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November 1966

When I crept into my first AA meeting, sober, and sank into the corner of a room, it didn’t occur to me that I was finally discharging a responsibility to myself.

Actually I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Yes, I had a wife, a home, and a bank account, but still I had no other place to go. My home had become alien to me; I’d run my wife out of the house on my last day of drinking; the money couldn’t buy what I was looking for. All my life I’d looked for something outside of me, not for the answers to being comfortable within. Some “thing” would make me happy, some person would change my life, and I would find my place. “Seek and ye shall find” meant to me trying to fulfill the distorted values I had come to hold.

It never occurred to me that I was using alcohol as a medicine in an attempt at a self-cure, to make myself comfortable while I was rehearsing my way to the bottom. That knowledge only came to me after I’d “cured” myself into AA. God works in strange ways, and he had allowed me to beat myself almost to mental and physical death in an attempt to get me to face up to the responsibility of becoming a human being. Alcohol was the runaway freight train I used in my no-brakes, downhill ride. Even though I was in the caboose, I rode in the cupola above the rest of the train and had a good view, but I was busy looking down at the book I was writing, Dante’s Inferno.

There are still times when I just plain and simple don’t like responsibility. Responsibility irks me. As a young boy, I wouldn’t enter sports because it carried with it the responsibility of winning. School carried with it the responsibility of studying and making good grades. As a young man, work carried with it the responsibility of making good. Marriage carried with it the responsibility of making a home, being true to one woman, raising kids. I backed off from them all. The feeling of inadequacy was awful. Since coming to AA, I’ve found that my feeling of inadequacy was a rationalization to enable me to escape responsibility. I used the guilts of the past to feel that no matter what I did I would never be forgiven by God, if there was a God. Until I came to AA, I didn’t realize what a magnificent rage and hate I had for people, life, living—me.

I told myself I wasn’t responsible for wars, murder, rape, arson, mayhem. Didn’t people know that was all wrong? Why did they do it? I didn’t realize that it was my responsibility not to add to those horrors, but add to them I did, especially when I slipped into my vodka bottle. People became indistinct shadows to me; they were bent upon my destruction; everybody threatened me. I was escaping the responsibility of living, true, but I was also adding to being responsible for the curtain going up on opening night with me flat on my back, asking for help from the only prompter who can rescue me.

The job looked much too big when I came to AA. It bugged me that I was responsible for attending meetings. I was hurt and enraged when my sponsor didn’t call or stop by and take me to a meeting—thereby making me responsible for going to meetings by myself. I disliked meetings because those present didn’t talk about things I wanted to hear, or they said things I didn’t understand. When some members seemed serene and competent, my defenses went up—who did they think they were? When I asked a question at a discussion meeting and it was answered, I became enraged because I thought everyone was after me, looking at me, putting me down.

If we hit bottom with a public bang, the time will come in our AA tenure when we will have to venture out of the house and face that public. Face the very same people who were eyewitnesses to our final day of disgrace, whatever it may have been. This is defi­nitely a responsibility. By the time I exposed myself to the view of my knowing neighbors and business associates and acquaintances, I’d fortified myself with months of AA. Some of the first things I learned were that if I thought God could forgive me, who was I not to forgive myself? That now I had a new life, was a member of a Fellowship that cared, that there were understanding people standing behind me, that I should not fear, that I had a responsi­bility to stand up and be counted, sober. As our Big Book says, I could go anywhere, do anything within my capabilities, as long as my motive was right, as long as I felt I was putting myself under the big director, my Higher Power.

Even today it bugs me to feel that I am responsible for my actions. Worse yet, I am responsible for the thoughts that lead to the actions. At times the whole shebang becomes so overwhelming I am forced to go back and start all over again—“First Things First”; “one day at a time.” I must put one foot carefully after the other; be careful that I don’t always look down, but also look up to see where I am going and note that the sun is shining, that I am sober, physically well, my mind cleared of booze and pills. I must be grateful in the knowledge that there is a Power greater than myself. Perhaps I am not responsible at all times for the adversity in my life, but I certainly am responsible for trying to cope with that adversity sober.

To my chagrin, I’ve learned the hard way that I am responsible for slipping into mental and emotional depressions. I can usually take action that will forestall a depression when I conjure up one and begin to slide into it. My depressions are mostly brought on by frustration, fear of the future, self-pity, rage at my lot in life, but above all fear .

AA has taught me that I will not be asked to bear more than I can, regardless of what I think, but that I am responsible for reporting for duty and making the effort to overcome the adversity, and in so doing to overcome myself, which is my first responsi­bility.

D.W., Van Nuys, Calif.