The dark side of us. That’s what a man said about himself, while we were talking about the second step today. He said that AA had brought out so much good in him, yet he was often drawn to the edge and his dark side.
And it was the dark side which brought him to a drink.
At the same meeting, another man talked about a graduation party he put on for his son. He said that there was more drinking going on all day and how good his reaction was to all those around him and how pleasant he acted all day. Then, he said, came Sunday and all this darkness came out of him. He said it was just like having a hangover. He was angry, resentful, and took it out on all around him. This man has been sober a long time.
A friend of mine and I were talking after the meeting. He said that he was thinking about what these two men said. I was doing the same thing. He told me that he believed that deep down in us was a good person. But, he also believed that deep down in there was a bad person. Both of these elements he said were below the level of our conscious mind, but that these two were in conflict with each other and this conflict could be aroused by what goes on in our emotional lives. Sounded like a lot of what Bill W. talked about in the 8th step in the 12 &12.
Then, referring back to the two men, who spoke at the meeting, he tied this into the insanity of drinking again. That deep down in each of us our alcoholism is alive and well. He said that he believed the man with the “hangover” was affected by all that drinking going on around him, although at the time he thought he was handling things well. He said, as did the man, that a sleeping giant was awakened and he wasn’t aware of it at the time. Not consciously.
Later, after I got home, I thought about these two men and what they said. They were, I believe, talking about all of us. It made me recall what Bill W. said in the BB. That when we’re cut off from the sunlight of the spirit, the insanity returns and we drink again. That darkness within is able to overwhelm us. The man, who had the graduation party said that he went into it unprepared and was paying the price with an emotional hangover the next day.
It made me think of how careless I can get and move the edge without knowing I’m going there. How without that sunlight I can so easily move into the darkness within myself. I can so easily get into relying on my own “power” and lose all contact with my Higher Power. This form of self reliance leads to a loss of faith and I can find myself in a state of self will run riot, even though I may not thinks so, as Bill pointed out.
It doesn’t matter how much time I may have accumulated in this program. In fact, the more time I have, I’m told, the closer to the next drink I may be. It was just a wake up call. That’s why I need to go to meetings and hear these messages being passed along. I don’t want to drink again, that’s for sure.
Just thinking and being grateful for the people in the rooms. I need to hear the solution, which is what the second step is all about.