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May 1975

We put the AA Preamble in the Labor News, a once-a-week paper. Last week, a man who left AA twenty years ago happened to read it. Even though he was drunk, he got hold of another AA member and went to his first meeting again. And last night at a meeting, a friend told me he was still sober. I guess that makes it all worthwhile.

When I came around the first time at age sixteen, I just couldn’t identify with anyone. AA wasn’t out in the open as much. Then I came back at twenty-five, in January 1970, after living two years on Clark Street in Chicago. There still weren’t any real young people in AA. The youngest were in their thirties. But I made up my mind to stay anyway. I’ve only had one slip since then, at the end of two years, simply because I didn’t work the Steps. I was lucky it only lasted six days.

After my slip, I started working all Twelve Steps in order, and I lost my compulsion to drink, even when I went through a lot emotionally. My wife came down with Guillain-Barré syndrome. It’s a form of polio. She was completely paralyzed for eight months and out of work for a year. I had only been sober about four months when she became ill, and you know, I didn’t even think of a drink, even when she was in intensive care and they didn’t know whether she would live or not. If it hadn’t been for AA, I wouldn’t have made it.

Last September, my wife had our first child—a boy. So, you see, I’m really thankful for AA, because it gave me my wife and son. I met my wife, who is a nurse, while on a Twelfth Step call. We had taken a fellow to the hospital for help.

When I was young, I was a wino on the street for two years, in mental hospitals about forty times, and in jails about as often. It got so bad, the AAs didn’t want me, ‘cause I had used them so many times. I was even barred from the hospital at the end. I’m grateful that this past Christmas I didn’t have to sleep outside in a back alley where it was twenty below zero. In fact, I’m grateful to be around at all. On one of my drunks, while on skid row, I passed out on top of a railroad trestle and was run over by a freight train. When I came to, the only thing I thought of was whether my wine bottle was busted.

In January, I had my third anniversary. Now, we see a lot of younger people and other people who didn’t have to go down as far as I did, and I’m glad. I just wish that everyone knew about AA, but a lot of people still don’t. Putting the Preamble in the paper might help someone else someplace else. We put the AA central office phone number at the bottom, and they got some calls.

W.C.

ROCKFORD, ILLINOIS