They used to say that if you stop attending meetings, relapse is inevitable. It’s just a matter of how long it takes. Even with ten years of sobriety, I’ve taken for granted this knowledge. Four years ago, after my husband and I made another big move across the country, for various reasons, we failed to plug into our new AA community. We stopped putting our sobriety first. Despite hearing over and over in AA meetings the same story, “the promises came true, life became busy, major life changes occurred and I just stopped going to meetings… then I drank again”, somehow, we were different, right?
For a true alcoholic like me, when I stopped working the program, it stopped working for me. After all, alcoholism isn’t so much a drinking problem, as it is a thinking problem… I didn’t notice it at first, but I had been tripping on my own feet for awhile, and all it took was a trip “home for the holidays” for the first time in 14 years to really set my spiral in motion. Although, it was a good visit (one I am very grateful for) after I got home, my world seemed to fall apart. Old wounds of the past opened up and I just couldn’t stop the bleeding. It bled into my entire life. Life became just as unmanageable and miserable as it was when I was drinking. FEAR became my driving force. F*** everything and run. I didn’t want to drink, but I wanted to die. Without a doubt, it was a sober rock bottom, and an indication that if I didn’t take action quickly, I’d suffer the same fate of relapse or worse.
By the grace of God, I got in touch with my sponsor who helped me work things out, and pushed me to plug back in. AA works, but only if you work it. The truth is in the old saying “We have to give it away to keep it.” When I came into the program, the steps gave me a new outlook on life. My life before it was one tragedy after another. One regret after another. Hope and joy only existed momentarily, and only when alcohol ran through my veins. I lived to drink and drank to live. It was painful. My obsession with alcohol stole any opportunity for true joy and nearly took my life.
What a gift it was to be led into the rooms of AA. One day at a time, the people I sat with gave me the courage to push forth. Listening to the old timers and watching their lives, made me realize that I wanted what they had – a positive outlook on life and a chance to start over. The only way to I would get it was to do what they said. Go to meetings, walk through the steps, and don’t drink no matter what. And everything I have today is because of I made the choice to change.
The steps are everything. Every single one of them, done in order, contain a saving grace like no other. As hard as it was at times, once I got to step seven and felt that heavy weight physically leave my body – the obsession taken from me by my God – I realized that nothing in life was worth more than that. No drink, no drug, no person, no nothing. In that one moment the chains of my prison were broken. I was finally freed. What I stopped short of thereafter, is when the promises made themselves true in my life, I got careless about my sobriety. I learned to live, but forgot I needed to take great care with it. I got wrapped up in my own world and forgot that it’s not so much about how God freed me, but how I needed to keep sharing my experience, strength and hope with others, so they might be freed, too. That’s how I stay sober.
It takes what it takes. The book says, “we are not saints, the point is that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines”. For now, I’m still sober, but no longer dry. Meetings provide the support that all recovering addicts and alcoholics need, and there’s a reason people stay in it until they are called home. It’s our “medicine”, but we have to be willing to take it. Despite the pride we all have, the ego that tells us, “I’m not like those people” or “I don’t need those people”, resting on our own laurels will always lead us astray. Whether we like it or not, the people in those rooms might be the only ones on earth that can truly understand us.
The first couple meetings I went to as I dragged my ass back in last month, were not great. I didn’t want to be there, but I knew I needed to be. By the third and fourth meeting, I felt a difference in my thinking. I found myself wanting to listen and see the similarities, not the differences. I knew I was back. I had a feeling of belonging again. Something I was desperately missing for too many years. To stay joyfully sober, we need to become less interested in ourselves and more interested our fellows. That I know for sure. When the well runs dry, we need to take steps to fill it.
