The author Stephen King stirred something up today. He apparently has a book coming out that concerns one of AA’s truisms. We’re as sick as our secrets. And that became the topic of the meeting this noon.
I can remember, as a kid growing up, that our family always said you don’t hang your dirty laundry on the clothesline for all the neighbors to see. We grew up not telling anyone anything. Except, of course, I grew up in a faith, which confession was part of its program. And even then, I tried to keep some of my secrets secret. So my alcoholism had begun to grow even back in those early years.
Keeping secrets wasn’t possible, when I began to drink. As the years went on my mouth was running in the bars all the time. I guess I must have told a lot of my secrets to whoever would listen. Maybe I knew it was safe to tell a bunch of other drunks my stories, because who would remember them?
However, when I came into the program, I was so plagued with guilt and remorse for the life I had led that I was not about to tell anyone anything. Fear and shame kept my mouth shut. And that just compounded my problems. I was miserable to say the least. I wasn’t drinking, but my alcoholism was apparent to everyone in the rooms. They commented on it constantly.
Finally one night I couldn’t stand it any longer and I sat down and began to write my 4th Step. When I finished it, I immediately went and did my 5th. What a relief. It wasn’t much, but I had made a start. As they say, more would be revealed later down the road.
The funny thing was, at the time, that those old timers knew right away that something had happened, because the misery I had brought into the rooms with me, had been lifted from my shoulders. The next night at the meeting they questioned me openly at the meeting. What had happened to me that changed me. I was embarrassed to tell them, because I had obviously resisted the Steps up to that point. I mumbled something and they laughed and told me to speak up. Red faced I then told them I had worked the 4th and 5th Step and they laughed and smiled. I was a member of AA at last and accepted by everyone in the room. Someone knew my secrets, or some of them. I had begun the road to freedom.
As we talked in the meeting today, those memories came back to me. How just the act of taking the time to write about what was bothering me and holding me hostage by fear and shame, and then telling someone what I had written, was the start of a new life. It was to begin the cure for what was making me so sick. My secrets.
I was thinking about this all day. The funny thing was, as some said today, that the secrets we hold so close to our vest are really no secret. Everyone in here has almost all the same secrets. So it’s not the secrets themselves that are the problem, it’s the holding on to them, which opens the door to us going back out and drinking again. How grateful I am to all those old timers, who wouldn’t leave me alone, until I gave up my secrets. Many of them are responsible for my still being sober today.