When I was “growing up”, I was a worry wart. My mother kept telling me that and I guess it was true. I was also extremely shy and always naive. I was not a good student and had a lot of problems in school. I became the class clown to offset some of this, as my defense. And then after I graduated I found booze. It was like a miracle. It completely changed me.
Then booze took me down roads I never ever conceived were possible. I became out of control. Not long after I started, I began the downward spiral that I guess most of us suffer from. It was to occupy the rest of my journey here for many a year until I hit my bottom.
This is what I brought into the program. Like my sponsor told me, I was immature, insecure, and oversensitive. I had never grown up. I had no idea of adulthood. I had no idea of what it was that mature human beings experience. I was still the child. Full of fears, anxiety, depression, paranoia. Whew. How had I ever survived this long?
Today, I look back and marvel at what I have become. I’m no longer any of those things. Somehow, through the grace and exercise of applying these 12 Steps to my life, by adapting to the requirements of this program and having done what all those old timers suggested I do, no matter how imperfectly, I’m not the person, who walked through these doors.
I was thinking about this today, as I sat watching a man, who was “coming back”. To me he appeared not to paying too much attention to what was being said. Just my opinion. But it did make me feel sorry for him. I don’t have any idea of what’s ahead of him. That next drink? Or coming in and doing what we all had to do to get sober? Only time will reveal that.
What I thought about was what it was like for me, when I first entered. That first meeting and what I found here. As sick as I was, I did find hope in that first meeting. Hope that what had happened in the lives of those, sitting there and telling their stories, that I could have what they had. They had the power not to drink and I didn’t have that. I desperately wanted to have that. And that was the start of a whole new way of living.
And what is that? It’s a way of comfort. I am comfortable with me. I have a sense of peace and serenity in my life. I know today what it is to be mature. Grown up. No longer the worry wart. No longer full of fear and paranoia. Maybe a little shy and still a little naive. But, and this is the most important aspect, I no longer want to drink alcohol. I have had the thought of a drink taken from me. I’m sober and I want to stay sober. Sanity, as described in the BB, has replaced the insane thinking I had, which kept driving me back to a drink.
And then there’s the problem of the “God hole” which left me totally empty within. It has been filled. There’s no longer a vacuum within me. I have surrendered instead of complying, as was my practice from childhood on. I was cut down to size by all those old timers and entered reality. I have a higher power, the concept of which is still in process.
I like this life today. In fact I love it. Being sober and being part of this fellowship of people just like myself. Those who have gone through the same process and are willing to share with someone like me.