Watching loneliness vanish

"ALCOHOLISM is a disease of isolation". As with many of the sayings that I first heard in the Rooms of AA, this really helped me. I came into AA having successfully isolated myself from everyone. The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions mentions, on p.53, our inability to form a true partnership with another human being - forget a true partnership, I wasn’t even emotionally capable of arranging a meeting with anyone else. Unless I was drunk of course. I was terrified of everyone and I practised avoidance until it became an art. I would make excuses about why I couldn’t meet up with someone (my usual excuse was that I was ‘too busy’, which was actually true as I was too busy being terrified of a possible encounter). I have no idea where this depth of fear and dysfunction came from but it paralysed me. Early on, alcohol allowed me to function in the face of this paralysis. I was thrown into a panic if I encountered something with which I needed another person’s help. From fixing any sort of machine to a painful emotional hurt, I wanted to be able to do everything for myself and not have to rely on anyone or anything else. Self-sufficiency at its most destructive. Alcohol seemed to give me the ability to connect with people, but I know now that this connection was an illusion. Bonding with the person on the next bar stool was the closest I came in my drinking days to having a meaningful relationship. Not meaningful at all as it turns out. The cruel paradox was that I was able to be sociable, to feel I could relax enough, only because I was drinking. 

What lies alcohol told me. I understand now that the moment I take alcohol into my body I lose the possibility of true connection with myself, another person or any sort of Higher Power. And yes, eventually alcohol stopped working. Nothing really helped me, the consequences were becoming more and more unpleasant, and I sank into despair and self-loathing from which only a miracle could save me. When I came to AA it was really hard for me to stay in the meetings and allow myself to be seen and known by others. I was fortunate that the compulsion to drink was lifted from me by the time I got to my first meeting but it took me a long time to open up. I was caught - I knew AA was going to help me stay sober but I didn’t want to do it with others. Sober, I simply had no idea how to relate to people. We get what we need in AA and the specifics of that are different for each of us. 

I got sober in a place where there were only two physical meetings each week (no online meetings at that time). For me this was a blessing. I knew I had to turn up to those meetings each week if I wanted to stay sober. If I had lived in a bigger city with more numerous meetings, I would have hopped around and taken my old habits of avoidance with me. As I write these words today, over twenty-four years after I came to that first meeting, I hardly recognise the fearful, lonely, woman I’m describing. I have watched the chill of loneliness and isolation melt away before the warmth of AA. In working the Steps honestly, I exposed all of myself to another human being and found (to my astonishment!) that this helped me heal, helped me grow as it says “…to watch loneliness vanish, to see a fellowship grow up about you, to have a host of friends – this is an experience you must not miss.” (BB p.89). 

Today, by the miracle of everything that AA has offered me, I have had this experience. I am able to be curious and unafraid and keep my heart truly open to others. I am no longer isolated or alone and for that I am truly grateful. 

DENA, Luxembourg