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Beyond My Wildest Dreams

Beyond My Wildest Dreams





Audio Version

My name is Maggie and I am a recovering alcoholic. I have been blessed with a good few years of continuous sobriety and a life beyond my wildest dreams. I owe it all to the teachings and the fellowship that I have found in Alcoholics Anonymous.

I didn't know what my wildest dreams were when I first came into the Fellowship. Oh yes, I dreamed; my whole life was a fairy story. I wouldn't have recognised the truth if it smacked me in the face. My head was like Spaghetti Junction and I could hardly string two sentences together. I didn't want to know anyone and no-one wanted to know me. My family had disowned me a long time ago. I had no home, no job and no self-worth. I didn't know who I was or who I wanted to be.

The most frightening thing of all is that I had no concept or understanding of the seriousness of my condition or how close I came to not being here at all. For over 20 years, apart from a very short stay in AA, not a moment passed when I didn't have alcohol in my system. It was my solution to the ills of the world and my best and only friend. In the end my every waking day was spent in the pursuit of alcohol and my success or failure determined whether it was a good or a bad day.

When I finally crawled back into AA I heard the words "This is a gift that is freely given but you have got to work to keep it." This gave me real food for thought. After a couple of days without alcohol, I realised that the world was not falling down around my ears. I started to think for the first time that perhaps I could do this. Perhaps I could stay sober. From that moment I rolled my sleeves up and started to work. I put my heart and my soul into my recovery; after all, I literally had nothing to lose.

Slowly but surely, with the help of a good sponsor and the AA programme, I started to find out who I really was. Much of this did not make pretty reading. I found that I was egotistical from the minute I was able to think and that my whole world revolved around me for the next 40 years. I never once looked outside of myself and how I felt. It hadn't occurred to me that other people had their own lives, their own thoughts and their own feelings. I either people pleased to gain popularity or rode roughshod over others to get what I wanted in life. I lived in constant fear although if you were to ask what I was frightened of, I couldn't have told you. This, I discovered, was the nature of the beast - my illness - the illness of alcoholism.

For 40 years I had blamed the world and everyone in it for what was wrong with Margaret and measured my success and popularity on what people gave me or what was taken away from me. I thought that material things would make me happy but no matter how much I had, I always wanted more. I craved praise and attention although, by nature, I was chronically shy. It wouldnâ??t matter how much someone told me that they loved me, I could not believe it. Why would I if I did not love myself? I didn't realise that the emptiness inside me was like a bottomless pit, that no amount of praise, love or material gifts could ever fill the void that I had lived with all of my life. I learned that alcohol was only a symptom of what was going on inside me. I had to put the bottle down and address the real problem - me.

Through the patience and support of my friends in the Fellowship my priorities started to change. I began to value people rather than possessions. I learned that to have friends I had to be a friend and to give of myself rather than continually take. I learned from examples around me how to show consideration and kindness without expectation or ulterior motive. I learned how to be reliable and courteous and to think before I opened my mouth. I learned to respond logically rather than react emotionally. I learned how to cry for others and laugh at myself. I learned how to be a daughter, a sister, a wife, a colleague and a friend.

Through all of this I have found and accepted myself, that person I loathed most in the entire world. The fear has gone, the noisy head has calmed and I have finally found contentment in life. If someone had handed this recovery to me on a plate I would have found no value in it. I would have discarded it as I did everything and everyone else in life.

The true value and joy of sobriety is to be found in the journey and what a journey it is proving to be. The world is now my playground, not my prison and my life is beyond my wildest dreams.

Maggie

Grangemouth Morning Fellowship, Grangemouth Step & Tradition