Making Contact

Audio Version 

It seems a good time to reflect on how far I’ve come in these strange, still days of lockdown. There are no ‘what ifs’ in recovery but I am full of admiration for those who have come into recovery during this time and stayed, with only the telephone and the internet to make contact with other members. For it is making contact that is the key to my continuing sobriety and it was its absence that was the lock that kept me imprisoned in active alcoholism for so long.

In early recovery I would look for any excuse to avoid making contact and so not logging on would have been too tempting for me. I was fortunate because I was surrounded by strong, sober people who literally held my hand every step of the way in early sobriety and I was so lost, I was willing to be led. I became absorbed into the AA community - it was my life. I attended meetings almost every day and had many people around me - the like of which I hadn’t experienced in a very long time - carrying me through the first few months. I was still avoiding contact with other sober women, contact so necessary to peel away the protective layers surrounding me. Scary contact that would help me see myself as I really was and help me begin to recover my lost integrity. So of course, I avoided it like the plague! I sneered and resented those women, so pathetically enmeshed in each other’s lives, as I saw it then.

And so, despite all the meetings, reading all the books and being so very knowledgeable about the theory of the 12 Step Programme – I drank again - of course I did. It was still all about self and me - I’ll sort myself. Thankfully the drunk was short lived and I ran back to meetings. Safe now in the rooms, supported by other AAs, but with my inner life still in turmoil I was too scared to drink, but too scared to live in the world. The meeting rooms were my sanctuary for a couple of hours, the rest of each day was a living purgatory of striving, anxiety and depression. Driven to succeed at this game of life and terrified of failure, I began to be signed off work with depression and anxiety for the first time in my life and took to my bed. No drink but no sobriety either – I was surviving by hiding. Eventually coming up to one year sober, in desperation (that wonderful gift!) I asked a woman to sponsor me and so my recovery began.

Little by little, Step by Step, the layers that I had built up over the years of surviving as an alcoholic began to be peeled away. I had to learn a whole new language, the language of the heart and I am very grateful to my sponsors who patiently waited for me to open up. The Programme was a path where I learnt to tell the truth, how to describe what was going on in my head and my heart, how to see those patterns 11 Page 11 of thought and behaviour that had me repeating the same self- defeating mistakes over and over again. Good sponsorship helped me to understand the message of the steps and how to use them in my life to change these destructive patterns. The biggest  stumbling block as the years have passed has been my inability to change as I would like. I know these character defects now, I don’t want them anymore, so great - job done - bring on the new, serene, sober me! The trouble is it turns out I’m human as well as an alcoholic and these bedevilments will not go away, no matter how hard I try. As with everything in recovery, the biggest stumbling blocks turn out to be the stepping stones to the next stage of my recovery. For me this has been the growing of a spiritual way of life that has enabled me to eventually come to rest and accept life and everything in it, including me, on life’s terms. It’s a daily job of work, this continuing surrender and one I frequently reject and into battle I go again. As time passes however and more and more experiences show me that “God’s got this” I am beginning to let go and know deep down that all will be well - no matter what.

Teresa Inverness

Ness Bank Monday