AA Saved My Life

Audio Version

My name is Michael and I came to AA 38 years ago via the Salvation Army. One morning, walking past their door as I was trying to get my head together, I asked them if I could get in. The wee man who worked on the door there asked if I had a problem with drink and I said I had. I was offered a bed so that I could detox. I had money coming the next day but I knew if I carried on as normal I would drink it and there would be more of the same soul sickness. Instead I took the bed.

Once in, I spotted a guy I knew who regularly slept in the local cemetery. It was this man who asked me if I wanted to go to an AA meeting on a Sunday afternoon. After a couple of weeks off the drink I didn't feel so bad physically so we went together to the meeting. That was Easter Sunday 1981 and I've not had a drink since.

AA saved what was left of my life. I got the desire and the information on how to stay away from the first drink, on a daily basis, at those meetings. I was shown how to pick up the pieces of my life and find the real me. It's better just being myself. The original me is better than the fake I used to be.

Thank you to AA, the folk in it and my Higher Power.

Michael Greenock St Lawrence's, Saturday