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I remember my first introduction to AA. I had asked a friend at work about how she was able to stay sober, and she offered to take me to a meeting. I wasn’t an alcoholic of course, but I was starting to spend a little too much money on the drugs I was now using on a daily basis. Sure I drank, but I could take it or leave it. I knew that my friend had been sober for some time. Maybe what she was doing to stay sober could help me stay off the drugs.

From “Admitting Powerlessness” January 1991

The worst result of my drinking was—and to this day is—the way I treated other people. I was young, I had ideals, and coming from an unloving alcoholic family, I had definite ideas about how I wanted to relate to other human beings. And over the progression of my disease, all this had gone out of the window: people were there to help me get drunk, they were manipulated to cover up the mess of my life, they had become mere pawns. When they became obstacles between me and the glass, they had to go. And all because I had to drink.

And then or course there were all the other aspects of unmanageability: the shame and guilt of waking up in some stranger’s bed after yet another blackout, the terrible hangovers, the headaches that no pills could cure, the thirst that gallons of water could not quench, the occasional realization of the filth that I had come to live in, the increasing inability to hold down even menial jobs. In short, I lived my life in a way I did not want to, and I could not help it; it was all because I had to drink.

Listening to someone else’s sharing in a meeting a few months into AA, having stayed away from the first drink a day at a time, it suddenly hit me how much pain I had suffered, how close to death I had been, what a nightmare these years had been.

When I surrendered to the fact that alcohol was greater than myself, accepted life without ever drinking again, the compulsion was removed, left, as if it had never been there.

EVA M.,

LONDON, ENGLAND

One Tuesday night, we opened the door to a crowded smoke-filled room. The images I remember were mostly those of older men. Everyone greeted each other warmly and many came over afterward to shake my hand. The sharing was honest and open, and I remember being impressed by that. I went to several other meetings with my friend but never felt like I belonged. I remember thinking that these people must really need all these meetings because they were lonely and they probably had no other life to fall back on. One the other hand, I still had a job, friends, and a family. And besides, alcohol wasn’t my problem. I said thank you very much to my friend for her trouble, but I was not using anymore and I was sure that I could handle it from there.

For six months, I stayed clean and sober. Each day was a huge struggle. My friend would check in with me every once and a while to see how I was doing and asked me if I wanted to go to a meeting. “No thanks, I’m just fine,” was my reply. Inside I was becoming more and more restless, irritable, and discontent. Then the day came. Surely after six months I’d proved that I didn’t have a problem. One day I picked up and the physical compulsion returned. My disease was active again.

Two years later, I picked up the phone and called AA. I still didn’t believe I was an alcoholic but I didn’t know where else to turn. That night I sat in the parking lot before the meeting and I was shaking. I was no longer going into the meeting as a casual observer, but as a person in pain who needed help. I was open and willing. I remember how safe I felt in that room that night and how the things people talked about made sense to me. Being there with those people gave me the strength to make it until the next morning.

I kept going to meetings every day, and I found myself feeling better and better. I listened to hear what people who used drugs were calling themselves. Cross-addicted seemed to be acceptable so that’s what I’d say. I tried to get the word “alcoholic” out a couple of times but it just wouldn’t come because I didn’t believe it. I talked to a few members about how I felt and they told me that as long as I had a desire to stop drinking I belonged and that if I kept coming back, I would figure out for myself if I was an alcoholic. I did have a desire to stop drinking because I knew that alcohol would lead me back to the drugs.

Six months went by and I experienced all the stuff that goes along with early sobriety: the fears and mood swings, the physical cravings, and the relationship problems with friends, family and coworkers. One night when I was staying over at a friend’s house, I was offered a drink and I took it. I had been restless that day and the thought of a drink to relax seemed like a wonderful idea. It never even occurred to me that there would be consequences. I still didn’t really believe that I was powerless over alcohol. I hadn’t taken the First Step.

The minute I felt the glow of that first drink of rum I wanted more. Everyone else was sipping their drinks slowly, enjoying the conversation, while I became more and more obsessed with how I was going to get the next drink without drawing too much attention to myself. I couldn’t stand the thought of sobering up before I fell asleep, so after I poured myself two more good-sized drinks, I went to bed. The next morning when I woke up I was flooded with anxiety and a sense of foreboding. The feelings were strangely similar to those I had felt a little over six months earlier on that morning I had made the call to Alcoholics Anonymous. At that moment I began to get a glimpse that I might have a problem with alcohol.

I started back to the meetings. Three months later I was let go from my job and decided that maybe I should attend a rehab program. By this time I had changed the way I was talking about my recovery. Instead of saying I’d been sober for three months, I was telling people I had been “around the program” for nine months. My denial was very strong.

The counselor I was assigned in the treatment center was an AA member with twenty years of sobriety. After listening to me talk for twenty minutes about why I was there, how I had emotions and mood swings to deal with, and how I wanted to learn to live with myself and others, she questioned me about my alcoholism. I told her I knew I couldn’t drink because it would lead me back to the drugs. She told me even though I had many other issues to deal with, what I really needed to do was to work on Step One: my powerlessness over alcohol.

It was there that I wrote my first drinking history. As I went back I discovered many things that had somehow escaped my notice. The first drug I had ever picked up was alcohol. I had started drinking three to four nights a week after only a few weeks of drinking and always to get drunk. I was suspended from college because of a low grade point average, and that was directly related to my drinking. As I reviewed all the crazy, desperate, unmanageable times in my life, alcohol was always present. It had affected my life physically, emotionally, mentally, socially, academically, and spiritually. It was as if my eyes had been opened for the first time. I was powerless over alcohol and my life was unmanageable. I was an alcoholic.

When I returned from treatment and went back to meetings, I was able to stand at the podium and say, “My name is Lynn and I’m an alcoholic.” The words came freely because they were coming from my heart. I’ve been sober a few years now and I owe my life to AA. I’m grateful that those people I met when I first came in didn’t reject me because I couldn’t say I was an alcoholic. Today when I’m in a meeting and I hear somebody share that they’re not sure whether or not they belong because alcohol was not their primary drug of choice, I can extend my hand and tell them that I understand. I tell them what was told to me: Keep an open mind and keep coming back, and you will find the answers for yourself. Some people stay and have the same experience that I did. Some leave and find their home in other twelve-step programs.

I believe that it is important not to dilute AA’s message and that our singleness of purpose should be preserved. Many of us do have other issues to deal with and the Big Book encourages us to go for outside help in those cases, but in AA meetings, I want to hear how people are staying sober. I’ve been able to deal with some of those other issues by going for outside help, but without my sobriety, none of it would have been possible.

When I first came into the program, I didn’t understand anything about the disease of alcoholism and how it had made my life unmanageable. I thought that people, places, and things were the real problems. It took AA members with good long-term sobriety to help me get the focus back on me. When newcomers come in talking about outside issues, it’s my responsibility to keep things on track in the same loving and careful way that others used to walk me through my early sobriety.

LYNN J.

SAINT JOHN, NEW BRUNSWICK

DECEMBER 1995