What is it that gets alcoholics to the point of where they stop going to meetings, or they cut down drastically on the number of meetings and place themselves in peril of drinking again?
I had several chances this week to talk to a number of these people. The first was a man, who believes he is keeping himself sober, without the help of a higher power. Right or wrong, my take on it was that it was self sufficiency, self reliance, and not a little intellectual pride. Scary. I can remember early on, when I went through the same phase.
Another person had a couple of things going on with them. One was a disappointment in a relationship with another member. It happened a number of years ago, but the resentment is still there. Plus the fact that this person believes they can handle their sobriety on their own. Self pity and pride. How well I remember those elements in the process I went through myself. But my guess is that the failed relationship is the main problem. A lack of trust in anyone in this fellowship as the result.
When the BB talked about what happens, when boy meets girl on the AA campus, it offers a caution that we need to be sure that their are no hidden booby traps awaiting us down the line. Unfortunately I’ve been witness to this over the years and its consequences.
Faith or lack of it is another hazard. Dr. Carl Jung talked to that young man in the BB about this, when he advised the man to seek a spiritual experience. The man said that he was religious and Jung said that was not enough. It was enough to convince the man to go off and find such an experience and he became a member of the Oxford Movement and stayed sober the rest of his life.
I remember a wise man once talking about doubt as a virtue. He said that, if we grow up with our beliefs based on our parents or some other adult, we might suffer from a childish faith. Doubt he said could force us to achieve a mature faith. So doubt, as in my own life, can be a useful asset. It can open our minds and hearts to begin the process of spiritual growth.
As I thought about these things today, I recalled a woman in the program I knew many years ago. She had almost twenty years in, when I met her. But years before she had eight years in, when she drank again. During those eight years, she was married to an old timer. When he died, she drank again and hit another bottom. She told me that, during that marriage, her husband was her program. Upon his death she found that she didn’t have a program herself. She had to come back and start from the very beginning.
Anyway, a friend of mine and I were talking the other day, what it was that caused people to stop going to meetings and eventually fall back into active alcoholism. Resentments we decided, from our experiences and talking to others seemed to be the number one offender. Certainly the return of ego and intellectual pride was another. Lack of dependency on higher power was another. Lapsing back into our former thinking and activities, which we had left behind, another. People, places, and things. Looking for more excitement. My sponsor told me, when I had told him a long time ago I was getting bored, that it was because I was not doing anything. I had stopped working the program and he got me busy and I have never been bored since then.
Anyway, I could be wrong. But I was thinking about this, especially when I talked to a man, who just told me he was getting bored with meetings. Time to get busy and be grateful for what I have today.