The last couple of days the our lives being unmanageable has come up, again and again. In particular the alcoholic’s inability to fit in with those around us. In the past, before we drank, during drinking, and how it is today. More importantly how this plays in with our sober lives.
When it comes to the feeling of not being able to fit in or get along with family, friends, and the world at large, the mainstream of life, I have my own stories, as I know others have. In fact, yesterday and today, I’ve heard a host of stories. Like I said, I have my own stories, but one man I’ve heard many times, probably tells it best. He talked about an experience he had, as a child. He talked about his first memory of his family. As he looked at them, he asked himself, “who are these people?”. Next, he tells about an experience as young adult. He was at a gathering with classmates in college. He saw them as hostile and unwelcoming to him. At that moment he took his first few drinks of alcohol and suddenly he felt warm, comforted, and welcomed by one and all and was able to talk and see himself suddenly popular. Under the influence of alcohol, he finally fit in. The same with me.
Growing up, going to school, during classes, going out and finding work, all this was painful, until I took that first drink. That first drink. To me it was like a spiritual experience. I was transformed. I changed. In between drinks and bouts of drinking, when I was “sober”, the alienation process came back. I was a stranger in a world not of my making. I was alone and lonely, as often is said, in a crowd. I needed alcohol. And the more I drank, the more alcohol took over and owned me body and soul.
When I finally was able to quit alcohol and came to this program, I was alienated again from those around me and I suffered from what I call alcoholic paranoia. I saw others as hostile and I was sure they didn’t like me and that they were always looking at me and talking about me.
But the program began to take over. Gradually, as I began working these steps into my life, I began to change. In fact the whole world changed, as I changed.
I was able, not only to build friendships, I also found out what was at the root of my not fitting in and what made my life so unmanageable. It came from what I lacked my whole life up to that point; a higher power. Moreover, I lacked not only a dependency on this higher power, I never had a real relationship with it. I had, what the people in this program called “a God hole”. It was then I was to learn that the only way this vacuum within me could be filled was from the inside and not the outside.
That’s where hope and faith began to grow. The more I attended meetings, listened to those, who had long experience in this program, hope began to build within me. I began to hope that I could get what they had. And, as hope grew, faith began to build within me. I realized that I was looking at the evidence of what this program could do for me. I could see it and touch it. I heard it. It was right there in the rooms around me. It was the fellowship of men and women, who were staying sober a day at a time.
I was told the same man will drink again. I had to come to believe that I could change that man, with the help of this fellowship and the God of my understanding. And it worked.
I was thinking about this today. I know how important all this is in my staying sober. I’m still in process of continuing to change. I have my moments, when I stumble along this path I’m on. It’s hardly perfect. But I am able to get help from those around me. I’m still striving to grow in emotional maturity. And that is dependent on growing along spiritual lines; the maintenance of my spiritual condition. It’s all in the 12 Steps of this program.