August 22, 2026 (this day)

I really need to revamp the book page on this blog and read the books that were recommended to me………13 years ago.

These are the books waiting to go to little free libraries (kind of a hobby of mine) and I tried the Emmet Fox one because it was apparently used in early AA, before there was a Big Book or AA literature. I’ve recently twice recommended people with questions about the Big Book read Writing the Big Book and I think both found it too dense. I listened to in on audio over the course of probably two years. It is dense. I almost always have an AA-related book going, and I almost always read it slowly, a little at a time.

Minor aches and worries afflict me today. A mouth sore that can’t be diagnosed, treated, or cured. Restless leg that the doctor gave me an apparently obsolete potentially damaging drug for. My mother had one good eye doctor appointment but another looms next week. Do I need a plan in case ICE comes to my English lesson and tries to take my student away? Am I brave enough ask to go with her? Will I ever complete the museum in Animal Crossing?

I signed up to guest chair a meeting I frequently attend. I need to get a speaker for next month, so I’m nervous about that. I work security two days a week at my online meeting, and on those days I try to stay and keep the room open and talk to people for as long as they want to stay after the meeting. That’s my AA lift right now. And oh yeah, the fifth step.

Tools of the AA Program

The OG tools are the steps, as is stated on page 95 of the Big Book. “…lay out the kit of spiritual tools…….show him how they worked with you.” And page 25. “……..there was nothing for us to do but pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools laid at our feet.” These are the steps, and anything else qualifying as a tool can probably be fit into the steps.

• asking for help
• using the phone
• helping others (in and out of AA)
• patience, kindness, and all the other virtues
• sharing our experience
• going to meetings
• service in AA
• sponsorship
• prayer
• meditation
• slogans
• fellowship
• literature

I was recently at a meeting where someone said she doesn’t want to share, as in telling her story, and doesn’t much like sharing by just speaking at a meeting. I agree! AA is tough for introverts. I said (in a rare-for-me share) that I do it, occasionally, because I don’t think it’s wise for me to reject a whole part of the program and say I won’t do this part. There is the thought that what if everyone said that, AA wouldn’t have been there when I needed it. But also just letting the people who want to talk have all the say leaves out a lot of people, and someone may identify with me and my reluctance to share.

July 21, 2026 (this day)

I got this air filter for my cat (shut up). He has runny/watery eyes and I thought it might help. I was shocked the other day to go to my volunteer tutoring thing in a light haze, and come out two hours later to visible smoke. Canadian wildfires. This filter always reads 100%, and the AA way tells me that I need to remember to be very grateful for that. It actually went down to 60% in the house at the worst. It’s alarming and frightening and my self-righteous indignation would like to blame politics.

Other things that are alarming me. My mother’s eye appointment yesterday, which went well but it the most frightening regularly scheduled event in my life. My daughter looking for houses four hours away from me. My daughter going on a long, far away vacation alone after her friend cancelled the day before they were leaving, though she’s coming home tomorrow. MLMs (’nuff said). The neighbor’s plumbing problem.

Things that are exciting me: I have been volunteering teaching English to immigrants for three or four years now, and I’m seriously thinking about getting TESOL certification. It would cost around $3000 and AI tells me I don’t need it, already having a BA in journalism, an MA in secondary English education, and experience tutoring. But I want it. To be continued.

I hope everyone around the wildfires is safe, and that people in power do the greatest good they can.

This Practice of Admitting One’s Defects (Step 5 continued)

This practice of admitting one’s defects to another person is, of course, very ancient. It has been validated in every century, and it charactarizes the lives of all spiritually centered and truly religous people. But today religion is by no means the sole advocate of this saving principle. Psychiatrists and psychologists point out the deep need every human being has for practical insight and knowledge of his own personality flaws and for a discussion of them with an understanding and trustworthy person. So far as alcoholics are concerned, A. A. would go even further. Most of us would declare that without a fearless admission of our defects to another human being we could not stay sober. It seems plain that the grace of God will not enter to expel our destructive obsession until we are willing to try this.

Strong words!

As I wind my way through the 5th step in the 12 and 12 – my last step! I started with Step 6 19 YEARS ago. I am going to have to amend the message I share about continually working the steps. I would say it takes me years, but apparently it takes me decades. And I may consider doing it differently if I made it to the end of Step 5.

My mind wants to get into the weeds here and parse the difference between Step 5 and Step 10. The wrongs I did while drinking were relatively short and mild, only because I only drank for six years, and during those six years I had periods of sobriety. The sins I committed and the flaws I displayed were in large part the sins and flaws of a sick child, only because I was able to achieve a lasting sobriety at almost 22 years old.

My character defects, though, were there in full force and I have to say they live with me still. Knowledge of my personality flaws, as the step reads, well, I think I share those pretty regularly and today I don’t do things I want to hide.

As a chronic relapser, though, I’m interested in the idea that the grace of God will not enter to expel our obsession until we are willing to try this. I don’t think this is what prevented me from getting sober. I am more of a depressive type very willing to admit how wrong and terrible I am. But I can see in meetings that many people are unwilling to do a 4th and 5th step, and so can’t continue on with the steps.

One last note is that I attend a Lutheran church and part of the service is communal confession and I find it, at least at the church I go to, to be unsatisfactory, not giving me time to reflect or think about what I’ve actually done wrong. And the idea of the Catholic thing with the priest and the screen I find to be very freaky.

June 4, 2026 (this day)

I went on a Great Lakes cruise! Five lakes, ten days, three flights, and two fights with my mother.

For those who don’t follow along (as they say on youtube), I don’t travel well. I’m afraid to fly and very anxious in many ways about being away from home. But I do it. And I did it.

This trip was different in one important way, in that I was able to zoom into my regular meeting several times during the trip. That was wonderful. On big cruise ships, my wife and I have often tried to find other Friends of Bill to have a meeting, but we’ve mostly failed to find more than and few and to meet more than once or twice. This time I learned the valuable lesson that when you can’t hear well through headphones, it could be because they aren’t connected to your device and you’re broadcasting an AA meeting to the unsuspecting dining room. This was a small boat and an old crowd, and I doubt we’d have found enough compatriots to hold a meeting. Zooming into a place here everybody knows my name was priceless.

There was alcohol everywhere, and my mother drank some of it. In the past she’s gotten literally fall-down drunk but didn’t get that bad this time. This time she just got mean to me. I asked my daughter to please tell me if I’m ever mean, and she said that I am not ever mean. My daughter has a sober mother. I do not.

Drunken mean mother aside, I did it. I know I’m not supposed to be, but I’m always a bit proud of myself when I make it through these trips in once piece. I think I could so easily be someone who just says no to all of this, the anxiety is too high. But I made it.

Too Busy for Meetings?

I think I should add another topic, “meeting as a leisure activity,” because these days for me I’m not too busy for anything.

This may sound silly and unimportant, but this is my story, just mine. There are times when I don’t say what I think in meetings because I don’t want to be a bad example, or I don’t want to go against the prevailing culture, or I don’t want to take a chance that I have done something wrong to AA standards, yet it turned out alright, but I can’t risk sending someone else down the wrong road, following my example.

I marked 42 years sober on May 1st, and someone after the meeting at my meeting asked me how AA has changed. AA has changed, and of course I have changed. I was 16 years old in 1978, at my first meeting, when Lois Wilson was still alive and AA was only 43 years old. The oldest old-timer at that time could only have had 43 years. Throughout the history of human beings alcoholics have stopped drinking, but through AA this has only been going on for 91 years. The blink of eye.

In my experience, in my opinion, the biggest change has been the zoom format. I love zoom meetings, and my home group is a zoom meeting and I go there every day. In the time it used to take me to get dressed, drive somewhere, be somewhere, and drive home, I can go to two or three meetings in my pajamas. My meeting is at 7 am and some significant number of attendees are in bed. We have zoom babies who are achieving five years of sobriety who have never been to an in person meeting. People get sober and sponsor people they have never met. Maybe most importantly, people who cannot get to an in person meeting can attend, with a little technology.

All that was prelude to recording my personal experience with meetings. Until five years ago, the meetings I attended were mostly in person (though I did meet my wife at an early AOL meeting where we typed rather than talked, I rarely went to those). From the ages of 16 to 22 I went to a few meetings a week, and I did accomplish the iconic 90 in 90 several times as I drank and returned, drank and returned. When I was 23 I had a baby, and from that time until around five years ago at COVID, at various times I had two children home, went to school, worked full time, and a combination of all of those. For many years I went to one meeting a week and it was OK, and I was OK, and it worked for me.

I didn’t let that slide. My chronic relapsing made me promise myself I would go to one meeting at week at the very least, and I did. I have always lived where meetings are plentiful and I consciously arranged my schedule to make sure I made one.

As the kids left and the job ended, I went to more meetings and COVID did coincide with my stopping work. In the midst of COVID I worked from home and started the habit of a daily zoom meeting. I now belong to a zoom meeting, attend every day, and have responsibilities there. I also go to one and usually two in person meetings each week.

That’s my own experience, and I don’t see how someone with a phone and an internet connection could be too busy for meetings.

And as a personal note, some people at my online meeting will say that they’ve never been to an in person meeting, or that they’ve been to a few and weren’t comfortable or didn’t like it. I strongly, strongly urge anyone in that situation to go. You are missing out on what is in my opinion one of the most important, best parts of AA. Fellowship is different in person. We are people who ordinarily would not mix. You belong in the mix.

April 3, 2026 (this day)

I had two recent experiences with wet drunks – alcoholics who are currently drunk and are asking for help.

I did this myself many, many times. As a sort of recap, I went to my first AA meeting when I was 16, almost 17, and I was actually drunk at that meeting. For the next six years after that I drank on and off, and attended AA on and off, mostly on, and the two situations coincided frequently. I went to many meetings under the influence. I think my nickname must have been, “here she comes again.”

So last week my wife and I were on our way to a meeting when a friend called. Another friend in the program was drunk and asking for help. Let’s call the help asker Pam.

We’ve known Pam for 17 years, all because of AA, and at times she has been a good friend. But she inevitably faded away again and again over time, sometimes calling someone in the program when she was drunk, sometimes not. In my personal experience, she may be the person who has repeatedly tried and failed the longest to get a lasting sobriety through AA. There was a time when I sponsored her, years ago.

Our friend headed off to help Pam and I was scandalized because I learned it as “rule” that you don’t do these things alone! I think that’s a good rule to follow so I’m sending it out into the universe.

The other situation happened the next day on zoom. Let’s call this one Melinda. She showed up asking the eternal questions, “Can you hear me? Is this thing working? Can somebody sponsor me?”

Melinda quieted down once the meeting began but she raised her hand, and when she was called on she started a story about how her ex had refused to get their six year old help and the six year old threatened her classmates at school. The security team cut her off and asked her to stay after the meeting to talk to us. After the meeting, she said she wanted to kill herself. We suggested she call 911. It sounded like there was someone there with her. She left, and hasn’t come back to that meeting.

First, I completely understand what they meant when I was drunk at meetings and people told me I was keeping them sober. In general I don’t deal with drunk people (unless they are a family member, and I’m trying to prevent them from ruining a wedding), but people showing up at meetings and calling because they need help are different.

In person, they took Pam to the hospital and she was admitted for detox for a few days. I’ve been there other times with her when we convinced her to go to rehab. I’ll put it here that many, many years ago I took someone else to the hospital and I missed my kids’ back to school night, and I still feel terribly guilty, and if I had it to do over I might have tried to find someone else to do hospital duty. Pam is currently still in touch.

The zoomer, I don’t know. In person if someone was saying they want to kill themselves, I’d have no problem calling 911. Melinda has disappeared into cyber space for now.

I also want to say that all the time the good people of AA spent on me when I was drunk and in attendance was not wasted. I wish I had the magic words to tell Pam and Melinda how I finally got it and stopped drinking. But I don’t. I don’t know what the secret ingredient is, or why God’s grace shines on some and not others.

So Intense, Though, is our Fear (Step 5 continued)

So intense, though, is our fear and reluctance to do this, that many A.A.’s at first try to bypass Step Five. We search for an easier way–which usually consists of the general and fairly painless admission that when drinking we were sometimes bad actors. Then, for good measure, we add dramatic descriptions of that part of our drinking behavior which our friends probably know about anyhow.

But of the things which really bother and burn us, we say nothing. Certain distressing or humiliating memories, we tell ourselves, ought not to be shared with anyone. These will remain our secret. Not a soul must ever know. We hope they’ll go to the grave with us.

Yet if A.A.’s experience means anything at all, this is not only unwise, but is actually a perilous resolve. Few muddled attitudes have caused us more trouble than holding back on Step Five. Some people are unable to stay sober at all; others will relapse periodically until they really clean house. Even A.A. old-timers, sober for years, often pay dearly for skimping this Step. They will tell how they tried to carry the load alone; how much they suffered of irritability, anxiety, remorse, and depression; and how, unconsciously seeking relief, they would sometimes accuse even their best friends of the very character defects they themselves were trying to conceal. They always discovered that relief never came by confessing the sins of other people. Everybody had to confess his own.

Not sure what to say about this one, my fifth steps being well in my past. One thing I treasure about my time in AA is all the stories I’ve heard of things people have done. Some really bad, some really tragic, but the richness of hearing people confess, whether in fifth steps or just in sharing in AA, is something I bet people not in AA don’t get to experience. That’s quite a sentence. The confession aspect of AA has added to my life, both in confessing and in hearing confessions.

And of course, fifth steps do not need to be done with another alcoholic. In case anyone reading this is afraid to let people in the program hear their stuff, any other person will do. Religious people come to mind immediately, because they are used to it and they promise to keep things confidential. Don’t hold back!

(I admit I’m a little baffled by the confessing the sins of other people thing. I mean, I know when I accuse people of being intolerant, I’m showing intolerance myself. But confessing their sins?)

March 14, 2026 (this day)

Not much to report from my everyday life but what the heck? I’ve been keeping this blog for a million years and somewhere way way back I decided to intersperse day to day stuff with AA stuff. I may rethink that. But for now.

This past week was full of medical stuff, all good. I had trigger finger release surgery on Monday, on my right hand, and I am strongly right handed. It’s been a challenge and I’m not convinced that it will completely recover. But it all went well until yesterday when my wife tried to remove my stitches. She’s a doctor, but not that kind. CVS minute clinic assured me they have seen much goofier stuff than people trying to DIY stitches.

Yesterday she had a colonoscopy, so that took over the day before and the day of. All is well there, too. Her father died of colon cancer and it’s always on her mind. I was thinking of how my father died at the age of 33 from alcoholism. I have no idea what diseases he may have developed, had he lived. So many things I’m potentially not worrying about.

My daughter is going on vacation and will be dropping off her little dog to stay with us for the week. We are thrilled but my 15 year old cats are not. I fuss over them. It’s my main job. And I do it well.

Life is good, meetings are good, all is well and all is well!

Tolerance Part 2

The other, important way that tolerance figures into my sobriety is that when I was drinking, it was pretty much because I couldn’t tolerate life. I couldn’t tolerate feeling, any feeling, or, really, life. Bad things, good things, being bored or being busy. There was something about living that I found unbearable, and alcohol helped me bear it.

What changed? Well alcohol stopped working, mostly for me because I couldn’t moderate. I sought a slight degree of drunkenness but consistently went too far. Sober people will remark, “Why would I want one drink?” I wanted two. Maybe three. But the first on in me clouded my judgement and I couldn’t stop.

Now AA, the people and the steps, have given me many ways to cope with life and with emotions. Things can still get too rough, but now I know that alcohol won’t help. The trap door was a trap! It was a frightening thing to realize that this won’t work. I still strongly resist a chemical solution because I have a healthy fear of where it will take me.

There are plenty of tools in AA I can use to tolerate life and emotion.