When Redemption Transforms
“If any of my fellows out there consider prison sponsorship please be brave and come inside. What I’ve learned from my sponsor has been invaluable.”
It’s been twelve years since I last wrote to Roundabout. My article “AA Saved My Life” gave me some very good comments which in turn gave me some inner strength, helped me face my reality.
For those of you who are new to my story, I got a life sentence in 2002; I had to serve fifteen years before I would be considered for release on parole. I attended my first AA meeting on 4 November 2006 and haven’t looked back: a life definitely saved.
I had ten parole tribunals and haven’t been anywhere near to being released. To date I’ve served 23 years and eight months, but in this time frame I am about to celebrate 19 years’ continuous engagement with AA. I have the best of sponsors and we’ve worked together for 17 years in this time: we’ve been happy, glad and sad, lifting each other when down, cajoling and kicking each other’s backside when merited; never did I think someone of her stature would be able to understand someone of my calibre, but we work – sponsors work.
If any of my fellows out there consider prison sponsorship, please be brave and come inside. What I’ve learned from my sponsor has been invaluable. I am not alone, although prison can be a lonely place, but being part of this great Fellowship has helped mould me into a very different man from the person I was in 2002. I am 60 years old today; my mind and body have caught up with each other.
I’m not old-aged and am relatively fit, have good cognitive skills with no mental health issues, thankfully.
My mental well-being is purely down to the work I’ve done with AA. I chose as a Higher Power to practise Buddhism, whose philosophy runs very much the same as the Twelve Step Programme. We’ve all got to find a Higher Power. Life can’t have a God while we’re in our cups thinking we were it, messing our own lives up, subjecting those around us to absolute hell.
Please my fellows, find that peace I got from my Higher Power. I’m sitting here thinking: so what’s the message? Twenty-three years of months in jail, no prospect of release, yet each day I am pro-active, positive, and happy with my lot: get on board – AA does save lives.
All the best, people.
Alan (The Lifer)
HMP Barlinnie