I was thinking today about the truth and falsity of what I have to say. Often I will say things descriptive of my life and times in this program. They are true, but they’re also false. For instance, I told the group today about how long it took for me to surrender to this program, after I came in. That was true. But, it’s also true that I had surrendered from the very start and I wanted to succeed in never taking a drink again. I was ready to do anything it took to do this and yet had such resistance to what it took to do so.
I say a lot of things based on my experiences over the years. They are both true and false at the same time. At any given time in a day I’ve done a lot of things, which are offset by a lot of others things. I’m both good and bad at the same time.
Confusing? Well, the reason I bring this up is that I happened to be talking to someone I “sponsor” this afternoon. This is a person, who has been in this program for a lot of years. From what I have observed of them they have “good” sobriety and work this program very seriously. I knew, or could probably guess that there was some difficulties going on. I had observed on many occassions at meetings, studying their profile, that something was going on. Finally, today, they called me and said they needed to talk to me.
The content of that talk is not so important as the act of talking. Here was a person who was walking their talk. They are to me the epitome of what this program is about and always have a good, if not a great message. Yet, here they were, just weighed down by an awful lot of stress and a host of problems. This had been going on for months and months.
But now they were talking and getting everything out on the table.
There was no thought of a drink. But, as this person said, in their experience, as well as mine, they don’t necessarily have to plan a drink ahead of time. When the insanity returns, the drink will be there. Keeping things in and carrying them around is one way to introduce the insanity back into our lives.
We are never one thing. But we are alcoholics. We can be doing everything right and at the same time, everything wrong. The only measure of this is our willingness to work the program and not take a drink a day at a time. At the same time our atttitudes and perspectives can be slowly changed over periods of days and weeks by what is going on in our heads. As Bill said, alcohol is a subtle foe. It can appear in our lives as something entirely different than we think.
I was once told that alcoholics live to talk and talk to live. I know that’s true. But, I also know, that we all have a tendency to isolate and try to figure things out for ourselves. There are two ways out of that dilemma. One is to drink and one is to open up and talk.
Today I got a good reminder by this wonderful person, who gave me the priviledge of their confidence, and demonstrated how this program really works. I was reminded once more of how important it is to be aware and stay sober.