Well Tooled-Up!
I got sober, thanks to AA, in the summer of 1995. I had arrived at what would be my first home group after being taken there by a dear newly sober friend. I was 24 years old, and though able to stop at that time after pub binges, I could see that my future held the drunkard’s life of slow descent. My love affair with drinking and all the nihilism that came with it was coming to an abrupt end. The circus had indeed left town, and I was still left standing in my clown suit, wondering where to turn next. As we went into the big meeting Room I was shocked at how many people filled it, and the friendly loud chatter. There were men and women of all ages. I could see that for some reason, though we were in a grim part of London on a Wednesday night, and not Miami beach, a lot of the men were wearing Hawaiian shirts. They shook hands and hugged a lot.
The sight of this made me shudder. The shirts were bad, but the hugging? I stayed safely in my safe harbour in the corner of the Room away from the men. Two women nearby were chatting, and I quickly realised that if I nodded as if I was part of their conversation, then the men would ignore me. This didn’t work for long. I was soon introduced to the first of the big loud-shirted fellas, a man who had found AA via a prison which was a few minutes’ walk away. He in turn introduced me to others with quirky names, and one by one I got the impression of a jovial, light-hearted welcome. Over 30 years later now, I don’t recall much else from that first night at the group but the welcome, humour, and indeed the intriguing nature of the Hawaiian shirts kept me interested enough to go back. I had little else to do, now that I wasn’t drinking.
I was advised to get a meeting daily, and the more I returned to this group every week, their repeated message was simple. Keep coming back. Stay away from the first drink. They said I could have my misery back any time I wanted should I get fed up of AA. That attracted me, as I then realised that AA didn’t need me, but I sure needed the back-up of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. As I attended the group and got to know the members through their sharing, I eventually got uncomfortable enough sober to ask a man for help. He became my first sponsor. The group was big on sponsorship. Still in my early days, I heard one of the loud-shirted members describing another member, an ex-prisoner, as being “Well tooled-up!” I wilted. Suddenly, I was back in my saloon-bar fears.
Another member quietly explained to me that the Fellow had actually been referring to the AA Big Book’s mention of the Fellowship’s “…kit of spiritual tools…” (BB p.25) I also realised that others in the group were ex-prisoners who had been introduced to AA via this group taking a weekly meeting in the prison. They brought in sober members to do a ‘chair’ and share their experience with the prisoners on the rehab wing. Once I had reached my first-year sobriety milestone and was doing chairs, the then secretary of the prison meeting invited me to go in there and share. I was terrified. I thought of myself in those days as a bit of a high-bottom drunk. I was living with my folks when I got sober and had never even been arrested, let alone been in prison.
I thought they would see me as a lightweight at the very least, or that my chair would be so disappointing, it might trigger a prison riot at the very worst. It turned out that all this was fear-based fantasy. I was sober, one day at a time after being unable to stop drinking by myself. I was a success, an example of what can be achieved, one day at a time with AA’s help. The secretary put some chairs around in a circle and I heaved a big table over from the corner to sit behind. No one said a word as the meeting went on, but I soon realised that usually it was just chairs in a circle. My fear must have been apparent, but they listened to my share respectfully. The Room seemed so normal to me in an AA sense. It had the usual AA signs and a Big Book on the table.
To close my chair, I shared about a predicament I had. I was a skint student, and that week I had been offered a stolen DVD player. As I listened to their responses, only then did I remember that I was actually in a real, grown-up prison, not the usual AA venue. To my surprise and inspiration, all the men advised me at the end of their own sharing time to refuse the stolen goods. They said that it might upset my chances of staying sober as honesty was such an AA virtue. They told me that the path back to a drink might start there. When the meeting ended, and the gate clanged behind me, I suddenly felt very grateful for the freedom to get on a bus. I took their advice on the DVD player and am still sober today nearly 31 years later.
JAMES, Crawley