I was listening to a talk given by an old timer the other day. One of the things he said was that, as he was growing up, he had no real goals. His only goal really was to drink. I talked to another friend, a man who had been fairly successful in business, who said the same thing. It was true of me, too.
Growing up, I had a vision of a couple of things I wanted to do, and I even went away to school to fulfill one of these. But booze interrupted this journey and I dropped out and was off to the races with alcohol. After that nothing could stand in my way to live just to drink.
After I hit bottom, I came to this program and everything changed. Alcohol was no longer my goal. After years of aimlessness and wandering from bar to bar, my mind and heart became focused on one thing and one thing only: Sobriety. I wanted to be sober more than anything. I became willing to go to any lengths to achieve and live a sober life. As one person in my group once said, I was willing to roll a peanut with my nose all the way from College Park, Md., where I got sober, to Baltimore, if that was what it took.
But there was another element, which would not only become the means to get sober, but which was going to become a way of life. That was a way of life I was introduced to by the program. It was the spiritual life. Like the Ninth Step tells me, the spiritual life is not a theory, it has to be lived. It was the choice I was given in the chapter We Agnostics. To live a spiritual life or die an alcoholic death. I had already been exposed to the latter and wanted no part of that, so I chose to follow the life my sponsor and all the other old timers were leading.
Finally, for the first time I was given a map, which was to direct me, not only to the goal of getting sober and staying sober, but it put me on a road which has led me to a life of endless possibilities. I found it was possible to live a life of happiness and joy. A life of peace and serenity, where all my problems can be solved by the application of spiritual principles. A life, where for the first time, I have been able to establish real and meaningful relationships. A life, where I am never lonely, even when I’m alone.
The 12 Steps and the 12 Traditions of AA are that map. They led me to a higher power. A power which has empowered me to come back from the living dead into real living for the first time. I’ve been brought into a life of awareness, from the unconscious to a conscious contact with a God of my own understanding. I have been given a purpose to fulfill the will of God on a daily basis and the power and grace to carry that will out.
I don’t pretend to know what God’s will is. I only know that it begins with not picking up a drink a day at a time. I believe it is, for me, to do the next right thing. And the rest of it is revealed through the words and messages of others like me, through the meetings I attend and in private with the friends I have made in this program. For this I am eternally grateful.