We had a new man at our meeting today. He looked clean and fresh. Probably in his early thirties. And I thought back to how it was when I came in. I know that I sure didn’t look like that. I was told by someone that I was the sickest looking drunk they had ever seen. I was wondering if it was possible that this man was an alcoholic. But, then what do I know?
How could I possibly know what he was feeling inside. How could I know how much he drank or what it did to him. I didn’t know his story. I didn’t know what it was that brought him here to his first meeting. All I knew was my story and what happened to me. Now, that’s a story.
Then, as it went around the room and people addressed him with their stories and comments, hoping he would hear something, with which he might be able to identify himself to and relate to the problem of alcohol and the solution we offered, something hit me. It was the word “gratitude”.Not just gratitude that I hadn’t had to take a drink today, but something else.
I was forced to go back and think of that awful life I led, while I was drinking, and how close to death I came, as a result of my drinking. Yet, here I was, sitting in a meeting, where someone was being introduced to the opportunity I had been given so many years ago. I realized how fortunate I was to have been able to grasp onto this way of life and sobriety. But more than that. I had literally been given a second chance at life.
Through my drunkenness, I had ruined the first chance at life. I had completely blown it. Had I continued to drink, my life would have been over. Yet, by virtue of coming to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, something wonderful had happened. With the help of other alcoholics, like myself, and being introduced to the concept of a higher power, I was able to close the door on my past life and open the door to a new one. How great is that?
I know that I’ve read and heard stories of people coming back from near death experiences and how they began to appreciate their lives for the first time. But here I was having the very same opportunity. All I had to do was what everyone else had done in this program. I only had to put the drink down and follow a path laid out for me by all those men and women, who had preceded me. There it was in the example of others and it was written down in the pages of the Big Book. This is how it works. There was a solution to what was wrong with me. And not just me. All of us.
I was sitting here, thinking about second chances and gratitude that I was given the opportunity.