Don’t Drink and Don’t Die

As I have written previously, when I first stopped drinking for a time, I could remember my past and what had happened when. After approximately 18 months of sobriety, I drank again and didn’t stop for another five or six years. When I stopped, I had lost the ability to sequence things and know when they happened. That ability has not returned.

It’s not anything as dramatic as brain damage, I’m pretty sure. It’s only during that time that I don’t have odd memories and long periods I can’t account for. The reason, I think, is that I spent those years in just about a constant state of being under the influence of alcohol, inasmuch as that was possible for me to do.

I know I was still in high school when I achieved my first prolonged period of sobriety. I stopped drinking, and I went to AA. I followed the AA program to a large degree. It will be useful for me to try to remember and delineate what was right and what went wrong. When I tell my story at a meeting, I always have in mind the chronic relapser and the person who struggles again and again and again. That was me, and I eventually got it together.

But at first, after a few false starts, I did stay sober for some time. I was so young. It’s not common to see such young people at meetings. It’s not easy to fit in when you’re that young. Unfortunately, there are even people at meetings who do not want teenage girls there. At times I was discouraged and made fun of, though rarely. In general people were wonderful, and I did speak the universal language of the suffering alcoholic. I’ve also always thought it is special and telling that although I was young and vulnerable, I was only taken advantage of once, and that was when one of the dirty old men pillars of AA society grabbed my breast. It was awful and terrible, and it was the only time someone in an AA meeting ever did something like that to me.

I was at a young people’s meeting early on, and the topic was the first step. Although I had good grades and the intelligence to earn them, I could not comprehend the concept of the first step. I said so, and there was a young woman at the meeting who gave me her phone number.  She said she identified with me.  I asked her to be my sponsor, and she accepted.

Elli was a driven young woman.  She had about a year’s sobriety at that time.  She rented a room in someone’s house, and she worked as a secretary in a lawyer’s office and was putting herself through school to become a paralegal.  She had a boyfriend, Kristoffer, who probably doesn’t need any more mentioning than that.  Elli was a tough sponsor, and I’m still grateful to her and for her influence on me.  To be continued . . . .

I was thinking about the revelatory nature of AA and they way we are encouraged and supported and urged to share on the deepest level. There are lots of aspects of this that interest me. I have said and heard so many things over the years, it makes me pause.

On the very deepest level there is probably the fifth step. Where I live now, many people choose to do their fifth step with an anonymous clergy person. There’s a religious organization that supplies such people to listen, and I guess you can look at it as a bit of a tradition here. It’s not anything I heard much about in the other places I’ve lived. I’m sure people did it, but it’s a common experience here.

An anonymous fifth step must certainly be better than no fifth step, and I can understand that sometimes some people feel the only way they can possibly do it is with someone they don’t know and won’t see again. Still, I wouldn’t do that or recommend it unless there truly is no other way.

But THE fifth step is a very small part of the revealing that goes on at AA meetings. I’ve heard people admit to just about every sin except for murder, and I have known at least two people well who did kill someone with a car by driving drunk. I knew someone for some time who lost a baby to fetal alcohol syndrome. I’ve heard people say they have stolen and cheated and lied. People have been unkind to their pets and their children and their parents and their neighbors. People have wasted money and resources and opportunities.

I took this topic from As Bill Sees It, and the section is titled something like “We can’t do it alone.” The chairs pictured are from my home group, and after the picture was taken people sat in the chairs and talked things over together.

I’m an introvert. As I’ve written before, I believe this makes it tough to work AA in a way that someone more extroverted wouldn’t experience. It is by its very nature a very social thing, a self help group. I always hesitate to say that because I know that now and in the past, people in some very extreme situations have stayed sober without other AAs around to help. But in general, when people and meetings are available, it is vital to recovery to go socialize. One of the awesome aspects of the situation is that within the AA program, there are lots of other people who have trouble socializing also. And even the friendly outgoing people are used to being with and helping the loners.

I think the social aspect of it keeps some people out of the program. I read blogs written by people who know they could benefit so much from going to AA, but who don’t go and continue to suffer. Others make up their minds to stop drinking and do so, but they don’t go to meetings and they don’t share with other alcoholics. I don’t count either of those groups of people as being successful at dealing with their drinking problem.

I’ve also seen the culture where the only sharing a person does is with his or her sponsor.  I’ll have to write about “back in the day,” but when I started AA, in the late 1970s, it was sort of required at the beginning that a person get phone numbers and call and talk to people in addition to their sponsor.  Personally, I’m extremely grateful that this is how I started.  I hated it, and I would not have done it had there been another way.  I believe I would have stuck with just a sponsor and maybe another friend or two, and that would have been it.  Because it was expected I would call and speak to another person every day, because it was required, I did it, and it broke a huge hole through my wall of isolation.

I also imagine that for those lucky extroverts, the socializing and sharing that goes on in AA is of an excellent quality and the content is supreme.  Whether we like it or not, every day we have a chance to hear about the very humanness of those around us, and to know we’re not alone.  I have no doubt too that all I’ve said and all I’ve heard has made me more tolerant of and patient with the people outside the rooms, in the rest of my life.  Almost anything anyone can tell me I have heard already, and I’ve known someone who has gone through it, whatever it may be.  I know that the people who seem arrogant and all together are not.  I’ve heard their counterparts describe it and explain it many times over.

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.

I’ve commented before (OK, I’ve complained) that more and more often these days, I have the most time in the room when I’m at an AA meeting.  This problem will only get worse.  I’ve also been in a bit of an oldtimer funk, and that’s actually why I started this blog, among other reasons.  I know that many of the people who got sober with me and before me have died, they’ve gotten drunk, they’ve stopped going to meetings.  However, I also guess many of them are around, but they go to day time meetings.  They are retired, and/or they may have issues with driving at night or being out at night.  Maybe they congregate to be with more of their own kind.

If all goes according to plan, and if it’s God will (blah, blah), I’ve got about 20 working years ahead of me at least.  And the work that I choose to do happens mostly in the day time.

I had a doctor’s appointment today, so I took the opportunity to work from home and go to a day meeting.  Lots of what I do also takes place on the computer, and that part could theoretically be done anywhere at any time.  First, at the doctor’s, the doctor told me that what I hope are mild signs of an approaching menopause could be cancer.  She doesn’t think that it is cancer, but she sent me for three more tests to make sure.  As I was telling Carole, tests to make sure things aren’t cancer will probably be more and more frequent as we get older, if we are lucky.  I had a blood test today, to see if there are any menopausal hormones in my blood.  I need to have a sonogram and a biopsy (OW) along with the usual mammogram (which probably won’t be such an ow after the biopsy).   The doctor told me that for my age, the risk of uterine cancer is 5%.  I don’t quite understand that, since does that mean that 5% of 46 year olds have uterine cancer?  Doesn’t seem right.  Regardless, I think she meant the risk is there, but it’s small.  It doesn’t matter in the long run since I have it, or I don’t.  No gray area here.

But, it’s frightening.  Aside from all the regular reasons why this is frightening, Carole’s mother died from this, and it was awful.  So, of course I resolve to eat better and exercise more and not ingest so much artificial sweetener.  Really.  Even if I’m fine.  Because I really like being alive, and I want to continue as long as I can.

AND I resolve to enjoy life more and let little things pass and be grateful upon grateful for my buckets of blessings.  No matter what the outcome of this is.

After the doctor and the blood test, I went to a meeting.  Just as I expected, there were a few oldtimers there.  Although this meeting is nearby, I didn’t know anyone there well, and I only knew a few people by sight.  I think it really is true that lots of people go in the day, or at night, but not both.  There was a woman there who has 34 years, 10 more than me.  Others had more than 10, 15 or 20.  There were also some newcomers.

The topic was taking other people’s inventories.  In my opinion, the level of discourse was different.  I truly think that the presence of the oldtimers raised the discussion, at times, to a higher level than the usual basic stuff we say about this topic.  After everyone had had a chance to speak, there was still time, and some people spoke again.  During the whole meeting I had thought on and off about speaking about my desire to start an oldtimer’s meeting, but I didn’t say anything.  Then, with still some time left, the chair person asked if we would quickly comment on complacency.  Finally, I said something about the problems of oldtimers and the idea of the meeting.  One person took the CD I had brought, and another took my name and number and email.  They both reacted very positively, and the more I share about it, the more I know there is a need for this thing.

Honestly, I wish someone else would start it.  I’d like to just attend it.  I cannot leave my home group, because we only have a very few members, and I don’t want to leave it.  I wish someone with more time (retired, maybe?) would do it.  And someone may.  I think it will work best with an actual meeting.  If that doesn’t work out, I’m personally more dedicated to interacting regularly with people who have more time than I have.  It’s fairly easy for me to take a day off to attend a day time meeting.

I also wish those oldtimers would attend night meetings some times, if for no other reason than to show the people there that people can achieve 34 years and be happy about it.

It was interesting being at that meeting with my health scare on my mind.  I was in the zone where I was loving life, loving AA, loving being there, and wanting to show up, retired one day, with 44 years of sobriety to share.

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.

This is my favorite AA symbol.  “The Man on the Bed,” “AA #3″ also known as Bill Dotson.  To my understanding, once Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob had shared their stories and outlined the program of recovery, they knew they had to “pass it on” as the only way to keep it.  It’s that element of AA that enabled me to recover.  It’s not like reading a book or going to a therapist or doctor for treatment.  The resource of the real people who share my space, listen to me talk, comment on my life, ask me for advice, makes it work for me.

I’m an introvert.  Totally.  This isn’t the way I would choose to do it, given a choice.  Well actually, I would choose to do it this way now.  It’s not what I would have chosen at the beginning.  This, to me, is the miracle of AA I reference when I say, “Don’t quit before the miracle.”

Last night I got to celebrate my 24th anniversary with my group.  I understand that 24 years in not fathomable to some people.  That’s OK.  It’s still important for me to be there to show that it works.  I was able to articulate something with more clarity for myself, at least, as to what has helped me.  Through the years, when I’ve had upheaval in life situations and/or my mood and thoughts, I’ve turned to the program.  I’ll detail that more further along in “my story,” but what I can see is that when I’ve felt something wrong, I’ve been able to understand and believe that there’s something wrong in me, not in the program.

It’s become clear to me that this is one key to my long time sobriety.  I drank and relapsed many times before I got it.  I thought that AA wasn’t working for me.  That attitude, over the years, varied all the way from me just being too bored with sobriety not to drink all the way to thinking I was one of “those unfortunates” who, born that way, could not get it, and many places in between.  When I accepted my alcoholism, accepted that over any period of time it gets worse, accepted that drinking wasn’t an option, I really had no choice but to work the program or kill myself.

I figured and figure I’m going to die eventually anyway, why not give this a go?  Twenty four years later I’m considering the problems and opportunities of an oldtimer.

I’ve had the opportunity over the past two years to introduce someone to the program in a formal way, and that friend told her story for the first time at a meeting (she “lead,” or “spoke,” or “qualified” depending on how you say it) last night for me.  It’s an awesome experience to see her evolve and slowly pick up all the benefits and rewards of the promises of the Twelve Steps.  That’s why I like the symbol of the “man on the bed” best of all the symbols.  Really, if Bill and Bob had not shared it with Bill, I don’t know if I’d be or where I’d be but the miracle of the program is that I wouldn’t trade here and now for anything.

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’s Mother’s Day, and my mother and daughter are here.  My daughter graduated from college yesterday, which is why my mother is here.  My daughter hasn’t looked for nor found a job yet, which is why she is here.  We’re going to Disney as a graduation present for my daughter at the end of the month.  She’s worked at one or more jobs since she was about 15, sometimes against my will, so I’m not terribly worried about her not looking for work yet.  She also had the option of going straight to grad school, which she decided not to do.  I’ll guess we’ll see.  This isn’t much of a problem except for the blasted American dilemma of health insurance.  As of June 1, she’ll be on Cobra.  I’m grateful it’s an option and one we can afford for now.  I’m anxious that there’s nothing more permanent or doable for the long term in place.  And my son will hopefully be in the same boat two years from now, so the Cobra funds may be needed then.  Yuck.

Anyway, after graduation my wife and I were able to make it to our home group AA meeting.  The topic was anger, and at first I thought I’m really not very angry, rather I’m on a bit of a pink cloud from the graduation.  As I thought about it though, I realized that I had had two flare ups of anger over the past two days.  One involved my wife, and one my wife and mother.  They were quick, insignificant flare ups, and they were brought on by the stress of the situation - trying to balance the wants and needs of all the people involved in the graduation.  Lots of the group looked to me to ultimately make decisions about where we went and when and how.  I was already stressed by leaving my dog (long story) and my utter hatred of spontaneity.  Things went better when I told them to tell me where to be when, and to do their best to take care of the dog.  My daughter ultimately decided what to do after the ceremony (there’s a concept, having the graduate decide) and I was able to go along and be pleasant and try to push my dog anxiety away.

So at the meeting I was able to say that although these anger issues were there that day, they weren’t serious.  They didn’t threaten the relationships and all the relationships are pretty good.

At the diner after the meeting, to which my wife and son went with some people from the meeting, my wife told us how my mother had put me down during their car ride home from the ceremony.  This isn’t surprising or new.  I’m an only child.  I’m not the most stellar specimen you’ve ever seen.  I make plenty of mistakes, I’m average or below average in most ways.  My mother has always put me down.  Often, to others, she’ll talk me up.  But not to me or the people close to me.  She’s always liked my friends better than she’s liked me.  She likes my wife better than she likes me.  She likes my kids better.

What she told my wife about my faults was fundamental and cutting.  She criticized the way I have mothered my daughter, and she blamed my daughter’s mental health issues on me.

Without getting into it too much, through the years of my daughter’s struggles I have taken her to doctors and therapists a-plenty.  I have always asked them to please let me know if there was anything I could do better, do differently, stop doing or start doing.  I am not mother of the year.  I have never been. But …….. I really feel I’ve done a much better job than my mother.  She has always criticized me.  In all these years I have not answered her with a recitation of her own sins and lacks.  I haven’t yet.

So often I hear people say that their parents did the best they could with what they knew or had at the time.  I don’t believe it.  I wanted my children and made them number one in my life.  Still I could have done better.  And so often real parents were bad, or wrong, or careless or dangerous.  I don’t know why pop psychology says we must love and forgive.  Resentment against my parents occupies hardly any of my mental energy, but it’s there, and I don’t see how getting over it or denying it would help any.

At the diner, my son said he knows he had never been physically hurt by me, and I’m very grateful that that is his picture.  And not to derail this, the accusations are not that I was ever physically punishing or cruel.  Even the example that my mother has at times shown my children, her grandchildren, has been very bad, and I haven’t said anything.

The AA program only goes so far in helping us parent, I think.  But the legacy of behavior I have shown my children and given my children is so far superior to what I was given.  Because of AA.  My son said moderation would be the best example to give your children regarding alcohol, better than abstinence.  I told him that I cannot show moderation, and my example may actually change his life one day.

As I had this conversation with him and heard what my mother had to say about me, and considered what she has shown me through the years, I am filled with gratitude for the program, for my children, for the power to break away from that diseased and sick example.  My son, at 20, and my daughter, at 22, are so much healthier than I was at their ages.  I was actually getting sober at 22, having spent six years in a drunken hell.  I didn’t graduate on time, due to drinking.  I stopped drinking then and I started having them then and I feel that their health and happiness have been made possible by AA.

Of all the blessings of sobriety, my children have got to be the biggest, best, and most important. If, as a young adult, I had been told I could have only one thing in life, I would have chosen to have children. I always wanted them. My ideal fantasy life would have been to be a stay home mother of around four. Complications…. My only child status has much to do with this. I have always hated being an only child. I still do. It’s much more common now, and that must make it easier, but I still think it sucks as I am the only child of my mother still. There’s no one to share her with me, and if she becomes someone to be taken care of, that will be all on me. There’s no one who shared my growing up experience and I’m alone with many of my memories. Of course I understand that many people have siblings who are a negative presence in their lives, or worse. The siblings I mourn are the idealized, Brady Bunch siblings but also the average and special siblings that many people have, appreciate and enjoy.

There’s lots of infertility in my family, and one reason I’m an only child may be because my mother couldn’t have any more. I think she may have tried with my father and then with her second husband. When she was around 40 she was diagnosed with endometriosis and she had a hysterectomy. Her sister, my aunt, was never able to have children. She speculates that the endometriosis prevented my mother from having more. That aunt adopted two children. Their other sister, my other aunt, neither had children nor did she adopt. Her husband is, to say the least, a piece of work. I remember my grandmother saying it’s best they didn’t have any, since he’s such a nut. I don’t know if they tried to have one or not. I would guess they did, but I don’t know. My grandmother, their mother, had four children, with lots of miscarriages and a premature baby who died after a few days.

All of that factored into my desire to have children as soon as possible once I was an adult. I felt I had to finish college before having a baby, and I did that. I would have liked to have owned a house, but not badly enough to wait to do it. I got sober in May of 1984. I met my kids’ father around that time. I graduated in August, got engaged in September, married and pregnant in December, and my daughter was born in September of 1985. This is not recommended, but I had been going to meetings for five or six years at that time, so I wasn’t really new.

Many of those details will fit better in “my story.” For the purpose of this topic, I’ll say that I think being pregnant had much to do with my ability to stay sober this time. I DO NOT recommend that, and I realize that many, tragically many pregnant women are not able to stay sober even though they are pregnant. And of course the last time I was pregnant was 21 years ago, so it did not keep me sober.

I remember the frightening thought that I HAD TO stay sober at that time. My drinking had been so bad, and I had tried so many times to moderate, that I knew then the baby had a good possibility of being damaged or killed by my drinking. Still, that thought was fleeting. I don’t even remember ever considering drinking for a moment with the second.

And so, babies, toddlers, children. Many of the tenets of AA thinking do not fit or work with your own children. We do not “live and let live,” “let go and let God,” “take our own inventory.” We guide, teach, punish, reward, shape, control, and socialize our own. Or try to.

During my kids’ early years, I moved many times, living in each place for usually a year or less. That was difficult, and I at first moved far away, so the only family support I could get was over the phone. I never stopped going to meetings, and even with giving birth, I don’t think I stayed away from meetings for an entire week until recently, actually. I took my daughter with me until my son was born, then I left her with her father, and later a babysitter for them both, in order go to meetings.

I could list endless awfulness that having an active alcoholic parent brings that thankfully my kids didn’t experience. I remember a particular sermon in church when the pastor asked what kind of legacy we had been left, as well as what we were leaving for our children. I thought of my experiences with my drunken father and the fact that my kids have never been endangered by my drinking. I still of think of that often, with so much gratitude there aren’t words. We had moments when their wellbeing was threatened, but not by that. At times I find this difficult to share at meetings because so many people have suffered the consequences of drinking around their children and grandchildren. I often tell young people that this experience makes all that goes with sobriety well worth it.