If you've been in recovery for a few 24-hour periods, you've met them in meetings: alcoholics whose drinking has brought them to a fork in the road of their lives: stop now and keep everything they have or continue and lose it all.I know all of us faces that prospect, but I'm talking about people for whom alcoholic destruction is no longer a theory, like a woman I met I'll call Meg.

Meg is a former army officer (one of the few active-duty women who have actually staffed combat missions). She has a bachelor's degree in a technical field. She is physically attractive. She drives a late-model sports car and owns a home in the nicest area of town. She married another army officer, and they have an adorable toddler together.

A couple of years ago, Meg lost her military career when she tested positive for cocaine. She quit that habit to focus on (more legal) alcohol. Here's what that's gotten her, just during the past year:

• A driving-while-intoxicated arrest and conviction
• A divorce
• A Child Protective Services investigation into her parenting
• A custody battle
• Bills putting her near the verge of bankruptcy

Meg started coming to 12-step meetings once her husband moved out, wanting to get sober in order to maintain custody of her daughter. She got a sponsor, got a Big Book, worked with her sponsor every week for several months, and went to at least one meeting a day. She picked up a 6-month chip a few weeks ago.

Child Protective Services got out of her life.  Her soon-to-be-ex was ordered to pay child support. Her DUI was dismissed after some time on an occupational drivers license. Everything was looking up for Meg!

She spent yesterday very drunk.

And so, the $64,000 question: why? She could lose everything she's worked for! It could get even worse for Meg if she keeps drinking!

Page 24 of the 4th edition says this, and it sums up for me the nature of the disease:

We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousnesses with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink.

So often I hear in meetings "If you don't take the first drink, you won't get drunk!", usually followed by guffaws of newcomers and the easily amused.

That's not in the Big Book, and for good reason (stated above): I'm without defense against the first drink! It's not that I didn't realize that alcohol is intoxicating.

If someone like Meg can look at all she has to lose and still drink, can't any of us? If her self-will could have prevented her relapse, surely it would have yesterday.

Robert Frost described two paths before him in a forest, and he chose the path that had carried fewer travelers thus far. He concludes that "... made all the difference."

 I hope there's a road less traveled ahead for Meg.

How It Works - The Original Version!

A few weeks ago, an oldtimer created a bit of a stir by reading the original version of How It Works at the beginning of our meeting.

Many people (read: newcomers) were visibly uncomfortable with the hardline voice contained therein, but I loved it!

My favorite passage is this one:

Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after, have been designed to sell you three pertinent ideas: (a) That you are alcoholic and cannot manage your own life. (b) That probably no human power can relieve your alcoholism. (c) That God can and will. If you are not convinced on these vital issues, you ought to re-read the book to this point or else throw it away!

The hardcore crux of the matter of alcoholism is that the only existing solution is the development of a spiritual life. That might look that the religion of one's upbringing, but it certainly doesn't have to. As long as it's a God of the drunk's understanding, he's on the way.

If you won't work to discover who that God is, get yourself up of that seat so someone who will do the work can have it. You have obviously not hit bottom yet. You may wish whatever drove you in here was your bottom, but it wasn't. You need to go lower.

I was about to write "and may God help you then." But you wouldn't agree with that yet, huh?

One day you will.

Day 7

Okay, Day 7 was yesterday, please forgive. I fell asleep without posting, probably in part from heavy reflection in this issue...

I have also realized that I have learned through this program to have some measure of peace about my son's father, who is, empirically, a major pain in the ass. I have learned not to get too wound around the axle about his latest stunts, and he concerns my son. Therefore, I have no excuse to not practice the same behavior with P.

I need to lower my expectations, and accept her for who she is, because I am powerless over her behavior.

Method and My Madness

Things I tried in order to control my drinking before getting into recovery:

• Only drinking beer
• Only drinking on weekends
• Drinking only one drink per hour
• Drinking only after eating
• Only drinking at home
• Only drinking when away from home
• Seven Weeks To Sobriety
• Self-hypnosis CDs (that's humbling to admit!)
  

Always and Forever

I believe that I have always been an alcoholic, from the day I was born. I remember sipping my mother's gin-and-tonics and thinking about how great it would be to be an adult and have one (or seven) all of my own - and I was five!

I don't ever remember having one drink, ever. I drank until a) there was no more booze in the zipcode I was partying in or b) I passed out. I sometimes hear folks referring to "becoming" an alcoholic - sorry, can't relate.

The Big Book tells me that I must accept that I will never drink like a normal person, assuming I ever did in the first place. I spent several years wondering if I had a drinking problem. Ironically, normal drinkers don't wonder if they are alcoholics!

I have probably sat in thousands of meetings. I have no idea how many times I've read the BB or the 12&12, but I know it's several times apiece at a minimum. Every single day of my life for years, I have spoken to at least one recovering or wanting-to-recover alcoholic.

But this is not rehab. All of that listed above does not eradicate my disease. There is no chemotherapy for this. It helps me hone my spiritual dimension that in turn makes me able to go one more day sober. Then I will get up tomorrow morning and God willing, do the same things again, with the same result.

I have blue eyes, horrible vision, a great sense of humor, and alcoholism - it's who I am, and who I always will be.

No Salesman Will Come To Your Door

Every so often at my home group when desire chips are offered, people attempt to "sell" a newcomer on getting one ("go ahead!", "they're free!", "don't you want one?"). The culprits are always the pink-clouders with a few weeks or months and are now out to sober up the world.

But the world at large does not want to get sober. The latest estimate of the adult population in my little city is 100,000. If ten percent of the U.S. population is estimated to be alcoholic, that's 10,000 of us in this city alone (and if you ever get a chance to read our city's police blotters, you'll probably agree that's a reasonable estimate). I've never seen more than 50 people in a meeting around here.

Alcohol was everything to me. I wouldn't have actually said that out loud, even to myself, but it was. Nothing got between me and my drink, whether I had to hide it, lie about it or steal it. But I would have indignantly told you I was i no way an alcoholic.

Step One says that we admitted that we have a problem. Webster's defines "admitting" as "confessing". My confession came from hitting bottom - that point where life itself showed me that I had a problem, and I had to agree.

One of the great mysteries of life for me is why some people admit this earlier in life than others. Why did I come in after a few fender-benders and get this, while we have folks court-ordered to attend who are right back out the minute the last line of their form is signed?

The closest I've come to an answer to this riddle lies in "How It Works": I get this when I am capable of rigorous honesty. Until that day, you could keep your chip.

Powerless, The Sequel

Step One is “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.”

But I am learning that "drinking is but a symptom" of my disease. Once I subtract the booze, I am left with my brain, and I've been pouring booze on that since I was an adolescent!

Today, Step One reads for me "I admit that I am powerless over others, that my life has become unmanagable."


When I came into the program, I had a string of booze-related traffic accidents that each should have resulted in a DUI, but for some reason, they didn't. Maybe because I didn't need them to: once I wrecked a rental car with scant knowledge of what I'd done the next day, I knew I had a problem, and I wasn't going out in some blaze of glory. Jails and institutions didn't sound like anything I wanted to experience.

Lately with my anxiety running amok, I am missing out on my life to agonize over things that haven't happened. I am not sleeping, and I am almost constantly tormented by "what if?"

Unmanagability!

I am powerless over the behavior of others in my life. If people are acting out in my life, that's their choice: I can't hit some mute button and silence them (trust me, I'd have done it by now).

Step One freed me from the moment I walked into the program to get better. I have the relief of my problem having a name. I have a Big Book that tells my life story. I have people around me that understand.

Now I need to keep working, to get more relief.