One thing I have learned is how much our emotions can bankrupt our reason and often lead us back to a drink.
Today the meeting was dealing with someone, whose grief led the group to talk about how to stay sober through all of this. All well and good. But I have known some, who let it get the better of them and they drank again.
One old timer I knew years back had a first wife die and he got through it all right. He stayed sober. He married a second time and she became ill and he did something, which amazed me at the time. He wouldn’t ask for help and when help was offered he refused it. He isolated and drank again. Reminded me of the BB. Without help it’s too much for us.
Grief is normal. We all go through this process. However, in my experience, my fellow alcoholics were there to help me through each passage I underwent. It kept me aware of my higher power and gave me the support I needed at each time.
I’m not talking about being cold and unfeeling. What I am thinking about is not to let my emotions so control me that I end up drinking again. Death and the causes of grief are not about me. It’s about the person, who is ill and passes on. I know I got a dose of that message from an old friend of mine in the program, who was dying. I remember walking into his ward in the hospital and there he was sitting on his bed looking at me. “What’s that long face you have on?” He told me to get rid of it, because he was the one who was dying. It made both of us laugh. But it put me in my place and adjusted my perspective on what was really happening.
There’s no need for me to sink into self pity and withdraw from the society, this fellowship, which has given me so much. I can still feel what’s going on and at the same time think with my head and not my heart. Bill W. called it growing up into emotional maturity. Emotional sobriety.
I have some individuals I know, who are near the end of their lives at this moment. They’re in my thoughts and my prayers. Not my will but God’s will be done. I am powerless. Do I feel bad? Absolutely. Will a drink fix it? I doubt it. A drink can’t do anything but make it worse.
Anyway, I walked away from that meeting today, thinking these thoughts.