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Connecting was the answer

IT’S the summer of 2017 and I have been drinking dangerously for pretty much all my life since my teenage years, but since January I have been powerless. I have told myself night after night, day after day that I will not drink today. I’ve meant it, yet I find myself running to the nearest shop ten minutes before it closes to buy the drink I so don’t want! I am jobless after being laid off for my ‘mental health’, I’m suffering from seizures, and I’ve lost my driving license. I’m no longer able to act my way through life in the outside world nor able to continue to attempt to ‘fake it to make it’. I am full of self-loathing and self-hatred, and the small task of getting up, dressed and active each day is near on impossible. (All of this is without a drink).

I am suicidal and full of self-pity! Jealous of all you humans out there just able to do life! My eldest daughter and a few relatives have mentioned many times they think I have a drink problem. I tell myself, “What do they know, how dare they?” If they had gone through the life events I had, they would understand why I drink! I’m angry, resentful and completely lost! Another consequence of my drinking happens, I see pain on the faces of those that love me, and the self-hatred deepens. I try a cry for help – a suicide attempt – and now, having survived, know I must try and find the answer to my continuous cycle of insanity.

I’m on my knees, desperate. I’ll do ANYTHING! I email Alcoholics Anonymous, not because I’m an alcoholic, more to validate that I’m a heavy drinker really. (See the contradiction here?) Yes. It was real. Desperate but defiant! I received a call from a lady who attended AA. She told me her story. It might have well been mine – she felt how I felt, and drank as I drank, to stop the horrendous emotions and shut out the world. She too had felt the desperation I felt! She invited me to a meeting that night.

I went to that meeting in the same way I would find myself at the shop buying alcohol when I didn’t want to go! There were another 30+ people who had all drank the same, felt the same, thought the same. I finally felt connected…to something. I didn’t know what, but that connection meant I was no longer alone. They shouted of a solution to the restlessness, irritability and discontent. They promised that if I put in action, got myself a sponsor, a home group, and worked through the Twelve-Step Programme I could get out too, and live a life where I would be happy, joyous, and free. However, this had to come first for I would never defeat this disease of alcoholism, but instead I would have a daily reprieve!

It’s now January 2024 and I am truly living in a world where I am connected! I live in freedom, no longer suffer the exhaustion, and pain, of the powerlessness that led me to drinking. The Promises have come true, and I have a second chance to do life. I will always be grateful that by the grace of God I connected to the ones who went before me to show me the AA way!

SHONA