I’m speaking of those who’ve let go of an otherwise good sponsor because they couldn’t stand being told to either come to Jesus or lose any hope of lasting recovery. Or those who were children whose fathers Talked the Walk but religiously hit the bottle as soon after Sunday lunch as possible. And spent the rest of the day and night hurling abuse or beating their spouse and kids. Or those who went to churches seeking help and found nothing but misunderstanding and customized guilt-trips wrapped up in a sermon about “Wretched Sinners in the hands of a Righteous God”.

I go to AA meetings to find recovery, to speak with people who understand me from the inside out because they know I have a problem with alcohol (and whatever else my addictive nature falls for) not because I’m a lost sinner in desperate need of a saviour. If God is real and he/she/it is my higher power then can’t you just let me be. I want to discover my personal spiritual awakening in the time that’s perfectly right for me. 90M