All posts tagged early sobriety

Making Difficult Amends

Carole’s room last year looked down on a labyrinth that I never saw anyone walk or even go near. In this (bad) picture, you can see Christmas lights. I have no idea where those actually were. And, honestly, when I look at pictures from that time one of my most frequent thoughts is “I hope I never need to have my knee replaced.” In my defense, I had major knee surgeries when I was ten and eleven. And really I just marvel at the fact that, 40 years later, those surgeries are still keeping me mobile. If it was easy to do, I’d find out if the doctor is still alive and let him know about it.

Thankfully, because I stopped drinking young, I didn’t have many big or difficult amends to make. What comes to mind is a situation with my father’s family. I’ve probably written about it before but actually those relationships are still unresolved (though many of the key players have actually died).

I was a drunk dialer, and at some point (I don’t remember exactly when. I think I can look up the Social Security Death Index and see exactly when) my father’s father, my grandfather, was dying.

I didn’t know him well at all. My father died when I was six. When I visited his family intermittently through the years, I would go visit my grandfather. He lived in the same apartment building as my aunt and great-uncle. They owned the building, which is a whole other can of worms and maybe relevant, but certainly long. My grandfather wouldn’t leave his apartment after my grandmother died, 16 years before he died. So for the last 16 years of his life, he left his apartment only to go to the hospital by ambulance, as far as I know.

My aunt let me know when he was dying, and I’m afraid I did some nutty drunk dialing around it. I have only vague recollections. The death index tells me I was 20 years old. That was within my worst drunken times.

Anyway, he died, my life went on, and two years after he died, I got sober for what has been until now the last time. In the ensuing weddings/baby showers/Christenings of my cousins, I got sober, and, as a newly, truly sober person, I went about making amends. I knew that some of my cousins were mad at me. I figured there had been talk about what a scene I made when my grandfather, who I really didn’t know very well, was dying, and how hard that was on the relatives who lived with him every day. I sought out my aunts, since I know I talked to them during the melee, and apologized.

Well, I was forgiven. How nice. Turns out that they were made at me for something I said at my own wedding shower, WHEN I WAS SOBER. I still don’t know what I said. Some stupid remark that was taken the wrong way. Isn’t that usually the case? But you could have knocked me over with a feather.

I’m glad I apologized. I’m sorry I hurt their feelings (I guess??), but yeah, the thing I thought I had done wasn’t even the thing I had done. Live and learn.

3 Comments

by Lydia on December 4, 2012 • Permalink

Posted in alcoholics anonymous, early sobriety, everything else, step 9

Tagged alcoholics anonymous, early sobriety, step nine

Posted by Lydia on December 4, 2012

http://lydiacharlotte.wordpress.com/2012/12/04/making-difficult-amends/

What Convinced You that You Had a Problem?

Convinced is a good word for me. I knew I had a problem almost as soon as I started drinking. I understood I was an alcoholic very early on. I was unable to stay away from alcohol with that knowledge and understanding for a very long time.

I had some small understanding of alcoholism before I ever drank. I was born in 1962, and I went to good schools in a liberal area of the US. I don’t know if my understanding came from school or from culture. I know I even looked into a bit on my own at that young age. My father had died from alcoholism when I was 6 and he was 33. I knew a little bit about it and I knew, pretty much as soon as I started drinking, that I had a problem.

I started drinking at 16. I had a small list of things I would never do while drinking. One that I remember is that I promised myself I would never drive anyone else in my car when I had been drinking. Now that was the late 1970s. No one I knew wore a seat belt, the drinking age was 18, people gave their children and their children’s friends alcohol at their Sweet Sixteen birthday parties, and the bars where they didn’t check IDs were abundant. I see now that I would be a terrible menace on the road whether or not I had a passenger, but I didn’t see that then.

Anyway I broke that promise. I drove the car with my friend in the car, as we went to a pet store to do something or other about pet hamsters. I was a child. I was very lucky. But the self-realization was creeping in, even at that early time.

I furthered my understanding as I had contact with AA. I talked to the people and I read the books. One memory I have is of sitting at a young people’s meeting. The topic was the first step, and when it came to me I said I had no idea what they were talking about. A young woman gave me her phone number because she could relate to that, and she did become my first sponsor.

I grasped key concepts fairly quickly, like it’s the first drink that gets you drunk, or that any number of bad things hadn’t happened to me yet, but still I drank again and again and again and again.

So initially, just learning about alcoholism convinced me I had a problem.

What convinced me to surrender to the problem is another story. That would be six hard years of trying to drink, and six hard years of failing to do it successfully, or even minimally functionally.

5 Comments

by Lydia on October 15, 2011 • Permalink

Posted in alcoholics anonymous, everything else

Tagged alcoholics anonymous, alcoholism, early sobriety

Posted by Lydia on October 15, 2011

http://lydiacharlotte.wordpress.com/2011/10/15/what-convinced-you-that-you-had-a-problem/

September 25, 2011 (this day)

I was stuck for something to write about, then I checked out my own side bar. I see that I am to concentrate on the character defects of “abrasiveness, hostility, belligerence, being generally bad-humored.” That I can do (anyone old enough to remember A Chorus Line?)!

At my meeting last night, the topics that were suggested were (1) how have you changed? (2) why do you keep coming back? and (3) anger, fear, and resentment. Not much to talk about there! So putting these two together I thought about what happened after the meeting.

We traditionally have a meeting after the meeting. Carole and I, as regulars, go out after, inviting all and sundry to come. The tradition has changed a bit over time and what I had in mind at the beginning was to sort of recreate the diner experience I had when I first got sober. I did that for years, then not so much as I moved many times in sobriety, then had kids at home I needed to get back to. Now I’m free again. Among other things, I do believe it helps newcomers socialize with AA folks in a non-meeting setting.

Because there are many financial situations represented at a meeting, I always push for a diner-type place to eat. Somewhere that someone can have just a cup of coffee, or dessert, or a whole dinner. I’m often over ruled though and we got to real restaurants with real dinners, and that’s what happened last night.

So on the way there, we saw fireworks. Our town was shooting off fireworks, I don’t know why. Our town is small and the fireworks are visible from all over. They’re shot off less than two miles away and they shake the ground and are very loud.

And my dog is afraid, as are so many. And I’m not happy when my dog is afraid. We can comfort her to some extent, but she’s really still afraid even when we tell her not to be. Fourth of July and Halloween (ringing door bells, lots of people walking around) are two times I make sure to be home with her. I’ll add late September to that list, but last night I didn’t know about it.

On the way to the dinner, I really worried about her. I was very torn about going home to be with her and letting Carole get a ride home, or coming back to get her. I wouldn’t comfort the dog then go back out. I think that would be worse. I struggled with knowing the fireworks would be done by the time I got to the house, thinking the dog would still need some comfort, and the truth that at times I go away for more than a few hours, leaving the dog to cope with whatever comes, including, possibly, fireworks.

I stayed at the dinner. It really put a damper on my experience and, from my above list, I’d have to say I was generally bad-humored. I still feel kind of guilty about it. Having made my decision and staying at the dinner, I couldn’t slough it off and just be happy with the company and the night.

Using the Program Instead of Alcohol

A long time ago, someone asked this question of me in comments: How did you replace the alcohol? I see that people sometimes find the blog by asking that of a search engine. It is a fundamental question, I think.

At the heart of it, I replaced the alcohol with the program. The reason I drank was to cope with, well, everything. I loved life so much better when I was just a little bit drunk. If that had been a successful strategy, I wouldn’t be writing this. I’m an alcoholic, so that didn’t work.

Without alcohol to help me cope, life was a very painful thing. To be honest, even with alcohol to help me cope, life was a very painful thing. It did not happen over night and it was far from easy. In my case, it took me six full years to actually stop drinking in Alcoholics Anonymous. I learned a little bit along that way, but really I’m just lucky I survived. Many don’t. I almost didn’t.

But over the years of sobriety, AA actually did teach me to cope with life, for the most part, in a way that far surpasses my strategy of being a little bit drunk. Even if that had worked, I’m sure I wouldn’t have learned the tough stuff. Learned how to cope and usually how to be moderately happy.

Now I think the person who first asked the question was still drinking, or had just quit. At that point replacing alcohol is difficult and there is painful growing ahead. I’m here to say it’s worth it.

For me, the way of alcohol was the way of death. I got worse and worse, and I had many examples in life and in the media of how bad things get. There was a girl, completely disabled by a drunk driver, on the hospital floor with me when I had my wisdom teeth out. I’m sure the driver who did that did not mean to. I can’t imagine the hell of either party. I can’t kid myself that I’m not taking a chance of joining them by drinking. I am. I would be.

AA has so many helpful ways to enable a newcomer to make it through to where life becomes bearable: phone numbers, meetings, literature, sponsors, service. Online is a huge vista of recovery resources I did not even dream of when I got sober. Newly-sober and not-so-newly-sober folks find refuge in these things when times are hard and they are made better by them, not worse.

I’m afraid some small measure of faith is needed to begin. A person simply can’t experience sobriety without being sober.

So both in terms of how to spend my time, and how to cope with life, I replaced the alcohol with AA. AA takes much less of my time now than it did at the beginning. That’s a choice I make and a crucial difference, too, is that now when I spend time with it, it’s because I really want to. Because I finally held on to some sobriety and lived long enough to see it get better.

1 Comment

by Lydia on August 30, 2011 • Permalink

Posted in alcoholics anonymous, early sobriety, everything else, faith

Tagged alcoholics anonymous, drinking, early sobriety, recovery, sobriety

Posted by Lydia on August 30, 2011

http://lydiacharlotte.wordpress.com/2011/08/30/using-the-program-instead-of-alcohol/

Even the Newest of Newcomers (Step Twelve continued)

Even the newest of newcomers finds undreamed rewards as he tries to help his brother alcoholic, the one who is even blinder than he. This is indeed the kind of giving that actually demands nothing. He does not expect his brother sufferer to pay him, or even to love him. And then he discovers that by the divine paradox of this kind of giving he has found his own reward, whether his brother has yet received anything or not. His own character may still be gravely defective, but he somehow knows God has enabled him to make a mighty beginning, and he senses that he stands at the edge of new mysteries, joys and experiences of which he had never even dreamed.

I don’t have much to say about this paragraph. I know that when I try to help someone new, I increase my understanding and learning as I look things up or parse them out or try to describe what has transpired in my life. At worst, the person gets worse, and that also fills me with gratitude and humility for my own miraculous recovery from something so very difficult to recover from. I often wish that I could explain myself better, or help people who are struggling understand more what I went through, so that they too could recover.

1 Comment

by Lydia on November 1, 2010 • Permalink

Posted in alcoholics anonymous, newcomer

Tagged alcoholics anonymous, early sobriety

Posted by Lydia on November 1, 2010

http://lydiacharlotte.wordpress.com/2010/11/01/even-the-newest-of-newcomers-step-twelve-continued/

Sponsorship (my history)

Four times I’ve asked someone to be my sponsor, and four times they have accepted. I’m still in touch with one of those, and one has died.

My first and most important sponsor was Elli. I acquired her shortly after I started the program. Although I didn’t achieve a lasting sobriety during the time she sponsored me, I did get 18 months dry and I laid a foundation that would hold me up later.

I met Elli at a young people’s meeting. The topic was the first step, and despite my intelligence I simply had no idea what they were talking about. When I shared that, Elli gave me her phone number, and I called her. She later said she could relate to me there in my confusion.

Elli was tough. I had to call her every day, as well as someone else in the program. I had to call the other person first, then when I called Elli I had to tell her who I had spoken to. This, in the days before answering machines, made for a lot of phone calling. I can’t even picture someone doing this today. People would just not be willing, I don’t think. For me, an avowed introvert, this was drastically hard and drastically necessary. I would not have done it any other way. Later, when tough times presented, I had people I could call, and I did call them, because I had practiced when things were OK. I’m grateful to Elli for that.

She had me to go twelve weekly step meetings in a row. I understood not much about the steps, but the discipline was good.

I can see now that Elli was a friend, of course, but she had a definite program of recovery in mind for me. She wasn’t primarily there to listen to my relationship troubles.

And I had a terrible relationship trouble. I kept up my relationship with a married man during that time. I don’t know, but I think it may have been that dysfunction that prompted Elli to say I had to get another sponsor, an additional sponsor. That or maybe some major mental illness she saw in me. Or maybe she knew I was headed for a relapse she couldn’t help me prevent or . . . I don’t know what. She didn’t give me up, but she did say I had to have someone else in addition to her.

To be continued.

Cultish Aspects, Part II

This Blog – March 28, 2010

I noticed, looking at my archives, that I’m writing about half as often as I did at this time last year. I never set out with a goal of how often to write, and I’ve balanced it usually with the other things I do. What I do is have a full-time job (with generous time off), sleep, read books, crochet, read message boards, watch TV and DVDs, walk, brush, train and obsess over my dog, clean the house, cook (not often), shop (hardly at all), email, talk on the phone, go to meetings, other miscellaneous recreation, commute, read blogs, read and watch news, bathe and do person hygiene stuff, work on my fear of flying, exercise a tiny bit, talk to people in person. That’s all I can think of.

I’ve meant to focus my thoughts here, in this blog, on the oldtimer experience. I often can’t resist the “when I first stopped drinking” mode that permeates so many AA meetings. But I try. With other people, other books, other blogs, I appreciate oldtimers more than I can say. Even when those oldtimers are concentrated on “when I first stopped drinking,” their very presence cheers and inspires me.

In person, when I hear someone mention, for example, “Carmelita, who has 20 years of sobriety,” I cringe inside. I feel I do not live up to the amount of sober time I have. I feel someone would never refer to me in that way.

I mention AA, I link to AA, I quote AA, this is about my AA experience. I sincerely hope that no one thinks I am in any way endorsed by or related to AA beyond being a member. I am not. I owe my life to AA and I would never harm it. I hope that my experiences and thoughts reflect positively on AA. My experiences in AA are extremely limited, and I only write about my experiences. AA is world-wide and I am not. I have not studied AA, I just go to meetings and read information. AA gave me my life and so it is the most important thing in my life. That said, I believe that people who write in criticism of AA should be allowed to do that as well as I can write its praises. I will not reveal my real name or my full face because I follow the traditions of AA. I will reveal my politics because I do not speak for AA.

Some search terms that lead people here:

aa meetings topics : This is my most popular page. I have fun collecting topics and welcome suggestions.

aa character defects list : I do keep a list, and some of it is inspired or comes from AA literature, other parts of it do not. I mean it to be helpful only. I know many people struggle with understanding and listing character defects.

do alcoholics regret : Yes, I think they do. My understanding of the AA program is that not regretting the past is an ideal I am to strive for. I don’t think we ever get there.

terence this is stupid stuff analysis : Lots of people get here this way, and it makes me cringe a little. This is a poem that had lots of meaning for me when I studied it in school. It involves alcohol and drunkenness, and so I related and still do. I pity the poor English student who comes here seeking enlightenment. I should probably add a disclaimer to that page. I hope no one has suffered a bad grade due to my influence.

aa meetings how to chair a meeting : Things like this are so varied from place to place. I’ve lived lots of places but really, not that many, and all in the US. I wonder why people seek information like this on the internet rather than asking someone in their group.

running into someone you know at an aa : Well, it happens, and sometimes it results in a very happy ending. In my experience, the person usually doesn’t, as most don’t, stick with it, and they fade away. There are people out there who have seen me at an AA meeting and who are not members themselves any longer. This has never had a bad impact on my life in any way. Bottom line is, you’re there for the same reason. My drunken behavior would be much more noteworthy than my presence at an AA meeting.

embarrassed to attend an aa meeting : See above, and be honest. Your drunken behavior is much more embarrassing than your attendance at a meeting.

what’s the point of aa meetings : That would be to stay sober, and to help other alcoholics achieve sobriety.

3 Comments

by Lydia on March 28, 2010 • Permalink

Posted in alcoholics anonymous, character defects, everything else, meetings, oldtimers

Tagged aa, aa meetings, alcoholic, alcoholics anonymous, character defects, early sobriety, newcomers, oldtimers

Posted by Lydia on March 28, 2010

http://lydiacharlotte.wordpress.com/2010/03/28/this-blog-march-28-2010/

” . . . the maladjusted life you have led . . .”

A reader asks:

Hi, I just read your disclaimer “just for the record, I refused to meet her (Carole) until she had one year sober”.

So I don’t see how that you getting with someone with 1 year when you have 12 years. It’s not that it is bad, etc, but odd. I mean come on, there are many SINGLE individuals in the rooms of AA with the same amount of sobriety as yourself. Now, if you are still married to her, she has 14 years clean, with 13 with you. Her entire soberlife has been manifested with you. While your 13 year-relationship with Carole has only comprised half of your soberlife. My point being is, what is her program like with out you? What if she left you? What if she wanted to leave you? What if you left her? Let’s just say, she won’t leave you out of fear. Fear of loss. Loss of: clean time, aa (friends, meetings, support networks), possibly money and career, housing, etc

Let me say this, you unintentionally finding a vulnerable individual in their first year of sobriety is a loud cry as to the maladjusted life you have led for those first 13 years, NO MATTER how well-adjusted newcomer with 12 months really is…

Please reply

Where to start?

First, I would not, in any circumstance, dismiss the questions raised. They are legitimate questions to ask in any case. It is quite painfully true that AA is filled with experienced people who know how to take advantage of inexperienced people.

I mean come on, there are many SINGLE individuals in the rooms of AA with the same amount of sobriety as yourself.

I’m assuming this means I was looking for love, and that I should have been looking elsewhere, in other words, to other oldtimers, for a relationship.

I was not looking for a relationship. I had split with the father of my children seven years earlier, and I was very much enjoying being a single parent. I had lots of help from the grandparents of my kids. I had a job that let me take care of them when I needed to. I supported them financially including health insurance. I didn’t have to compromise with anyone as to if the windows would be up or down, or what to set the heat at, or anything. I was truly determined to stay single.

Also, for the first part of our online relationship, Carole with involved with other people. I was not, under any circumstances, going there. We began as an online friendship between an oldtimer and a newcomer.

Now, if you are still married to her, she has 14 years clean, with 13 with you. Her entire soberlife has been manifested with you. While your 13 year-relationship with Carole has only comprised half of your soberlife. My point being is, what is her program like with out you? What if she left you? What if she wanted to leave you? What if you left her? Let’s just say, she won’t leave you out of fear. Fear of loss. Loss of: clean time, aa (friends, meetings, support networks), possibly money and career, housing, etc

This crosses my mind from time to time. Not so much in terms of leaving, but I think, at times, about how difficult it would be if one of us was to die. Like any married couple, we relate to so much of the world, the AA world included, as us. If I’m calling someone from the program, and I think that person might not know who I am, I describe myself as, “Lydia, from Carole-and-Lydia.”

My sober time before I met her proves, I guess, that I can work AA without her. Her year prior to meeting me proves that she can also. But more than that, the AA (friends, meetings, support networks), money, career, housing, etc, falls squarely in my loss column, not hers. She is much more outgoing than I am. She has many more friends, meetings, support networks, much more money, a more secure and better-paying career, and much better potential to support herself than I do. If we were to split up, she’d be in a much better position than I would be in.

Having met in AA, and having worked the program as a couple for so long, I honestly don’t think we’d make it through a situation where one of us wanted to leave, but was afraid to do so based on the loss of those things. Our relationship is far too important, far too frequent, far too honest to make it that way for long. At least that’s the way I see it. I understand that people are made the fool every day, and that I may look back on these words bitterly, but I don’t think so. Today I’m willing to risk it.

Years ago, it was important to me that I maintain my ability to independently support myself and my kids. Now that the kids can see to themselves, I really don’t know if I’d make it on my own, or be too terribly devastated to do so. That, I think, is from advancing age, not from unhealthy dependence.

Let me say this, you unintentionally finding a vulnerable individual in their first year of sobriety is a loud cry as to the maladjusted life you have led for those first 13 years, NO MATTER how well-adjusted newcomer with 12 months really is…

Well, I did think, from the very beginning, that Carole had the characteristics to be a winner and to make it in the program. As I said, we started as an online AA friendship and (speaking for myself) fell in love. Before we met. Which is so cool!

Having fallen, I then did the prudent thing and said I would not meet her in person until she had a year. Once she had a year, and she proposed meeting (at 14 months), I expressed my concerns to a friend that a year isn’t really very long at all. I remember that friend said, “How long does someone have to have to date you?” See at that point, I did want to come across as a snooty oldtimer of 12 years. I was also concerned for Carole’s mental health and sobriety, should we not get along in person. It could happen! But at that point I was in love, powerless in those wonderful ways of resisting the object of my desire any longer.

This would have been a mess in person, and I’m grateful we met just the way we needed to do so, online. I don’t think we would have been attracted to each other in person, but if we had been, that could have been a bad scene.

I can see how, looking from the outside, it might look as if I found someone vulnerable and took advantage. I can’t convey in words on this page that it really didn’t happen that way. I can say that I’m as confident as I can be that she would not stay with me out of fear of the external things she could lose if she left. With any long relationship, AA-based or not, those issues are difficult and heart-breaking.

I hope our longevity speaks to the wisdom of our decisions back then. Carole was newly sober, yes, but she wasn’t a newborn baby, incapable of acting and dependent on the evil oldtimer to manipulate her.

Love like this is risky under any circumstances. The AA factor has added so much to our relationship. I can’t picture it, nor would I want it, any other way. Back then, I felt that I was the one risking so much. My fidelity to AA was proven, and hers was not. I moved my children 400 miles away from their home and their grandparents. I took a career risk, a pay cut, and gave up my precious independence to risk it on a relationship with a newcomer.

I am astonished, now, at all I did.

But I was in love, and I could not resist. I didn’t know about this kind of love before. I had been in relationships, and maybe I’d had some of emotions of being in love, but I had not met and developed a relationship with someone who would be a true life partner to me.

The life I lived before her was maladjusted, to some degree, I believe that we all are. But looking back, whatever I did and had done, it got me ready for the next step, which was my relationship with my wife. I wouldn’t blame anyone who, at the time, was worried about the potential for pain all around. But to me that is part of the life that AA enables me to live. Before AA I was not well-adjusted enough to have a relationship. After practicing for years I was able to.

I feel, in a way, that if I drink tomorrow, AA has still been a huge success in my life, having given me all these productive years. If Carole leaves me tomorrow I would likewise call our relationship a success (barring some huge deceit I don’t know about right now).

So I’m sorry, Matt B, that you read my explanation of how I met my wife in AA as an indictment and see it as something that I should not have done. I was mindful, and careful, and I hope the good results speak for themselves.

2 Comments

by Lydia on February 20, 2010 • Permalink

Posted in aa, alcoholics anonymous, children, early sobriety, everything else, gratitude, my story, sobriety

Tagged aa, aa meetings, alcoholics anonymous, early sobriety, fear, gratitude, newcomers, oldtimers, sobriety

Posted by Lydia on February 20, 2010

http://lydiacharlotte.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/the-maladjusted-life-you-have-led/

Remembering My Last Drunk

I always want to chant with this phrase: “Remember your last drunk, to keep it holy.” Like the commandment.

My last drunk has power to help me stay sober. My last drunk was the last because I sank lower than I thought I would ever go. I crossed lines I didn’t know I would cross. I achieved the level of hopelessness that enabled me to stop drinking.

My last drunk happened six years after I had admitted and understood that I was an alcoholic, and six years after I had tried to achieve abstinence through AA. I had attended AA that whole time and I had gone to many, many meetings. I reached 18 months of sobriety at one point, but that was it. I couldn’t make it longer than that.

During my last drunk, I drunk dialed God knows who all night long, until 2 or 3 in the morning, at which point I set out to my grandmother’s house, 30 minutes away. I was so drunk that I was mostly blacked out and during my lucid periods, my driving would get all wonky. I’d come to further down the road. This occurred in the very busy and dense borough of a major city. Only luck got me and others who shared the road with me safely to my grandmother’s house.

I ranted and raved drunkenly at her all night long about everything that was wrong with my life, from before I was born until way in the future. When I drove myself home in the daylight of that morning, I felt a helplessness that I hadn’t felt before. I felt like there was no where else to go. I wanted to die and would have killed myself if I had been braver about death. As it was, I figured I would stay sober for just a little while, while I made plans for the rest of my drugged up, helpless, useless life.

I was afraid of mental institutions because I guessed that others would be in charge of my drugs, and of course they would never give me enough. I didn’t think my mother would support me and my habit indefinitely, and I didn’t want her to. I couldn’t see supporting myself or convincing someone else to support me. I really saw no future at all.

Finally, I was realistic! There was no future the way I was going. Clearly seeing that bottomless pit helped me get sober and stay sober from then until now.

I want to add that I don’t know if the people of AA talked about me behind my back during all my years of struggle. I’m sure they did, but I don’t know if it was in a kind way, or a way that put me down or made fun of me. Probably both. I know I could be a heart-breaking person to care about during those years. People poured their time and energy and good intentions into me only to see my fail again and again. But no one made me feel bad about it or about myself. People did express their fears for me, and their thoughts that I wouldn’t make it the way I was going. But they did not call me names or make fun of me that came to my attention.

I’m writing that because recently, someone new to the program told me she was surprised to hear others making fun of someone in their group who was in and out again. These people called her a bad name and laughed. That happens all the time but it isn’t right. I hope and think that the people of AA do this less than other groups of people do. I know that our program tells us not to, and that we’ll study those ideas again and again as we work and rework the program. Had it come to my attention that people were doing that to me back then, my story could have had a different ending, and anything good I’ve done since then might have stayed undone.

To my face, the people of AA welcomed me yet again. They were the only people I had left to turn to, and I am profoundly grateful.

	Howard S on Attraction Rather Than Pr…
	Lydia on Pride in Reverse
	J.P. Johnson on Pride in Reverse
	markd60 on May 5, 2013 (this day)
	Ken Krauss (@birdhau… on May 5, 2013 (this day)

Don't Drink and Don't Die

All posts tagged early sobriety

Making Difficult Amends

What Convinced You that You Had a Problem?

September 25, 2011 (this day)

Using the Program Instead of Alcohol

Even the Newest of Newcomers (Step Twelve continued)

Sponsorship (my history)

Cultish Aspects, Part II

This Blog – March 28, 2010

” . . . the maladjusted life you have led . . .”

Remembering My Last Drunk

My Experience With

Praying Today For

Phillips Brooks

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