How really helpful it is to me that I receive calls from other alcoholics. I don’t know how helpful I am to them, but I do know that they help me.
It’s like the 12th Step. We try to help another alcoholic, but in the end, we’re the one who receives the help. Like one old sponsor told me after such a call, “I knew that guy on the bed was you and I knew that if you could win the argument with you, you could stay sober.”
All these calls helped me today. Even though there were problems on the other end, they made me reach down within myself and to remember things about myself. I was forced to run a refresher course inside me on what I had learned in this program. What I had read in the BB. What my sponsor and other old timers had told me. Then to bring them out and share them with those who had called. In turn they were able to share some of the wisdom they had learned with me.
I was reminded of how easy it is for me, thinking I’m being rational, to become self will run riot, even though I don’t think so. To close the door on my higher power and let my character defects come to the surface. When all I really have to do is open the door a crack and let my higher power back in to change my mind and show me how far off base I can get at times. How often I need that 2nd Step to be restored to sanity once again.
How really grateful I have to be to be able to have the privilege of talking and sharing with another alcoholic like myself.