Don’t Drink and Don’t Die

It’s somewhat unbelievable to me now. At 16, I knew I was an alcoholic and out of control (of course I understand now that this is stating the obvious). I didn’t know much about alcoholism or Alcoholics Anonymous. I really don’t know how I thought to call them. But I did. I know I assumed AA would attempt to teach me how to drink moderately.

So I looked it up in the phone book, and I called.  This was 1979.  There were no computers, no internet, no caller ID.  I do remember taking a book out of the school library that dealt with alcoholism.  That was how we gathered information back in the day.  Quaint, and slow.

My phone number at the time seemed to people like a commercial number.  It was one number off from a local golf course, which was a pain on Sunday mornings when people called to make a tee time.  It was something like 676-1000.  Anyway when I called the AA hot line and spoke to the woman answering the phone, she said she would get someone in touch with me and would call back.  When I gave her my phone number, I remember that she didn’t believe me.

I’ve lost the details of what happened between that call and my first meeting.  I know it was a few days away from the call.  I know I had a babysitting job, and Isabel covered that for me so I could go to the meeting.  Among the things I didn’t know at that time was the fact that there are AA meetings all over the place all the time.  I often wonder, when someone talks about being directed to a meeting by the answering service, why they are sent to meetings that are days away rather than as soon as possible.

My first meeting took place in the church pictured above.  It was in April of 1979, about a month before my 17th birthday.  I walked into that church drunk.  I couldn’t handle an AA meeting sober!  There was a greeter there, George.  He was an old guy, and he had the greeting job for years until he died.  I remember being at an anniversary celebration for that group after George died, and his wife attended in honor of him.  She was tall, German, all dressed in black.

That church had several meetings going on at once.  There was a beginners AA and several alanon or alateen meetings.  I went to the beginners in the church library.  After the meeting got going, the smoke was so thick you couldn’t see the other side of the room.  Washing ashtrays was a newcomer job, and it wasn’t a small job at all.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t say much at that meeting.  Some of the friendliest people turned out to be some of the flakiest.  But basically, everyone was very nice, and when I told them of my drinking problem, they told me they understood.  And I believed them, I believed that they did understand.  I never lost that belief.  I hold this as one of the keys to my long time sobriety.

I was surprised to see old people there.  I thought that all alcoholics were like my father, and I didn’t understand how they could live that long and be alcoholic.  I was surprised that AA practiced abstinence.  I was probably disappointed.

I talked to people, got phone numbers, got a sponsor.  Not at that first meeting, but at one of the first.  I drank a few times after getting a few days strung together.  One “slip” I recall happened after I took cough medicine.  It’s a trigger!  It made me drink!!  I began counting days on a calender.

So I got a shaky start on my lifetime of AA.  By the time it was my 17th birthday, I had begun what would be 18 months of continuous sobriety.

If I speak with the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I have become a sounding brass or a tinkling symbol. And if I know all knowledge and prophecy all mysteries, and if I have faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And if I offer up my body so I may boast********

This is where I lost it. I’m still trying to memorize it, but I guess I’m not trying very hard.

So, as is my custom, when all else fails I think about following directions. I prayed for the first time on this vacation yesterday, the seventh day of the odyssey. I should know better. I went to one meeting on this vacation on I don’t know which day. I have even put this blog on vacation. Though I’m writing a lot, I left the disciplined format I had developed.

I feel like I have failed at having fun. Now this is nothing new. Which makes it worse. And of course I’ve had fun, tons of it, days of it. Why isn’t it OK to admit that I don’t like vacation? Why isn’t it OK to admit I don’t like heat?

The ultimate ideal, I think, would be to like and be serene in all situations. It would be to recognize and appreciate God’s grace as expressed to me through this vacation. I would really like to get into and love the whole Disney experience. I’ve actually come a short way toward doing that recently by letting go of some of the thoughts I have that involve the evil of Disney. Ideally, I would remain serene in the face of the distress of my family members. I would be the calming, loving example for them to admire and follow. Maybe I’d also accept my humanness.

We went to a show explaining animation, and the announcer guy said that on the third day of Disney, someone in the family snaps. He said he wouldn’t single people out, but advised everyone to be nice to mom. So maybe I’m just totally average, although I want to be better.

I’m heading out for my last day at Disney for this trip.  I wonder if it will be my last time.  Not to be morbid, but you never know.  Maybe I’ll try to live it as if it is my last.  Maybe I’ll try to live it as if I had been practicing AA for 24 years.

I’m shocked to discover this. One of the first blessings of AA was the fact that I wasn’t alone or unique. At 16, believe me, I was different than most of the people in the rooms, but not unique. It is also a blessing and a key to my sobriety that at my very first meeting, when people told me, “I understand,” I believed them. Nothing that’s happened to me is something that hasn’t happened to many people before me. None of my thoughts or defects are mine alone. Alcoholics do understand me and I understand them. Whatever else may divide us (age, gender, economics, culture, language, and on and on) we have this one important thing in common. And usually lots more.

I started this blog because I felt a need to examine and share the longtimer experience. The bulk of AA is dedicated to the newcomer, and that is as it should be. I find being an oldtimer tricky in many ways. One of the most difficult aspects of it is that there just aren’t many people to share with who understand.

I got sober in 1984. So did many other people, and there were hundreds of thousands already sober. Then each year, some drank, some died, some stopped going to meetings, and each year there are less. I often have the most time in the room. If I don’t have the most, I’m second or third. Most days, at most meetings, this doesn’t matter a bit. But sometimes it crosses my mind, and it disturbs me in a way I have trouble sharing. Really, there’s no way to share it without sounding proud, unless I share it with someone in the same boat.

I started writing this blog for that reason, and I love doing it. I would write more if I had more time, and I’d write something for beginners also. This is a natural fit, and I wish I had started sooner.

For my anniversary, Carole gave me a CD from the AA Grapevine Online Catalog called A Lifetime of AA. I started listening to it on my way to work a few days ago, and I was stunned. I had the feeling I had when I first went to AA, of not being alone, of other people understanding, truly understanding. I had to keep stopping the CD because it sent my mind in a million directions, and I wasn’t listening anymore. I still haven’t listened to much of it, I was so taken aback by what I heard.

It is articles from ancient Grapevines written when oldtimers had five years. Five! Or six. Wow, how our perceptions have changed! The stories I’ve listened to name and address the problems of being an oldtimer, and they have different solutions. Most exiting to me is to begin an oldtimer meeting. This is something I’ve wanted to do for some time, but the CD has given me the push to try. I’m copying the CD, and when I get back from vacation I’m going to give it and a note to all the oldtimers I know and some I don’t, asking if they would be interested in such a meeting. At first, we’ll hold it while our other meeting is going on. But if there’s enough interest, who knows?

I’ll come back and enumerate my own perspective on the problems and joys of a lifetime of AA. It’s jazzed me up, but I’m also continuing the sixth step, continuing my story, and I need to get back to further thoughts on sober parenting.

If only my pesky job, kids, wife, house and pets did not demand so much time and attention. Benefits of sobriety.

Here are some of the terms people put into search engines that brought them to this blog:

sixth step, aa sixth step, resentment 12-steps, step six aa, how do i work the 6th step in aa?, what is the sixth step about? I hope my writings so far have helped someone get a little further along with the sixth step. Clicking that category isolates those posts from the others. After I’ve finished with the step in this way, I intend to research a bit what others have written.

my father and my mother Not that my mother ever would read this, but I think I’ve crossed the line of where I could let her read it. Too hurtful at this point. I feel bad about that, and I felt bad about it, but not quite so bad as I did before she told my wife what a terrible mother I was to my daughter. I hope the person searching that gained something from my experience, but I know there are far far worse parents out there than the two I had and have.

my story about experience This one baffles me a bit. I’m telling my story and it is about my experience. Hope this person wasn’t looking for something sexy.

how many people die a a year The double “a” seems to be a typo. Or, is it asking how many people during an “a” year? What’s an “a” year, and how can I have one?

aa meetings in new york They rock! We’ve started one in our area that uses the New York format.

friends who don’t drink In my opinion, these are the best kinds of friends. It’s interesting to see if you like to spend together once drugs are removed.

90 meetings in 90 days aa Do it, do it, oh please just do it! I’m shocked and bit frightened by the reluctance some people have to do this. There was time to drink every day, wasn’t there? When I started AA I did not view this as optional, and I’m so glad. This establishes you in AA, fills your time at first when all you’ve known in active alcoholism, helps you make sober friends. My cynical brain says someone searched this term to find a way out of doing this. Just go!

I am gay So am I!

paralyzed by sloth So am I!

It seems that meetings and meeting formats are the number one way people get sent from search engines to this blog.  It would seem logical for me to write about that as a topic, but really it doesn’t interest me that much.  It seems like a beginner question, or a question someone would have when they have not yet been to a meeting.  That’s important, but I think the info they seek is easily found.  So often when I try to write about something here, I’m powerfully drawn to “when I was drinking” and “when I first stopped drinking.”  Those things are vital, vital.  But they are not my purpose here.  Please, anyone who is thinking of checking out a meeting, call your intergroup, get out your phone book, Google it, and get to a meeting.  It costs nothing.  Your picture will not end up in the paper.  There is no obligation to ever return, and people will help you or leave you alone as you wish.  You need not fear AA or AA people.  Millions have found salvation this way, millions have not.  Only one way to find out if you will be one of the lucky ones.  Go to a meeting.

Oldtimer spin.  I’ve lived for reasonable lengths of time in four distinct geographic areas:  suburban New York, northern California, and eastern and western Pennsylvania.  I’ve been to a few meetings in other places on vacation.  I’ve come to have a favorite meeting format which is, surprise surprise, the format I was “brought up” with.  Basically there is a minimum of reading and announcements at the start of the meeting, there is a speaker of 90 days or more of sobriety who tells his or her “story.”   I’ve heard this also referred to as “qualifying,” telling how that person qualifies to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.  Generally it is the story of that person’s life with emphasis given to alcohol before and after recovery.  In my favored format, this lasts from 15-30 minutes.  There is then a coffee break and then a discussion.  Again, in my favored format, the speaker gives everyone who shares (talks) some kind of feedback by making a short comment.  The meeting ends with a prayer said while everyone holds hands.  For anyone who hasn’t been to a meeting and who would be frightened away by such a thing, I’ll tell you that people can easily step aside and not hold hands, pray or not, or even just leave the room without a big show.

I helped start a group in my area that uses this format and that is my “home” group.  It’s been going for about two and half years now, and I’m happy we did this.  With a lead every week, we get to know all the people who attend on that level, which I like.  I find the discussion that follows more enjoyable than a disembodied discussion because we know where the person is coming from.  I really, really like feedback because sometimes without it, I get a sad or awful feeling that I and others are sort of speaking into a void.  I like actually speaking to someone.

This is my favorite format, but I have experienced others and lived happy and sober with other formats for years at a time.  Common variations are meetings where there is no “speaker,” just a topic brought up for discussion, and those where there is no discussion, just one or two speakers telling their stories.  There are also beginners meetings where the emphasis is on the first three steps and early sobriety, and specialized meetings centered on the Big Book, the Twelve and Twelve or other literature.  I consider it a testament to AA that it can exist over the entire world in different formats with one primary purpose.

Finally, some people become alarmed by something different.  In lots of other areas of my life, that could be me.  In AA I’ve come to like diversity and variety.  I’m not worried about AA on a larger scale, if it can survive without more precise rules.

PS - I should mention for the possible Googlers that there are “open” and “closed” meetings.  Open meetings are for anyone at all to attend for any reason.  In my experience, it’s very rare that non alcoholics attend these, but they do at times.  Closed meetings are limited to alcoholics or people who have a desire to stop drinking.  That does include people who are questioning their drinking behavior and who think they may have a problem with alcohol.  Anyone with questions should be easily able to direct those questions to an AA “hotline” for a discussion with a live person or to request that a person call back.

Throughout the years, I’ve usually had one women’s meeting as my “home” group. The very first group I joined was not a women’s meeting, but a regular group that met two nights a week with different meetings that changed over time. When I moved so often in sobriety, I always hooked up with the nearest women’s meeting and made that my “must attend” meeting in that place. When I first moved to where I am now, I did go to the same women’s meeting most of the time. After a few years I stopped going there, and I haven’t been that regular at a women’s meeting since.

I still prefer women’s meetings to mixed meetings, but only slightly. I have seen them get to up close and personal, and at times I’ve called them “AA lite” when the personal problems of the members take over and when there is drama between members.

I’ve been to gay meetings and at times I’ve attended one regularly. I really like the aspect of being totally “out” at those, though really it’s not a big deal at any meeting. I find the people in AA to be among the most accepting in the world.

Where I live now, all the groups meet just once a week. Some are specialty meetings like Big Book or beginners meetings, and I can’t see belonging to a group that does just that. Some have one week of big book, one week of discussion, one week of a lead, and so on. Others have several different meetings going on at once. I like big book and step meetings, and at times I’ve attended one of those for weeks in a row. Still my favorite format is lead with discussion. I like to hear the stories of the people I see often.

I got sober in one place. I lived within a 20 mile area from the time I was born until I was 22. That’s where I went to meetings for six years, and it’s where I got sober. When I was one year sober (after five or six of drinking, but still in AA) I moved very far away from my home. Over the next twelve or so years, I moved many times, usually only living somewhere for a year until I moved back to my home town and stayed there for six years. Then I moved again and I’ve lived where I am now for almost ten years.

I have always gone to AA through all the moves. It is amazing to me that in all those places, there are thousands of people recovering through the AA program. All of the moves were within the US, though I did go from one side to the other and back, and a bit toward the middle. All the AA meetings used the same books, steps and traditions of course, and the meetings are more similar than they are different.

I really hesitate to criticize a meeting because at the core, it is an AA meeting, people are getting sober there, and I owe it my life. I wonder if moving and finding it hard to totally embrace different meeting formats is a problem of oldtimers. With lots of time, I would think, one is apt to get set in their ways, and would find it more difficult to accept something different than a newer person.

So personally, I do find all the reading boring and frustrating. Especially bad, to my patience, is the reading of items from the newsletter. So many times the person reading tells about little details of far off meetings and it eats up time. But honestly I also find it tedious to listen to “How it Works” at every meeting, all the traditions, all the promises, and goodness knows what else. I also find listening to one speaker tedious at times. Where I’m from, speakers spoke for shorter periods of time, and in an hour meeting there would be at least two of them. Finally I don’t like the aspect of the discussion meetings in my area where no one gives feedback. This is not the dreaded “cross talk,” but a format where the leader or speaker might make a short comment rather than, no matter what someone has said, say, “Next.”

Well this post is even boring me. I obviously have opinions about what I like and what I dislike regarding the format of an AA meeting. By no means, though, am I putting down the AA here or anywhere. I’m sure these things evolved for a reason, and the variety is actually interesting. It’s that certain night of the week when I know the nearby meeting features lots and lots of reading that gets me down. And I know I could join the group and try to see if others would see it my way and cut down. But I don’t do that.