Walking The Walk

My name is F and I am an alcoholic. I can tell that I am still a bit of a rebel, I buy the magazine every month then I save them up and have a binge to catch up so I am now reading the April edition. There have been several things that have sparked thoughts for me.

I put myself into a treatment centre to learn how to drink like a lady (fat chance!) where I had the ‘abdabs’ that I had put myself into what had to be classified as a mental institution (Moi?), completely missing the point that I have a three-fold illness.  However, it did separate me from the drink for a few weeks. Afterwards I went to aftercare two evenings a week where I remember having problems with the idea of “Let go, Let God” as for me it was always “Yes but…”  I also went to two meetings a week where I said thank you when I got my coffee, thank you when I gave my cup back, sat at the back against the wall thinking I might share if the silence ever got long enough (it never happened), and never talked with anyone at the meeting – you can guess the result. A drama happened, I tried a few numbers given to me by people in treatment, never knowing that there was such a thing as a help-line for just such a situation, nobody was answering so I returned to my default setting and picked up that evening. Someone saved my life by returning my call the next day who advised me to “put it down and start again” - bless her, I do believe she saved my life.

I changed my meeting venue and thought “I’m supposed to do something, so some wisdom must have filtered through into my thick head about this being a Programme of action.  I thought I’ll do the washing up as it’s in a room at the back, then I will have done something and I still won’t have to talk to anyone. Someone was already at the sink so I dried up, and during the course of my monosyllabic side of the conversation this person must have gathered that I was a newcomer as they offered to be my temporary sponsor – not that I had any idea of what a sponsor was or did – and thereby began my journey into recovery, or what I prefer to describe as the journey from the head to the heart.

When I had arrived in treatment I had “a problem with alcohol”, by the time I left I didn’t want to stand out so said I was an “alcoholic”.  What transpired at that meeting was that I was starting to “accept” that I was actually an alcoholic, and that meant that I had started to be responsible for myself and my actions. I took on being the literature person at two meetings and was very proud of “my” table, until I was rudely ousted from my position after about five years – being a very slow learner, I had absolutely no idea about rotation.  Someone said I was doing well, I said I was doing okay – I didn’t want to be doing too well and need to reward myself with drink, nor to be doing not well enough to punish myself either. It was during the literature stage that I introduced recovery coins to those meetings, and they are still doing them. I missed getting one this year and am looking forward to getting my quarter century on Founders’ Day next year as I reckon that I will then be able to say that I will have been sober longer than I ever drank. Actually, I value my AA birthday more than my belly-button birthday.

Returning to the subject of my sponsor, this wonderful person is still my sponsor even though they offered to stand down when I was having a rant about something not to do with them. After nineteen years as a temporary sponsor I promoted them to being my permanent sponsor amid much laughter. This lovely person has only ever instructed me to do something once in our time together, when I was told to report something to the police and to ring back to say what had been said’

I have been “in service” since those early days and have learned an enormous amount, growing in my recovery as a result.  Some of the positions I have volunteered for have never turned out as I imagined them to be though I have done my best which is all the Fellowship has ever asked of me. Same with sponsorship, I never know how it will work out and I never know why someone asks me in the first place.  Some get “it” - the magical “it” that I wanted when I was in the treatment centre, and some don’t. I have had to learn my boundaries, to accept that I cannot make people get recovery, and to go to any lengths – their lengths, not mine.  Sometimes they only want the consequences to stop and sometimes they want to get well, and I have to accept that – I can only share my experience with them.  Some have died, some have drunk again, some have moved away, and some have wanted this Programme. The last group give me such deep joy it’s hard to explain. Once some time back I did a chair and one of the people there said that I had answered the phone to her when she had called the help-line, and that she was a year sober – what an amazing Programme we have, “If you want what we have just do what we did” is so true.

I become more and more grateful every day for my sobriety (I agree that it is so different from being abstinent!) and prayer and meditation is part of my Programme – that talking to my HP and listening for the answers. There have been times when I’ve nearly worn out the Serenity Prayer as it covers every eventuality (God bless Ruth for introducing it to Bill W.) and I have definitely now got the idea that it’s a twenty-four hour thing and I only need not pick up a drink today, and maybe follow a few of the suggestions I have been given over time. Thank you for being there for me – the SHARE team and all who might read this article.

F. Battle Tuesday