I may be in denial, but I don’t think I’m much worried about things right now. But there was a time when I was worried all the time. That worry fueled much of my drinking life. And when I came in, worry followed me through the door and all the way to the tables.
When I was a kid, my mother called me her litttle worry wart. So that unmanageability in the first step was there before the drink.
The reason I bring this up is that I ran across a woman today, whom I knew from way back. She’s been away from the meetings, without drinking, but she’s back. It was her worries which drove her back to the meetings. She pulled me aside to talk about her worries. She made me think of what worry did to me in the old days. Worry bought me a drink.
After she left a thought came to mind. I remember years ago reading an essay by a famous physician, who wrote thought provoking articles. The one I recalled was about this very subject: worry. He told about his busy life in which worry played a big role. He said one day he took the time to total of hours and minutes he spent worrying in a given day. He said that he was amazed at how much time he wasted worrying and decided if he could just stop worrying he would have a more productive day at work. So, this is what he did.
He said to himself that everytime a worry would pop into his mind he would stop and write it down and then he would save his worries up until evening when he could sit down and really worry about these things. So, he did this for a month. Everytime a worried thought entered his mind, he wrote it down and so was able to continue his work. He said it saved him countless hours. But he said that something else happened. When he finally had time to sit down with this list, he found that he couldn’t stir up enough energy to worry about the things he was worried about. He couldn’t find out what he was worried about.
I don’t know why the woman I talked to didn’t drink in the years she was away, but I thought to myself that if I had done what she had done, I just might have taken a drink. I told her I was glad that she was so fortunate to get back without drinking. But I was glad that I was fortunate enough not to have gone down the path she did.
I remembered after I read that article back so many years ago that I followed that man’s advice. Not that I followed the letter of the pains he went through, but I remembered to put my worries off long enough to get the same effect he did. I would conciously save my worries until the end of the day and find that I had nothing to worry about. I remember now that at that time I really had a purpose for doing this. I didn’t want to drink again. I truly wanted to stay sober.
It’s not that worry doesn’t enter on the scene anymore. It does. It’s just that I know that I don’t have to go there. I can make a decision that it’s not worth it. I have come to realize that it’s a waste of time to worry about something I have no control over. It’s part of recognizing how powerless I am over so many things. How much I need God’s help and the help of those around me. And, if I am truly worried and can’t get rid of it, I find a meeting will bring me down to earth and relieve me of the distress this kind of thinking brings to me.
Thank God for the program and the meetings. It’s why I’m still sober today.